Introduction

edX was co-founded by MIT and Harvard in 2012 as a non-profit, open source platform for MOOCs (massive open online course). Partnering with colleges, universities, and businesses from around the world, we sought to provide access to high quality education to everyone, everywhere. In addition to courses and professional certificates, we launched additional programs including MicroMasters credentials in 20161 and Master’s Degrees in 20182 with our University partners. 2U would acquire edX in 2021 in a deal worth $800mm3.

Team

I joined edX in 2015 as the first full-time hire for IT. By the time the deal to acquire edX in 2021 was announced, I had proven the value of investing in IT and had grown my team to two managers, five individual contributors, and consulting resources across IT Operations and Business Systems.

Major Accomplishments

Here are some of my major accomplishments while at edX. I focus on my specific contributions, but in every case worked with a number of other fantastic people, especially the managers and individual contributors on my team. Please reach out if you’d like to talk about any of these contributions in more detail.

tCRIL IT Services

  • When: 2021
  • Context: The tCRIL (The Center for Reimagining Learning) was the non-profit entity that remained after the sales of the edX business to 2U for $800mm. My teams built out the core corporate technology and CRM services so that tCRIl could continue to function without interruption. All of this work happened on an accelerated schedule while we were also preparing for the technology integration with 2U.
  • What I did: I met with tCRIL leaders to learn about their needs and then provided options and recommendations for minimum viable technology capabilities. This included building out a collaborative, visual “IT Capabilties” map to anchor our conversations and use as a launch point for implementation. I translated this high level capabilities plan into an actionable project plan. I then delegated implementation to my IT Operations and Business Systems teams, supervising the implementation through its successful completion. We deployed and migrated affected users to core productivity, file sharing, endpoint management, security, and collaboration services.
  • Impact:
    • ✅ Established core IT capabilities on time to ensure operational continuity

DEI Governance

  • When: 2020-2021
  • Context: I was a major contributor to our company’s DEI program starting in 2015. Over the years, I worked with other employees to develop buy-in from Leadership and HR to invest in DEI. While we made some improvements over time, the efforts were stymied by lack of alignment with leadership and problems aligning employees on priorities.
  • What I did: I led the development of our governance structure for DEI, which laid the groundwork for decision-making and strategic planning activities. This involved putting together a first draft of roles and responsibilities and defining the relationship between our COO, Executive Sponsors, Head of HR, HR Manager, and the creation of a DEI Steering Committee and DEI Council. The plan was refined with HR leadership and the DEI Steereing Committee. I adapted Teresa Torres’ Opportunity Solution Tree model to support both the Steering Committee’s strategic planning responsibilities and the DEI Council’s role in suggesting and experimenting with solutions.
  • Impact:
    • ✅️ Established clear roles and responsibilities around DEI efforts
    • ✅️ Established clear strategic themes for DEI and executive sponsors for each theme
    • ✅️ Established a structure that helped employees focus their energy on the same impact areas

New Office Build-Out

  • When: 2019-2022
  • Context: edX’s office lease was set to expire, so we needed to decide whether to renew or to find a new space. My manager, the VP of Finance, was responsible for facilities and was running the project. I asked to be included early in order to provide my expertise in technology and collaboration throughout the project from office selection through design and build-out.
  • What I did: I was part of the team that toured, selected, designed, and built out what would have been our new office when our existing lease expired. I worked on a team with the architecture firm and other edX experts to research, plan, and design new workspaces that integrated technology, accessibility, and inclusivity from the beginning so that we could support a hybrid work environment. I successfully advocated for designing different kinds of spaces to support a hybrid approach to office use, using what we had learned during the course of the pandemic about how different kinds of spaces could be tailored to support different kinds of work. As technology was present in and supported just about every space within the new office, I drove the work to orient and design hybrid-enabled collaboration spaces, from working with A/V specialists to the furniture specialists to create an integrated experience. Unfortunately, 2U decided to close most offices and the Boston Office was turned into a sublease.
  • Impact:
    • ✅️ Successfully advocated for creating an employee “work-mode” focused office that provided a variety of spaces for different kinds of work, from Amtrak “quiet-car” style spaces to highly collaborative, high-traffic spaces.
    • 🤝 Facilitated communication and building shared understanding between the architecture firm, internal stakeholders, and vendors to break deadlock on design disagreements
    • ♿️ Successfully advocated for creating accessible experiences and spaces within the office environment throughout the entire process, from furniture selection through color choices.
    • 💖️ Successfully advocated for creating an inclusive office space, including a single-occupancy bathroom / shower combo because the common amenities in the building did not have facilities for people who exist outside the gender binary

HR Driven Identity and Access Management: HCM and IdPaaS Integration

  • When: 2020-2021
  • Context: As we brought our new HCM system online and finished the initial implementation of our IdPaaS, one of my strategic goals was to enable HR-driven Identity and Access Management. This meant enabling the automatic provisioning, update, and deprovisioning user accounts based on data in the HCM system.
  • What I did: Because the HCM provider we used and the IdPaaS service we selected didn’t have a turnkey integration, I onboarded an Integration Platform as a Service and then worked with their professional services team to design and implement an integration. This also included adding customizations to the HCM platform to track data that we needed for downstream systems (e.g., relationship to organization, pronouns, name used).
  • Impact:
    • ⬆️ Improved employee experience through faster changes in access when onboarding or changing roles
    • ⬆️ Improved data quality of HR records between IT and HR
    • ⬆️ Decreased the time for changes to take effect in downstream systems, including changes in access, name, and title to minutes from hours and days
    • ⬇️ Decreased the time that IT and HR team members spent manually updating data in multiple systems

Centralized Identity Provider Rollout

  • When: 2020
  • Context: One of the major items on my strategic roadmap for improving IT Operations at edX was the introduction of a centralized Identity and Access Management platform to reduce IT overhead, reduce our attack surface area, and to improve employee experience. We also had a new customer security requirement at the time that would have been untenable to achieve without a centralized platform.
  • What I did: I coached the Manager of IT Operations on my team on how to develop business requirements and a comprehensive RFP for an Identity Provider as a Service (IdPaaS) through creating different customer and user personas, talking with stakeholders, and defining measurements for the underlying business capabilities that we wanted to improve. I also coached him in analyzing the responses and presentations to push sales representatives on questionable claims so that he could articulate the differences between the offerings and their impact on our business in order to make a recommendation. I then coached him and his team throughout the rollout process, which included working with different teams across the company to switch their services to authenticate against SAML or Open ID.
  • Impact:
    • 💪🏻️ Developed RFP, story writing, project planning, and project execution skills in a newly minted Manager of IT Operations
    • ⬆️ Improved employee experience by reducing the number of passwords they needed to remember or manage in a password manager and the number of times they’d need to sign in to services over time
    • ⬆️ Increased the security of protected services by enabling multi-factor authentication consistently and applying risk-based security controls
    • ⬇️ Decreased the attack surface for the company be reducing the number of passwords used for authentication
    • ⬇️ Decreased the time to productivity for new employees by providing them access to pre-approved services automatically
    • ⬇️ Decreased the time that IT team members spent provisioning, adjusting, and deprovisioning user accounts through automation

MIT Divestiture

  • When: 2019-2021
  • Context: MIT provided edX with incubation services for years, including payroll, benefits, and retirement. We also used some software licensing, networking, and support services from MIT. We had always planned on leaving MIT’s incubation services and this project included making that happen. You can find details about my contributions in the three subsections below.

IT Services

  • Context: Our team needed to select vendors and resellers for endpoint management, productivity, endpoint security, VoIP, and desktop software that was used across edX and was previously provided through our MIT relationship.
  • What I did: I coached and supported my IT Operations team in planning and implementing the services and software we needed to onboard and implement to run ourselves. This included coaching my Manager of IT Operations on the development of individual project plans for each project and then the portfolio management to schedule milestones of the projects to account for cross-project dependencies and external deadlines. For each project, I also coached the team on establishing project plans that considered what “fully built-out” might look like against what “minimally viable” would look like.
  • Impact:
    • ✅ Successfully achieved minimally viable implementations for all projects by external deadlines
    • 💪🏻️ Developed the ability of the IT Operations team to start with minimally viable implementations and then iterate to deliver value sooner

HRIS/HCM System Implementation

  • Context: We worked on an accelerated timescale to learn about, choose, implement, and deliver a new HCM system with an external HR Consulting firm. Normally implementations would take over 6 months before users would use the system. We started in late August for a November Open Enrollment and January first payroll.
  • What I did: I was the in-house project manager, technology lead, and data lead as we selected and implemented a new HCM/HRIS system to support payroll, benefits, retirement, performance, learning, and workforce planning.
  • Impact:
    • ✅ Successfully delivered HCM modules on time to enable open enrollment and a successful first payroll
    • ⬆️️ Improved internal team experience by filling in gaps in vendor project management
    • ⬇️ Improved data quality by partnering with the HR team to address accuracy and consistency of data

Overall Change Management

  • Context: We needed to communicate many high-impact changes to employees in anticipation of the completion of our separation from MIT.
  • What I did: I developed a know, learn, do framework to communicate changes in benefits, processes, and systems across HR and IT to ensure that employees were well-prepared for changes and had ample time to learn about them before any impact. I helped the team to create a communications plan, which accounted for critical dates (e.g., open enrollment starting, MIT accounts deactivating) and dependencies, so that we could send out updates consistently on a weekly basis without overwhelming either employees or the HR and Leadership team with questions.
  • Impact:
    • ⬆️ Improved employee experience by creating consistency and clarity in a time of a lot of change
    • ⬇️ Improved coordination of change management across the different divestiture workstreams

Salesforce and Netsuite Integration

  • When: 2019-2020
  • Context: In our organizational efforts to improve operational excellence, improve the quality of financial data, and to improve customer experience, our VP of Finance (my manager) sought to integrate Salesforce and Netsuite to improve our Order to Cash process.
  • What I did: I led the project, from vendor selection through process analysis and improvement and implementation. This included working with Sales, Sales Operations, Legal, and Finance to re-engineer their processes to integrate the new technology and realize its benefits. This also included on-boarding our first in-house Salesforce Administrator who worked on the in-house implementation alongside our consultants.
  • Impact:
    • ⬆️ Improved the quality (i.e., accuracy, consistency, completeness) of financial data, including orders and contracts
    • ⬇️ Decreased the time to deliver products to customers
    • ⬇️ Decreased the time to bill customers

Automated Lead Sharing

  • When: 2018-2019
  • Context: When edX launched Micromasters and later Master’s programs with partner institutions, we would collect leads for them and then needed to transfer them to the partner to follow-up for marketing and applications.
  • What I did: My team and I designed and deployed a lightweight, automated lead sharing solution for our Micromasters and Master’s Degree programs to get leads to our partners in near real time. We built support for customers who could accept data via API as well as customers who needed to manually import data.
  • Impact:
    • ⬇️ Decreased manual effort from humans needing to manually aggregate and share leads
    • ⬇️ Decreased time to follow-up after a prospective learner submitted a request for information

Onboard B2B Sales onto Salesforce

  • When: 2018
  • Context: edX was entering the B2B space by launching edX for Business, which was intended to help organizations upskill their workforce through high quality courses provided on the edX platform. As it proved out its success, the team needed to scale quickly and needed Salesforce to be updated to support a velocity sales model.
  • What I did: I worked with Sales Director and a consulting firm to build out our instance of Salesforce to support Velocity Sales when we launched edX for Business. This included working with internal stakeholders to understand goals and requirements and then work with the consulting firm to develop solutions for the problems the business needed to solve. We implement sales processes for qualifying leads, managing leads, accepting leads, and the conversion of leads into contacts and opportunities. We also worked closely with the Sales Director to build out Dashboards and reports to support Sales Management and reporting.
  • Impact:
    • ✅ Established the technology support for critical sales processes
    • ✅ Enabled the Sales team to grow
    • ⬇️ Increased consistency in the Sales Process

CRM Technology Opportunity Discovery

  • When: 2017
  • Context:
  • What I did: I retained the services of a CRM technology consultancy to do a comprehensive, organization-wide review of our existing CRM capabilities for our non-B2C customers (e.g., content partners, open source community, B2B partnerships). We delivered a roadmap that illustrated the opportunities for improving the way that we worked across functions to provide excellent service to our customers. I worked closely with functional stakeholders before consultant interviews to get them thinking about current processes and capabilities to maximize the value of the time we had together.
  • Impact:
    • ⬆️ Improved organizational understanding of how CRM technology and business process reengineering could improve internal operations, customer outcomes, and revenue opportunities

Information Security Policy Development

  • When: 2016-Onward
  • Context: While edX had a Written Information Security Policy, our Security Policy Working group decided that having a more formal suite of security policies would be helpful for driving security outcomes for the organization with consistency.
  • What I did: I co-wrote the suite of Information Security policies with our General Counsel, soliciting feedback from the CTO and other technical leaders at the time. I reviewed them with the GC annually or more often as needed.
  • Impact:
    • ✅ Established a foundational suite of security policies to drive consistency in practice and iterate on over time
    • 💰️ Enabled sales and partnerships by having a suite of policies based on commercially reasonable, industry standard practices

Vendor Management Process

  • When: 2016-Onward
  • Context: As in many early stage startups, different functional groups sought to bring in new technology to meet the needs of the business. Our Legal, Finance, and IT teams agreed that we wanted to improve the management of vendors, as they could have financial, legal, and security impacts on the business.
  • What I did: I worked with Legal to develop an on-boarding process for new Cloud and Software vendors with the goal of using a risk-based approach to consider legal, operational, and information security risks. We reviewed new vendors with business owners to understand the risks to edX and edX data and manage risk appropriately, which included modification of contractual terms, vendor product or process changes, or choosing a different vendor. I created a Service Desk to make it easy for employees to submit requests and for IT and Legal to review them.
  • Impact:
    • 🤔 Enabled business teams to make better decisions on contractual terms, make product improvement requests, and choose alternative vendors that would actually meet their needs when
    • ⬇️ Decreased legal, security, and financial risk to the organization by applying expert review to each vendor
    • 👉🏼 Redirected business teams to using pre-existing software or services used by other teams, saving on cost and increasing institutional expertise

Chromebox for Meetings

  • When: 2015
  • Context: edX was using Mac Minis in conference rooms for supporting meetings with videoconferencing.
  • What I did: I built a business case to migrate to invest in Google Chromebox for Meetings hardware for videoconferencing and ran a pilot to collect feedback. After receiving glowing feedback from in-office folx who used the equipment and fully remote employees who had been suffering through poor quality meetings for some time, I received the greenlight to install them in other conference rooms.
  • Impact:
    • ⬆️ Increased quality of audio and video for in-office and remote employees
    • ⬇️ Decreased time to start meetings
    • ⬇️ Decreased IT administrative overhead for managing full OS endpoints
    • ⬇️ Decreased security exposure related to employees logging in to their individual accounts on shared machines

Footnotes

  1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MicroMasters ↩

  2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EdX ↩

  3. https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/29/2u-set-to-acquire-non-profit-edx-for-deal-north-of-600m ↩