James Runco

About James Runco

I\'m a program manager with over two decades of work experience in academic, business, and federal environments. Previously, I was a solutions expert with more than a decade of product management experience, much of it in agile methodologies. I love creating, innovating, and crafting excellent user experiences. I believe in human centered design. I have been honored to lead significant national impact projects; ensuring that they were successful. If you give me a high-level goal or problem, I can use data to identify and map a path forward to produce measurable results. I generate an actionable strategy, identify stakeholders, milestones, tasks, risks, and timelines. I find the best technology for the job and am a huge fan of automation and more recently Generative AI. I love making things more efficient and effective and have the human, professional, and technical skills needed to lead. I have been praised for my focus, grit, resourcefulness, teamwork, humility, and attention to detail. I have years of experience pulling together teams with diverse skills and backgrounds to solve the toughest challenges. I have backgrounds in project and program management, process improvement, quality management, metrics, agile product management and web design, user research, qualitative and quantitative reporting, people management, audit, financial regulations, plain language writing, and financial education. I enjoy solving problems. I\'ve mostly applied my skills to technology system development, financial industry analysis, financial education, and metrics driven operational excellence improvements. I was a bank examiner for 5 years and earned a financial regulator commission. I worked for almost a decade in a university environment in various data/IT and customer service positions. I can also write or review content as applicable for public consumption or business/technical audiences.I am passionate about my family, my work, and doing the little things in life that make people smile. I love chocolate (it\'s real and it\'s deep). I am a big fan of a nice family night out to the drive-in movie theater or a summertime weekend getaway to Bethany Beach with my wife.

Experience

1. Quality Assurance Program Manager

   Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

   Jun 2023 — Present

   Program Manager that directed all aspects of a data intensive quality program that contained about 20 full time employees and contactors. Also coordinated closely with another 10 managers and QA analysts who did this work as a portion of their responsibilities. Provided individual and group coaching to the ~25 federal staff and ~80 contractors evaluated. Significantly improved performance in all areas monitored while maintaining high standards. In some area results increased by 20 or more percent. In the last few months of this job about half of the monitored programs had moved to scoring between 99,9% and 100% with only infrequent errors. Had a significant breadth of responsibilities including: Determining contractor volumes and work types, monitoring burndown, ensuring they were following guidance, and assigning validations of their daily work to federal staff. Continually evaluating and reporting on the evaluated areas (Consumer Call/Resource Center and Federal workers doing a variety of tasks), providing scores and detailed implementable recommendations for how to improve. Very granular analysis provided as was access to broader trends to help improve individual employee and overall function performance. Building and maintaining tech systems, processes, and procedures to support the above. Built and publicized process maps, request forms, online trackers, and automated notifications. Had publishing/elevated access and abilities to Salesforce, MS Power Platform and Sharepoint, and Tableau Flow, Tableau Desktop, and Tableau Server. Built almost everything my team needed myself except for our primary Salesforce App (Leaptree Optimize for which I served as a local admin and provided many adopted improvement suggestions). Leveraged my technical and operational knowledge from when I was the product manager for the CFPB\'s case handling system.

Education

• Villanova University

  Bachelor of Arts, Economics; Political Science/Prelaw concentration

  2002 — 2006

Skills

• Report Design
• Finance
• Policy
• Economics
• Strategy
• Financial Regulation
• Research
• Data Analysis
• Consensus Building
• Leadership
• Bank Secrecy Act
• Impact Assessment
• Banking
• Risk Management
• Agile Methodologies
• Management
• Team Building
• Operational Risk
• Presentations
• Analysis
• Communication
• Business Writing
• Helping Others Succeed
• Product Management
• Process Improvement
• Financial Analysis
• Financial Services
• Regulatory Compliance
• Idea Generation
• Policy Analysis
• Metrics Reporting