Managing Customer and Team Expectations

Biography: 

Shawn Birch is a Business Relationship Manager for the Department of Administrative Services, Office of Information Technology, for the State of Ohio. Prior to joining the state in December 2021, she spent nearly 35 years in the financial services industry, working within IT.  During her career, Shawn held several positions, ranging from IT Supervisor to Senior Vice President of IT.

Shawn began managing small-scale projects as part of her job duties as a United Federal Credit Union supervisor. With a few successful projects under her belt, she moved into a formal Project Manager role, where she spent a great deal of her career honing her craft, where she was called upon to:

• Step into projects midstream to course-correct and get them back on track
• Serve as the escalation point when critical project tasks are at risk
• Build a Project Management Office from the ground up, including designing the organization structure, roles and responsibilities, staffing the team and formalizing processes and procedures
• Manage several high-profile projects and initiatives of varying size and complexity, including but not limited to:
•       Mergers
•       System conversions
•       New product launches
•       Mergersersions

Shawn has built her career on a few simple principles – work smarter not harder, do the right thing even when no one is looking, and be accountable for your decisions, actions, and inactions!