## Chris Malek

I am a San Diego, California-based Technology Consultant with over 25 years of experience automating and implementing software solutions for corporate and institutional clients. I have worked with large and medium-sized organizations to propose, design, and implement complex back-office automation projects. These projects reduce costs, improve workflow, generate higher-quality reporting, and increase operational efficiency. I am a technical consultant with strong soft skills. Additionally, I can interact with all levels of management and end users to extract business requirements and recommend solutions.

# Work Experience

## Cedar Hills Group, Inc

Principle IT Consultant March 2003 - Present

I am an independent PeopleSoft Consultant providing solutions to corporate and higher education clients. As a consultant, I design and implement solutions that automate back-office ERP business processes.

## Notable Client Projects

• Streamlined Financial Aid Process: A higher education client contracted me to analyze, recommend, and implement a streamlined solution for a financial aid (FA) department. The FA department was using a combination of paper-based forms and an outdated electronic system, which caused significant inefficiencies.

  • I led the project by working closely with directors, subject-matter experts, and front-line staff.
  • After several prototypes, iterations, and design meetings, a solution was designed and implemented to increase productivity and remove paper from the process. The delivered solution drastically increased the turnaround time for the FA Department. In the previous process, the lifecycle could have taken weeks.
  • In the new electronic system, staff could request forms from a student and receive them back in minutes.
  • This project resulted in significant cost savings and productivity gains as well as happier students and staff.

• PeopleSoft Connectors for LMS: a higher education System Integrator contracted me to design PeopleSoft connectors for a Software as a Service (SAAS) Learning Management System (LMS).

  • The LMS needed a tight integration with PeopleSoft to synchronize data.
  • I used my expertise to work with the PeopleSoft client and the system integrator to deliver a robust series of web services to expose the PeopleSoft database via a modern web API. The key design challenge was to deliver a solution that ensured low support costs and a light technical footprint for the institution hosting the PeopleSoft system.
  • Additionally, the design had to allow the LMS SAAS application to evolve and be loosely coupled with the PeopleSoft system.
  • The integration supported over 22 community colleges in the state and processed thousands of messages daily.
  • The project met the goals and still plays a critical role at the institution.

• OKTA SSO Integration: A higher education client contracted me to integrate their OKTA Single Sign-on (SSO) Provider with their PeopleSoft infrastructure.

  • The OKTA product had no native integrations with PeopleSoft and was exposed only to a REST HTTP API. The client needed the ability to provision and de-provision accounts, synchronize group memberships and personal data, and access audit data. I designed a configurable platform on which the integration’s behavior could be set up and maintained by the staff.
  • This integration allowed for a flexible framework that can evolve with the institution.
  • The integrations automated many aspects of the student and staff account life cycle.

• Modernized Admissions Process: A higher education client contracted me to improve their student application and admissions process. The previous solution was dated and had many limitations. The admissions process involves many stakeholders, including marketing, admissions, the registrar, and financial aid.

  • The challenge was to design an admissions process that delivered a modern UI for the applicant and satisfied the complex requirements of the stakeholders. Each group had specific needs.
    • The marketing department needed the ability to track the effectiveness of outreach efforts.
    • The Admission and Registrar departments required high data integrity, auditability, and automation.
  • The project was rolled out successfully and manages the majority of student admissions into the institution.
  • The solution uses a responsive UI interface that allows for the input of their application data.
  • The back-end automation allows for the automatic vetting of the applicant and integration into the student management system.

• Automated Adjunct Payroll: a higher education client contracted me to improve their adjunct professor payroll process.

  • The design challenge was the variation in different methods of pay.
  • The payment could vary depending on many aspects of the class like enrollment, teaching method, and seniority level of the instructor.
  • Additionally, the integrity of the data that feeds the payroll often had mistakes leading to incorrect pay and a complex process to determine if a class was paid incorrectly retroactively.
  • The institution had been using an Excel-based solution that opened the institution up to simple copy-and-paste mistakes and audit complexity and risk.
    • If a professor called to ask about their pay, the inquiry could take a large amount of a payroll expert’s time to search through various Excel spreadsheets to determine what was paid and piece together the calculation.
  • I worked with the subject-matter experts to understand the requirements and catalog the desired future state process.
  • I designed and implemented a configurable solution where pay rules could be well-defined to properly automate business logic and calculation.
  • The system would automatically calculate pay for the classes.
  • Additionally, when data entry mistakes were corrected in the upstream data, the payroll system would automatically look back and make retroactive payroll adjustments.
  • The new system allowed the professor to look up payroll inquiries in their portal.
  • Additionally, the audit risk was decreased by several orders of magnitude as protections were implemented to flag transactions that fell outside the rules.

• Enhanced HR Benefits Enrollment: A client contracted me to improve their HR benefits enrollment process for new hires, terminations, position changes, and open enrollment. The client had been using an inefficient paper-based process. The benefits Department wanted an electronic workflow that would help automate a complex, tedious, and error-prone process.

  • The client had different groups of employees who all qualified under different eligibility rules and coverage ranges.
  • I designed a system that would detect benefit eligibility and present employees and benefit administrators with screens to process and update benefit records.
  • The system would automatically detect if employee eligibility changed and generate workflow events that the employee or the administrator could complete. This ensured that HR data was maintained properly and that employees received their eligible benefits promptly.
  • The project increased the data integrity in the system and decreased the time it took for employees to enroll in benefits.

## Client List

Here is a list of clients I have worked directly with or who have been a part of a project I have worked on running software I wrote.

• AMN Healthcare
• Anadarko Petroleum
• Appsian
• Augusoft (Merged with Modern Campus)
• Cerritos College
• City College of Chicago
• City University of Seattle
• Coursedog
• Decision Desk
• Edvisorly
• Frederick Community College
• Glendale Community College
• James Madison University
• Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL)
• Lorain County Community College
• Los Angeles Community College District
• Los Rios Community College District
• Mira Costa College
• Modern Campus
• N2N Services
• National University
• Northern Arizona University
• Option One Mortgage Corporation
• Palomar College
• San Diego Community College District
• Solidan
• The City University of New York
• The Northern Alberta Institute of Technology
• The University of Alberta
• The University of Massachusetts System
• The University of Utah
• Transocean (formerly GlobalSantaFe & Global Marine)
• University of Puget Sound
• University of Massachusetts System
• Virginia Community College System

## PeopleSoft Consulting USA

Technical Consultant

January 2000 - March 2003

I worked for PeopleSoft® in the consulting practice before the Oracle acquisition. I worked on various projects nationwide, working on all aspects of technical ERP implementations.

# Education

Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering (1999)

The University of Texas at Austin

# Skills and Tools

• PeopleSoft ERP - Expert in all aspects of PeopleSoft Development
• Cloud
  • AWS, Google Cloud
• Products
  • OKTA Administration and Integration
• Programming Languages & Technology:
  • Go, SAML, HTTP, REST API Design, SQL
• Areas of Current Technical Research & Interest:
  • Datastar , Hypermedia

# Additional Personal Information

• I love to learn new things and the challenge of solving complex problems.
• Interests - Surfing, Wing Foiling, Hiking, Reading, and Traveling
• Dream Vacation - Surfing from a yacht in warm water with my family. Wingfoiling in the Maldives.
• Apps I use Daily:
  • NotePlan
  • VSCode
  • https://github.com/danielmiessler/fabric
• Recent Books
  • Nexus - Yuval Noah Harari
  • James - Percival Everett
  • The Nightingale - Kristin Hannah (Anything by Ms. Hannah)
  • Endurance - Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage - Alfred Lansing
  • Endurance - Scott Kelly
  • Sapiens - Yuval Noah Harari
  • The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde (Amazing Classic!)
  • I love Capitalism - Ken Langone
  • The Evolution of Everything - Matt Ridley
  • Skin in the Game - Nassim Nicholas Taleb
  • Leonardo da Vinci - Walter Isaacson
  • Principles - Ray Dalio
  • The Go Programming Language - Alan A. A. Donovan
  • The Rational Optimist - Matt Ridley
  • Super Intelligence - Nick Bostrom
  • Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. - Ron Chernow
• Favorite Podcasts
  • Software Engineering Daily
  • Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History
  • James Altucher Show
  • This Week in Startups
  • ECON 102 with Noah Smith