Alfonso Herrada
Operations leader who builds the operation that serves the customer and the capacity model underneath it. At Figo Pet Insurance, joined the CX team as its eighth member and grew the support organization past thirty through a $250M acquisition; outside reviewers rated the service best-in-category three straight years. At Chicago Public Schools, specified the coverage platform for a 500+ school district, directed the vendor build, then extended the system in-house; inquiries fell 30% and placements ran 40% faster. Builds with AI daily and decides where it enters an operation and where it stays out.
The record, by engagement.
| Engagement | Role | Outcome | Years |
|---|---|---|---|
| Analytic Gator Strategy and operations consulting | Founder & Principal | Runs day-to-day operations on Claude-native systems built and operated solo. Rainmaker, a human-in-the-loop outreach agent, took 1st place of roughly 350 DataExpert.io capstones. A paid 10-week engagement bringing AI into a client's back-office operations is in delivery. | 2022–present |
| Chicago Public Schools Department of Principal Quality · 500+ schools | Business Operations Program Manager | Specified the coverage system, directed the 5-to-7-person vendor build, then extended it in-house. Inquiries fell 30%. School-leader placement ran 40% faster on request-to-fill dates. 88% on an externally administered stakeholder survey against a 69% district average. | 2024–2026 |
| Figo Pet Insurance Insurtech · $250M acquisition | Customer Experience Operations Manager · Interim Director of Customer Experience | Joined the CX team as its 8th member and built the support organization past 30 through the acquisition, at 10,000+ monthly contacts. Outside reviewers rated the service best-in-category three straight years. Escalations cut 30% in six weeks. New-hire ramp cut from 9 weeks to 6. | 2018–2021 |
| JPMorgan Chase Second-largest branch in the country | Business Banking Operations · Branch Manager on Duty | Grew branch revenue 15% and NPS 10% over five years. A qualification framework cut low-fit pursuit time across the 16-person business banking team and lifted conversion 30% in 12 months. | 2011–2016 |
| AT&T Consumer and business retail | Sales Operations Manager | Coached the 10-person team from #25 of all Illinois AT&T stores to the top 5 within 12 months. Annual revenue up 15% on structured weekly coaching. | 2009–2011 |
| Meso America Technical Services Telecom EF&I for carrier central offices | Business Operations Manager & Project Manager | Led 20-40 people across warehouse, installer crews, and supervisors. ISO 9001 certification across 4 departments cut non-conformance 40%. Demand forecasting and bulk purchasing cut procurement costs roughly 10%. | 2001–2009 |
How the work gets done.
Where AI enters the operation, and where it stays out.
Alfonso runs his own day-to-day operations, career, content, and family care, on Claude-native systems he built and operates solo, with human gates throughout. The Desk, the container his agent systems run in, has a live public demo. Career Arc, the career relationship manager inside it, produced the résumé this page links to. It is the same pattern he would build for a department.
Rainmaker, a human-in-the-loop outreach agent from the same practice, took 1st place of roughly 350 capstones in the 2026 DataExpert.io competition and earned the founder's recommendation. A home-services operation is in audit now as its first prospective deployment, and a walkthrough is available on request.
The systems come with the operating judgment to match. A career of running support operations informs where AI agents belong, where deflection is real, and where a human gate is non-negotiable.
Honest about where I add value, and where I don't.
Strong fit if
- You need the operation built or rebuilt. I joined a CX team as its 8th member and built it past 30. I walked into a five-team shared inbox and left behind a coverage platform a district runs on.
- You are scaling through an inflection point. I ran support through a $250M acquisition, a COVID demand surge, and a repricing wave, all at once.
- Your operations run on tribal knowledge and scattered spreadsheets. That is exactly where the CPS build started.
- You are deciding what AI should do in your operation. I make that call daily in my own systems and right now for a client.
- Spanish-speaking customers or teams are part of the picture. Both languages are native for me.
Probably not a fit if
- You need a pure individual-contributor analyst. The leadership would go unused.
- The system already exists and needs steady-state maintenance. I will keep finding things to improve, and that would frustrate us both.
- You want the tooling operated exactly as configured, with no room to change the design.
- The problem is fully specified. I add the most while the question is still being worked out: scoping, elicitation, deciding what gets built.
Let's talk.
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