About
People strategist and organizational builder with a decade of experience designing the programs, systems, and frameworks that help organizations and their people work better, currently leading change management on a statewide generative AI deployment, with an independent practice building and running AI infrastructure firsthand. Track record of building from scratch in under-resourced environments: a research-grounded change methodology, psychometrically structured diagnostic instruments, a complete performance management system, an operating model policy suite. Prosci-certified.
West Sacramento, CA · Open to Remote
Experience
- Lead the organizational change management workstream on a statewide generative AI procurement tool for the California Department of General Services, mandated under Executive Order N-30-25. Own process design, journey mapping, user acceptance testing design, adoption and training materials, accessibility compliance, and the behavioral components of AI governance strategy, supervising one analyst and coordinating across the client division, prime contractor leadership, and a separate build vendor.
- Ran a research program of six interviews and four validation walkthroughs across five procurement roles and two organizations in eight business days, producing four current state process captures, six future state journeys across three contractually fixed personas, and eight process diagrams each with an accessible written equivalent.
- Verified asserted tool behaviors directly against the application codebase rather than relying on vendor documentation. Designed a five-label build status convention that kept the process design intact while giving the client a gap register traced to their own requirements, converting a change management deliverable into an input to requirements traceability.
- Traced core product requirements against the contract build specification and the codebase, and routed open questions to the client as decisions with evidence attached rather than as change requests.
- Delivered a 39-page State deliverable built to ADA acceptance conditions from first draft, and triaged an 84-item open items register by severity and routing owner into a decision agenda for the contract administrator.
- Authored the firm's proprietary OCM Framework and its 41-page theoretical foundation, integrating organizational readiness theory, Normalization Process Theory, COM-B and the Behaviour Change Wheel, habit and automaticity research, implementation intentions, and psychological safety into a delivery-ready operating system for practitioners.
- Designed two proprietary diagnostic instruments, a 25-item Readiness-Resistance Assessment and a 17-item Habit Adoption Assessment, each measuring five dimensions with reverse-coded items and weighted composite indices, plus the four-tier taxonomy used to scope and price client engagements.
- Conducted a formal construct validity audit of both instruments, surfacing six findings including a deterministic dependency between the readiness and resistance indices and a level-of-analysis gap between individually-referenced items and organization-level reporting. Produced remediation roadmaps and escalated the findings carrying contractual acceptance risk.
- Conducted a scored operating model gap analysis across people, process, governance, tools, and accountability, then authored the firm's complete policy suite in response. Five of five policies approved and effective August 2026, including a six-stage Client Delivery Approach with quality gates, RACI, and 49 supporting templates; a Decision Rights and Escalation Framework; and a four-procedure Engagement Lifecycle.
- Designed and built the firm's Annual Performance Review system end to end across two performance cycles: rating framework, four-level evidence anchor matrix, calibration design, 9-block talent review, and an appeals process with defined filing and response windows. Prototyped in Excel when no performance platform existed, then migrated it into ADP Workforce Now.
- Own the APR rollout for a 12-person firm with no HR function underneath it: designed and facilitate a 75-minute manager and employee enablement program, built the supporting worksheets, rating practice scenarios, and a re-recordable walkthrough video pipeline, and authored the full change and communications plan spanning a 13-milestone timeline, 11 audience-tailored communications, and six reference documents.
- Served as lead consultant to ACCBE, California's only statewide association for county board trustees, facilitating a two-day Strategy Summit, Board of Directors sessions, quarterly gatherings, and legislative advocacy across 120+ trustee relationships representing 80% of students served by California county offices of education.
- Delivered strategic planning, organizational change, and AI adoption advisory to nonprofits and social entrepreneurs, developing proprietary transformation methodology and diagnostics used as the foundation for a subsequent product venture.
- Advised VP-level stakeholders at Gartner and Verizon on change strategy for high-visibility transformation initiatives, designing stakeholder engagement plans and communications frameworks for audiences of 800+.
- Led cross-functional leadership alignment on go-to-market strategy, communications architecture, and digital presence for a new Deloitte service offering and research institute, and supported buildout of an internal change management center of excellence.
- Led project teams across three internal engagements, a financial transformation initiative, a DEI practice launch, and a Salesforce CRM optimization, directing junior resources and presenting to executive stakeholders.
- Designed and executed engagement strategy for a 700+ person alumni network, combining qualitative research, Salesforce CRM segmentation, and multi-platform communications to rebuild program participation.
- Established an external partnership with a minority- and women-owned executive coaching firm; designed and delivered a pilot coaching program for 26 early- and mid-career professionals.
- Built a seven-module professional development curriculum for cohorts of 80–100 AmeriCorps members, designed from scratch with no existing model, covering adult learning theory, behavior change, and professional identity. Averaged 4.5 out of 5.0 satisfaction across facilitated sessions.
- Coached individuals and teams through performance challenges, identity barriers, and resistance to change. Facilitated a recurring DEI learning series for 50 members across a 10-month service commitment.
- Directly managed a team of AmeriCorps members and staff embedded at Andrew Jackson High School, overseeing daily operations, individual performance, and the school partnership relationship. Trained and coached the team in City Year's Whole School Whole Child model.
Independent AI Practice
- Built and operate a full personal AI stack on a Raspberry Pi 5: thirteen production services under systemd, local model inference via Ollama (Mistral, Qwen2.5-Coder), an encrypted data vault, and secure remote access over Tailscale. Nine applications written and deployed on top of it.
- Use Claude, Cowork, Claude Code, and OpenCode as daily working tools, including agentic coding sessions run against local models. Designed, built, and debugged two self-hosted websites in roughly 30 hours with no formal development background.
- Publish at sece.dev, documenting the build in terms a non-technical reader can follow, and at xophersean.com, a portfolio and essay site on change, technology, and adoption.
- Learned the adoption lesson firsthand: one application ran a crash loop for three months, attempting to restart more than 116,000 times, unnoticed because it was built but never wired into actual use. Capability is not adoption, and the distinction now anchors how I design enablement.
Skills & Tools
Organizational Development: organizational design, operating model gap analysis, policy architecture, performance management systems, job architecture, talent review and calibration, change readiness assessment, diagnostic instrument design, curriculum design, adult learning theory, facilitation
Change Management & Service Design: Prosci Certified Change Practitioner, behavioral change methodology development, current and future state process mapping, persona and journey design, user acceptance testing design, stakeholder research and evidence synthesis, requirements traceability, accessibility conformance (ADA, WCAG 2.1 AA)
Generative AI Delivery: AI governance and interpretation guidance, output provenance and verification design, human-in-the-loop decision boundaries, AI adoption for non-expert users, Claude, Cowork, Claude Code, Ollama and local LLM deployment, prompt engineering
Platforms: ADP Workforce Now, Microsoft 365 (SharePoint, Forms, Power Automate, Excel), Salesforce CRM, Monday.com Enterprise, React, Node.js, Python, systemd, Tailscale
Education & Affiliations
Bachelor of Science, Public Relations, Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU), December 2012
Teach For America Alumni (Charlotte 2013, Jacksonville 2018 Halverson Fellow) · Deloitte Consulting Alumni · City Year Inc. Alumni · AmeriCorps Alumni