Carlandra protrait

Hi, I’m Carlandra — passionate about FinOps, Cloud Governance, and how emerging tech can shape smarter growth.

I combine a background in IT Operations with FinOps expertise to help organizations scale with clarity and control. I focus on building Cloud environments that remain transparent, efficient, and accountable—without slowing innovation.

Whether it’s a fast-moving startup or a growing enterprise, I enjoy crafting systems that balance creativity with structure and growth with purpose.

Career

  • 10+ years Business Analytics
  • 6 years Project Management
  • 5 years Cloud FinOps Analytics
  • 4 years IT Operations

Certifications

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Interests

  • Governance & Compliance
  • Cybersecurity
  • Cloud Engineering
  • Data Engineering
  • IAM
  • AI/ML

Expertise & Focus

FinOps Leadership

Directed enterprise-wide FinOps strategy overseeing $200M+ AWS spend; achieved $1.5M+ in cost avoidance.

Developed executive dashboards and KPIs monitoring usage, unit costs, and Savings Plan utilization.

Partnered with IT Finance to implement cost allocation frameworks and enhance showback/chargeback processes.

Cloud Governance & Strategy

Established cloud data governance standards integrating Cloudability, Apptio BI, and AWS native tools.

Drove automation of cost reporting and anomaly detection to improve forecasting accuracy by 15%.

Led FinOps culture initiatives—training 50+ stakeholders to embed financial accountability across teams.

Business Analysis & Insights

Consolidated multi-source reporting to support executive decision-making and performance analytics.

Designed and tested data reporting solutions in Salesforce Lightning, Apptio BI, and Power BI.

Partnered with technology teams as the key liaison between business units and development teams.

Analytical & Technical Expertise

Skilled in AWS Cloud cost modeling, Cloudability, Apptio BI, Power BI, SQL, and Excel-based forecasting.

Experienced in SaaS data integration, cost tagging, and usage-based chargeback automation.

Strong foundation in data validation, QA processes, and Observability metrics for cloud spend analysis.

Strategic Impact

Implemented Smarsh’s first FinOps program by defining requirements, personas, and governance processes.

Delivered recurring reports to Executives and Board, improving cloud visibility and accountability.

Led cross-functional initiatives that modernized financial reporting and reduced waste across environments.

IT Operations & Reliability Governance

Led initiative with Infrastructure & Reliability and InfoSec Governance teams to redefine measurable SLAs — reducing operational risks by 63%, strengthening enterprise resilience.

Identified inefficiencies in IT workflows and system operations, driving measurable improvements in uptime, reliability, and compliance.

Involved in Root Cause Analysis and risk prioritization workflows by transforming raw IT data into actionable insights.

Featured Projects

Cloud Resume Challenge

🔧 Cloud Resume Challenge

The Cloud Resume Challenge bridges cloud certification with real-world DevOps skills. Built as a full-stack AWS showcase, this static site is hosted in AWS S3 featuring modular infrastructure...

AWS • DevOps • IaC • CI/CD • IAM • Documentation
FinOps Case Study

💰 FinOps Case Study

Uncovered cost drivers in AWS Free Tier usage and deployed budget guardrails with tagging-based visibility...

FinOps • Cost Estimation • Optimization
Cloud Governance Playbook

📘 Cloud Governance Playbook

A curated framework designed to bring clarity, consistency, and control to scalable infrastructure.

FinOps Strategy • IAM Governance • Tagging Framework • Stakeholder Management
DNS-Level Failover

🔮 Decision at the Edge – DNS Failover with Route 53

Keep a hot (active) S3 static site + backend in us-east-1 and an identical passive copy in us-west-2. DNS failover using Route 53 will send traffic to the passive copy only when health checks show the primary is unhealthy.

High Availability • CloudFormation • Route53 • Automation Pipeline
Cloud Governance Playbook

🏷️ AI Model for AWS Resource Tagging

Build and deploy an AI/ML solution in AWS that predicts missing or inconsistent resource tags (Environment, Project, Owner) using metadata + resource context.

Model Training • Data Preparation • AWS SageMaker • Automation Pipeline

Let's Collaborate

Email

carlandra.williams@gmail.com

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