Senior Product Owner - Aflac - South Carolina
(2019-11)
Lead product ownership for Aflac's group and individual enrollment platforms, Policy Administration System, Billing, Claims, Commissions, and Finance — driving end-to-end delivery for AWS-hosted digital products serving hundreds of thousands of policyholders.
- Own and manage product backlogs for enterprise insurance technology solutions, ensuring alignment with business priorities, customer needs, compliance requirements, and delivery objectives.
- Define product vision and translate complex healthcare insurance business requirements into epics, features, user stories, acceptance criteria, and actionable development tasks.
- Serve as the primary product owner and decision-maker for backlog priorities, working closely with software engineers, QA teams, architects, business stakeholders, and delivery teams.
- Lead Agile ceremonies including backlog refinement, sprint planning, sprint reviews, demonstrations, and stakeholder discussions to ensure successful product delivery.
- Manage product enhancements supporting enrollment workflows, eligibility processes, benefits administration, policy servicing, reporting capabilities, and system integrations.
- Collaborate with business operations, compliance, finance, and technology teams to understand needs, resolve challenges, and deliver solutions that improve operational efficiency.
- Partner with QA teams to coordinate System Integration Testing (SIT), User Acceptance Testing (UAT), defect triage, validation activities, and production readiness.
- Analyze business processes and system behavior using SQL and reporting tools to investigate issues, validate requirements, and support data-driven product decisions.
- Prioritize enhancements based on business value, customer impact, regulatory requirements, technical feasibility, and operational needs.
- Drive continuous improvement by identifying process gaps, streamlining workflows, and delivering scalable solutions across enterprise platforms.
- Enrollment Platform Leadership: Owned the full product roadmap for Aflac's group and individual enrollment platforms — managing onboarding workflows, eligibility rules, plan selection, e-signature, and STP (Straight-Through Processing) for new business and renewals.
- Virtual Enrollment Innovation: Led an Agile initiative to build and launch a Virtual Enrollment Solution enabling remote broker-assisted and self-service enrollment, generating $3.3M in annualized premium and earning the Aflac Enrollment Platform Champion designation and Excellence Award.
- End-to-End Enrollment Delivery: Delivered enrollment features across the full lifecycle — new hire enrollment windows, qualifying life events (QLE), open enrollment periods, COBRA continuation, cancellations, and reinstatements — coordinating across billing, commissions, and policy admin systems.
- API & Integration Strategy: Directed API product requirements for enrollment service integrations with upstream HR platforms and downstream billing/claims systems; validated APIs using Postman and partnered with AWS DevOps on CI/CD deployment pipelines.
- Data Migration & Remediation: Led duplicate record cleanup from DR server deployments, CarMax data fixes, and plan termination batch atomicity workstreams — ensuring data integrity across enrollment and billing systems.
- Stakeholder & Team Management: Managed 5 Business Analysts and collaborated cross-functionally with UX designers, Scrum Masters, developers, and business partners across commissions, SLA, client management, and reporting teams.
- Backlog & Release Management: Owned product backlog prioritization, release roadmaps, UAT coordination, and production sign-off across multiple concurrent Agile sprints; led staging environment management for all AWS software releases.
- Automation & Quality: Led automation testing coverage with QA teams using QTest; promoted Lean disciplines to minimize waste and reduce time-to-market for enrollment features.
- AI Integration: Currently leveraging AI tools (ChatGPT, Claude, Microsoft Copilot) to accelerate user story drafting, acceptance criteria generation, and stakeholder communication — reducing documentation cycle time by an estimated 30%.
Senior Business Analyst - State of South Carolina - Medicaid (Healthy Connections) - Columbia, SC
(2016-03 - 2019-10)
Delivered BA leadership for South Carolina's statewide Medicaid program, supporting eligibility determination, enrollment intake, benefits administration, and case management across multiple policy tracks serving 1M+ beneficiaries.
- Enrollment Eligibility & Intake: Authored Business Requirements for Application Intake, Annual Reviews, Intelligent Evidence Gathering, COC (Change of Circumstance), and Notices tracks — defining enrollment rules aligned to federal and state Medicaid policy mandates.
- Enrollment Rules & Program Logic: Worked with developers and SMEs on interface design and program rules for Medicaid eligibility determination, income verification, and benefit assignment workflows.
- Requirements Traceability: Reviewed and managed RTM, FDS, and TDS documents to ensure 100% traceability from business enrollment policy through test execution in CIT, SIT, and UAT cycles.
- Defect & Change Management: Led defect triage meetings, managed Change Request process post-FDS approval, and tracked resolution in JIRA across all testing environments.
- GAP Analysis & Documentation: Conducted GAP analyses on existing enrollment requirements; produced clear BRDs, use cases, user manuals, and process documentation for non-technical stakeholders.
Senior Business Analyst / Financial Analyst - Northern Trust Financial Services
(2010-06 - 2015-08)
Served dual capacity as Senior BA and Financial Analyst supporting trading, portfolio management, and operations risk at a leading global custodian bank managing $10T+ in assets.
- Authored high-level and detailed BRDs and process flow documents for IBOR/ABOR platforms, fixed income, equities, derivatives, and alternative investment products.
- Conducted risk and control interviews with SMEs and Risk/Control officers; identified Internal Control Gaps across high-Risk Assessment Units (RAUs) and documented remediation plans.
- Performed client account performance audits using PACE, Eagle, and Management Reporting; delivered daily cash balances to front office and portfolio managers.
- Documented UAT guidelines for custodian clients; managed multi-geography teams of 20+ resources across onsite and offshore locations.
- Trained and coached analysts on corporate actions, trade processing, interest and principal payments, in-kind transfers, and fee calculations.
Financial Analyst - IBM
(2009-11 - 2010-05)
Client: BP Petroleum - Finance & SAP Accounts Payable Operations
- Validated SAP AP processes including T-codes, invoice tolerance levels, vendor master settings, and journal entries across all environments per SOX requirements.
- Prepared daily and monthly bank reconciliations; conducted month-end close, revenue/cost reviews, and expense budgeting activities.
- Delivered hands-on SAP training to end users covering AP process workflows and error rectification procedures.
