Aakash Garg, CFA, PMP

+1 781 817 0074 | aakash.garg@hotmail.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/aakash-garg/

PROFESSIONAL PROFILE

15 years of experience in Program, Project Management, Business Analyst and various roles within Securities and Capital Markets domain. Extensive experience in project management, requirements gathering, business analysis, conceptual design through writing user stories, implementation, user training, quality review and enhancements.

Deep experience in Project Management, Business analysis and Requirement analysis.
Experienced in transforming teams from Waterfall to implement Agile methodologies.
Good understanding of System Development Life Cycle (SDLC), having thorough understanding of various phases from requirement gathering, analysis, design, development, and testing.
Coordinated meetings to evaluate new implementations and worked with SMEs to forecast high level estimates.
Presented high level estimates, capacity plan and project roadmap along with recommendations to senior management.
Resolved conflicts by doing the cost-benefit analysis for senior management to get budget approval of new projects.
Successfully managed and transformed various legacy systems to modern platforms within timelines.
Excellent communicator: leverage technical, business and financial acumen to communicate effectively with clients and other stakeholders.
Lead/worked on various Request for proposals (RFP) and Proof of concepts (POC) to engage new clients and business.
Domain knowledge on Advisory Firms, Asset servicing, Dealer servicing, Corporate Actions, Exchange Traded Funds and Regulatory platforms.
Worked closely with project stakeholders, product owners, SMEs, external clients and staff to analyze the requirements and specifications for new and existing products.

PROJECT PROFILE

Program Manager, PMO, Commonwealth Financial Network 3/2023 - Current.

Responsible for managing overall program to get Continuum, a new RIA firm being established from ground zero.
Partnered with Deputy General Counsel and legal team to register the new firm, and with Compliance to get started with ADV filing for registration with Securities and Exchange Commission.
Partnered with CFO and finance team on cost, resources, and multiyear revenue projections for financial modeling purposes for board approval.
Facilitated vendor contract negotiations, reviewed vendor contract and provided guidance to legal team on from project management perspective.
Created overall program structure, governance model and cross functional teams for all the workstreams (Operations, Product and Services, Technology, and Growth and Acquisitions) for pilot and MVP.
Worked with Technology, Custodians, and vendors to create multiple project plans to define overall program roadmap and aligned them with key deliverables and milestones of pilot and MVP launch.
Partnered with enterprise marketing team for press releases, marketing and advisor recruitment efforts.

Sr. IT Project Manager, PMO, Commonwealth Financial Network 11/2019 – 3/2023

Projects:

Overseeing project teams comprised of individuals from multiple functions, departments, and roles across the Company.
Facilitating the definition of the project scope, milestones, goals, and deliverables. Partnering with business stakeholders, when needed, to develop business cases, process flows, and requirements.
Managed multiple internal and advisor facing projects including some of the Regulatory Projects (DOL and Regulation Best Interest)
Managed various vendor implementation including Actimize, A360, Global Relay and Fiduciary Decisions.
Working with Scrum and IT project teams as needed to establish a project management approach that will account for the Information Technology team’s model for project completion.
Building consensus with senior cross-department stakeholders and presenting status to executives.
Developing and building out detailed project plans at the task, milestone, and resource level which involves identifying tasks required to complete the project, the estimated effort and duration of these tasks, and the team members responsible for each.
Identifying key IT project milestones at significant intervals to aid in monitoring, oversight, and reporting.
Collaborating with IT project sponsors or product owners to break the project into proper phases and clearly identify deliverables for each phase.
Tracking IT projects against plan—anticipating events that may require a contingency plan, recommending corrective action, and ensuring that stakeholders are kept informed.
Providing management, direction, and support to the project team.
Managed multiple projects of various size. Budget ranging between $1 million to $10 million.

IT Consultant/Systems Analyst Randstad Technologies, Boston

CLIENT: Agile Project Manager & Senior Systems Analyst at Fidelity Investments

PROJECT NAME: Fidelity Corporate Actions Solutions 03/2018 - 10/2019

Responsibilities:

Worked with product owners and SMEs for feasibility analysis and forecast high level estimates for new implementations.
Presented resource/capacity plan and project roadmap to senior management and other stakeholders.
Facilitated team to adopt agile methodologies by inviting agile coaches in scrum ceremonies and enrolling team in agile trainings.
Managed/Lead development and QA team for new features/enhancements on Fidelity’s Corporate Actions solutions platform.
Successfully delivered enhanced escrow/de-escrow module for Front office clients and custody processing workflow for voluntary events.
Worked on re-architecting the application on new Angular UI and cloud-based APIs.

Senior Consultant, Wipro Technologies, Boston

CLIENT: Senior Consultant at State Street Corporation, Global Markets (Dealer Division)

PROJECT NAME: BPM Dashboard and MRP Cloud reporting platform 04/2015 – 03/2018

Project Description: BPM Dashboard and MRP cloud reporting platforms are advanced tools which are used by different LOBs of SSGM for regulatory monitoring and reporting purpose.

Responsibilities:

Managed a global team of 10-15 people.
Risk management to deliver time sensitive regulatory projects.
Worked with PMO and sponsors of global markets to secure resources and funding.
Collaborated with State Street Agile office to adopt best agile practices within teams.
Conducted meetings with FX-Front office, FX-Middle office, Regulatory client-onboarding team and project sponsors to understand and document requirements.
Understand monitoring and reporting requirements of OTC trades (Forwards, NDFs and other products) for Dodd-Frank, Volcker and other regulations
Facilitated business users training and provide demonstration on applications.

CLIENT: Senior Consultant at State Street Corporation, Global Advisors

PROJECT NAME: Exchange Traded Funds 11/2014 – 04/2015

Project Description: Exchange Traded Fund project is a web based global automated platform for Investment vehicle Exchange traded funds (ETF). ETF application is designed to deliver a global solution for all State Street Corporation clients across the Globe.

Responsibilities:

Conducted meetings with ETF SMEs, Business Stakeholders, Project Sponsors, Developers, Upstream Data Source Systems, QA team to gather requirements and making sure each team understands these requirements.
High and Low level designing for new enhancements.
Created test plans, updated test cases, and track test results in IBM Clear Quest and JIRA.
Offshore and Onshore Team management.

Also, worked on an RFP to migrate data from DB2 to oracle for State Street.

Business Analyst and Java Developer, Wipro Technologies, Bangalore

CLIENT: Bank of New York Mellon

PROJECT NAME: Workbench Reporting and Corporate Actions 04/2013 – 10/2014

Project Description:Worked on various requests to enhance the existing asset servicing platform, Workbench, of BNYM.

Responsibilities:

Requirements gathering, analysis, functional documentation (Scope, FRD, Test Plans), data mapping, testing and implementation support for various BNYM Asset Servicing reports and Corporate Actions modules (Event creation, enquiry, vendor data, and SWIFT upgrade.
Data analysis and mapping for BNYM asset servicing custom reports.
Coordinated with business users for UAT testing and logged UAT defects in JIRA.

PROJECT(S): Real Time Custody, RTC-Corporate Actions & Mobile Quick Query Management–Trade & Position Inquiry 11/2009– 03/2013

Project Description: Real time custody is a web application for the clients of BNYM to placevarious types of transactions like cash, mutual funds, security buy/sell etc. RTC CA application provides announcement data for various accounts and securities. Mobile application enabled clients of BNYM to see and authorize the transaction entered from RTC web application via i-PAD and i-Phone.

Responsibilities:

Worked as a Java developer.
Creating the oracle queries and user interface using JavaScript. Analyzed and data feed for corporate actions announcement data.
Participating in the database design meetings and providing inputs to the database architects on the constraints application may face.
Developed APIs and java services for integration of JSON objects with UI team in London.
Creating test strategy to test the application

Domain Skills

Securities and Capital Markets
Project planning, Budgeting and Team management
Business Analysis and documentation
Stakeholder management
Starting up a new RIA firm.

Technical Skills

Project Management: MS Project and Planview PPM Pro
Databases: Exadata, DB2 and Oracle PL/SQL.
Languages: SQL and Core Java
GUI/Tools: Crystal Reports, Visual Studio, Eclipse, Toad, Postman
Test Management Tools: JIRA, IBM Rational Clear Quest.
Others: Flex, Sencha, Angular JS and HTML.
Microsoft office tools.

Academics

M.S. - Software Engineering (Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani)

Bachelor of Science (Hindu College, University of Delhi)

CERTIFICATIONS

Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA)
Project Management Professional (PMP)