Top 100 Biographies

Shikha Parakh, MPhys Sr. Strategy Execution Manager Office of DE&I Novant Health

Leaders describe Shikha as an entrepreneurial, human-centric, efficient, change leader who has the unique talent of taking abstract concepts and turning them into valuable deliverables all while influencing, motivating and bringing people together to encourage growth, innovation and resiliency.

She currently serves as Sr. Strategy Execution Manager for the office of Diversity, Inclusion and Equity (ODIE). In her current role, she is executing the strategies for a culture change as envisioned by C-suite. Her latest achievements include creating an enterprise wide eLearning workshop to develop the mindset needed for culture change. She further defined strategy for enterprise wide long-term goals through framework and processes to bring the organization’s diversity, inclusion and equity strategy to life. For mammography equity for all goal, she created the conceptual framework and then a tangible road-map detailing planning and design to launch to initial operations. She identified appropriate outcomes and led multidisciplinary teams through transformation. She is a trusted thought partner for her Chief diversity, inclusion and equity officer for all the board and leadership presentations.

Prior to joining ODIE, she successfully managed a multi-project portfolio of $44M that produced, supported, and monitored medications at all care points. She attained a contractual incentive of $7.8M by delivering the project ahead of schedule and with quality.

In 2010, She led one of the Cognizant’s large strategic financial services account’s Program Management Office and operations with a focus to run the entire account with high efficiency, growth and profitability. She managed the growth from $22M to $36M by establishing a PMO team owning operational processes and tools to track and improve the KPIs / SLAs under “Smart work” initiative. She oversaw a portfolio of a $5M and 30 FTE team delivering various IT projects across all lines of businesses. She directed and owned overall PMO functions spanning Resource Management, Portfolio Management, Change management, Account Operations and Audit Risk/Compliance.

As a Rating Leader at Progressive Insurance, she led transformation and delivery of multiple rate revision products and offerings ($112M policy services transformation program). She spearheaded development of underwriting models, credit scoring, rate revision offerings and rating rules engine yielding increased speed to market and penetration in preferred markets/consumer segments.

Shikha holds a master’s degree in Physics. She is a certified Project Management Professional, certified Scrum Master and certified diversity facilitator. She gives back to the community through her organization AWEBA (Asian Women Entrepreneurs and Business Alliance) by assisting Asian women in reaching their full potential. She is also proud recipient of 2018 and 2019 Jump Start Grant from city of Charlotte. She graduated as class 8 of Emerging Business Leaders program conducted by Charlotte regional business alliance. She had the privilege of working in the Healthcare, Financial Services, Insurance industry enjoys lending her experience and expertise to non-profit organizations board where she can make a difference. She is currently serving as Secretary to the US Pan Asian Chamber of Commerce Board – Southeast chapter.

As a lifelong learner, she spends most of her free time enhancing knowledge through edutainment. She is a proud mother of 2 amazing daughters and a fur baby.

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