Patrick Kenney

Objective: Strategic Human Resources Leadership,Entrepreneurship And General Management
Seeking Full-time Leadership Roles Delivering Business Results, Performance Excellence, Innovation, & Human Capital Management Enterprise-Wide

Senior Human Resources professional and program management leader with track record overseeing organization-wide people management processes, systems, and culture transformations for companies such as Seagate Technology, AnswerThink Consulting, Digital Equipment Corporation, NASSCO, and Personnel Decisions International. Consultant across a multitude of industries including computing, medical device, energy, utilities, agriculture, commodities, financial, private equity, and nonprofits.

A trusted C-level manager & advisor, and formative HR leader with a history of driving performance- and contribution-focused results in the midst of global restructurings, system implementations, outsourcings, mergers/acquisitions, and divestitures.  Expertise contribution ranges from company & program governance, solutions innovations, initiative leadership / program management to front line project & service execution.

Entrepreneur and intrapreneur, a principled natural integrator and influencer who drives optimal results with on-time, on-budget strategy, tactics and real time operations. HR pioneer with a record of award-winning, best practice innovations that align people, structures, processes, and systems with business, technology, and legal/financial imperatives while bolstering business leadership performance.

Selected Areas of Expertise

Strategy Design & Execution: Innovative solution development that onsolidates best practices to customize strategies to meet organization needs and drive overall business success. Leveraged capability across a range of corporate-wide programs covering all areas of human capital management, positive business culture & organization development

Business Transformation: General management competencies cross all major business functions enabling a comprehensive, realistic, and effective business transformation strategy & implementation path. Transformation leadership includes organization development, positive business culture, HR business contributions covering competencies, functions & roles, comprehensive workforce management processes, metrics, and data management for systems development & implementation,

Policy, Practice, & Process Reengineering:  Extensive streamlining of and implementation of all human capital processes to enable management & employee direct control over their owned processes and enable HR to re-align streamlined roles and competencies to achieve best in class performance contributions.

Post-M&A Integrations: Enhanced corporate brands and reputations through expert professionalism in leadership of outsourcing, acquisitions, mergers, and divestitures. Career of leadership roles covers spectrum of executive, program, project, and work stages.

Organizational Development: Leveraging expertise in workforce and people management with general management capacity enables a uniquely pragmatic strategic and tactical contribution to overall business organizational development requirements and opportunities; in particular, leadership of restructurings, succession, community & political impacts, risk management, governance.

Change Championing: A career of business impact via program management and functional leadership has honed high level expertise in change championing and change management. Expertise across business prioritization, talent development & enabling talent potential, culture management, engagement, communications, and establishing management,/leadership success.

Leadership & Management Development: Innovator and leader of development programs for management and leadership across all areas of expertise. Leverages the perspective that the path to business success is developing talent as appropriate to achieve the ‘high performance’, business results, company of the year level of success.

Talent & Workforce Management: Multiple development programs leveraging learning systems capabilities. Key contributions include a long term focus on developing and sustaining workforce and talent dashboards for company leadership, position-talent alignment across the individual employment value chain lifecycle and the business requirements planning

Performance Alignment: Multiple program innovations aligning business objectives across all employees to achieve focus, engagement, and optimizing performance results. Designed and implemented multiple performance management programs.

Quality: Six Sigma, Lean, and more: Progression of capabilities in quality stem from early career application of Deming’s principles in shipbuilding. This quality application developed and impacted major, award winning contributions  across multiple industries. Certified Six Sigma Executive Program Champion and Executive Brown Belt; awarded “HR Best Practice Award” for leadership of programs at Seagate Technology in a major acquisition, an international performance management system development & implementation, and major accomplishments in labor relations activity in Europe and establishment of practices around the globe.

Business Leadership and Human Resources Achievements

Vocation Crowd Inc., Minneapolis, MN                                                                                      2016 – Present

Founder, Chairperson and CEO
A startup membership association Minnesota ‘C’ Corporation. This is a three corporation mission oriented solution focused on mitigating student loan debt. The second organization is Certitude Lending Corporation, a partially formed startup South Dakota “C” Corporation to be licensed as a lender and offer private student loans. The third organization to be established is Summa Vocare, a nonprofit managing vocation funds to mitigate student loans and facilitate debt elimination. Our mission is to increase vocation freedoms for all Catholics through highly effective higher education finance. All net revenue from Vocation Crowd and Certitude Lending are donated to the Summa Vocare vocation foundation. Marketing strategies address key entry points to the greater than 20 million participant population.

The Laboure Society, Eagan, MN                                                                                                    2014 – 2016

Managing Director & Strategic Contractor
Developed strategic plan with board of directors and acquired over $2million in grants and donations to implement the strategic plan. Managed operations through building a national staff, reconstituting intellectual property, marketing and recruiting program participants.

HR Visions, Inc., Minneapolis, MN                                                                                              2012 – Present

HR transformation consulting firm serving New Ventures & Fortune 100 businesses.

Principle
Partner in leadership, equity collaborator and advisor on training, new technology, and energy ventures. Provide expert market research, advise on investment capital, and structure leadership for business development in critical competencies development,  innovations in energy & power generation markets, staffing and employment frameworks and investor relations management for early stage ventures. Advisor to Boards of Directors both ‘for-profit’ and ‘non-profit’.

Green Harvest Technologies, Minneapolis, MN                                                                           2009 – 2012

Start-up product producer leveraging advanced renewable materials technologies in multiple markets, including healthcare.

New Venture Business Development & Chief Executive Officer
Recruited from major investor role into executive leadership of new venture. Presided over development, validation, and expansion of technologies, products, and markets. Steer investor relations, business planning, due diligence, financial management, government relations, talent management, and fundraising. Developed strong product, market, administrative, and technical startup team.  Developed stong relationships across domestic & international economic development agencies, angel investors, private equity, venture capital groups, and more. Funding and resource development was not sufficient to commercialize.  Business is closed.

Seagate Technology, Minneapolis, MN                                                                                           2000 – 2008

Global leader in information storage with annual revenue of $11.4 billion and ~52,000 employees in 22 countries.

Executive Director, Human Resources – Global Product and R&D Center  (2006 – 2008)

Executive Director, Human Resources – Global Recording Heads & Media Organization (2000 – 2006)
Recruited by former client to drive strategic and operational HR for key businesses and align people, processes, and organization with emerging business needs. Served on executive team, supporting operations in US, Asia, and Europe with up to 10,000 employees. Championed mission-critical organizational transformation initiatives, including human resources facets of major merger/divestiture, with global team of 45.

w  Organization-Wide Cultural Transformation: Contributed to major, multi-year cultural transformation to close performance and engagement gaps. Steered structure, systems, training, metrics, and work environment shifts.

–   Deployed execution of enterprise-wide international job-leveling, performance management, succession planning, compensation, and benefits alignment programs.

–   Using a strategic business partnering model, improved internal satisfaction, operational effectiveness, and 50% reduction in HR workforce and budget.

w  Employee Relations: Achieved union-free workforce across domestic and international locations, championing positive employee-management relations internally and externally in the midst of organizational change.

–   guided executive management, HR function, and people programs in the midst of significant RIFs, consolidations, outsourcings, and new ventures.

w  Performance Management: Tightened alignment and results through innovation of business-driven performance management system recognized as best practice by Corporate Leadership Council.

w  Post-Acquisition Integration: Led HR and workforce integration for Maxtor acquisition, sustaining high staff retention in multiple locations. Selected and aligned key competencies/products for critical engineering and R&D talent, while propelling integration to on-time, on-budget completion within 6 months.

w  Post-Divestiture Staff Retention: Optimized HR program design, key employee retention, and product transitions during Xiotech divestiture.

Early Career Snapshot

The Hackett Group,  AnswerThink Consulting Group, Miami, FL, March 1999 to July 2000

Leading business and technology consulting firm and division of the Hackett Group.

Director
Co-developed and led HR Transformation consulting practice, offering strategic blend of people management, strategy development, best practice benchmarking, and process reengineering expertise. Delivered services ranging from best practice gap assessments to transformation planning and project management.

w  Start-Up Consulting Leadership: Grew practice to nearly $18 million in 15 months, building team from 3 directors to 45 staff and instituting niche consulting offering for joint ventures & acquisitions.

w  HR Organizational Launch: Forged HR organizations for multiple Fortune 100 start-up joint ventures. Steered board, executive, and senior HR leader negotiations and spearheaded rollout from strategic plan through operational launch in adherence with corporate financial model.

HR Visions, Inc., Minneapolis, MN, March 1995 to March 1999

HR transformation consulting firm serving Fortune 100 businesses.

President & CEO
Launched and grew consultancy delivering cutting-edge and strategic HR transformation of people, processes, and technology, building on expertise developed at DEC. Built and sustained relationships with executives of leading companies while overseeing a consulting team of up to 12.

w  HR Return-on-Investment: Pushed first-year firm revenue to $500,000, with $1+ million gains each subsequent year, through the design and execution of strategic human resources models. Cut expenses and expanded return-on-investment, guiding US-wide implementation for multiple clients.

w  Cost-Per-Hire Reduction: Bolstered speed and volume at lower cost-per-hire, reengineering technology company’s end-to-end hiring processes/systems and global recruiting for US positions.

w  HR Restructuring: Drove 2-year, comprehensive HR reorganization for medical technology company encompassing new systems, service center rollout, self-service, role redesign, and HR cost containment.

Prior experience includes leadership & management roles pioneering global HR transformations

Digital Equipment Corporation, Western US Region to US-wide Region, August 1986 to March 1995

Human Resources Management, Business Partner & Transformation Program Management

General Dynamics/National Steel & Shipbuilding Company (NASSCO), San Diego, CA Port

Manager of Management Development, 1984 to 1986

Personnel Decisions International, Minneapolis, MN

Consulting Staff Associate1981 to 1984

Education, Credentials & Professional Development

Graduate Studies in Industrial Organizational Psychology & Marketing (joint degree program)

Completed doctoral-level coursework 1984-1991, not dissertation w Alliant International University, San Diego, CA

BA, 1977, in Psychology and Human Development w St. Mary’s University, Winona, MN

Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR) w Master Human Capital Strategist (MHCS)

Six Sigma Champion Executive Brown Belt w Lean Manufacturing