J. A. Terry Solutions

Test Property Secret Shop.pdf

Secret Shops

I founded and led the launch of Redstone Residential’s in-house Secret Shopper Program after identifying a critical gap between on-site execution and the expectations set by leadership and client-facing teams. The initiative aimed to bring greater visibility and accountability to leasing operations while replacing costly third-party vendor reliance with a more agile, internally managed solution.

Key accomplishments include:

Conducting a competitive and cost analysis of industry benchmarks and third-party offerings
Designing a sustainable financial model that mirrored vendor revenue, enabling the program to be brought in-house without reducing value
Building a structure that included 12 phone shops per month and two in-person shops per year across 85 properties
Generating over $50,000 in revenue while creating added value for clients and operational teams alike
Improving average secret shop scores by 11 percentage points, supporting stronger leasing performance and higher accountability
Increasing flexibility and responsiveness, allowing shops to be tailored and strategically deployed based on performance trends

This program enhanced both client confidence and internal quality control, while driving measurable improvements in leasing standards and customer experience.

Presentation - Redstone Connect.pptx

Redstone Connect & Funnel

Background / Problem Statement:
The company identified a learning and performance gap at underperforming properties where leasing velocity was low, directly impacting occupancy and revenue. Additionally, there was an opportunity to establish a centralized leasing model that could enhance capability-building across sites while generating revenue. This required scalable systems, strategic training, and targeted enablement.

Objective:
Design and implement a centralized leasing function that would:
Improve leasing velocity through enhanced knowledge, skills, and support

Drive operational efficiency by standardizing tools, systems, and workflows
Enable team performance through continuous training and coaching
Create a sustainable, scalable model to support long-term growth and onboarding

Stakeholder Engagement:

Executive Leadership: Partnered closely to align L&D outcomes with company-wide business goals
Operations Specialists: Conducted skill gap analyses and needs assessments to ensure content, support, and training aligned with onsite processes
External Vendors: Evaluated tools not only for functional fit, but also for ease of training, integration into SOPs, and long-term learner adoption

Planning & Design:

Developed financial and workforce models to forecast staffing and L&D resourcing needs
Designed and deployed SOPs, training curricula, and enablement playbooks
Decided on tools (e.g., virtual tours, call routing systems) based on usability and alignment with training strategies
Built knowledge management assets and job aids to support ongoing performance

Execution:

Recruited, onboarded, and trained the leasing team with a focus on customer experience, technology fluency, and sales effectiveness
Developed microlearning content and simulations for lead handling and virtual engagement
Established success metrics (lease conversion, response time, lead volume) to tie L&D efforts to business performance
Rolled out continuous coaching and peer learning for rapid upskilling

Community Manager Personas:
To ensure training resonated with on-the-ground realities, the team developed personas based on community manager roles across different property types. These personas guided tone, delivery method, and priorities within training modules. Examples included:

The Solo Operator: Balancing leasing and maintenance at small sites, needing quick-reference guides
The Relationship Builder: Strong with residents but needing systems training
The Data-Driven Manager: Excels with dashboards but struggles with interpersonal coaching

Results / Outcomes:

Generated $100,000 in revenue in the first 12 months
Achieved profitability within 14 months
Demonstrated direct correlation between training and improved conversion metrics
Built a replicable and scalable training framework supporting rapid property onboarding

Scalability & Sustainability:

Created modular training content to support future hiring and internal mobility
Standardized onboarding and certification paths
Implemented quarterly feedback cycles with regional leaders to refine training content and ensure ongoing relevance
Introduced a learning loop framework for performance improvement and innovation

Presentation - Academic Advisor Dashboard.pptx

Academic Advisor Dashboard

Product Vision & Problem Framing
Although I was not the Product Owner, I served as a Scrum Master and committee member supporting the development of a university-wide Academic Advisor Dashboard. The vision, led by another department, focused on answering two key questions:

What is the impact of academic advising?
How can we identify and improve advising practices?

The primary challenge was that academic advising is deeply qualitative, with success often defined by intangible student interactions. Without clear metrics, advisors’ work risked being misunderstood or undervalued.

Team Collaboration & Sprint Planning
As Scrum Master, I helped keep the project moving by coordinating between subject matter experts, academic advising leadership, and institutional research analysts. The team was cross-functional and relied on each member’s domain expertise to determine what could realistically be tracked and measured.

Tasks were selected based on feasibility and value, with backlog items like:

Measuring time spent in student meetings
Tracking student outreach frequency
Evaluating student follow-through (e.g., course registration, retention to next term)

Overcoming Resistance & Driving Change
There was significant initial resistance. Many advisors feared the dashboard would be used for micromanagement or punitive evaluation, rather than support. To overcome this, I worked with stakeholders to reframe the dashboard as a tool for recognition, transparency, and equity—helping surface high performers, demonstrate invisible work, and identify scalable best practices.

Implementation & Team Agility
The dashboard was developed iteratively, with advisor feedback incorporated throughout. As the team began to see real-time data reflect their positive contributions, buy-in increased, and the shift in mindset became a critical success factor. The team grew more responsive to feedback and change, especially once it became clear the data would be used constructively.

Impact
This initiative helped quantify traditionally invisible labor, enabling institutional leadership to recognize and scale impactful advising behaviors. It also helped academic advisors better understand and communicate the scope of their work, elevating advising as a professional, data-informed practice.

Additional Projects

IPEDS Outcome Measure

Analysis

We identified a gap in existing retention and graduation metrics, which primarily focus on first-year retention and four-year graduation rates. These metrics are appropriate for traditional institutions but fail to reflect the diverse pathways at regional and community colleges, where students often take longer or follow nonlinear academic journeys. This led us to explore and advocate for broader, more inclusive metrics—particularly the IPEDS Outcomes Measure (OM). Our target audience included institutional researchers, student success professionals, and internal leadership teams who needed a clearer picture of long-term student success.

Design

Our learning objectives were to:

Clearly explain how the IPEDS Outcomes Measure is calculated
Provide insightful trend analysis using institutional data
Deliver a presentation that was both memorable and informative for a mixed audience of analysts and decision-makers
We aimed to blend technical accuracy with engaging storytelling. This led to a presentation strategy that included visualizations, analogies, and audience-focused explanations to build both comprehension and retention.

Development

We worked within a 4-month development window, compiling data, conducting trend analysis, and writing the paper. Deliverables included:

A formal written paper
An interactive slide deck
A video-edited presentation

Collaboration included teams from Institutional Research, Business Intelligence, and Student Affairs. I coordinated closely with our institutional researcher on data extraction and analysis, and contributed to both the narrative and visual components of the presentation.

Implementation

The paper and presentation were delivered at the RMAIR annual conference, with myself, our Vice President of Student Affairs, and an institutional researcher co-presenting. The session shared not just our data methodology but also why this metric matters, helping to shift the conversation around student success toward long-term outcomes like the 8-year graduation rate.

Evaluation

While we did not conduct a formal self-assessment, our work was externally evaluated by conference judges and was awarded Best Paper & Best Presentation for the year. Feedback from attendees indicated that the session offered clarity, innovation, and practical takeaways for institutions wrestling with how to fairly represent student progress in nontraditional models.

Impact

As a result of this work, internal stakeholders gained a clearer understanding of the IPEDS OM metric, and we advanced a conversation across institutions about how to better represent student success over time. The project continues to influence how our institution communicates outcomes data and supports more inclusive retention narratives.

Predictive Analytics

Role: Implementation Team Member & Data Strategy Contributor

At UVU, I played a key role in the implementation and strategic use of Civitas, a predictive analytics platform designed to identify students most at risk of stopping out. While we did not build the software, we successfully integrated it into our advising and retention practices to support data-informed student outreach.

The platform leveraged over 40 variables—including household income, current and high school GPA, declared major, and even gym usage frequency—to generate individual-level risk scores. These insights enabled academic advisors to prioritize outreach and allocate support where it would have the highest impact on student persistence.

To evaluate the effectiveness of interventions, we used propensity score matching to create pairs of statistically identical students—one who received an intervention and one who did not. By repeating this process across hundreds of student pairs, we could reliably detect patterns of positive or negative lift in semester-to-semester persistence.

The impact of this work was significant. It allowed us to:

Identify and scale the most effective interventions
Deprioritize low-impact practices
Strengthen the advisor-student connection using targeted, data-backed strategies
Contribute to institutional goals around retention and graduation rates through evidence-based decision-making

This initiative helped move UVU toward a culture of proactive, data-driven student support and positioned predictive analytics as a key tool for enhancing student success.

Executive Dashboard

Role: Strategic Contributor & Data Storyteller (in collaboration with the AVP of Student Affairs)

As a key stakeholder in UVU’s analytics initiative, I partnered with the Associate Vice President of Student Affairs to support the University President in building out and maintaining retention and graduation dashboards. These executive-facing tools visualized key metrics, including four-, six-, and eight-year graduation rates and first-year retention, helping leadership track progress toward institutional goals.

In addition to dashboard contributions, I led the development of a series of persona-based fact sheets that highlighted equity gaps and institutional impact across key student groups, including:

Women
First-generation students
Students of color
Veteran-affiliated students
Non-traditional learners

Each fact sheet provided clear, data-informed snapshots of graduation and retention trends, barriers to success, and targeted initiatives in place to support these populations. Designed for strategic storytelling, these materials were used by the University President in meetings with government officials, donors, and executive stakeholders, serving both as a call to action and a demonstration of progress.

This work elevated the role of data in institutional decision-making and helped align student success efforts with executive priorities, while humanizing metrics through the lens of lived student experiences.

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