Modern Werk Studio

Carmen Gulliksen · Richmond, Virginia

Working with clients in the US, UK, Germany, Austria and Switzerland

Work·About

EN|DE

Most people who sell you a website come from design. I came from the systems underneath.

For twenty-five years I built enterprise data architecture — warehouses, integrations, master data, and the decision dashboards executives use to run a company. Financial services, regulated healthcare, insurance, logistics.

I am not only the technical half of that. My MBA is in finance and organizational behavior, which means I understand both what a change costs and the part most projects get wrong: what motivates the people who have to work differently on Monday, and why a correct system nobody adopts is a failed system.

Which is why the work here is rarely just a website.

Carmen Gulliksen
Carmen Gulliksen
25+
Years designing data systems and the interfaces on top of them
5–25
Size of the delivery teams I led through cutover
MS + MBA
Information systems in business process re-engineering, and an MBA in finance and organizational behavior — the IT side and the business side
2
Languages projects run in, end to end

What the job actually was

01

An organization had grown. Its processes had grown around it by accident. Nobody could get a straight answer out of its own data.

My work was to find out what the business was really doing, redesign the process, and build the system that carried it — then put reporting on top so the people running it could see what was happening.

Why that matters at your scale

02

A small business has the same problem as a large one, minus the budget and the IT department. The website is dated, bookings arrive by email, registrations get retyped into a spreadsheet, and somebody's memory holds the rest together.

An agency redesigns the surface. I look at the flow first — what your customer is trying to do, what your staff then have to do about it, and where the retyping happens — and rebuild the experience around that.

How I work now

03

Fixed scope, fixed price and a delivery date, all agreed before anything starts. A refresh can be days; a site with a working system behind it takes longer. What I won’t do is quote you six months for either.

I will tell you plainly what I would and wouldn't spend your money on. If a rebuild isn't the right call, you'll hear that on the first call.

A prettier page that still hands you a form to retype has not solved anything.

Selected roles

IT Lead Engineer, Enterprise Data SolutionsMaximus
Architect, Data & AnalyticsMaximus
Enterprise Data Modeling & Governance LeadFederal Reserve Bank of Richmond
Senior Data Architect & Enterprise Systems LeaderUnited Network for Organ Sharing
Business Intelligence & Process Re-Engineering LeaderPatient Services Inc.
Senior ETL Developer, Testing LeadEstes Express Lines
Senior Data ArchitectHealth Management Corporation
Consultant, Information Systems Research InstituteVirginia Commonwealth University

Education

MS Information SystemsBusiness process re-engineering · Virginia Commonwealth University
MBAFinance & organizational behavior · Virginia Commonwealth University
BS Business AdministrationVirginia Commonwealth University
PG Diploma, Research in Health PracticeDoctoral pathway · University of Bath, United Kingdom

Transformation & enterprise expertise

Business transformation & process

Business Process Re-Engineering (BPR)Business Process Analysis & OptimizationCurrent-State / Future-State Process DesignProcess Mapping & DocumentationGap AnalysisOperating Model DesignOrganizational TransformationChange ManagementStakeholder Discovery & Requirements AnalysisWorkflow Design & AutomationProcess Governance & StandardizationStrategic RoadmappingContinuous Process Improvement

Enterprise strategy & information

Enterprise Data StrategyData GovernanceData ArchitectureMaster Data ManagementBusiness & Data RequirementsData Quality & ControlsKPI & Decision DashboardsBusiness Intelligence & AnalyticsSystems Integration Strategy

Delivery & transformation leadership

Cross-Functional TransformationExecutive Stakeholder ManagementProgram & Initiative LeadershipAgile TransformationSAFe® / Scrum / KanbanUAT & Production ReadinessVendor & Consulting Partner ManagementKnowledge Transfer & Process Adoption

Technical foundation

Data WarehousingDimensional ModelingETL & Data IntegrationSQL / Relational DatabasesAWSSnowflakeOracleTeradataSQL ServerSSRS / SSAS

Native German and English. Born and raised in Germany, based in the United States since arriving as a collegiate athlete. Projects run end to end in either language.

Tell me about your project.

Fifteen minutes. Tell me what your business runs on now and what isn't working. I'll tell you what I'd do about it, how long it takes, and what it costs — on the call, not three weeks later.

Book a 15-minute call

Based in Richmond, Virginia. Working remotely with English- and German-speaking businesses worldwide.