The Technical Leadership Journey of Iyahannah Wheeler
Army Veteran · AI Builder · Enterprise Technology Leader
My career didn't start in a boardroom — it started in the motor pool. As a Staff Sergeant (SSG / E-6, NCO) in the U.S. Army, I learned that success isn't about titles. It's about making sure 300+ people have what they need, when they need it, with zero room for error.
I managed a $2B+ property book with 179-250 active line items using SAP GCSS-Army, maintaining 100% accountability across all federal inspections. As a direct people leader of teams of 7–10 soldiers, I'm accountable for performance management, training, mentoring, and readiness. Through Lean Six Sigma, I delivered $1.5M in cost savings — exceeding the original $1M target by 50%.
Transitioning from military to corporate wasn't just a career change — it was a translation exercise. I joined Merck & Co. as a Procurement Analyst, Business Systems & Process Improvement, serving as primary internal customer liaison for enterprise system deployments and business process transformation across global procurement.
I led SAP Ariba rollouts and Agile transformation initiatives as the primary implementation liaison, improving procurement cycle times by 20% and approval times by 25%. I partnered with engineering leads on Agile transformation — sprint planning, retrospectives, and ceremonies coaching. And I built Power BI dashboards that translated complex financial data into actionable insights, reducing project cost overruns by 10%.
At Broward County Government, I stepped into a role as Senior Purchasing Agent inside a nationally accredited centralized Purchasing Division (NIGP OA4, NPI AEP, FAPPO Award of Excellence) serving 60+ County agencies. This became a full-lifecycle SaaS implementation challenge — the kind that tests every skill from discovery to hypercare.
I led the end-to-end implementation of Bonfire B Pro across 20+ county departments: requirements gathering, configuration, UAT coordination, training program design, go-live, and post-launch support. The result? 30% improvement in operational efficiency. 100% user adoption within 3 months using structured onboarding playbooks, role-based workshops, and persona-specific user guides. And a 25% reduction in reporting errors.
This chapter brought two concurrent enterprise roles that showcased both sides of my expertise. At Akamai Technologies, I served as Technical Program Manager, InfoSec PMO (Contract) — the primary operational liaison across a 30–50+ stakeholder portfolio spanning Security Engineering, GRC, Compliance, Risk, and executive leadership. I managed four concurrent security programs, tracked 265 compliance control narratives (82% complete by Q3), designed dashboards reducing ad-hoc requests by ~40%, and built a centralized Action Item Tracker consolidating 100+ items per quarter.
At Oracle, I served as Technical Account Manager (Tier-1 Strategic Accounts) — owning end-to-end engagement for JPMorgan Chase, a Tier-1 Fortune 10 financial services account. I sustained 95%+ SLA on 130+ concurrent Service Requests across nine product areas through Redwood UI migration. I architected the Service Value Review governance cadence spanning 25+ stakeholders from frontline to C-suite, led recurring EBRs and steering reviews, resolved multi-month Sev-2 escalations, and owned 508/ADA/WCAG accessibility compliance.
I'm seeking my next enterprise leadership role — where I can combine implementation management, customer program governance, CS operations design, and AI-powered automation to drive measurable business outcomes. This portfolio? Built entirely with AI. The auto-updating job tracker? AI-synced with Gmail. If you need a technology leader who builds, not just manages — let's talk.