Keara Leigh Burnham-Saunders

Responsible for the overall delivery of Xero’s strategic annual company objectives (OKRs) ensuring they are well defined and scoped effectively to meet annual targets. Establishing and driving outcomes across cross-functional OKR leadership squads (globally) ensuring clear accountabilities to achieve highest business value outcomes. Consistently applying fit-for-purpose governance structures across OKRs, projects and business initiatives while owning companywide commitments to achieving program outcomes

Current areas of responsibility include:

• Leading the overall strategy of large programmes, translating company objectives into executable roadmaps that are clearly articulated and widely understood
• Executive stakeholder management, consistently driving alignment and ensuring seamless programme execution
• Establishing and leading program governance committees to ensure alignment between executive leadership, project sponsors and execution teams
• Executive reporting on activity-based objectives and metric driven outcomes for monthly and quarterly business reviews

Responsible for the implementation and support of Standard Bank's strategic Cloud Acceleration program, including developing and implementing the Group Cloud Operating Model. Designed and executed operational processes for migrating applications and systems from on-premis infrastructure to Cloud Service Providers. Managed service providers, overseeing delivery and relationships to maximize program value.

Areas of focus:

• Developed, maintained, and drove robust and achievable roadmaps for Cloud Operating Model implementation.
• Designed, developed, and implemented the Group's first Cloud Centre of Excellence.
• Developed and delivered an end-to-end Cloud Operating Model implementation template
• Identified, managed, and mitigated key program risks while adhering to regulatory and compliance requirements.
• Effective relationship management for internal delivery teams and external stakeholders.

In conjunction with Head of Service Management accountabilities, I assumed a dual SRE STE role for the Wealth Business unit. Accountable for full application stack analysis and improvement recommendations across multiple business unit value streams. Remediation roadmap development for multiple processes with milestone target creation and progress tracking and reporting.

Areas of responsibility include:

• Site reliability deep dive analysis across end-to-end value streams and technology stacks
• Vulnerability and single point of failure remediation strategies and delivery plans
• Application stack resilience assessments and remediations
• Observability reviews and remediations with the implementation of Service Level Indicators, Objectives and Error Budgets
• Architecture reviews and improvements to support and improve service availability and resilience
• Analysis of DevOps capabilities and improving Continuous Integration and Delivery through DevOps pipelines

Accountable for maturing Business Service Management capabilities: service design, strategy, stability and economics, across the Wealth Portfolio, aligning with ITSM practices. Assessing, managing and reporting on system outages and changes affecting multiple business units. Providing a holistic view of preventative maintenance, root causes and remediations as a strategic input into decision making. Managing and leading communication to impacted business stakeholders where business impact is across BUs on a portfolio level. Operating at a CIO and senior business level in communication, facilitation and engagement. Being both strategic and operational given a multitude of operating scenarios and forums.

Areas of responsibility include:

• Service Stability, availability & restoration
• Service Design, definition & reporting
• Making visible and optimising the total cost of ownership by managing service economics
• Service partner and business stakeholder management, maintaining effective internal and external relationships
• Providing oversight and leadership to the Business Service Lead functions across multiple geographies and portfolios

Developed and implemented business and ITSM strategies for Corporate Functions and Wealth business areas, initiated cross-functional projects to improve service delivery, efficiency, quality, and cost-effectiveness. Managed stakeholder relationships, providing insights into Group IT Service Management, collaborated on trend analysis and reporting to offer critical recommendations for continuous improvement.

Areas of responsibility included:

• Providing strategic direction and developing a high performing virtual LOB ITSM delivery team
• Implementing ITSM policies and best practices through business units: Crisis, Incident, Change and Problem Management
• Optimising solution delivery and drive production stability through lines of business
• Strengthening operational efficiency and effectiveness and enhanced task delivery
• Driving strategies to reduce the impact of service disruptions
• Aligning LOBs across the Group with policies and strategies
• Minimizing risks and intensified compliance

Provided oversight of the IT RUN business services. Ensured appropriate business services were delivered at correct cost and adhered to expected quality levels. Defined services in accordance with GTO standards including SLAs, OLAs, availability plans, capacity plans, service cost allocation models, service cost recovery models, and run books.

Areas of responsibility included:

• Expanding service delivery on value proposition
• Managing partner engagements and service satisfaction
• Achieving quality delivery of services and contributing to the development of the total cost of ownership organisational recovery model
• Decreasing unpredicted impact on production services, operations and support organization
• Improved service operations, raising quality and minimising risk
• Leading the business service management team, including career development, coaching and mentoring

• Responsible for overseeing test assurance processes and ensuring quality standards are met across various projects.

• Managed test services portfolio, ensuring effective test strategies and execution across multiple business units.

• Managed multiple projects across various business units, ensuring alignment with strategic objectives and successful delivery.