Hello!

I’m Yolanda Brown, MBA

Management Consultant
Board Director
Trusted Ally
Yolanda Brown MBA

919.627.7742

Durham, NC

About me

I find delight in project delivery, from identifying problems to discovering optimal solutions that lead to increased customer satisfaction.

Business and Community Leader excited to drive optimized outcomes in marketing and technology.

Tech-savvy business strategist and community advocate with over 18 years of experience specializing in business and strategic planning, cross-functional leadership, and collaboration to drive optimized results in marketing and technology. Besides being an entrepreneur, I have applied my MBA and work experiences to initiatives most recently in the strategy consulting, wireless, and nonprofit industries.

Experience

Senior Consultant

Luminas Strategy

05/2018 – Present

Facilitate the assessment of value proposition with cross-functional teams, in B2B units of Fortune 100 companies and leading nonprofits, to enhance internal capabilities and improve customer relationships on a sustainable basis.

  • Verified $77MM in value provided to customers against competitors for Fortune 100 B2B supplier.
  • Led senior consultant and analysts through engagement process as well as communicated weekly progress with client project leadership.
  • Improved presentation of key information to executive stakeholders for stronger engagement during report-outs.

IAM Delivery Lead

U.S. Cellular

01/2019 – 02/2020

Orchestrated over 30 Single Sign-on (SSO) platform migrations in collaboration with enterprise security architects, Identity and Access Management (IAM) engineers, and third-party vendors using an Agile approach; 50% travel/50% remote.

  • Completed project migrations nearly 30 days ahead of schedule and under budget without negative impact on quality.
  • Partnered with a 16-member cross-functional project team across the enterprise (Waterfall) project lifecycle including stakeholders from the following teams: enterprise project management, IS project management, multi-channel strategy and operations, change management, quality assurance, and customer support.
  • Communicated as principal IAM contact with 25 technical and business team contributors including compiling over 100 project artifacts in Confluence and SharePoint.

Board Chair

Urban Ministries of Durham

07/2013 – 02/2020

Provided strategic oversight on a 25-member board of directors for a 501(c)(3) social services nonprofit with a $3.8M operating budget to supply food, shelter, and a future to over 6,000 of Durham’s very poor and hungry population.

  • Enabled nonprofit to achieve a 52% revenue increase while maintaining nominal costs by building out specialized strategies for optimal financial performance while overseeing P&L review, and annual audit and budgeting processes.
  • Built a diverse, mission-oriented team by recruiting nine highly-qualified candidates to executive-level roles.

I’ve gotten to work with some amazing IDEAS!

Education & SKills

Skills

N

Business Strategy

N

Cross-Functional Team Leadership

N

Process Improvement

N

Stakeholder Management

N

General Management

N

Soft: Empathy, Listening, Visionary

UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School

Master of Business Administration

University of Missouri-Columbia

Bachelor of Science, Industrial Engineering

Activities & Societies: National Society of Black Engineers, United Way Day of Caring Steering Committee, Americorps, Institute of Industrial Engineers.
Honors & Awards: George C. Brooks Scholarship Recipient. Executive Board Member of the Year – National Society of Black Engineers – MU Chapter.

FEATURED Work

Validating Differential Value in F100 and Leading Nonprofits

Identity Platform Migration at Major Wireless Carrier

Social Impact: Improved overall performance in Respected Nonprofits

Founder of new company

Company Founder & CEO

References

Working with Yolanda is nothing short of pleasure. Her planning and leadership skills would impress anyone challenged with complex process improvement, delivery, innovation and relationship management. Adding Yolanda to the team would spring any project to life. Together we had a chance to work on multi-million dollar, highly matrixed and complex project. Thanks to Yolanda project was delivered on time, hitting all milestones. Allowing our client to realize benefits of the decision, long before project deadline. I would say grab Yolanda for your project and don’t look back 🙂

Yolanda is a visionary that applies focus and detail to any project she undertakes. She listens to ideas and is able to develop them further with her knowledge and expertise. I appreciate that Yolanda takes the time to familiarize herself with industry standards in order to offer insight and recommendations that are competitive with the current market.

— Courtney R.

In the simplest terms, Yolanda is a master tactician! I had the great pleasure of working with Ms. Brown on several technical solution integrations. In each instance, I was overly impressed with Ms. Brown's keen ability to drive seemingly divergent workstreams and align personnel across multiple time zones and numerous technical disciplines. Ms. Brown's deep process knowledge, expert communication skills coupled with her vast technical prowess were critical in translating obscure business objectives into specific technical requirements. I have worked with very few who could match her tenacious customer focus and personal adaptability. In addition to being a phenomenal technical delivery lead she is one of the coolest technical people I have ever had the privilege of working with.

— Freddie W.

Let’s Work Together

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