Portfolio and Governance Manager

This role manages the project portfolio and establishes comprehensive governance standards for NW Natural, which spans Business, Engineering, and IT projects totaling $200MM annually. They actively manage the portfolio - driving prioritization, intake, resource and capacity planning and project assurance. This is a highly visible leadership role that works collaboratively with executives and leaders across NW Natural to enable the successful planning, intake, and delivery of the project portfolio.

This role defines and continuously improves the quality of project delivery - encompassing the approach for project management, program management, change management and business analysis. The role also partners with the Director to ensure that leaders and executives have consistent visibility into portfolio performance on both a recurring and ad hoc basis. This role works closely with the PMO's service delivery managers to ensure consistency across their work and actively drives process improvements within the PMO.

• Portfolio Planning and Management:

- Define, improve, and lead the annual portfolio planning process by collecting inputs (project requests, strategic priorities, annual goals, etc) and engaging appropriate executives and leaders across NW Natural. Establish and enforce principles for evaluating and prioritizing projects. Conduct regular portfolio reviews with key stakeholders and adjust project portfolio priorities as needed.Re-baseline the project portfolio as business, economic, environmental, or political needs dictate. Actively manage portfolio quality by embedding portfolio-wide criteria and review for project readiness, expected outcomes and delivery - ensuring the portfolio is delivering the right work at the right time with the right level of quality.

• Project Intake:

- Manage the project intake process, including the portfolio management committee (PMC). Ensure that roles and responsibilities are clear at each step in the process. Define, maintain and improve intake reports. Identify and deliver process improvements to the Intake process. Conduct investment/capacity planning (ICP) analysis on proposed projects and provide insight and recommendations to the PMC. Own the end-to-end demand and capacity planning process across the enterprise, balancing new demand against available reources and organizational capacity. Proactively forecast future constraints and model tradeoffs to inform and facilitate executive prioritization and sequencing decisions.

• Portfolio Governance:

- Maintain and update project methodology. Conduct project stage gate audits to ensure compliance and quality. Define, maintain, and improve portfolio governance processes. Evolve the governance framework to provide a holistic view across Business Analysis, Change Management, and Project management disciplines - ensuring that methods, tools, practices and approaches work in concert to drive successful outcomes. Beyond compliance, actively promote quality, consistency and clarity across all projects and programs. Lead audit reviews (at each gate and holistically across the portfolio) with a focus on quality assurance, risks, improvement opportunities and ensured adherence to expected standards of performance.

• Portfolio Performance Reporting:

- Create, monitor, and improve portfolio performance metrics. Determine cadence and audience for performance reports and respond to ad hoc requests for portfolio information - providing insightful, action-oriented reporting on performance and highlighting emerging risks, areas of concern and opportunities such that leaders and Officers can understand portfolio health and make informed decisions. Conduct root cause analysis when appropriate to address performance issues and identify improvement opportunities.

• Leadership and Team Oversight:

- Directly manage product and data analyst, with potential for additional reports as the PMO operating model evolves. Through direct and indirect management, provide strategic guidance, coaching, and performance oversight to ensure aligned execution, high-quality delivery and cross-function collaboration. Champion a unified approach to delivery across these disciplines, fostering a high-performing and integrated team of experts.

• PMO KPI Reporting:

- Identify and maintain department KPIs, including baselines and targets. Monitor performance against the KPIs and establish a review cadence with the PMO leadership team. Work with the PMO leadership team to determine remedies for any shortfalls in department performance.

• Communications and Stakeholder Management:

- Establish strong working relationships with key portfolio stakeholders across NW Natural. Build trusted partnerships with senior leaders by consistently delivering clear, credible and proactive communications. Help leaders focus their attention on high-impact decisions within the portfolio. Champion the role of the PMO as a strategic partner.

• Portfolio Financial Management:

- Partner with Finance and Accounting to ensure portfolio financials are accurate, strategically aligned and clearly communicated. Work with Finance to prepare quarterly Board forecasts and Accounting to ensure consistent treatment of capital and O&M costs.

• Portfolio Resource Planning and Management:

- Ensure that resource demand and supply information is complete and accurate. Conduct analyses to identify resource constraints or conflicts and work with PMO solution delivery managers to resolve any issues. Provide regular feedback to resource managers across NW Natural regarding overallocated resources, unfilled demand, and inaccurate capacity. Establish and lead enterprise-wide resource demand and capacity management process for project work. Ensure that decisions regarding resource allocation are informed by current-state utilization data, future state forecasts and strategic priorities. Escalate systemic issues and partner with leaders to resolve structural capacity gaps.

• 10+ years experience in project, program, and portfolio management with 2+ years specifically in a senior portfolio leadership role.
• 5+ years in a leadership or people management capacity.
• Demonstrated experience designing and evolving enterprise-level portfolio governance frameworks that span project, change and business analysis functions; experience building or maturing PMO capabilities a plus.
• Proven ability to partner and support senior executives, with a track record of building trusted relationships, surfacing critical insights, and driving alignment across the enterprise.
• Experience managing cross-functional project portfolios with annual budgets of $100MM+, including intake, prioritization and capacity planning.
• Expertise in financial stewardship of programs and portfolios - ensuring forecast accuracy, capital/O&M treatment, and alignment to strategic investment priorities.
• Experience with Utilities/Energy sector preferred.
• Hands-on experience leading large-scale, high impact programs and initiatives.
• Familiarity with both waterfall and agile project delivery methos; portfolio, program, project and/or change management certifications (e.g., PMP, PfMP, SAFe, Prosci) preferred.
• Superb leadership, interpersonal, and motivational skills including the ability to lead and influence up, down and across.
• Proven ability to conform to shifting priorities, demands and timelines through analytical and problem-solving capabilities.
• Exceptional written, verbal and presentation communications skills; ability to tailor messaging for diverse audiences.
• Technically competent with various software programs, including but not limited to Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint), Outlook, PPM tools like Planview and ServiceNow, and reporting tools like Power BI.
• Bachelors degree in business, management, finance or related field required. Masters degree preferred.