FVP, Head of Digital Banking
August 2020 - January 2025

For five years, Sam led the digital banking strategy and experience delivery for two digital banking brands, Monifi and Vio Bank, as well as the responsibility for delivery of web and mobile banking experiences in support of our brick and mortar banks throughout Oklahoma, Arizona, Colorado and California.

Leading a digital team of 55, which consisted of Product Owners, Product Designers, Financial Analysts, QA Engineers, DB Engineers, Front-End Developers, Back-End Developers, AWS Architects, and Program Management — in a hybrid remote work environment. The digital team implemented a design led product delivery strategy with teammates allocated to agile product teams (called PODs), to support our digital banking strategy.

Over the span of five years, the Digital Banking team delivered 5 banking experiences (web & mobile apps), internal customer support tools, a AI/ML enahnced fraud mitigation tool, Data Enrichment via Amazon Lambda Machine Learning, Natural Langage Processing/Search, Save & Spend Trends, and Gamified Saving's experience.

Chairman, Government Technology Applications Review Board (GTARB)
May 2019 - October 2021

Sam continued his service to the State of Oklahoma as Governor Stitt's appointee to the Government Technology Applications Review Board (GTARB) in which Sam was the Board appointed Chairman through October of 2021. GTARB's legislated authority includes the review and approval of the Office of Management and Enterprise Services (OMES) rates, as well as the review and approval of e-commerce portal fees and licensing rates by each of the 217 State Agencies, seeking to offer online licensing to the Citizens of Oklahoma.

Director of Statewide Customer Experience
February 2020 - July 2020

In this role, Sam served as a consultant focused on elevating the voice of the customer on strategic projects throughout the State -- ensuring the physical and digital systems are built with citizen experience in mind.

Update on SB 1422, Central Purchasing Reform: On May 20, 2020, the Governor of Oklahoma signed into law Senate Bill 1422. This bill included reform of the Central Purchasing Act, which hadn't been comprehensively reviewed since 1998. The new legislation will help to empower agencies to purchase with less bureaucracy, while also increasing the audit and training arm of Central Purchasing. A big thanks to Senator Thompson and Representative Wallace for carrying the legislation through the State Legislature, and to Governor Stitt who asked us to bring bold ideas into the agencies we were leading.

With Governor Stitt's leadership and State COO, John Budd's backing, Sam was given the responsibility to lead Central Purchasing through a number of organizational changes, as well as the opportunity to draft this comprehensive reform with the talented legal and compliance team leads. The work allowed Central Purchasing the ability to provide unparalleled support during the Statewide response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Watch Governor Stitt sign SB 1422

State Purchasing Director
August 2019 - February 2020

Sam led the state of Oklahoma's Central Purchasing Department, as the State Purchasing Director working to fulfill Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt's promise of continued focus on Digital Transformation and enhancing the citizen's experience with the state of Oklahoma.

Central Purchasing manages $416M in Statewide contract spend, and centralized procurement practices saved the State over $105M in 2019. Sam was asked to modernize procurement and pivot Central Purchasing from a regulatory agency to a customer service oriented team. To achieve these goals, Sam focused on these three initiatives:

People: New training program centered around knowing oneself, so they can better relate and serve purchasing partners throughout the State.

Policy: Modernization of the Central Purchasing Act, the first true reformatting and modernization of the act since 1998. SB 1422 has been passed out of committee and is working its way through the legislative process.

Platform: Negotiated $1.7M in new funding for Central Purchasing to invest in a new e-procurement system for the State of Oklahoma, including a $4M integration to our existing ERP system.

Press:
January, 29, 2019 - Senate Appropriations Chair Roger Thompson files bill to modernize state agency spending
March 3, 2020 - Full Senate approves bill to modernize state agency spending

Digital Transformation
March 2019 - August 2019

First brought into Government work by the COO of the State of Oklahoma (former CSO of Sonic Drive-In) to consult on a digital transformation strategy for the State of Oklahoma’s new Administration under Governor Kevin Stitt.

Sam spent 6 months focused on:

• Project Prioritization — Audited 600 projects currently prioritized at Office of Management and Enterprise Services (OMES), to understand current processes for project initiation and resource management. Results of the audit included the identification of resource bottlenecks and produced a optimized project brief process.


• Citizen Facing Experience — Delivered a plan for digital transformation of the citizen facing experience, worked with legislature and Governor’s office to pass a $15M Digital Transformation Fund, a portion of which is to be used for transforming the citizen facing experience.