Resume - G. Joel Hager — Strategic Operations Leader

G. Joel Hager — Resume | Strategic Operations Leader

Professional Summary

Strategic operations leader and entrepreneur with experience building and scaling multi-state programs, teams, and operational systems across telecommunications, transportation, manufacturing, financial services, healthcare technology, and volunteer-run community operations. Founder of Workers’ Rebellion LLC, which launched its first product, a job search tracking application, in August 2026, and volunteer Regional Venture-Coordinator for the Organized Play Foundation, where volunteer service dates to 2018.

Professional Experience

Founder & CEO

Workers’ Rebellion LLC | September 2025 – Present

Founder-owned LLC.

Company Formation: Founded and lead Workers’ Rebellion LLC, a self-funded, values-driven software company that also offers IT consulting. Formed the Georgia LLC, obtained an EIN, and secured business licensing; make business spending and financial-planning decisions as owner.
Product Development: Product owner for the company’s first product, a proprietary job search tracking application: authored the specifications, directed AI-assisted development, and led QA and testing from September 2025; launched commercially in August 2026 with $0 incremental production spend.
Consulting: C2C and 1099 IT consulting engagements are available through the LLC.
Brand and Vendor Strategy: Authored the company’s brand system and a four-phase financial transparency model; filed a trademark application for the software; conducting vendor research and relationship development for additional offerings planned after development milestones.

Regional Venture-Coordinator (Regional Operations Director equivalent) – Volunteer

The Organized Play Foundation / Paizo Organized Play | September 2025 – Present

Unpaid volunteer role. Volunteer with this organization since 2018: Venture-Agent (2018) → Venture-Lieutenant (2019) → Venture-Captain, Atlanta (2021–2025) → Regional Venture-Coordinator (2025–present).

Regional Authority: Top volunteer operational role for the Appalachian Region of Paizo Organized Play (VA, WV, TN, NC, SC, GA). Directly oversee Venture-Captains and indirectly oversee approximately 60 volunteers, with authority to appoint, promote, and remove volunteers within the organization’s published Venture-Officer structure and to handle third-level conflict-resolution escalations. Report to the Organized Play Foundation with operational accountability to Paizo Organized Play.
Atlanta Venture-Captain (2021–2025): Directly oversaw four Venture-Lieutenants and indirectly oversaw six Venture-Agents. Built a Google Forms/Sheets/Apps Script operational dashboard to track Atlanta game cancellations; Paizo Organized Play leadership commended it directly, and it became the conceptual foundation for the current regional platform. Went beyond the Venture-Captain requirement (convention coordination, additional quarterly games, or committee service) by doing all three; see Onboarding Committee below.
Atlanta Results: Atlanta game cancellation rates decreased as scheduling moved toward a two-week minimum lead time.
Convention Operations: Sole planner for Atlanta Pathfinder Society’s DragonCon program, where the weighted count of reported tables grew 183% from 2022 to 2024; achieved first post-pandemic Tier 1 convention status in the Appalachian Region.
Municipal Partnership: Manage Atlanta Pathfinder Society’s relationship with the City of Marietta Department of Parks & Recreation – annual partnership since 2023 for the “Marietta the Gathering” event.
Appalachian Regional Health Dashboard: Product owner, specification author, and QA lead for a production platform that aggregates multi-venue data into a single regional health view. Directed development (not hands-on engineering) and continue QA and later-phase improvements. Product environment: React/JSX, Supabase, Node.js, Vercel, Cloudflare, GitHub. Designed so other regional coordinators can replicate it; $0 incremental production spend.
Digital Infrastructure: Built and operate two WordPress sites (atlantapfs.org, appaopregion.org) and a 13-applet IFTTT automation network distributing content across web, Facebook, X/Twitter, BlueSky, and a 400+ member Discord server that I own and manage.
Community Safety: Developed and implemented community safety and inclusion procedures for DragonCon volunteer operations; in use at DragonCon for the last two years.

Independent Operations Consultant

American Horrors / B-Movie TV (Roku) | October 2025 – Present

Volunteer role – unpaid advisory engagement; no billing or invoicing.

Systems Development: Designed and deployed a Google Forms/Sheets-based ticketing system for technical issue reporting and escalation tracking.
Operational Support: Provided research and operational support for a merchandise line launch and advisory input on ad sales and channel programming.

Former Chair, Onboarding Committee – Volunteer

Paizo Organized Play (Global) | 2023 – July 2026

Unpaid volunteer role – concluded July 2026 after a three-year tenure.

Global Scope: Chaired a global committee serving Pathfinder Society and Starfinder Society players, GMs, Venture-Officers, and lodges across 18 international regions spanning North America, South America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Russia, the South Pacific, and online communities.
Document Leadership: Oversaw the creation, revision, and publishing pipeline for onboarding documentation, including accessibility verification with checking tools and a quality-control review by the organization’s accessibility reviewer; co-authored the publicly available VO Handbook.
Organizational Change: Successfully petitioned to merge VO Handbook Task Force duties into the Onboarding Committee, consolidating overlapping functions at the national level.

Senior Product Delivery Associate

JPMorgan Chase, Atlanta, GA | July 2022 – October 2025

Cross-Functional Collaboration: Worked with product managers, engineers, and business leaders on delivery of financial technology products within regulatory compliance requirements.
Risk Management: Identified and resolved delivery blockers, managed complex dependencies, and advocated for resource alignment to keep delivery on schedule.
UAT and Product Feedback: Ran user acceptance testing cycles and delivered structured feedback to product teams.
Stakeholder Relations: Partnered with stakeholders at all organizational levels through proactive communication and issue resolution.

Technical Systems Consultant

Mission Staff for Teladoc Health, Remote | March 2021 – July 2022

Healthcare Systems Documentation: Documented processes and procedures for the TeamSupport platform and Sales Demo environment in Jira/Confluence; partnered with the TeamSupport team to surface and resolve system issues.
Compliance Operations: Held direct responsibility for HIPAA/GDPR compliance and issues originating from the Denmark office, serving as primary point of contact for international incident coordination.
Cross-Border Issue Resolution: Identified and escalated a video codec issue originating in the Denmark office that was affecting physician call quality; coordinated with technical teams through resolution, which required a codec change that prevented broader service disruption.
Quality Assurance Participation: Supported testing initiatives for system stability and reliability for product demonstrations and customer onboarding.

Lead Service Management Analyst

Amtrak, Sandy Springs, GA | May 2016 – September 2020

Enterprise Operations: One of six Tier 2 support leads for 400+ applications serving 20,000+ employees nationwide; participated in the shared on-call rotation supporting 24/7 operations.
ServiceNow Transition: Contributed to the team’s migration to the ServiceNow ITSM platform; the team collectively owned the service catalog workstream, including requirements gathering, testing coordination, and implementation discussions with IBM as the platform builder.
Service Excellence: Partnered with service owners to redesign onboarding procedures and operational processes, improving service desk performance metrics.
Team Leadership: Mentored junior analysts and coordinated cross-team initiatives to maintain consistent service delivery standards.
Identity and Access Management: Administered Active Directory in lower/non-production environments; provisioned user access and entitlements in SailPoint after the platform’s adoption later in my tenure.

Selected Highlight

Published Research

Published a research-backed analysis of filtering and rejection technology in hiring systems; the LinkedIn post reached 59,000+ impressions, 507 reactions, and 228 comments within 30 days.

Core Competencies

Strategic LeadershipMulti-state operations, team development, stakeholder management, succession planning, conflict resolution

Volunteer & Nonprofit LeadershipMulti-tier volunteer program management, global committee governance, volunteer recruitment and training, succession pipeline development

Operations ManagementProcess optimization, resource allocation, performance metrics, quality assurance, change management

Service ManagementITSM, service catalog, ITIL V3, Tier 2 support, escalation management

Product OwnershipRequirements authorship, product specification, QA leadership, development direction

EntrepreneurshipStartup formation, brand strategy, financial modeling, trademark filing, vendor research and relationship development

Industry KnowledgeFinancial services, healthcare technology, telecommunications, security operations and fraud remediation, transportation, manufacturing, community operations, emergency response

CommunicationExecutive reporting, policy development, training development, accessibility compliance, content architecture

Technical Proficiencies

Service & Project ManagementServiceNow, Jira, Jira Align, Confluence, Maximo, ITIL V3, Agile methodologies

Identity & Access ManagementActive Directory administration (lower/non-production environments); SailPoint user provisioning and entitlement assignment

Web, Automation & DataWordPress; IFTTT; Google Workspace (Sheets, Forms, Apps Script, Drive); performance dashboards and metrics tracking

Product Environment DirectedReact/JSX, Supabase (PostgreSQL), Node.js, Vercel, Cloudflare, GitHub (product direction and QA; not hands-on engineering)

Compliance & RiskFinancial services regulations, HIPAA, GDPR, ISO 9001 (1994 & 2000 standards), NDA-compliant data architecture, audit preparation

Education & Certifications

Coursework: Information Science (Widener University), Communications (University of Delaware), Justice, Law & Society (American University)
ITIL Foundations (V3) Certification – Service Management
FCC Restricted Radiotelephone Operator License
CERT Emergency Response Training – City of Smyrna, GA; certified and available for activation

Earlier Career

Rodel / Rohm & Haas Electronic Materials — Customer Service, then Quality Assurance; co-lead ISO auditor, responsible for adherence to the documentation requirements (Section 4); contributed to the transition from ISO 9001:1994 to ISO 9001:2000 with no nonconformities as part of a four-person QA team. (1997–2004)

Comcast — Progressed from tier-one technical support to the Customer Advocacy Group (carrier-to-carrier phone number porting) to Customer Security Assurance, handling compromised-account remediation, malware issues, and usage-policy enforcement. (2007–2011)

M&T Bank — Online banking technical support. (2012)

E.I. du Pont de Nemours — (contract via Kelly Mitchell Group) — International Customer Service.