Danita Walton · Pittsburgh, PA

I do my best work where a process is broken and the mandate is to change it.

I bridge operations, technology, and the people who rely on both.

Business Operations · Process Improvement · AI-Enabled Operations


About · Why I do this

Drawn to the process that isn't finished yet.

I've always been drawn to work where the process isn't finished yet — where the requirements are unclear, the workaround has become the workflow, and someone just needs to sit with the mess long enough to see the shape of a better system. That's true whether it's a support queue at a Fortune 500 bank or a product I'm building from scratch on nights and weekends.

By day I'm a Senior Specialist, Business Technology Liaison at BNY Wealth Service Delivery, where I design and build support and automation systems on Microsoft's Power Platform. Outside of it, I'm the founder of pagarii and the builder of Bowline — the same pattern each time: walk into ambiguity, find the recurring pain, and build the structure that makes it stop recurring.

How I Work

The same loop, every time — from support queue to shipped product.

This is the pattern that repeats across all three case studies below — not a philosophy, just the sequence the work actually follows.

01

Observe & research

Start with what's really happening — user surveys, review analysis, watching the workaround in the wild.

02

Find the recurring pain

Separate the one-off complaints from the failure mode that keeps coming back.

03

Define requirements

Turn the pain into written requirements, user stories, and data structures before building anything.

04

Prototype

Build the smallest working version — a Power App, a core loop, an onboarding flow.

05

Validate

Test against real use — release-night scenarios, daily dogfooding, cross-model review gates.

06

Document

Write the system down so it survives handoff — knowledge bases, versioned specs, governance docs.

07

Automate

Move the repeatable parts to flows, agents, and pipelines — routing, notifications, builds.

08

Measure

Instrument the result so the system learns from real data instead of guessing.

Case Studies

Three systems, built end to end.

Highlights

The numbers can speak for themselves.

43%
Year-over-year increase in sales production
285%
Increase in agency bonuses
1,200
Wealth application users researched
11 / 59
Applications & workflows documented in a OneNote knowledge base
Skills & Tools

Operations first, tooling in service of it.

Operations & Analysis

Business Operations · Process Improvement · Change Management · Program & Product Operations · Business Analysis · Requirements Gathering · Agile User Stories · Workflow Design · Knowledge Management

Platforms & Automation

Power Apps · Power Automate · SharePoint Lists · Microsoft Forms · Microsoft Access · UiPath · Microsoft Copilot · AI Builder · OneNote

AI-Enabled Delivery

Claude Code · Claude Cowork · ChatGPT · Gemini — requirements development, process design, and operational analysis, with independent validation of every output

Data & Business Tools

Excel · Salesforce · Jira · SPSS · Stata · Python & SQL (working knowledge, AI-accelerated) · cluster analysis · regression · topic modeling · survey design · qualitative interviews

Background

Where the pattern comes from.

Nov 2024 – Present
Senior Specialist, Business Technology Liaison — BNY Wealth Specialized Solutions, Wealth Service Delivery · Pittsburgh, PA
2023 – 2024
Associate, Tax Reporting & Compliance — BNY Operational support for 1042-S tax records, returns, and reporting · Pittsburgh, PA
2018 – 2023
Office Manager — Robin Byrd State Farm Insurance & Financial Services Operational and sales-process improvements across a full-service agency · Pittsburgh, PA
2014 – Present
Founder & Product Manager — pagarii Dating product and singles events · 400+ event participants across two cities · 4,000+ member Meetup community
2022
B.S., Integrated Social Sciences — The Pennsylvania State University Graduate studies in Marketing Analytics & Insights, 2022–2023 · UiPath Studio certification · BNY AI Explorer & AI Builder pathways
Get in touch

Working on an operations challenge? I'd love to hear about it.