RyanEndres.com
Operations manager with a results-driven passion for process improvement
Biography
A Madison Wisconsin native, Ryan received his bachelor of science at The University of Wisconsin La Crosse. After receiving his bachelor's degree in 1998 he spent six years working in the biotechnology field managing projects at a small biotech start-up company PowderJect Vaccines which had less then 75 worldwide employees in 1998.
PowderJect was a rapidly growing pharmaceutical company headquartered in Oxford, UK, with facilities located in Europe and the US. The Madison facility was focused on needle-free delivery of vaccines. It was one of the world's largest vaccines companies with over 1000 employees in 2003.
During his first few years at PowderJect as a Project Coordinator he managed research projects and authored/co-authored several publications and abstracts (publication list). As a Project Manager he managed projects with USAMRIID, Sanofi Pasteur, the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research along with leading the development of PowderJect needle free delivery device.
In 2003 PowderJect was purchased by Chiron and in 2004 Chiron sold the Madison PowderJect facility to PowderMed, a UK based company. After the sale and closure of the Madison branch Ryan teamed up with Dr. Daniel McLain (former VP of Toxicology at PowderJect) to revamp his consulting company Walker Downey & Associates. Walker Downey is an evidence-based product safety and development consulting company providing strategic solutions for clients in the healthcare industries. In 2007 PowderMed was purchased by Pfizer.
He then moved onto a challenging position with the University of Wisconsin Madison at the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at the Fundus Photograph Reading Center (FPRC) where he headed up their Project Management Office (PMO) which is made up of 10 Project Managers and 10 additional support staff, who are managing over 35 worldwide clinical trials and other various Information Systems projects. He was brought into this position to create a PMO and tools to manage their large portfolio of projects, and he lead a mission critical project for the tracking of samples throughout the organizations using bar codes.
He then moved on to work for Hewlett Packard (HP) as their Implementation Manager in their Enterprise Services group. In this position he managed several hospital infomatic projects and oversaw a portfolio of over 35 projects.
Today he is the Director of Project Management at Healthgrades where he oversees a staff of 9 Project/Product managers. He was brought into this position to lead an initiative in reducing our project backlog by 75% and reducing project durations by more than 50% through the implementation of Agile methodologies, team cross-training, improved client-facing processes, automated testing and a positive team environment.
In an effort to develop his project management skills he has received Project Management Professional (PMP) status from the Project Management Institute (PMI), he is a Certified Scrum Master (CSM) and he has completed the masters certificate in Project Management and has received his Six Sigma Yellow Belt at the University of Wisconsin Madison.