Program Manager - Underwriting & New Business Modernization
New York, NY

Job Description

A career at New York Life offers many opportunities. To be part of a growing and successful business. To reach your full potential, whatever your specialty. Above all, to make a difference in the world by helping people achieve financial security. It's a career journey you can be proud of, and you'll find plenty of support along the way. Our development programs range from skill-building to management training, and we value our diverse and inclusive workplace where all voices can be heard. Recognized as one of Fortune's World's Most Admired Companies, New York Life is committed to improving local communities through a culture of employee giving and service, supported by our Foundation. It all adds up to a rewarding career at a company where doing right by our customers is part of who we are, as a mutual company without outside shareholders. We invite you to bring your talents to New York Life, so we can continue to help families and businesses "Be Good At Life." To learn more, please visit LinkedIn, our Newsroom and the Careers page of www.NewYorkLife.com.

Program Manager

Key responsibilities include:

* Highly skilled in collaborating, influencing, and negotiating to achieve business outcomes and strategic objectives with business and IT leadership, external vendors, and numerous project teams.
* Collaborates with onsite and distributed (internal and external) teams to resource, define, and schedule activities required to develop and launch new products and manage business innovation program. Oversees multiple timelines and resolves resource conflicts across projects; manages cross-organizational dependencies.
* Responsible for leading the delivery of multiple strategic, complex, projects using SDLC (Waterfall) and Agile/Scrum/SAFe methodologies.
* Responsible for providing project and program management leadership and strategy by partnering with Direct, Life Product, Agency, and cross-functional core teams to ensure all deliverables are produced on time and with quality results.
* Develops the integrated master program/project plan including all interdependencies and oversees the day-to-day activities for multiple projects and reporting of all deliverables. Ensures the right work is being done at the right time.
* Identifies, documents, manages, escalates and resolves risks and issues and all changes to scope and/or schedule with project core teams and key stakeholders; ensures commitment to timelines and strategic objectives.
* Ensures project and program status is proactively communicated to all key stakeholders via daily stand-ups, project meeting minutes and weekly project status reports that reflect the status of assigned projects and ensures project information is regularly shared, reviewed and discussed with all project core team members and key stakeholders. Prepares executive level presentations and communications.
* Provides leadership and delivery of governance reporting for project/program health to multiple forums and audiences including senior management.
* The successful candidate will recommend and champion process and tool improvement efforts to strengthen and build upon existing PMO capabilities. Defines and enforces best practices; demonstrates expert knowledge in both project and program management.
* Educates, coaches and mentors non-Agile/Scrum project managers and core team members on the use of standardized tools to improve project delivery.
* Pro-actively supports various governance bodies as well as identifies reporting requirements; recommends ways to efficiently provide information for multiple forums.
* Supports the collaboration with other PMOs within New York Life to identify proven project management standards and opportunities for enterprise-wide adoption of Agile/Scrum/SAFe

Essential Requirements and Experience:

Functional Knowledge

* Bachelor's degree required.
* Master's degree preferred.
* Project Management professional (PMP) certification required.
* Certified Scrum Master (CSM) certification preferred.
* 8-15 years of relevant experience in Project Management within the Insurance/Finance Industry preferred.
* Program Management experience required.
* Excellent analytical skills, independent thinking and ability to exercise prudent judgment; ability to identify problems and implement solutions before they impact project and program timelines
* Demonstrates strong business acumen.

Leadership

* Ability to enable self-organizing/managing teams to achieve their goals by teaching and coaching the agile process, implementing and supporting lean agile principles and practices, identifying and eliminating impediments and facilitating flow.
* Ability to build strong partnerships and can work both independently and as a collaborative team player who is highly proficient in working across organizations and with cross-functional teams.
* Negotiates scope, establishes timelines, milestones and defines implementation dates; ensures commitments to deliverables with the project core teams and key stakeholders.
* Ability to escalate, manage and resolve risks and issues within a project/program.
* Strong negotiation, organization and project management skills are required.
* Highly flexible and adaptive to changing priorities and managing multiple simultaneous commitments on time, on budget and with quality.

Communication Requirements

* Highly polished communicator who can effectively persuade and negotiate with others to build consensus across the teams/organizations.
* Excellent interpersonal and communication skills (verbal and written) as position will engage with senior management, key stakeholders and business partners.
* Ability to lead and inspire teams to achieve desired strategic, project and program outcomes.

Technical Expertise

* Requires in-depth expertise in Project and Program Management knowledge and competencies.
* Skilled in project software: SharePoint, MS Project, MS Office, and Visio.
* Knowledge of Agile tools such as JIRA, TFS or Rally (Agile Central) preferred.
* Ability to build reports with appropriate details for varying audiences.

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