My resume is available here on Linkedin.
In short, I have a business and technology background with experience leading large-scale multi-discipline portfolios of programs and change management initiatives. I have a good understanding of how to manage change in business situations; i.e., I have successfully changed tires on a moving cars. Having launched and run my own custom manufacturing business, I have deep practical understanding of business, customer service, and finance. Both my government and private corporate work experience has been in a global capacity and has included direct management of ex-US operations and staff. With a PMP and over 20 years of project management experience, I build teams and deliver on deadlines, scope, and budget.
I have maintained my hands-on expertise in delivering projects. Most recently, I led the startup of a new distribution subsidiary which required the merger of customer service, finance, and distribution operations of eight recently acquired companies and the build-out of a new customer care center as well as two validated temperature-controlled distribution centers. I delivered the project on time and then transitioned it into a daily operation processing over $800 million/yr in domestic and international orders of government regulated product. The immediate saving was $10.3 million per year.
Some further contributions:
- I have well over fifteen years IT, business, and engineering program and project management experience; leading project offices and PMOs; and supervising and mentoring project managers.
- I have architected and lead successful launches of three PMO start-ups both in line-of- business operations as well as in the information systems area; all were in large-scale distributed corporate and Government enterprises and on a global basis.
- While at Merck, I organized, developed, and lead the project portfolio management processes and systems for the high profile, business critical, in-house developed clinical trial system (both application development and infrastructure).
- While in the civilian Defense Acquisition Corps, I lead one of the largest multi-discipline program offices at the Command; delivering on multiple simultaneous high-visibility, large-scale projects that included the full product lifecycle (from definition through implementation, in-service support, and retirement).
- At Inverness Medical, I was leading the transformation of IT into a cohesive service organization with a common service catalog and delivery expectation.
My more stuffy and formal bio:
Joseph Kolakowski was most recently Chief Information Officer for North America at Inverness Medical Innovations from July 2007 to November 2008. Mr. Kolakowski is a senior technology and operations executive with practical business experience specializing in turnarounds, start-ups, and mergers and acquisitions integrations/divestitures. He was responsible for saving his client a minimum of 10.3 million dollars annually, while providing a scalable platform necessary to continue his client’s aggressive growth through acquisition strategy, and dramatically increase customer satisfaction by driving a “Greenfield” start-up of a new distribution subsidiary that consolidated Order-to-Cash, technical support, and global distribution operations of temperature sensitive, regulated products from eight recently acquired companies. Mr. Kolakowski also has expertise in lean project delivery and enterprise project portfolio management and has extensive experience in the pharmaceutical, medical device and aviation/ defense industries. He has a BS in Aerospace Engineering and a MS is Systems Management.
————————
July 2010:
Starting a management consulting gig on Monday (August 2). Very exciting–ground-up implementation of Closed-Loop Marketing in Pharma/Med Device domain. The business impact on the top line should be significant. Added benefit is that I will get to meet tons of new people and get to learn about an unfamiliar company.
January 2010:
01/07/10: Well, the hunt is still on. Needless to say, never in wildest dreams did I think I would be out of work for 13 months–I’m sure everyone says that. For last 2 weeks of December 2009, I totally unplugged and just focused on the Christmas Holiday and family. My wife took vacation so the three of us got to enjoy playing with the toddler’s toys. Now it’s time to plow trough the mountain of email and get back to shaking the tree. I saw a great show on PBS last night about Happiness. I’ll try to get a link on the blog.
September 2009:
September is my 10th month “in transition”. Yes, looking for a job is a full time job. Yes, its the hardest job. Yes, it is tough on the psyche.
Still, during this time, I got to do what most father’s wish that they could but can’t. I got the opportunity to spend a lot of time with our only child–Claire. She’s about to turn 3 next month. Seeing her develop a personality and the ability to communicate has been terrific. Unfortunately, our bankers are more interested in us making our mortgage payments.
C’est la vie
-JK
Want to chat? Drop me a wire… just enter text in the box below and it will be sent as an email to my personal account.
Joe Kolakowski 