Candace
Holcombe-Volke, PMP®

New York, NY · Remote · candace.volke@gmail.com

Analytics and Technical Project Management professional with 9+ years experience analyzing and interpreting data to identify strategic business initiatives, advocating for robust and resilient process, ensuring compliance with data protection regulations, and leading projects to advance the enterprise mission within healthcare, edtech, fitness technology, and non-profit industries.


Experience

Peloton | Technical Project Manager

New York, NY

Lead projects for a team of 15 data and analytics engineers alongside data scientists and analysts, that further the strategic goals of the Data Engineering team and broader Data Science department, to improve data quality, usability, and transparency, and ensure our data ecosystem is robust, resilient, flexible, and efficient. Work with matrix project teams to ensure alignment on global strategic initiatives, particularly with GRC, Finance, Accounting, Platform Engineering, Supply Chain/Field Ops/Logistics, Member Support, Retail Analytics, Marketing Analytics, and SRE.

  • Led rollout and orchestration of several concurrent projects with delicate interdependencies ensuring compliance with SOX testing and documentation policies and aligning stakeholders when they needed to take followup action. Simultaneous projects were:

    • migrate approximately 250 data pipelines from a single EC2 cron machine to Airflow,

    • implement an in-house snapshot process for critical ecommerce and user engagement RDS database tables and retire the legacy process which was managed by a third-party tool, and

    • migrate several critical and core data models into dbt (Data Build Tool).

  • Established the Data Science Changelog to increase transparency of DS improvement efforts that may have downstream impacts on user reporting, as a tool for stakeholders to prepare for upcoming changes, as well as engineers on call to reference when troubleshooting. A follow on New Dataset Releases publication announces new datasets that may provide insight in solving cross-functional business problems.

  • Leading efforts to improve protections around data privacy and compliance with national and international data protection regulations. Some efforts include:

    • role-based access, provisioning, and deprovisioning for Data Engineering-managed tools

    • data masking for PII and sensitive data and implementing 'GDPR deletion / DSAR-friendly' data ingestion processes

    • encryption of the Redshift cluster for additional data security

    • SOX control audits

    • publication of GDPR, CCPA, and SOX policy and process

    • supporting Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity planning for Data Engineering-owned business-critical tools

May 2021 - Present

2U | Project Manager

Lanham, MD

Implement all phases of projects driving Operational Compliance initiatives while building reliable, robust, and resilient organizational processes to support growth in alignment with domestic and international data, consumer protection, marketing, and education legislation.

  • Designed, implemented, trained, and managed a Jira Service Desk to support Compliance, Privacy, and Legal departments. In its first year, it routed over 1,000 requests from all departments and 3 product lines, and identified areas where additional training, documentation, and data protection was needed. The aligned service desk across the core business and two recently acquired companies served as an early example of the potential to integrate this service across business areas.

  • Designed an automated solution to provide university partners a pathway to comply with 2020 Department of Education regulations by engaging a matrix team including Data Science, Marketing, Email Automation, Web Production, CRO, University Services and Program Implementation.

  • Designed, modernized, streamlined, and expanded enterprise processes involving:

    • handling/processing student record information,

    • TCPA-compliant marketing outreach,

    • collection, access, and storage of sensitive information (as defined by GDPR / CCPA),

    • regulated disclosure notices regarding program accreditation, certification, and pathway to licensure, and

    • use of SMS text messaging in marketing, among others.

  • Developed web scraping programs to extract and document information from internal systems and marketing assets to establish a catalog of data used to expand guidance. The results of this analysis identified vulnerabilities.

  • Designed a formalized departmental risk register.

June 2019 - April 2021

University of Maryland Medical Center | Analyst, Program Manager

Baltimore, MD

Steered organization-wide patient experience data strategy to accelerate achievement by 88% over 3 years, equating to additional $5.6 million increase in state incentive payments.

  • Saved $14,000 per year while enhancing an executive initiative by building electronic feedback submission tool with similar capabilities as commercial products.
  • Spearheaded System transition and implementation of federally mandated surveys resulting in increased analytic capability and $136,000 cost savings annually.
  • Collaborated with the System Assistant Chief Medical Officer to construct a $500,000 incentive payment scheme for independently employed physician groups and integrate data, resulting in increased physician engagement in hospital key performance indicators.
March 2014 - June 2019

Baltimore Council on Foreign Affairs | Program Coordinator

Baltimore, MD

Planned, marketed, and executed all Council events, which, at times, attracted over 600 attendees, international and national media. Recognizing the need to update Council’s structure and expand membership,

  • Upgraded Council website to enhance UX and functionality including electronic reservations and ticketing, online payment, direct emailing, and archived event streaming.
  • Migrated email system to enhance professional presence.
  • Increased publicity of Council YouTube channel and Facebook presence to further its mission to provide free access to international relations education.
January 2013 - March 2014

Education

Johns Hopkins University

Master of Science, Computer Science
Expected 2023

American University

Bachelor of Arts, International Studies

Cum Laude

Completed May 2013

Awards & Certifications

Project Management Professional Certification, PMP ®

  • Project Management Institute, PMI, 2018

OneTrust Professional Certifications

  • OneTrust Certified Professional Certification, 2020
  • OneTrust Consent Management Expert Certification, 2020

2020 2U Annual Employee Recognition

  • "Strive for Excellence" Finalist

    One of 5 finalists for embodying the 2U guiding principle "Strive for Excellence" among 4,500+ global employees and 800 nominations.


Languages, Skills & Tools

Productivity & Collaboration Tools
  • Data: Excel, Python, R & Rstudio, SQL, exposure to dbt
  • Collaboration & Communication: Slack, Google, Jira, Confluence, Zoom, Skype, Google Meet/Hangout, SharePoint, Sitecore
  • Project Management SmartSheet, Trello, ProjectLibre (open source Microsoft Project)
  • Concise technical communication, analytical and strategic thinking, problem solving, teamwork, mentorship

Interests

I love learning, and in my free time I'm often making my way through some interesting course online. My favorite platforms at the moment are Udemy and EdX. I'm currently working on the Data Engineering Masterclass using AWS Analytics Services. Previously I completed Colt Steele's Web Development Bootcamp to expand my exposure to web development, and pick up sections of the 10 course Data Science specialization through Johns Hopkins to sharpen my data science skills with R.

I also recently purchased my first Arduino starter set, and I'm looking forward to my first project - building a time-triggered self-opening container that can automatically feed my cat her daily heart medicine (tucked inside of a treat, of course!).

I'm a big podcast fan as well! Some of my favorites include:

  • Data, Visualizations, Security, Development Tools
    • Darknet Diaries - by Jack Rysyder
    • If Data Could Talk - Taha Ebrahimi
    • Changelog - Adam Stacoviak and Jerod Santo
    • Not So Standard Deviations - Roger Peng and Hilary Parker
  • Other Topics
    • Stuff You Should Know - Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant
    • This Podcast Will Kill You - Erin Welsh and Erin Allman Updyke
    • No Such Thing as a Fish
    • Anything with Ira Glass, Sara Koenig, PRX, APM, New York Times reporting and/or producing

If I'm not in front of a working or studying, I'm usually out exploring the amazing things New York has to offer, or weekending in Philadelphia, other parts of New York, or wherever I can go with a cheap plane ticket.