Sarah Oconnor

Background

About Sarah Oconnor

I am a Registered Nurse, MBA candidate, and a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt with a passion for continuous improvement and people development through the application of effective leadership and appropriate technical tools. I have more than 20 years of experience in the public and private health sector, encompassing clinical roles as a Registered Nurse and operational team leader before transitioning my career over 10 years ago to focus on the design and improvement of processes.Between 2012-2020, I was in the amazing business of Blood with the Australian Red Cross Lifeblood, gaining broad operational and strategic experience across the organisation. I commenced my journey within collection services before taking on the opportunity to co-design and deliver a program to deploy Lean within our region. In 2016, I was selected for an inter-company secondment to Toyota Motor Corporation where I worked as a Supplier Development Specialist, completed training in the Toyota Production System, coordinating and facilitating improvement events and employee development activities. Between 2017-2020, I worked in a National function where I co-developed and implemented continuous improvement and quality training programs, led a team a regional continuous improvement professionals, and supported process reviews focused on lead-time reduction and quality improvements. From 2021, I have been working in a global role for Cigna's International Markets, Global Health and Benefits Team. In this diverse role, I am tasked with designing and implementing global improvement projects in an effort to better serve our members through early intervention and cost containment efforts. Working in an Agile environment I am accountable for the business activity of system improvement from ideation, story development, business readiness and deployment. I am accustomed to working in a highly regulated, fast paced, quality centrist environment.My experience is underpinned by tertiary qualifications in Psychology and Nursing and professional certificates in Agile Project Management, Change Management and Lean Six Sigma. I am proficient in MS Office, ADO, Salesforce Product and with a foundational understanding of Mini-Tab.