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Program delivery · Digital transformation · Vendor management

Programs.People.Delivery.

Senior Program Manager, Digital Delivery at Northbridge Mutual Financial

I've spent 12 years turning plans into working systems for a telecoms company, a bank and two insurers, first in Lagos and now in Toronto. Today I run a $15M+ annual portfolio of digital and core-systems projects at Northbridge Mutual. I'm good at the unglamorous parts: honest status reports, clear decisions and releases that land on the date we promised.

Career timeline Personal projects

Toronto · Open to Director of Delivery, Head of PMO and Senior Program Manager roles

Illustrated portrait · demo
Career boarding passTA · 2013 → 2019
LOSLagos
YYZToronto
Departed2013 · Project Analyst
Landed2019 · Project Manager
12+
Years delivering
$15M+
Annual portfolio owned
38
Projects delivered
45
People across six teams
Portfolio managementProgram governanceVendor negotiationAgile deliveryRisk managementExecutive reportingBudget controlRelease planningStakeholder alignmentBenefits tracking

Profile

Where the business case meets the release date

I started as a project analyst at a Lagos telecoms company in 2013 and was promoted to project manager two years later. Since then I've led delivery in banking and insurance in Lagos and Toronto, and in 2023 Northbridge Mutual promoted me from Program Manager to Senior Program Manager.

Today I own a $15M+ annual portfolio of 11 projects across policy administration, claims and customer self-service, delivered by six teams and two vendor partners.

Leadership relies on me for a straight answer on where things stand. I report portfolio health to the executive steering committee every month, raise risks while there is still time to act on them, and track whether each project returns the benefit its business case promised.

I hold PMP, PRINCE2 Practitioner, Certified ScrumMaster and SAFe Agilist certifications, and I'm working toward PMI-ACP. I live in Toronto with my family.

Core competencies

  • Portfolio governance
  • Program planning
  • Stage-gate reviews
  • Budget and forecasting
  • Vendor management
  • Contract change control
  • RAID management
  • Dependency mapping
  • Release management
  • Scrum and SAFe
  • Steering committee reporting
  • Benefits realisation
  • Data migration
  • Regulatory sign-off
  • Team leadership
  • Remote and offshore delivery

Career timeline

Professional experience

Four organisations, two countries, and a steady move from tracking projects to owning the portfolio.

Northbridge Mutual Financial
2021 – Present
Toronto, Ontario
Senior Program Manager, Digital Delivery
2023 – Present
  • Own a $15M+ annual portfolio of 11 digital and core-systems projects across policy administration, claims and customer self-service.
  • Lead six delivery teams (45 people), including two vendor partners, through quarterly planning and one shared release calendar.
  • Introduced a stage-gate review that cut late-stage scope changes by 35% in its first year.
  • Report portfolio health monthly to the executive steering committee: budget, risk, and benefits realised against each business case.
  • Delivered the customer portal relaunch on time for 240,000 policyholders, raising digital self-service from 22% to 41%.
Program Manager
2021 – 2023
  • Ran the $4.2M group benefits platform migration, moving 1,300 employer clients off a legacy system with no unplanned downtime.
  • Built the program's RAID log and dependency map, which the PMO later adopted as its standard template.
  • Coordinated sign-off from finance, compliance, IT security and operations across nine releases.
  • Negotiated a vendor change order that recovered $380K of contingency.
Lakeshore Insurance Company
2019 – 2021
Toronto, Ontario
Project Manager, Claims Modernization
2019 – 2021
  • My first Canadian role, which I started six weeks after landing in Toronto.
  • Delivered the $1.8M claims intake digitisation project, cutting first-notice-of-loss handling from 3 days to 6 hours.
  • Managed a team of 14 split between Toronto and an offshore testing partner.
  • Moved the project to two-week sprints mid-delivery, recovering a 10-week slip so it finished only 2 weeks late.
  • Moved 320 claims staff to remote working in three weeks during the 2020 shift to working from home.
Crestview Bank Plc
2017 – 2019
Lagos, Nigeria
Senior Project Manager, Digital Channels
2017 – 2019
  • Led the mobile banking app rebuild, growing active users from 180,000 to 610,000 in 18 months.
  • Managed a ₦1.4B budget (about US$3.9M at the time) across three vendors.
  • Delivered USSD banking for customers without smartphones in seven months.
  • Chaired the weekly change advisory board for all digital channels.
Meridian Telecoms Ltd
2013 – 2017
Lagos, Nigeria
Project Manager
2015 – 2017
  • Delivered 14 network rollout and billing projects across Lagos, Ogun and Oyo states.
  • Led the prepaid billing upgrade for 2.3 million subscribers, with the cutover completed over a single weekend.
  • Earned my PMP in 2016 while running the billing program.
Project Analyst
2013 – 2015
  • Built weekly status reporting for 20+ field projects, later adopted by the regional PMO.
  • Tracked site acquisition and tower build schedules for 120 sites.
  • Earned PRINCE2 Practitioner in 2014.

Signature engagements

Four programs that shaped how I work

Customer experience

Customer portal relaunch

Northbridge Mutual · 2023 – 2024 · 240,000 policyholders

Rebuilt the policyholder portal so customers could change coverage, file claims and download documents without calling us. The board had been told a date, so I planned backwards from it.

Outcomes

  • Digital self-service rose from 22% to 41%
  • Launched on the date committed to the board
  • One release calendar shared by four teams
Platform migration

Group benefits migration

Northbridge Mutual · 2021 – 2023 · $4.2M · 1,300 employer clients

Moved every group benefits client off a 20-year-old administration system in waves, with finance, compliance and security signing off each one.

Outcomes

  • No unplanned downtime across nine releases
  • $380K of contingency recovered
  • RAID template adopted by the PMO
Process digitisation

Claims intake digitisation

Lakeshore Insurance · 2019 – 2021 · $1.8M · 14-person team

Replaced paper and email claim intake with a single digital form and triage queue. Partway through, the project was ten weeks behind and I had to reset how we worked.

Outcomes

  • Handling time cut from 3 days to 6 hours
  • 10-week slip recovered to 2 weeks
  • 320 staff working remotely within three weeks
Digital banking

Mobile banking rebuild

Crestview Bank · 2017 – 2019 · ₦1.4B · 3 vendors

Rebuilt the bank's mobile app and added USSD banking so customers on basic phones could check balances and send transfers.

Outcomes

  • Active users grew from 180,000 to 610,000
  • USSD banking live in seven months
  • Three vendors managed to one plan

Personal projects

Work I do outside the day job

These are independent projects, mostly unpaid. I run them the same way I run work programs: a plan, a budget where there is one, and a short list of outcomes I can check.

Mentoring

Newcomer PM circle

Toronto · 2021 – Present · Volunteer

A monthly session for internationally trained project managers looking for their first Canadian role. We cover resumes, interviews and how Canadian PMOs tend to work.

Outcomes

  • 60+ members since 2021
  • 23 members hired into PM roles
  • Monthly sessions with no missed months
Education

Ikorodu school computer lab

Lagos (remote) · 2022 · Fundraising and delivery

Raised money from friends in the diaspora and managed suppliers in Lagos to equip the secondary school I attended with a working computer lab.

Outcomes

  • CA$11,000 raised from 74 donors
  • 30 laptops with solar backup power
  • Every receipt published to donors
Professional community

PMI chapter program committee

Toronto · 2022 – 2024 · Volunteer

Planned evening events for the local project management chapter, from finding speakers to booking rooms and running the night.

Outcomes

  • 8 events planned and run
  • Average attendance of 90
  • First chapter panel on newcomer careers
Open resource

Nonprofit delivery kit

Toronto · 2024 · Free template

A plain spreadsheet-and-document kit for small charities running their first grant-funded project: a plan, a risk log and a one-page monthly report.

Outcomes

  • Used by 9 nonprofits
  • Monthly reports cut to one page
  • Free to copy, no sign-up

Off the clock

Two cities, one home

LAGOS · LOS TORONTO · YYZ

Weekends belong to my wife Funmi and our two kids, usually somewhere along the Toronto waterfront or on a trail in the Rouge Valley.

We go back to Lagos every other December, and the kids now argue about whose jollof is better: their grandmother's or mine.

  • Family
  • Outdoors
  • Travel

How I work

Six habits I bring to every program

01

Bad news travels first

When the claims project slipped ten weeks, I told the sponsor the same day with a recovery plan attached. We finished two weeks late instead of ten.

02

Gate the scope, not the people

The stage-gate review I set up at Northbridge asks one question at each gate: is this still the thing we agreed to build? Late scope changes fell 35% in a year.

03

One calendar, one truth

Six teams and two vendors work from a single release calendar. If a date isn't on it, it isn't a commitment.

04

Name who decides

On the benefits migration, every release needed four sign-offs. I wrote down who owned each decision before the first wave, so no release waited on a meeting.

05

Measure the result

I report the benefit each project promised, not just whether it shipped. The portal counts because self-service went from 22% to 41%.

06

Leave a template behind

My status report in Lagos and my RAID log in Toronto both became PMO standards. I build tools that the next project manager can pick up and use.

Credentials

Certifications, education and tools

Certifications

  • Project Management Professional (PMP)PMI · 2016
  • PRINCE2 Practitioner2014
  • Certified ScrumMaster (CSM)Scrum Alliance · 2020
  • SAFe 6 Agilist2023

In progress

  • PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP)In progress · expected 2027

Education

  • MBA (part-time)Lakeview School of Business, Toronto · 2023
  • BSc, Information SystemsLagoon City University, Lagos · 2012

Tools

Planning and delivery

  • Jira
  • Azure DevOps
  • MS Project
  • Smartsheet

Reporting and finance

  • Power BI
  • Excel (advanced)
  • SAP PPM

Collaboration

  • Confluence
  • Miro
  • Microsoft Teams
  • SharePoint

Methods

  • PRINCE2
  • Scrum
  • SAFe
  • Kanban

AI enablement

Using AI with judgement

I use AI tools to save time on the writing and sorting that surrounds delivery. Decisions, numbers and anything sent to executives still go through me.

First drafts, not final words

I draft monthly status summaries from team updates with Northbridge's approved assistant, then check every figure against the source before it reaches the steering committee.

Finding patterns in risk logs

I ask it to group open RAID items by theme across 11 projects. It surfaces repeats I might miss; I decide which ones matter.

Meetings into actions

Transcripts become a list of actions with owners and dates, which the meeting chair confirms before anything is sent out.

Clear guardrails

No customer data or confidential material goes into public tools. I helped write my team's one-page guide on what can and can't be shared.

Contact

Let's talk delivery

I'm open to Director of Delivery, Head of PMO and Senior Program Manager roles in Toronto or remote within Canada, especially in financial services or insurance. If you're hiring for one, or want to compare notes on running a portfolio, I'd like to hear from you.

Start a conversation Connect on LinkedIn