Description
I most recently served as Director of IT Contracts (IT Counsel) for North Shore-LIJ Health System, the 3rd largest, non-profit healthcare system in the US consisting of more than 60,000 employees, 19 hospitals, an insurance company, medical school, over 400 ambulatory and physician practices and 70 affiliated facilities with an operating budget of nearly $8 Billion counseling executive management including the Chief Information Officer, Chief Administrative Officer, Chief Technology Officer and Chief Procurement Officer on major enterprise IT and Supply Chain Management contract initiatives. At NSLIJ, I significantly maximized ROI by exploiting my diversely extensive business and technical experience with my strong, tactically effective and proven negotiation strategies. I resigned to assist a consortium of former clients with a now completed joint venture. I am currently in private practice but seeking to return in-house. At NSLIJ, I successfully led negotiations on over 2500 contracts and special advanced projects with a total value of nearly $1B managing an ongoing average of 100 contracts in parallel. These included a single $180M agreement for an enterprise-wide integrated patient accounting and billing system with Siemens (now Cerner), its enterprise EMR and system wide IT outsourcing program with Allscripts having a total spend in excess of $400M and many with other companies each in excess of $50M. In 2014 alone, I completed over 800 contracts with a total value of over $100M. My focus on cost containment strategies coupled with my broad experience representing vendors and customers across diverse industries resulted in tens of millions of dollars in documented savings. Likewise, I leveraged my negotiation skills to gain substantially more favorable terms effectively reducing risks and exposure while increasing value and benefits. Moreover, I managed the internal process and formal responses to all license audits, compliance requests and contract disputes. Prior to NSLIJ, I served as lead Contracts Director and in-house attorney for MAXIMUS, an international software, services and consulting firm with over 6000 employees and $700M in annual revenue doing business in the United States and globally. I was recruited from my previous employer to direct and manage all contract and legal matters for its $55M, 5-year contract with the New York City Department of Education to develop a customized special education student tracking system to be used to ensure compliance with federal, state and city regulations as well as several class action lawsuit settlement agreements. Within 6 months of employment, I was promoted to be lead negotiator on major technology related contracts for 5 divisions (Consulting, Education, ERP, Health Services and Tax Credit) advising the CEO, CFO and division Presidents on contract risk analysis and mitigation as well as reviewing RFP responses. I also managed and mentored several contracts managers remotely. At PSI, I held the role of General Counsel for its conglomerate of privately held and publicly traded enterprises which included computer consulting, contract programming, network and systems administration, full time technical placement services and software, web and Internet development, primarily in the U.S. and Canada with annual revenue up to $100M. I was one of the four key decision makers on all major corporate initiatives along with the CFO, COO and the CEO/Founder. For most of my tenure at PSI, I managed more than 150 active projects at any one time with at least 30-40 new projects per week across five subsidiaries and affiliates supervising groups of up to 6 contract managers and paralegals in satellite offices. I also further developed the proprietary web based contract tracking system to maximize efficiency. As my attached resume clearly illustrates, I have an extremely robust and diverse background in all aspects of the entire contract process as well as in procurement, Supply Chain Management, cost containment, RFP generation and response, contract negotiation and enforcement, vendor management, privacy compliance, licensing, audits and general legal, business and corporate matters. One of the key functions I provided has been acting as the central point of the contract process, building consensus between, and addressing the specific requirements of, various departments within the company. This includes engaging Sales, Marketing, IT, Human Resources, Accounting, Management, outside counsel and the applicable vendor, client or subcontractor. The contract tracking system I further developed greatly enhanced the efficiency of the contract process and proved to be both a time and cost containment value add. This effectively offset the traditional cost center draw on company resources to a net savings for the company. Moreover, I have successfully leveraged the broad span of industries with which I have worked to bring unique solutions for complex issues. This has enabled me to save clients tens of millions which increased their net profits substantially. I have worked on virtually every type of agreement including consulting, intellectual property rights and licensing, time and materials, fixed price deliverables based, service level (SLA’s), ASP, Software as a Service (SaaS), web or data hosting, commercial and residential leases, vendor and supplier agreements, partnering and teaming, publishing and author’s, NDA’s, employment, sub and prime contractor, business associate agreements (BAA’s), asset purchase and software acquisition agreements. In addition, I have extensive experience dealing with privacy, corporate bankruptcy on creditor committee and as debtor, UCC, FAR, DFAR, ITAR, FERPA, FLSA, FCRA, FDCPA, FACTA, GLBA, COPPA, HIPAA, HITECH, PCI and other government compliance issues including the EU Safe Harbor program. I have negotiated, reviewed, drafted, enforced and advised management and staff on thousands of various agreements with a broad range of parties including Microsoft, ATT, Verizon, Oracle, Siemens, Wolters Kluwer, Springer, Elsevier, McKesson, Allscripts, Cerner, EMC, NEC, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Citibank, Bank of America, Accenture, Pricewaterhouse, Deloitte, Johnson & Johnson, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Bloomberg, NASA/JPL, Dell, BP Amoco, Ford, GE, GM, Dow Jones, Coca-Cola, Disney, D&B, Standard & Poors, Fidelity, IBM, HP, Intel, Motorola, Sun, NASD, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Cisco and other Fortune 1000 companies as well as federal, state and local governmental agencies. My speaking engagements further demonstrate I am able to convey complex legal and contract concepts and terminology to inexperienced and non-legal or contract personnel in a comprehensible manner. At the Shareware Industry Conference, I presented seminars on Effective Contract Negotiations and Selling and Licensing Source Code to business owners with no legal or contract background. Moreover, I conducted many in-house training conferences to sales and management on contracts, negotiating tactics and general business law concepts. These sessions not only explained the importance and efficiency of maintaining and using our standardized contract templates, but also provided guidance on how to effectively obtain the other party’s acceptance of our standardized approach with least exposure to the company. Based on my qualifications and experience, I am most confident I would be a valuable addition to your team and would very much appreciate the opportunity to discuss how I will make a positive impact to your needs. Thank you very much for your time and consideration.
