Suanne Pillay-Mescken

• Establish strong relationships with key stakeholders, fostering collaboration across departments for seamless product development.
• Evaluate third-party vendor partnerships by assessing their capabilities and performance, ensuring alignment with overall product strategy.
• Meet strict deadlines, coordinating moving parts in product team and orchestrating well-designed flow.
• Launch 15 successful product offerings per quarter to achieve revenue targets.
• Manage product roadmaps, aligning with company goals and ensuring timely delivery of key features
  Lead cross-functional teams for successful product launches, resulting in increased market share
• Mentor junior Product Managers in effective project management techniques and industry best practices
• Support staff development, promoting personal achievement and retention as best strategy for long-term organizational health.
• Act as liaison between business, sales and IT teams to refine product and incorporate features based on market demands
• Partner with IT and product leadership to drive and manage solution development process and ensure product team understands direction and vision
• Collaborate with teams to discover and deliver best solution to market presented by product team lead and business
• Create and maintain solution vision, roadmap, and backlog of work through project's life cycle
• Translate features into user stories within team's backlog while managing, ranking, and prioritizing this backlog to reflect stakeholder requirements
• Provide vision and direction to Agile development team and stakeholders throughout project
• Provide guidance in mitigating impediments impacting completion of Release/Sprint Goals
• Ensure team focus on behavior and outcomes that drive customer value
• Assess value, develop cases, and prioritize stories, epics and themes to ensure work focuses on those with maximum value that are aligned with product strategy.

• ING Bank sponsored visit to understand their company culture and working environment
• During visit, collaborated with cross-functional teams to develop in-depth understanding of digital workplace business unit
• Cultivated strong relationships with key stakeholders by maintaining open lines of communication and voicing onions and suggestions on how to solve current business problems.
• Collaborated with engineering teams on technical feasibility assessments, resulting in realistic scope definition for projects
• Optimized product performance by identifying areas for improvement and implementing necessary changes

• Managed all portfolio related projects on various Investment platforms in Group
• Conducted research and collate data to serve as input to operational reporting and decision making related to Investments and Portfolio operations
• Provided specialist input through investigation of opportunities for operational and process optimization, creating more streamlined flows of work
• Planned for value-added process improvements, initiatives and services to deliver on operational strategy and objectives
• Drew on own technical or professional knowledge and experience to identify and develop solutions to improve process service delivery & quality
• Prepared reporting to satisfy risk reporting requirements, with relevant interpretation of analyses for business users
• Contributed to TCF service excellence culture, which enhanced relationships and provides opportunities for feedback and exceptional service
• Implemented 6 processes that built service delivery excellence according to TCF principles & encouraged others to provide exceptional customer service
• Built many relationships and interacted positively with clients and as ambassador of organizational brand.

• Directed project plans to meet organizational needs
• Set project timelines and kept teams on task to complete milestones according to schedule
• Arranged for and rolled out 3 department-specific projects and programs that supported company's Finance function
• Reviewed and tracked completion of 100% of required market realignments
• Proposed and published metrics and KPIs incorporated into monthly reporting
• Prepared Risk and Operational reports for presentation to Executive Management
• Improved business performance in areas such as Cash Management and Exception handling through building automation
• Enhanced operational success through effective staffing, strong training, and adherence to SLAs
• Served instrumental role in organizational transformation and implementation and participated in ongoing successful large-scale corporate restructuring.

• Settlement and Control of Investment accounts by ensuring that all differences, concerns and issues are addressed, investigated and actioned then providing inputs and solutions to drive continuous improvement of processes within department
• Stream-lined reporting on progress daily/weekly and monthly to enable decision making and ensure that Administrators/Managers are informed
• Focused on historic and legacy issues and implement solutions Clean-up projects - Initiation and completion
• Reviewed manual Reconciliations for 22 LISP Bank Accounts and ensure that it fully complies with procedure documents and deliver necessary reporting to internal and external auditors
• Facilitated running of system upgrades and front-end testing and attended strategy sessions on upgrades
• Met with team/staff on difficulties experienced
• Management of relationship with third party administrators of partnerships and supervision of junior administrators and overseeing activities directly related to LISP recon services
• Lead, empowered, motivated and oversaw team performance through providing training on reporting and other daily and new activities
• Guided while also monitoring and following up and reviewing daily deliverables and key controls.

• Allocate investments to client's investments in AFRICA business, resolve account discrepancies to ensure consistent accuracy and prepare opening account documentation and risk management reporting
• Assist Portfolio Managers with due diligence and portfolio maintenance, generate financial statements and facilitate account closing procedures each month for 8 African countries
• Handle requests from internal and external customers, Provide Internal and External Audit Requirements and Year-End finalization on Unit trust Finance book
• Provide key clerical and administrative support to senior accounting staff
• Reconcile all types of bank accounts with updated information and monitor status of accounts receivable and payable to facilitate efficient processing.

• Compiled daily and monthly unit recon reports for analysis by collecting and arranging information by using advanced software proficiencies
• Processed daily manual instructions of over 10million rads to other LISPs and preparation of BUY and SELL instructions to align unit balances and compile reports pertaining to local and international cash receipts, expenditures and profit and loss investigated accounts and resolved variances
• Analyzed company investment statements, recordkeeping and write correspondence and provide extensive administrative support to department staff as well as General Financial administration while continually building and maintaining relationships with external stakeholders in trading cycle.

• Supported Indexing team by handling all administrative tasks and providing answers to customer questions via phone and email, typically within 15 minutes
• Worked with support teams to resolve issues with product, service or accounting areas and safely and properly operate various types of imaging systems, including Workflow and software
• Organized & Prioritized documents for scanning purposes then label and ship records to cold storage facilities as per personnel requests
• Organized critical information and data for STANLIB UT and LISP, reducing paper waste and supporting program operations by preparing and updating documents, reports and spreadsheets
• Managed department records and files for prompt and efficient retrieval and utilize strong time management and organizational skills to ensure smooth and seamless operations.

Dissertation: Assessing employee perception of the current employee wellness program and its impact on employee performance at bank X in Gauteng, South Africa

• Completed Coursework: 2021
• Dissertation: 2022

Strategic Management

The Management of Organizational Change & Renewal

Project Management

Distinctions: 14

Strategic Planning & Implementation

Global Business Environments