Stephen Schmidt

About Stephen Schmidt

I work at the intersection of strategy and execution, partnering with senior leaders to build the operating infrastructure that keeps complex organizations aligned, accountable, and moving.Most of the problems I\'m called in to solve aren\'t project problems. They\'re structural ones: unclear ownership, competing priorities, decisions that should have been made upstream but weren\'t. My job is to surface those upstream failures, build the frameworks that resolve them, and create enough clarity that teams can execute without everything funneling back to the top.I\'ve done this across enterprise transformation, multi-stakeholder portfolios, and high-velocity organizations where tooling and teams have outpaced operating models. The work looks different in each context - governance design, executive reporting, portfolio prioritization, change management - but the through-line is the same: closing the gap between what leadership intends and what the organization actually does.I don\'t add process for its own sake. I remove friction, surface risk early, and build structures that outlast my direct involvement.I\'m also a Chicago Emmy Award-winning writer and producer - a background that shapes how I communicate complexity, build trust across diverse groups, and find the narrative inside a messy problem.

Experience

1. Vice President Program Management

   RAPP

   Apr 2024 — Present · Chicago, IL, US

   RAPP leads a complex, multi-year marketing transformation program for a Fortune 500 client across Media, Marketing Technology, Product, and Engineering — and when I joined, the infrastructure to govern that complexity at scale didn\'t yet exist. My job was to build it: the planning cycles, governance frameworks, escalation models, and executive reporting that let a large cross-functional organization make decisions and keep moving without everything funneling back to the top.The work that matters most here isn\'t any single deliverable, it\'s that seven client organizations onboarded into a common operating model, leadership gained real visibility into portfolio health and tradeoffs, and a 40-person-plus program ran at 94% capacity efficiency. That doesn\'t happen from a playbook. It happens when the governance infrastructure is trusted enough that people actually use it.

Education

• Drake University

  Bachelor of Fine Arts, Theater Design and Technology

  1992 — 1996

Skills

• Web Project Management
• Sketch Comedy
• B2b Ecommerce
• B2c
• Script Reading
• Speed Reading
• Long Walks on the Beach
• B2b
• Digital Marketing
• E-Commerce
• Email Marketing
• Entertainment
• Social Media Marketing
• Screenplays
• Direct Marketing
• Web Analytics
• Web Design
• Product Marketing
• Integrated Marketing
• Weaving
• Online Advertising
• Project Management
• Management
• Strategy
• Social Media
• Digital Strategy
• Digital Media
• Writing
• Brand Development
• Interactive Advertising
• Content Strategy
• Marketing Strategy
• Advertising
• User Experience
• Concept Development