Very few people can make one run.
Most people find their calling. I found mine before I could name it.
Warner Bros. · Lionsgate · Ingram Micro · AT&T / DIRECTV · Blizzard · Fox · Adeia
Who is she
I'm Sharlene Louise — professionally, Sharlene Hardin. For more than forty years I lived inside the machinery of how companies actually run: standing up program offices from nothing, governing portfolios north of $85 million, steering one of the largest media mergers in American history, and writing the compliance frameworks that let publicly traded companies sleep at night.
The career was never a straight line. It was built in layers: the girl who learned to program became a woman who co-founded two commercial businesses alongside the men she was married to — a mechanical contracting company in 1984, a video production house in 1994 — then a leader who rebuilt how large organizations operate, across IT, insurance, supply chain, and media. Along the way I raised two children who are now adults I genuinely admire.
At an age when the expected move is to coast, I went back to school instead — MIT xPRO's COO program, then AI product design, then IoT. Not for the credential. Because the ground is shifting, and I refuse to be the executive who stopped learning.
That enterprise chapter closed in 2026. What I know from it now goes into two ventures of my own, and into a small number of engagements at a time.
Operations is never really about systems. It is about people, and the agreements between them.
The Practice
I do not sell frameworks. I sell the ability to see your operation clearly, name what is actually broken, and build the smallest thing that fixes it. Engagements are senior, direct, and finite — you should not need me forever.
The operating layer a growing company outgrew — governance people actually use, intake that survives a busy quarter, reporting an executive team can read in four minutes.
SOX 404 and ITGC, PCI, GDPR. I have run the external audits and written the remediation plans. Compliance as an operating discipline, not a fourth-quarter fire drill.
Executive PMO oversight through the DIRECTV–AT&T merger taught me what decks cannot: integration is won in the call centers, the vendor contracts, and the first ninety days.
Where AI genuinely belongs in your operation — and, more usefully, where it does not. MIT-trained in AI product design, grounded in four decades of real workflows.
What I'm building now
A story — or a business — only travels as far as the operation behind it can carry it. Both of these exist because I got tired of watching good work fail for reasons that had nothing to do with the work.
Live
Founder
A multi-level entertainment company developing across the full arc of modern media — literary works, film, episodic series, podcasts, and media marketing. Original properties are in development across literary and episodic formats, each built to a stage where it can be read, optioned, or shot.
Co-Founder
The businesses that thrive in the AI era will not be the ones with the best technology — they will be the ones whose operations were sound enough to absorb it. OperationsON puts real operating discipline underneath ambition, then layers AI on a foundation that can hold it.
For the business being formed. Entity and structure, a tool stack you will not regret in two years, documented process from day one, and an AI-native way of working built in rather than bolted on.
For the business that already works and has quietly outgrown how it runs. Readiness assessment, process documentation, targeted automation, and a change plan your team will actually adopt.
How she got here
A machine did exactly what it was told. Everything since has been a longer version of that moment.
Corporate secretary and operations for a mechanical contracting business. Payroll, phones, the education no MBA sells.
Head of operations for an independent production house for nearly a decade — strategy, clients, production.
21st Century Insurance, Warner Bros., Lionsgate, Ingram Micro, AT&T/DIRECTV, Blizzard, Fox, and finally Adeia — PMOs built, audits passed, an $85M portfolio governed, a landmark merger integrated. That chapter closed in 2026.
MIT xPRO — Chief Operating Officer program, then Designing & Building AI Products and Services, then IoT.
A multi-level entertainment venture spanning literary works, film, episodic series, podcasts, and media marketing — the production thread that started at Mills Video in 1994, picked back up with everything four decades taught her about running a studio.
Enterprise-grade operating discipline, and a clear-eyed view of AI, for the businesses that need it most.
Beyond the work
I am the mother of two adult children — the achievement I will still be proud of when the rest of this page has aged out. I volunteer with Special Olympics, which has taught me more about what leadership actually looks like than any executive program.
The rest of my hours go somewhere quieter. I write. I travel, often and with intent. I paint. And I crochet — which anyone who has run a complex program will understand immediately.
Credentials
Let's talk
I take a small number of engagements at a time. If you are a founder, an owner, or an executive with an operation that has outgrown how it runs — start here.
