Robert J. Gerden

About Robert J. Gerden

I’ve always had an interest in understanding risk, anticipating challenges, and looking…

Experience

1. Enterprise and Bank Technology Risk Advisor - Second Line of Defense

   USAA

   Dec 2021 — Present

   Serve as senior second-line advisor providing enterprise oversight of technology risk across bank and enterprise platforms, strengthening availability, capacity, and service resilience. • Lead Technology Process Risk and Controls (PRCI), influencing teams across organization and guiding execution of risk governance standards on behalf of senior leadership.• Partner with senior technology leaders, internal audit, and enterprise risk executives to fortify governance, challenge risk decisions, and improve executive visibility into technology risk exposure.Select Achievements• Received USAA’s 2025 Top Enterprise Risk & Compliance Award (WeAreERC), presented by the Chief Risk Officer, for enterprise-wide leadership and impact on technology risk governance.• Enabled board-level visibility into enterprise technology availability risk by designing and implementing risk appetite metrics and KRIs to strengthen proactive decision-making. • Transformed technology risk governance from fragmented, reactive practices into defined, maturity-based framework; clarified risk tolerance, strengthened control effectiveness, and drove alignment with large-bank regulatory expectations. • Reduced systemic outage risk by redefining capacity management as end-to-end enterprise discipline, linking business demand, application performance, and infrastructure constraints to close critical visibility gaps.• Strengthened control integrity and risk transparency by identifying and remediating oversight of SLO exceptions, eliminating default approvals and enforcing evidence-based risk acceptance.

Skills

• Risk Assessment
• Scenario Planning
• Strategy
• Business Continuity
• Banking
• Risk Management
• Management
• Risk
• Information Security Management
• Computer Security
• Enterprise Risk Management
• Financial Services
• Governance Operational Risk Risk Appettie
• Security
• Business Continuity Planning
• Incident Investigation
• Information Security
• Operational Risk
• Leadership
• Financial Risk
• Governance
• Business Process Improvement
• Vendor Management
• Program Management