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Clarissa Mendez

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Get to Know Me!

Howdy, I’m Clarissa Mendez! I am passionate about coaching and mentoring others, and take pride in guiding others to achieve their goals and achieve success. I enjoy diving into complex issues and generating creative solutions. My expertise lies in fostering a collaborative workplace culture, where teamwork and mutual support thrive.

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Experience

I have close to eight years experience as a System Engineer in the Defense and Space Industry. I have a received multiple awards for my demonstrated abilities related to planning, testing, and executing events. I lead teams of engineers with optimism and positivity, while also relying on my communication skills to convey customer requirements and feature requests.

“Optimism with some experience behind it is much more energizing than plain old experience with a certain degree of cynicism” -Twyla Tharp
Northrop Grumman: May 2022 - Current

Product Owner

Currently, I lead a team of engineers responsible for deploying system updates to five globally distributed sites. Working closely with our government customer and NG leadership, I gather functional requirements to ensure the engineering team understood product expectations. Utilizing Jira and Confluence, I capture and facilitate customer requirements to help keep a closed feedback look with all stakeholders. I developed a dynamic Jira Dashboard allowing stakeholders to easily access a visual view of team progress with respect to the current sprint and program increment helping identify any potential setbacks or opportunities.

Product Owner and Functional Manager

As the leader of a team of six engineers, I successfully oversaw the implementation of six CI/CD pipelines within both classified and unclassified environments, resulting in significant improvements to our organization's DevOps. By creating a clear vision for the DevOps team, I fostered a shared sense of purpose and enthusiasm, which increased motivation and engagement across the team.

Aerodyne/KBRWyle CAS: May 2015 - May 2022

In my role as a Lead Mission/Systems Engineer, I successfully led multiple computer-assisted, simulated events with varying levels of complexity. These events helped prepare stakeholders for various real-world scenarios, and by utilizing my technical knowledge to design scalable solutions, I ensured that each event met our customers' needs.

What it's like working with me! 

referenceImg-Meg
Clarissa is a naturally positive person. Her resilient, upbeat, and confident demeanor sets an excellent example for her team. She works with her team to instill a positive attitude and creating a collaborative and supportive environment. Her interactions with other teams while coordinating support is well received and provides her team a solid development foundation. She understands our business goals and leads a productive team.
-Megan Stuit
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As a new leader, Clarissa is a shining example of true servant leadership. Her commitment to both the mission and her team is unquestioned. Clarissa humbly and readily seeks feedback and mentorship in an effort to become a better and more effective leader. Her character and attitude ensures that she is on the path to continued and greater success.
-Francesca Poggio
Tiffani+Uresti
Clarissa is a strong leader who has contributed to her team's success.  She is able to evaluate her team's skillset, and find ways to best utilize their talent. Despite Clarissa being brought on during a time of significant programmatic change and turnover, she managed to gain the trust and confidence of her team by providing direction and goals.
-Tiffani Uresti
brenda+aleman
Clarissa takes ownership of her team and assigned tasks. Her knowledge on DevOps and SW development was limited when she was first hired on, but took immediate action to increase her technical understanding. In the short time she has been in this position, her level of knowledge has increased by ten-fold. Clarissa is able to tie her increased understanding of DevOps and our business goals together to ensure she is developing products aligned with our org.
-Brenda Aleman
matt+keil
As a functional manager, Clarissa has been a great advocate for the junior team members, helping them navigate the complex onboarding process and mentoring in terms of career advancement. Her team has a high-level of respect and trust  for her, allowing them to raise any issues they may need assistance with. She is calm, level-headed, and patient, which are essential when dealing with strong personalities.
-Matt Keil
dylan+nau
Clarissa is the unmistakable product owner for the DevOps team. She is passionate and forceful in developing solutions, even with little direction or feedback. As the product owner, Clarissa owns the team decisions and schedules, and though not needed, has no issues taking accountability in the event of a team failure. She is proactive and drives outcomes by ensuring all dependencies are identified and acknowledged by all stakeholders. Clarissa does an excellent job keeping the team focused on delivering high quality results.
-Dylan Nau
cute+dog+wig
Clarissa is very professional and gives me lots of T-BONES. She was very patient and gave me extra T-BONES when she was teaching me to shake, go-under, back it up, and put my head in the hole
-Elsie

Education

M.S. Information Technology Management

Western Governors University

Courses:

Financial MGMT for IT Professionals;

Project MGMT;

IT MGMT;

Technical Communication;

Technological Globalization;

Managing Tech Operations and Innovation;

IT Sourcing and Development in a Global Economy;

Current and Emerging Technologies;

Power, Influence, and Leadership

B.S. Computer Information Systems

Colorado State of University- Pueblo

Courses:

Introduction To Access DBMS;

Introduction To Computer Information Systems;

Introduction To Java Programming;

Introduction To Cyber Security;

Systems Analysis & Design;

Introduction To Business Analytics;

Advanced Program Design with Java;

Network Concepts;

Introduction To Web Development;

Linux Fundamentals;

Database Management

A.S. Biology

Alamo Colleges – Palo Alto College:

Courses:

Gen Ed,

Bio I & II,

OCHEM I & II,

Physics I & II

Skills

Technical:

Product Requirement Documents, MBSE, DoD Architecture Framework, Atlassian Suite, Jira, Confluence, MS Office Suite, DevOps concepts, CI/CD concepts, MS Visio, Webflow

Soft:

Cross-functional collaboration, adaptability, mentoring, emotional intelligence, optimistic, excellent written and verbal communication skills, time management, customer service, self-motivated, making decisions, developing clear visions

Certifications