Kara Henry

Project Manager, Award Program Cycles (alongside the roles below)

2024 – 2026

• Ran every award program cycle from 2024 through 2026 as project manager, owning the timeline and coordinating the work across departments from kickoff to published results.
• Handled the hands-on production too: running the numbers on scores, updating logos, keeping Engineering on track to display results, and managing the outside vendor for award merchandise.

Product Owner, Awards

Mar 2026 – Sep 2026

• Owned product strategy and roadmap for the company's awards portfolio, setting direction across brand, business model, platform, data, and launch, and driving a net-new platform for award recipients from concept to engineering readiness with a deadline-driven, working-backwards plan.
• Established the Care Experience Council as a unified recognition brand, consolidating three award programs inherited through acquisitions into one structure with shared naming, award levels, and winner benefits. Case study →
• Redesigned one program from pay-to-participate to free, automatic qualification, shifting revenue to optional winner-display benefits and sanctioned merchandise. Participation had fallen from 67% to 20% of winners in one year under the paywall; free qualification is expected to bring it to full participation.
• Directed requirements for the net-new recognition platform, connecting existing application data to an authenticated recipient portal, media-kit experience, and public directory of past award recipients. The platform is designed to replace a six-step manual process for 8,000+ award-winning care providers (home care agencies, skilled nursing, and independent living) that pulled a five-person team off their regular duties for roughly two weeks every year (about 400 staff hours). Case study →
• Used the decision-governance system I built as Program Manager to close 95 of 110 open awards decisions (86%) in under six months, then partnered with Engineering to turn the approved requirements into initial development tickets.
• Began moving into the Product Owner role for the established Retain and Recruit products, learning Engineering's ticket process with the VP of Engineering and defining about 20 tickets together, including a fix for a survey employees kept searching for and a setting to turn peer-to-peer recognition on or off. The toggle shipped, giving customers a way to reward survey participation privately without running a separate recognition program. Case study →
• Expanded the Retain knowledge base from 67 to 180 resources so documentation kept pace with the product instead of trailing behind it.
• Documented the full awards data pipeline from source system through data warehouse to web display, clarifying calculation, synchronization, and verification logic for technical and nontechnical teams.
• Defined scoring, eligibility, and methodology ownership and resolved authoritative data-source decisions across three platforms, then scoped the September 2026 launch with exemptions, appeals handling, pre-launch QA, and a parallel run of legacy and new programs through the transition.

Program Manager, Awards

Oct 2025 – Mar 2026

• Standardized five award programs inherited through multiple acquisitions on one nine-phase operating structure with consistent tasks, ownership, terminology, and controls. Backed it with nine reusable SOP and decision-log templates (plus AI prompts for generating new ones), growing the internal documentation for running the programs to 213 pages. Past cycles ran two to three days behind while people relearned once-a-year tasks; the first cycle on the new structure hit every deadline with no one-on-one training needed.
• Built and maintained seven Python automation scripts for ClickUp decision-log operations and cross-program task alignment, plus HelpScout tooling, saving an estimated 1 to 2 hours of admin a week and adding testing and safety controls to bulk updates.
• Designed the awards decision-governance system: nine work categories, seven-approver sign-off, and ClickUp as the single source of truth. Every decision carried a record of who approved it and why, so settled questions stayed settled, and the ownership documentation I wrote set which source wins when information conflicts.
• Ran weekly meetings with department leadership to track progress on company OKRs.

Digital Engagement Specialist → Customer Operations Manager

Jan 2023 – Oct 2025

• Developed scalable self-guided software training that reduced individual customer trainings by 20% within eight months, freeing about one in five live training sessions per Customer Success Manager for other customer work. Case study →
• Standardized support documentation and workflows following the merger of three companies, creating consistent processes across previously separate teams.
• Designed customer journeys for three products, helping teams close experience gaps, improve handoffs, and align on the full customer lifecycle. Case study →
• Unified knowledge bases for eight products into one consistent format, updating screenshots, merging duplicates, tagging topics, and standardizing titles and tone.
• Grew the combined library from about 525 to 650 articles, splitting long articles into focused ones and filling content gaps.
• Turned recurring support patterns into opportunities for Product, Engineering, and Operations.

Customer Success Manager

Aug 2019 – Jan 2023

• Improved support resources and closed gaps in the customer experience as part of a team effort that cut churn from unmet needs from 9% to 3.4% in 12 months. Case study →
• Selected and implemented a customer-facing knowledge-base platform, developed its content, and grew customer utilization from 9% to 30% in one year, so more customers found answers on their own instead of waiting on a Customer Success Manager.
• Led monthly training for Marketing, Support, and Sales for two years, and partnered with Product and Engineering to improve UX/UI for new features.

Web Designer & Project Manager

• Managed as many as 40 concurrent website builds, coordinating customer requirements, technical constraints, creative production, revisions, and launches.
• Reduced average project time from start to launch by 20% over three years through workflow and process improvements.
• Resolved escalated customer issues, contributing to a reduction in churn from 12% to 8% over five years.
• Facilitated cross-department collaboration to standardize policies and workflows, shortening problem-resolution time.