Manager, Strategic Initiatives

JOB SUMMARY:

The Manager of Strategic Initiatives is a hands-on player-coach responsible for leading the Strategic Initiatives team while personally managing a portfolio of high-priority, executive-sponsored projects. The role combines people leadership, portfolio oversight, and direct project delivery to ensure strategic initiatives are clearly defined, effectively governed, and completed on time with measurable business outcomes.

This manager develops and coaches project managers, assigns work based on organizational priorities and team capacity, and establishes consistent project management practices across the portfolio. In addition to leading the team, the manager serves as the project or program manager for complex, cross-functional initiatives and may support acquisition integrations when assigned.

SUMMARY OF ESSENTIAL JOB FUNCTIONS:

Team Leadership and Player-Coach Responsibilities:

• Lead, coach, and develop a team of project managers responsible for delivering high-priority strategic initiatives across the organization.
• Operate as a player-coach by personally managing complex or highly visible projects while maintaining accountability for the overall performance of the team and portfolio.
• Assign projects and responsibilities based on business priorities, project complexity, team capacity, and individual development needs.
• Set clear performance expectations, provide regular feedback, conduct performance reviews, and support professional development and career growth.
• Review project plans, status updates, risks, issues, budgets, and executive communications to ensure consistent quality and appropriate escalation.
• Provide hands-on guidance and problem-solving support when projects are at risk, blocked, or require senior stakeholder alignment.
• Balance team workload and recommend resource changes, sequencing adjustments, or additional support when demand exceeds available capacity.
• Create a collaborative, accountable team environment that promotes ownership, transparency, continuous improvement, and strong stakeholder service.
• Establish and maintain common project management standards, templates, governance routines, and reporting expectations across the Strategic Initiatives portfolio.
• Partner with the Director of Strategic Initiatives to support portfolio planning, prioritization, resource allocation, and department objectives.

Strategic Initiative and Project Delivery:

• Lead the identification, scoping, planning, and end-to-end delivery of strategic initiatives, including serving directly as project or program manager for assigned initiatives.
• Translate executive objectives into clear project charters, scope, requirements, work plans, milestones, success measures, and governance structures.
• Maintain accountability for project deliverables, timelines, budgets, dependencies, risks, issues, and targeted business outcomes.
• Develop business cases, implementation recommendations, and resource plans to support initiative prioritization and funding decisions.
• Facilitate cross-functional planning and decision-making with executive sponsors, business leaders, technology teams, subject matter experts, and external partners.
• Manage stakeholder expectations and communications, including concise executive-level reporting on progress, decisions, risks, issues, dependencies, and required actions.
• Identify barriers to delivery, drive timely resolution, and escalate decisions or resource constraints with clear options and recommendations.
• Manage changing priorities and scope while protecting critical outcomes, maintaining alignment, and ensuring appropriate change control.
• Ensure operational readiness through coordinated communications, training, process documentation, transition planning, and post-implementation support.
• Track adoption, financial impact, operational improvements, and other agreed benefits to confirm initiatives achieve their intended outcomes.
• Apply business analysis and process improvement techniques, including requirements gathering, process mapping, data analysis, interviews, and policy reviews.
• Lead project closeout activities, including stakeholder acceptance, lessons learned, benefit handoff, documentation, and transition to business owners.

Portfolio Management and Governance:

• Maintain visibility across the Strategic Initiatives portfolio and provide leadership with an accurate view of status, capacity, priorities, interdependencies, and delivery risk.
• Support intake and prioritization of new initiatives by evaluating strategic alignment, expected value, complexity, readiness, resource requirements, and organizational impact.
• Coordinate sequencing across initiatives to manage shared resources, business disruption, change saturation, and cross-project dependencies.
• Develop and maintain portfolio dashboards, roadmaps, schedules, RAID logs, decision logs, and other governance materials needed for effective oversight.
• Prepare and facilitate project governance meetings, steering committees, working sessions, and executive updates; document decisions and ensure follow-through.
• Monitor portfolio health and proactively recommend corrective actions, re-prioritization, or escalation when initiatives are not positioned for success.
• Continuously improve delivery methods and department processes based on lessons learned, stakeholder feedback, and evolving organizational needs.

Acquisition Integration Support:

• Lead or support pre-transaction integration planning and post-transaction execution when acquisition work is assigned to the Strategic Initiatives team.
• Coordinate cross-functional integration workstreams and ensure functional plans, milestones, dependencies, decisions, and risks remain aligned.
• Lead assigned system, process, and data migration initiatives from discovery through implementation and stabilization.
• Assess acquired-company processes and recommend practical alignment with Trace3 operating models, policies, systems, and controls.
• Partner with functional leaders and subject matter experts to capture requirements, document future-state processes, validate data, and support business readiness.
• Apply established integration practices while tailoring the approach to transaction size, complexity, timeline, and business requirements.

REQUIRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE:

• A minimum of 7 years of progressive experience in project, program, or strategic initiative management within an Information Technology, Professional Services, or similarly complex business environment.
• A minimum of 3 years of direct people leadership experience, including coaching project managers, managing performance, and developing team capability.
• Demonstrated success operating as a player-coach while simultaneously leading a team and directly delivering complex, cross-functional initiatives.
• Proven ability to manage a portfolio of concurrent initiatives, balance resources and priorities, and provide clear portfolio-level reporting to senior leadership.
• Successful track record delivering business and technology initiatives with measurable outcomes, including process, system, data, organizational, or integration-related change.
• Strong knowledge of project and program management methodologies, governance practices, requirements management, risk management, and organizational change management.
• PMP, PgMP, CSM, or comparable project or program management certification preferred.
• Strong leadership presence and ability to build trusted, collaborative relationships across functions and levels of the organization.
• Strong business and financial acumen with the ability to evaluate tradeoffs, develop business cases, and connect project execution to business outcomes.
• Ability to navigate ambiguity, manage multiple and changing priorities, and make sound decisions in a dynamic, fast-paced environment.
• Excellent written, verbal, facilitation, and presentation skills, including the ability to communicate complex matters clearly to C-level executives and non-technical audiences.
• Highly organized and detail-oriented, with strong judgment, follow-through, time management, and problem-solving skills.
• Proficiency with project and portfolio management tools and Microsoft applications, including Visio, Project, Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, Excel, Teams, and SharePoint.