IT and financial project management since May 2008 in the FinTech and banking sectors, operations, paralegal (document review) and administration as a relationship manager. This gives me experience with tasks that aren’t traditionally part of the Project Manager’s toolbox. PMP defines a Project as something that has a unique beginning and a unique end. I’ve used Agile: Iterative and Incremental, Traditional, and Hybrid methodologies.

Project Management + Operations + Legal Documentation = My Venn Diagram

• Financial Project Management/ Business Paralegal – Hybrid
  • IT Liaison
  • Best Practices Board
  • Compliance
• IT Project Management – Agile
• Operations
• PMI Western Idaho Chapter – Director of Finance (Volunteer)

Financial Project Management/ Document Paralegal – Hybrid

Senior Project Manager ( Hybrid)

I’ve worked at the intersection of finance, law, and project execution—delivering structured outcomes in highly regulated environments. I’ve worn multiple hats as a relationship manager, business paralegal (document review), and senior project manager. This cross-functional background helps me navigate ambiguous spaces that don’t fit neatly into traditional roles.

Leadership: Managed stakeholder relationships across bondholders, underwriters, legal teams, and SMEs

Project Management: Senior PM with experience delivering unique, high-value projects under Agile, Traditional, and Hybrid frameworks

Legal & Compliance: Oversight of legal documentation, risk matrices, and internal controls, collaborating with in-house and third-party counsel

Operations: Hands-on with money movement, asset reconciliation, account creation, custody services, and debt service waterfalls

Finance: Deep understanding of asset transfers, statements, distributions, and fund balancing across large portfolios

Governance & Strategy: Serve on best practices boards, standardization committees, and trust software liaison groups

Compliance is woven throughout my financial project management work. From collaborating with in-house counsel to managing regulatory documentation for bondholder portfolios, I’ve been directly involved in applying compliance frameworks like NACHA, SWIFT, and internal audit controls. Whether it’s due diligence, documentation review, or aligning deliverables with governance policies, I treat compliance not as an obstacle—but as a structural asset that protects organizations and accelerates trust.

At this position, I know as much as a seasoned paralegal and senior project manager. This position was less compartmentalized and integrated between project management and administration. The positions were less compartmentalized and more integrated without clear boundaries, and had a fair amount of operational work.

IT Project Management – Agile

IT Project Manager (Agile) and Operations

IT- liaison board with trust software company, risk (responsibility matrix), budgets, scheduling (program backlog, backlog with product manager, iteration), scope, stakeholders and major responsibilities (program management, project team, management, colleagues, SME), lessons learned, vendor management (trust software).

In my IT PM role, I partnered with a FinTech software vendor to migrate legacy systems to a cloud-based SaaS environment. I helped facilitate workflows, stakeholder engagement, backlog prioritization, and iterative release feedback loops—all while embedded within operations.

Process Improvement: Bridged gaps between development, compliance, and business priorities in real time

Technical PMO: Product Owner collaboration, vendor management, sprint planning, and program backlog oversight

Risk & Scheduling: Risk matrix creation, budget oversight, and cadence management (sprint, release, stakeholder review)

Ops Collaboration: Cross-functional work on reconciliations, custody processing, and client delivery systems

Operations

Below are only highlights of some of the duties.

• Purchase, Sales, Free Deliver/Receive, of publicly and privately traded assets
• Money movement: deposits, transfers, disbursements, and reconciliations
• Sundry or Memo Assets
• Creating of accounts, statements, and online access
• Instruction and balancing of assets
• Waterfall and the collection of funds for purpose of debt service
• Training to the fullness thereof
• Delegating tasks so both the project work and the operational work would be complete and on time

Degrees, Certificates, and Skills

I completed my Bachelor’s and MBA while working full-time in a high-pressure environment, thanks to great mentors and even better coffee.

• MBA & B.S. in Business
• Project+ Certification
• Paralegal-Level Bond Document Review
• Project Management + Operations + Legal Documentation = My Venn Diagram

Memberships and Board Positions

• Project Management Institute
  • Project Management Institute, Western Idaho (PMIWI)
  • Board of Directors
    • Director of Finance for PMIWI July 2024 – June 2026
• Paint-A-Thon, co-chair
• Boise Art Show, board and volunteer
• West Boise Neighborhood Association, President-elect
• Savor Idaho, volunteer

The only challenge doing personal projects is you have to define when is it done. That doesn’t mean you can’t tweak it and start the project again.

• Project 1: Rebranding
  • Update website
  • Write articles on LinkedIn and repost on this blog
• Project 2: Bash Scripting
• Project 3: Turn potato machine into a server
• Project 4: Create a LAMP Stack
  • Parts of LAMP Stack
    • Linux
    • Apache
    • MariaDB
    • PHP – server side programming language
    • Optional: Pearl or Python can be used as sever-side scripting
• Tools you can use during development:
  • PhpStorm: A powerful IDE for PHP development
  • Xdebug: Debugging tool for PHP
  • Beekeeper (like HeidiDB): GUI tool for mysql database management.
  • Apache JMeter: Performance testing tool for web applications.
  • Go: version control system
  • Docker: Application containerization platform
• Firewall (from MX Linux website)
  • By default, MX Linux does not enable the firewall; however, if you intend on using the firewall you will have to open the appropriate ports.
  • For unencrypted, http, traffic, open port 80 on the firewall.
  • For encrypted, https, traffic, open port 443.
  • Learning how to network a printer and create servers. Learning how things are done with Linux.
• Learn Networking
• Learn Servers

Finished Projects (since tracking)

• WordPress, moving to Ops and redesign as I go – Changed to Ops on 17.9.2025
• Literally found a Windows machine on the side of the road and now is using that as a sandbox Linux Machine – Completed 12.8.2024
  • MX Linux with xfce, and works with Mozilla Firefox on 2GiB of RAM
  • Dual boot with antiX and Fluxbox DE with Mozilla Firefox
• Linux on Main Machine – use progressive elaboration since learning is involved
• Use Debian, to replace Windows because Windows causes friction – complete
  • Postmortem: I would say this phase was successful. All but the printer works without friction with way less downtime. I expected printers on Linux to be different, but since I don’t print that often, I’m not too worried about it and I have a different computer for printing (Wife’s Windows)
  • Something happened to my Bluetooth and I fixed it, but the sound didn’t work. I used MX Linux before so I installed that and tweaked it to what I wanted it to be.

Product backlog subject to change

1. Learn Python
2. Do a write-up on this website and on Dev.to
3. PMP Certification – shelved for the time being.

Question I’m pondering: other than Windows having the greater market share than Linux or Apple, why is printing easier on Windows than Linux. Knee-jerk reaction is because it has a bigger market share, and therefor puts more engineering towards that OS. I wonder if that’s correct?