Chris Melson
Transformation Executive & Operational Architect | Board Advisor
Bridge critical gap between boardroom strategy and technical execution via rare 'Tri-Modal' leadership capability. Act as universal translator across business through unique combination of financial discipline of an MBA, technical depth of Computer Science background, and battle-hardened resilience of LSEG veteran. Architect and steer operations to eliminate incoherence, ensuring high-stakes vision materializes into scalable, reliable reality.
Professional Experience
Head of FX Operations Programs and Strategy at London Stock Exchange Group
Oct 2023 - Nov 2025 | Saint Louis, MO
Reported to Chief Operations Officer (COO) of FX. Recruited to Executive Steering Committee (SteerCo) to salvage FXI, a distressed $80M migration initiative with oversight of 1K+ matrixed stakeholders and associated support staff. Scope expanded to include global FX organizational restructuring and bridging of critical gaps between Sales, Engineering, and Product to eliminate shadow support dependencies and drive regulatory compliance.
Led forensic audit of FXI program revealing critical equities mismatch (incompatibility with 24 / 5 FX markets) and $2M / month burn rate, overcoming sunk cost paralysis to secure Board authorization to terminate the initiative, preserving $36M - $50M in future CapEx / OpEx waste.
Extracted and stabilized viable NDF venue from collapsing program by implementing 150+ manual run actions to compensate for missing tooling, ensuring zero regulatory breaches of Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and continuity for live revenue-generating asset.
Eliminated shadow support culture by upgrading technical support capabilities to repatriate 30% of Sales capacity previously lost to troubleshooting, mitigating $1.3M+ in revenue risk while reducing non-code tickets reaching Engineering by 90%.
Engineered Zero Trust support architecture utilizing proprietary identity emulation in Azure environment to solve observability deficit in regulated trading support, enabling read-only operational oversight without violating strict data privacy laws, ensuring full compliance with EU DORA and GDPR resilience mandates while maintaining high-touch service.
Resolved CSAT paradox of (high scores masking institutional dissatisfaction) by abandoning generalist model for specialized Venue / API and Desktop / UX verticals, achieving zero-cost restructure by redeploying engineering budget to hire venue-competent talent.
Established operational product strategy for FXall-to-Workspace Software as a Service (SaaS) migration targeting 10K+ institutional users, unlocking commercial potential of previously free legacy base by enabling upsell to $1.2K per month flagship data and trading solution.
Designed strict governance architecture for agentic operating model transition, implementing tiered routing logic that diverted 25% of low-value noise to AI self-service, redeploying time savings to reduce speed of response from 15+ minutes to under 60 seconds.
Director, Global Trading Systems Support at London Stock Exchange Group (formerly Refinitiv)
Nov 2020 - Oct 2023 | Saint Louis, MO
Selected by Chief Customer Operations Officer (CCOO) reporting to Group Leader of Capital Markets Operations (CMO) tasked with stabilizing distressed 200+ full-time equivalency (FTE) global trading organization with profit and loss (P&L) of 8M+, suffering from “hero culture”, decentralized IT, $10K+ monthly customer chargebacks, 40% attrition, and complete leadership vacuum.
Recruited elite leadership team to resolve critical management vacuum, driving cultural turnaround that reversed attrition from 40% to 6%, recovering $1M+ in annualized productivity previously lost to training ramp-ups while elevating staff engagement to 85 (Top Tier Glint).
Architected strategic exit of NEST trading vertical, securing executive authorization to divest zero-margin asset by demonstrating that remediation of shadow IT and brand risks would require 3x annual revenue investment with a prohibitive 10+ year return on investment (ROI).
Diffused critical "compliance bomb" by migrating 100% of sensitive trade operations from illicit off-channel platforms (WhatsApp / WeChat / email) to auditable Service Cloud ecosystem, mitigating regulatory exposure estimated between $2M fines and potential venue closure.
Replaced subjective, reputation-based prioritization model with objective data-driven customer relationship management (CRM) framework, introducing purpose built key performance indicators (KPIs), driving mean time to respond (MTTr) from 300 minutes to less than 20 and mean time to acknowledge (MTTa) from 150 minutes to less than 10, restoring operational stability to teams previously drowning in unmanaged volume.
Developed automated governance layer using Microsoft Power Apps to enforce four-eye checks, eliminating $120K in annualized operational write-offs by reducing trade execution failures to near-zero while establishing immutable audit trails for compliance.
Designed and executed global hub strategy, consolidating fragmented teams from 13 disparate locations into regional centers of excellence (CoEs), optimizing business continuity planning (BCP) and centralizing talent development to create a resilient operational footprint compatible with LSEG's risk appetite.
Director, Technical Specialists at Refinitiv (formerly Thomson Reuters)
Jul 2017 - Nov 2020 | Saint Louis, MO
Reported to Global Head of Technical and Trading Support with P&L accountability for $4.5M budget. Led operational transformation of 110+ person technical organization supporting 40K Data and Analytics users during $20B Blackstone M&A carve-out.
Orchestrated strategic transformation from reactive break-fix to proactive managed services model, optimizing organizational structure to reduce annual operating costs by 31% ($1.4M) while simultaneously enhancing service delivery capabilities for SaaS, and Platform as a Service (PaaS) offerings.
Spearheaded customer experience (CX) strategy that vaulted customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores from low 60s to low 90s by instituting standardized leadership coaching and accountability frameworks such as 1:1s, career pathing to professionalize talent layer.
Bridged critical integration gap between legacy Thomson Reuters infrastructure and standalone Refinitiv entity during $20B Blackstone carve-out, executing operational workstreams that ensured zero disruption for 40K global Data and Analytics users.
Commanded end-to-end major incident management (MIM) for high-frequency trading clients during critical outages, leading executive-level post-incident reviews (PIR) to restore trust and mitigate reputational damage in latency-sensitive markets.
Implemented tri-modal talent retention strategy that maintained elite staff engagement and minimized annualized attrition to 4% (significantly below 10%+ company average) during a period of aggressive corporate restructuring and COVID-19 exits.
Technical Specialist Manager - Trading (Enterprise) at Thomson Reuters
Aug 2012 - Jul 2017 | Saint Louis, MO
Reported to Director of Technical Specialists leading 27 FTEs. Managed critical support infrastructure for 10K global market data delivery fan-out devices.
Pioneered organization’s 1st global follow-the-sun support model, dismantling regional silos to establish unified 24/7 capability that eliminated after-hours shift premiums for 30 global staff while ensuring seamless continuity for Tier-1 banking clients.
Launched service delivery transformation by engineering automated deployment framework (HPE iLO / Rundeck) for 10K global devices, eliminating necessity for physical server dispatches to realize $10M in operational savings.
Created specialized engineering unit focused on Thomson Reuters Enterprise Platform (TREP) / Reuters Market Data System (RMDS) market data architecture, enabling efficient fan-out of real-time data to thousands of downstream applications to meet exponential volume growth driven by algorithmic trading.
Streamlined backlog elimination strategy driven by novel mean time to close (MTTC) metric, driving 83% reduction in daily open issue volume (300 to less than 50).
Previous Roles: Customer Support Team Manager (Open Systems) | Open Systems Engineer | Escalation Engineer | Senior Technical Support Specialist | Technical Support Specialist at Thomson Reuters (formerly Reuters)
| Saint Louis, MO
Education
Webster University
, Master of Business Administration (MBA)
Webster University
Bachelor of Science (BS), Computer Science
Webster University
Bachelor of Art (BA), Management
Ranken Technical College
Associate of Technology (AT), Computer Networking
Skills & Expertise
- Target Operating Model (TOM) Design
- Organizational Transformation and Change Management
- Post-Merger Integration (PMI)
- Global P&L Management and Cost Optimization
- AI Strategy and Agentic Workflow Governance
- Technical Due Diligence
- Data Strategy and Data-Centered Operating Models
- Digital Transformation and Cloud Migration
- Enterprise Risk Management (ERM)
- Regulatory Compliance and Governance (DORA / GDPR / MiFID II)
- Operational Excellence and Process Optimization
- Cybersecurity Strategy and Zero Trust
- Strategic Performance Management and KPI Development