25 influential women in project management

Note: The order in which the profiles appear in the following pages is random and not indicative of a ranking.

Cigdem Delano, PMP

AS DEPUTY EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR for the Georgia Technology Authority (GTA), Atlanta, Ga., USA, Cigdem Delano is the right-hand woman to the state CIO and manages a team of 650. She also has played a key role in bringing project management to the state government through the founding of the GTA, which oversees state projects with a budget of $1 million or more.

She was working as a project executive at IBM when the Georgia government requested help setting up the newly mandated GTA. “They were looking for someone from IBM to be assigned for one year as an executive on loan,” Ms. Delano says. “As I found out more about the job, it was clear that I really couldn't do that without creating a conflict of interest, because IBM is a vendor to the state. I had to make the decision to accept the job and leave IBM. The opportunity was so significant, and I really thought it would give me the chance to learn quite a bit, so I accepted.”

In September 2000, she joined the Georgia government as chief technology officer and six months later was promoted to deputy to the CIO. “When I came to GTA, most people didn't know what project management was about,” she says. “It was a term that was equated more with task management, it was seen as a very administrative role. The people in project management positions weren't formally trained project managers.”

Ms. Delano set up a project management office, encouraged her team to obtain the Project Management Professional (PMP^®) certification and worked to raise awareness of the profession throughout the state government.

“My key role was to communicate to the governor's office and commissioners the value of project management and gain their support,” she says. “We did not have appropriate reviews in place. Reports weren't done on critical projects. The governor's office had no view into what the status or progress was. What I did was sell the concept of creating the enterprise critical project review panel.”

The group is made up of the state's chief operations officer, chief financial officer, CIO, and director of the office of planning and budget. Ms. Delano facilitates the meetings, which take place every other month to review state projects with a budget of $10 million or more. “We have five or so projects at this level at one time,” Ms. Delano says. “[The panel] has enabled us to achieve a 60 percent success rate.”

Though her efforts to secure executive support for project management have been successful, she would still like to see project managers themselves take a higher profile role. “To get beyond the concept of project management being an administrative function requires project managers with really good business and financial acumen,” she says. “We still need to work on making sure project managers have the level of authority they need to truly make this successful. [We need to] make sure project managers are recognized as business and technology leaders.”

Ms. Delano is able to place project managers where they have an opportunity to demonstrate their savvy, but in turn they must live up to the responsibility. “They've got to demonstrate that value,” she says. “You can't just ask for it, it's something earned. What's important is making sure we've got project managers who perform at that level, who establish relationships at the executive level and understand the bigger scope.”

Catherine Robertson, PMP

IT'S NOT EXACTLY EASY TO IMPLEMENT STANDARDIZED PROJECT MANAGEMENT PROCESSES across an organization—but the job gets even more difficult when those strategies have to work as well in the United Kingdom as they do in Asia Pacific.

As projects domain lead for digital and communication technology (DCT) at BP, Catherine Robertson defines the project management processes used by her group's teams around the world. Before the initiative, there were “pockets of common processes but they were not universally applied across the various segments of DCT in BP across the globe.”

Effectively working with teams scattered around the globe requires a mix of communication strategies. “It's trying in different ways to market what you're about, not relying just on e-mail and also not being continually in a plane flying,” she says. Depending on the situation, she uses tools such as Internet meetings, video conferences, face-to-face communication, websites and newsletters. She also relies on key team members in various regions to serve as touch-points for projects.

Ms. Robertson began her career at BP more than 25 years ago, working in process control. She gradually branched out into different roles in IT and took on project management responsibilities, eventually landing the projects domain lead position. “I've had great opportunities to do different things, and I've taken advantage of them,” she says. “I found the most rewarding and interesting parts of my career are when I've done projects, because I enjoy the whole experience of delivering an outcome that adds value, working with others both on the project team and other stakeholders. There is a certain amount of pressure in doing this but I find it extremely rewarding to work with others on the team to a common goal and delivering. It's a great thing to do, so I'd like to promote it and help others develop themselves in that area.”

Nabilah M. Al-Tunisi

THE OIL INDUSTRY ISN'T KNOWN FOR BEING ESPECIALLY WELCOMING TO WOMEN, but that hasn't stopped Nabilah M. Al-Tunisi. Last June, she was appointed manager of the project support and controls department at Saudi Aramco, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. “I am currently the only woman in such a position, which gives me great pride and honor,” she says. Ms. Al-Tunisi now leads a staff of 384 supporting the oil giant's multibillion-dollar programs through front-end project planning, cost and schedule monitoring, surveying and engineering support. “It hasn't been easy being an engineer—not only in Saudi Aramco, but anywhere in the world—as a female working in a male-dominated field. I have overcome this challenge through knowledge, accepting challenges, continuous hard work and dedication, and reinventing myself and my contribution.”

Ms. Al-Tunisi began her career with Saudi Aramco in 1982 as a computer systems engineer. “After a couple of years getting established in the company and determining my goals, I joined the engineering and project management business line in March 1984,” she says. From there she moved up the ranks as a project engineer, process control engineer, senior project engineer, supervisor of process control technical services, and supervisor of the IT and electrical system planning unit. “These assignments helped develop my project management expertise as well as my technical skills,” she says.

In 1996, Ms. Al-Tunisi advanced again, heading up the company's IT and electrical system facilities planning division. In that position, she initiated and “led several major initiatives for improvements,” she says. One of these efforts involved leading a cross-functional team of technical experts and users from several Saudi Aramco organizations to analyze existing processes and make recommendations to management for expediting the deployment of IT across the company. “The team identified and achieved a comprehensive set of opportunities for change to benefit the IT strategy throughout the company,” she says.

Ms. Al-Tunisi also led a project to reduce the company's large electrical power consumption through energy conservation. The effort not only decreased Saudi Aramco's power usage, it also gave the company a new way to generate substantial revenue. Saudi Aramco started to generate electricity created by cogeneration systems, which use heat energy that otherwise would be wasted.

Throughout her career with Saudi Aramco, Ms. Al-Tunisi has contributed to and influenced the company's direction and strategies—and she isn't done yet. She says the next natural step in her career would be to implement a state-of-the-art project management information system throughout the company to increase productivity through knowledge sharing.

Lynda Bourne, PMP, DPM

LYNDA BOURNE SEEMS TO LIKE BREAKING NEW GROUND. Last year, she became the first person at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia—and quite possibly in the world—to earn a Doctor of Project Management (DPM). The new degree is positioned as more practitioner-oriented than the research-oriented Ph.D. in project management. She's also involved with the development of the Organizational Project Management Maturity Model (OPM3^®) and OPM3^® Product Suite. “I feel like a pioneer in that, because it will be so useful to so many people,” she says. “To be involved in something so powerful right from the beginning is quite exciting.”

Currently director of training at Mosaic Project Services Pty Ltd., South Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, Dr. Bourne continues to work on the human aspects of managing projects, the subject of her doctoral work. “The world of project management is ripe for more support in dealing with the relationship side of project management,” she says. “I was looking at reasons for project failure, and I discovered that everything points back to people being the basis of success or failure in a project.”

That relationship side can be even more complicated for women. “When I first started in project management, I specialized in IT projects,” she says. “I was in many cases the only female professional in the field, and it was very difficult in those days to be treated seriously, to actually be heard for the information and the knowledge I had. I had to learn about cricket and football to be able to start to build a relationship, to move into a trusting relationship with senior management so that they would hear me.”

Though difficult at the time, the experience has helped Dr. Bourne throughout her career. Project managers need to know how to gain the trust of stakeholders and executives to build support for projects, she says. “You use that [relationship] as the basis for having them see you as a person and not as someone who's going to challenge their role or power base in the project.”

Dr. Bourne also serves as a mentor for several younger project managers. “It profits them to have someone who's been there, someone who's not involved with the work they do so they can try out their ideas or the things they need to discuss,” she says. “I find that it's one of the most important things I do, the mentoring or coaching of young people coming into the profession. I find that very rewarding. It's great to have young people come up with ideas and enthusiasm.”

When it comes to her management skills, Dr. Bourne says they weren't honed from academia or the corporate world. Rather, she contends it's her role as a working mother that has been an “absolute godsend” for teaching her how to multitask and deal with difficult relationships on a day-to-day basis.

Gina Montillet

GINA MONTILLET DOESN'T SEE GENDER AS LIMITING HER OPTIONS. Indeed, she considers it a secret weapon in managing global teams and implementing strategies across cultures. “Women tend to adhere to different rules of conduct than men,” says Ms. Montillet, director of the global project management office (PMO) at SAP Field Services, Paris, France. “[Women] rely on the power of influence rather than the power of authority to break ground in challenging situations. In a global position, to achieve the results you are looking for, you need to rely on a more collaborative approach when working with people with diverse cultures, business priorities and markets. Women are more willing to share both power and information to energize, motivate and secure commitment.” People skills have played a significant role in her career, in particular “the ability to listen and know when not to speak,” she says.

Ms. Montillet took on her current position in 2003, when SAP initiated its PMO, and has been involved throughout its implementation and growth. Her responsibilities include project management maturity assessments of SAP subsidiaries in more than 50 countries, project quality audits, the creation of a project management career track within SAP, and the alignment of the regional PMOs in Asia Pacific and Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), with the global PMO. She also is a founding charter member of the PMI's EMEA Corporate Networking Group, which will be formally launched this month.

Ms. Montillet says she has never encountered a negative situation based on her gender. She credits this experience in part to supportive executives.

Of women in the project management field, she says: “We are good at what we do, we strive hard, and [our male colleagues] are very open to us because they know we've worked hard to get where we are.”

In addition to her work at SAP, Ms. Montillet recently mentored a team of French high-school students entered in the For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology Lego League Competition. Using limited time, resources and information, students invented, designed and built a robot that performed a series of movements. “We're giving children an opportunity to be in a real business world context because they have to solve a problem with all the constraints we encounter ourselves,” she says. “The goal is that they become excited about science and technology, and above all to instill into them values, such as gracious professionalism, a sense of responsibility that comes with knowledge, and to honor the spirit of friendly competition.”

Christine Wang, PMP

WHEN CHRISTINE WANG WAS PROMOTED to director of the project management team at AT&T California, she was one of only three people with the Project Management Professional (PMP^®) credential in the western region of her company. Within two years, about 92 percent of project managers out of her team were certified—which proved to be a plus for the company.

“It's so important, because having a group of employees who all went through similar training gives us a really strong foundation,” she says. “As our customers become more sophisticated in the practice of project management and look for more PMP-certified project managers to lead projects, having the PMP certification will set us apart from the competition.”

“As our customers become more sophisticated in the practice of project management and look for more PMP-certified project managers to lead projects, having the PMP certification will set us apart from the competition.”

She started at AT&T, which was then Pacific Bell, in 1998 as an operator services manager. That experience, coupled with technical expertise she gained while working with products and technicians, prompted her transition in 2000 to project management. “At the time, the project management team was fairly new, so there weren't a whole lot of processes already established,” she says. “That was a big challenge, but because I knew the services so well from experience, I knew how to get the deliverables to the customer.”

Just a few months after Ms. Wang joined the project management team, she was promoted to area manager, which allowed her more autonomy to set processes. “I was able to work a lot more with my peers and my team to extend more standard procedures,” she says. “We created some standard templates, project plans, timelines, things like that. That was also when I became PMP-certified. I really tried to align what we do daily to what I've learned through PMP certification.”

After a brief stint in marketing, she took on her current role as director. Along with championing PMP certification, Ms. Wang also spearheaded the effort to create an online process guide based on principles from A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK^® Guide). “We never really had processes established,” she says. “It began with a document on how to manage a project in our world, using project management methods and processes. It became a huge document, so we decided to put it on the web.”

Ms. Wang plans to continue to forward project management within AT&T and support her team in obtaining their PMP credentials. “I think it is so important, not only for our company, but for the industry,” she says. “I've told my people over and over again, if the company is willing to sponsor you, this is a great thing to get under your belt. It helps raise the bar with what you do here, and the skills are very versatile. We have to explore different opportunities, and we have to continuously raise the bar.”

Sharon Hayes, PMP

AT ANY GIVEN TIME, the State of North Carolina's enterprise project management office (EPMO), Raleigh, N.C., USA, is charged with managing more than 60 projects valued at approximately $1 billion. Despite those numbers, the office didn't exist until just two years ago.

After five years of managing e-commerce projects within the state's IT services department, Sharon Hayes was tapped in 2004 to build and lead the newly formed EPMO, which would ultimately have oversight on all IT projects across more than 20 state agencies.

“The timing was definitely right,” Ms. Hayes says. “There was tremendous leadership support from the governor, the legislature, the CIO and a great staff to create the new office. It all came together.”

Nonetheless, implementing a new layer of management to support existing systems presented a challenge. “Change is hard,” she says. Ms. Hayes intentionally positioned the EPMO as a consultative office, rather than a management one. The key to garnering acceptance for her group, she says, was simple: “If you can listen … that's all people want—[for you] to just listen to what their needs are.”

To ensure professional diversity within the EPMO, Ms. Hayes tries to recruit staff members with varying backgrounds, she says. She also established—and currently chairs—an advisory group that meets every month to determine the direction of the office. Both actions have helped encourage inter-agency sharing of information and solutions to potential problems.

In addition to her work with the state, Ms. Hayes helped to create the public sector local interest group of the PMI North Carolina Chapter.

Ms. Hayes' team also offers a free biannual Project Management Professional (PMP^®) certification course open to all state government employees. Taught by EPMO staff members, the course boasts a 99 percent pass rate.

“We want to grow our project managers internally,” Ms. Hayes says. And because the state wants to retain those newly trained project managers, the EPMO is working to implement an annual survey and salary adjustment intended to keep the state's pay scale in line with the marketplace.

Madhu Fernando, PMP

IN 2002, MADHU FERNANDO LEFT HER JOB as a project manager at Ericsson in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, to bring project management to her home country of Sri Lanka. There was a huge interest in the topic, but not much training or support available, she says. “That's where I came in.”

She started working as an independent consultant and founded the Colombo Chapter of PMI. “Bringing PMI to Sri Lanka, that's something I always wanted to do,” Ms. Fernando says. “It was the best thing I've ever done.”

Since then, she has worked with organizations throughout Sri Lanka, helping them set up project management offices and implement project management processes. “It's like giving this country something new, [something] they always needed. I got experience in Australia. I worked around the world. I shared that experience with my people here,” she says. “Reflecting back, that gives me satisfaction.”

It can be tough overcoming companies' ingrained habits, though. “I change the whole organization, basically, the whole team from the CEO to people who are in supporting roles,” she says. “It's a big challenge.”

Bringing about that kind of shift requires perseverance and patience. “It's like a brainwashing process,” she says. “You have to change the way they think. You have to be very close to them. You have to talk to their hearts. You can't change things very fast. It takes time.”

Although she trained more than 400 individuals last year, Ms. Fernando has had to lighten her workload recently due to the birth of her son. She's still working part-time, though, and plans to increase her responsibilities as her child grows older.

For project management to succeed in Sri Lanka, project managers must work together to promote the profession and train more people, Ms. Fernando says. “We have a long way to go. We need Project Management Professional (PMP^®) holders in Sri Lanka to get together and take a more proactive role to help people.”

Ms. Fernando is trying to encourage that spirit of cooperation by promoting chapter activities. “If we can get more people, we can change this culture, and that's what I want,” she says. “I will be helping them.”

Susmita Gongulee Thomas

SUSMITA GONGULEE THOMAS HAS ABSOLUTELY NO FORMAL PROJECT MANAGEMENT EXPERIENCE, but the veteran diplomat has found her own way to advance the profession. Currently the Ambassador of India to the Republic of Chile, Ms. Gongulee Thomas actively promotes project management practices to the country's government and education officials.

Having served in Ivory Coast, Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, among other places, Ms. Gongulee Thomas has seen projects of every size and scope both succeed and fail. She first learned to appreciate the benefits of formal project management methodologies while observing the successful completion of projects in the United States and Canada. “Projects would get done on time and with no cost overruns,” Ms. Gongulee Thomas says. “I kept wondering why we continued to have problems in our country.” Her initial dismay eventually turned to resolve.

A seasoned diplomat who has held posts on every continent except Australia throughout the past 30 years, she strongly encourages developing countries to adopt and implement project management as part of their strategy for growth. “It is important for developing nations to maximize the utilization of the scarce resources that they have,” she says. “And practices like project management can help achieve this objective.”

That lesson applies to her home country of India, too. Ms. Gongulee Thomas supports an government initiative there to formally train all diplomats on project management principles and considers the field a critical component in the country's continued growth.

In her present position, she frequently consults with the Chilean education minister, and together they have successfully implemented project management programs at the University of Santo Tomas and the University of Desarrollo, both in Santiago. Ms. Gongulee Thomas also is working to introduce project management principles at the secondary-school level. “Having these skills is important for our children … it's just as important as learning a foreign language,” says Ms. Gongulee Thomas, who is the mother of two teenage children.

Her efforts to integrate project management into the Chilean framework—coupled with her success in strengthening the relations between the two countries—have not gone unnoticed. In November, the University of Santo Tomas will present her with an honorary doctoral degree in international relations.

Linda Zeelie, PMP

WHEN LINDA ZEELIE WAS WORKING AT BUSINESS SYSTEMS AND METRICS in Johannesburg, South Africa, a manager asked her the same question every January: “What are you going to learn this year?” She was initially put out by this question because she considered herself finished with education. “But looking back, I can't thank him enough,” Ms. Zeelie says. “The IT and project management industries are constantly evolving, and staying current requires constant, ongoing growth.”

Ms. Zeelie has participated in more than 60 classes, training programs, workshops and seminars and is a certified Quality Assurance International quality auditor. In 2006, the Australian Computer Society awarded her the grade of fellow for distinguished contributions to Australia's IT industry.

“The bottom line is that by continuing my learning and branching into other areas such as quality, I have been afforded work opportunities and advancement that I would otherwise not have had,” Ms. Zeelie says. “It's good for keeping the brain cells active, too.”

Having benefitted from a focus on education, she also makes the effort to spread the word on project management through education and training. “I love teaching and do it through universities, in-house at EDS, industry associations, schools, seminars and preaching in church,” she says.

Ms. Zeelie started in the industry as a junior programmer and worked her way up through the ranks. “Once I was formally into project management, I never looked back,” she says.

Since then, Ms. Zeelie has worked as a project manager for the South African Air Force; a development manager for Citibank in Singapore; and a consulting principal for DMR Consulting in Adelaide, South Australia. Currently a client delivery executive at technology services company EDS, she's jointly responsible for all processes that pertain to the delivery of a large infrastructure services contract to the South Australian Government.

Even with all of this experience, Ms. Zeelie feels she still has more to learn. She is currently working on her master's in professional computing from the University of South Australia. “I had been planning on it when I got pregnant with my daughter Robyn— now 13 years old,” Ms. Zeelie says. “But with work, a second child and moving to Australia, I just didn't get back to it. I decided this year that I did need to finish it, and preferably before my daughter started university.”

Jennifer Stapleton

TWENTY FIVE YEARS AGO, WHEN JENNIFER STAPLETON FIRST BECAME INVOLVED in project management, she had no idea that the field would grow into the accepted and essential business practice it has since become. She also didn't know the role she'd play in that growth.

“We were making things up as we went along,” she says. “At the same time, however, it was all very exciting. We were on the leading edge of all sorts of things.”

Ms. Stapleton and her colleagues were developing the early principles of rapid application development (RAD), an alternative to the traditional waterfall method of sequential development. She would later refine these principles as part of her pioneering efforts to create the dynamic systems development method (DSDM), a unified framework for the implementation of RAD systems. “DSDM turned the entire project management paradigm on its head,” she says. “It has absolutely changed the way people think about IT projects.”

Ms. Stapleton was working as a process consultant in Cambridge, U.K., for IT solutions provider Logica CMG in 1994 when she attended the first meeting of the group that would eventually become the not-for-profit DSDM Consortium. Ms. Stapleton became the group's first technical director, a pro bono position she would hold for 11 years. She also was the architect for most of the initial framework for DSDM and subsequently made refinements to the protocol that would become the industry standard. “DSDM is a holistic approach,” she says. “It was the first solution to the problems that all the agile methods are now addressing.”

Agile project management is all about social engineering, Ms. Stapleton says, and projects will invariably rise or fall on how well the people involved are communicating. “When projects fail, it is almost always due to some sort of human reason,” she says. “That's why agile methods are essentially people endeavors that enable teams to become more self-directing.”

A mother of two, Ms. Stapleton says it was a challenge to balance her work and her personal life. Flexible employers helped, allowing her to work from home as much as possible. “It was always important to me to find the employers that would let me be the person I wanted to be,” she says. “I know that's not always possible today, but women should try.”

For the past 10 years, Ms. Stapleton has been an independent consultant to blue-chip companies such as Oracle, UBS Investment Bank, Shell Oil and British Airways. She is also a fellow and a past vice president of the British Computer Society, Swindon, U.K., and is a registered consultant for a U.K. government-led initiative to promote the value of program management to companies throughout the United Kingdom.

E. LaVerne Johnson

E. LAVERNE JOHNSON WAS WORKING OUT OF A SINGLE CUBICLE when she founded International Institute for Learning (IIL)—and her mother was her first hire. Today, the New York, N.Y., USA-based training company has offices in 14 countries and more than 500 full-time employees and contract trainers.

Although the initial decision to start the company was nerve-wracking, Ms. Johnson is glad she made the move. “When you're creating and selling training, you're helping individuals, you're helping companies, you're helping communities, you're helping countries and eventually you're helping the world to be a better place to live—all through the simple process of enabling learning,” she says.

Over the years, Ms. Johnson has learned that trust is the most important component in business. “You build it by your actions. You build it by doing what you say you're going to do, and if you make a mistake, you go back and tell the customer that you made a mistake,” she says. “You never hide anything.”

Ms. Johnson takes that philosophy seriously. When IIL presented a proposal to General Motors for a large number of its workers to participate in a live, global satellite broadcast, an IIL employee mistakenly wrote the cost as $5,000 instead of $55,000. “I had to stand behind that and say, ‘We'll do it for $5,000,'” she says. “We needed to deliver on what we said we were going to do.”

As Ms. Johnson has built her company, she says she has never encountered difficulties because of her gender. Indeed, since she started IIL, the number of women in IIL classes has skyrocketed. “When I started IIL, most of our project management classes were 90 percent men, 10 percent women,” she says. “Wow, has that changed. Today some of our classes are 50–50. Women make excellent project managers, they come into it from a history of managing multiple priorities.”

Looking ahead, Ms. Johnson is trying to build interest in project management among high-school students and has created a scholarship in honor of Harold Kerzner, Ph.D., a senior executive director at IIL. The scholarships will be awarded to two New York City students this year, based on 500-word essays on the value of project management. “They're our future,” she says. “If we can get them thinking, planning and measuring risk—the components of managing projects, which almost everyone does every day—they will be much better candidates and professionals in the marketplace in the future.”

PHOTO BY NICK SOUZA

Kathleen Hedges

KATHLEEN HEDGES TAKES A CERTAIN PRIDE in converting project management skeptics into true believers. As corporate director of project management and controls at systems solutions and technical services company Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC), she not only must demonstrate project management's value to executives, but also to program engineers, “who want to go off and do research,” she says. “I enjoy seeing the light bulb go off as they really begin to understand it. The really exciting part is when you hear the stories afterward—they've used the principles, they begin to understand why they're important and next time they have a project, they start using project management themselves. It's usually those that are the most difficult to turn around that are often the strongest believers.”

“I enjoy seeing the light bulb go off as they really begin to understand it…. It's usually those that are the most difficult to turn around that are often the strongest believers.”

Her secret for success is a working knowledge of the technology involved. “The most important tactic is to understand the world from their perspective, then explain program value added,” she says. “Understand what program management and controls are adding [to the project], and try to slowly and carefully bring them into a project management discussion.”

Ms. Hedges' ability to influence people helped her efforts to establish a program management culture within SAIC. She had worked for the company in various roles for more than a decade when she joined the corporate ranks in 1993. At the time, project and program management operated on an ad hoc basis. “I [went] to a senior manager and said, ‘We really need to establish a formal program management organization within SAIC.' It was my vision to put it in place. We've developed a common approach for project management controls, established a career path and formed a community of practice.”

The initiatives are paying off. Customer satisfaction has increased, and executives and stakeholders have more insight into projects and processes, according to Ms. Hedges. Having an established program management career path also has created opportunities for employees to expand their skills and advance within the company.

In addition to her work with SAIC, Ms. Hedges established the professional development program at PMI's San Diego Chapter. She is also on the advisory board for the Master of Business Administration program at the University of California–San Diego, San Diego, Calif., USA.

Throughout her experience in project management, Ms. Hedges says gender has never been a limitation on her career development. “I think it's a fabulous career for women,” she says. “It requires both strategic and detail-oriented thinking. It's an untapped career, so many people don't understand or know about it. I see it as a very positive direction for a lot of women.”

Chioma Nnoli, PMP

IN NIGERIA, THE MAJORITY OF MANAGEMENT IS MALE—and that makes it difficult for women to climb the corporate ladder. “One of my past jobs involved directory services implementation for a bank in Nigeria,” says Chioma Nnoli. “The CIO, a male colleague, could not come to terms with the level of authority I was exercising on the job. He would not grant me access to the resources I needed when I needed them. But I still had to deliver on time, so I had to work for extended hours with little or no privacy. I think with the right combination of intellect and maturity, it can be overcome.”

Ms. Nnoli seems to have found that intellect and maturity.

When she joined Guaranty Trust Bank (GTBank) in Lagos, Nigeria, the country's banking industry was in the throes of change. Market shifts, such as new capital asset minimum requirements, sparked much merger and acquisition action. “In lieu of this, the bank embarked on a new retail strategy and initiated several projects geared toward strategically positioning it to actively compete in this new dispensation,” Ms. Nnoli says.

She soon realized the only way to successfully coordinate these projects was to set up a project management office (PMO) in the organization. Convincing her co-workers of the PMO's merits, however, turned out to be the most difficult part of her job. “The whole concept of an office that manages projects was new to most of my colleagues,” she says. “I spent my initial period at the bank creating PMO awareness and advertising why it was required for successful project management.”

GTBank's PMO was up and running in only three months. “There was an urgent need to establish a business link between the business owners and sponsors and the technology group,” she says. “Secondly, there was a need to coordinate the projects centrally to ensure effective communication management and timely execution.”

Since its implementation, GTBank's PMO has significantly improved the organization's project management activities within the technology sector. “There are now clear plans and rigorous monitoring to ensure timely and on-budget completion of projects,” Ms. Nnoli says. “Most importantly, the central management of projects has now created the transparency needed to allow for prioritization of projects to ensure optimal allocation of resources.”

Implementing the PMO was a prime example of what Ms. Nnoli says she finds interesting about the industry: “watching an intangible idea mature into something tangible.”

Lori Roland, PMP

THERE WAS NO FORMAL PROJECT MANAGEMENT OFFICE (PMO) at Gillette's oral care division when Lori Roland took a role as director of program management. She immediately went to work establishing the group, and her resulting team of 12 project managers in North America and Europe helped increase product speed to market by 47 percent.

The move helped to bring more than 130 products to market and dramatically increased the efficiency and reliability of the product development process while reducing costs. “We really had the pulse of the organization, and I encouraged my team to take a strategic, enterprise-wide approach,” Ms. Roland says. That strategy proved so valuable that Procter & Gamble retained the existing program management group when it bought Gillette.

Ms. Roland credits not only proper project management methodologies, but an ability to select and mentor the right people. “I don't have a cookie-cutter approach,” she says. “It's more about the people skills and leadership skills and linking the role of the project managers to the business strategy.”

To deliver on that philosophy, she regularly held development workshops for her management team. The result was a more cohesive and focused team that was well-suited for “managing change and strategically driving results within the business,” she says.

“As project managers, our key product is leadership,” Ms. Roland says, “although it's leadership through influence rather than leadership through authority or reporting relationship.”

To win over executives resistant to program management, she suggests focusing on ROI. “We're the function that's not functionally aligned,” Ms. Roland says, “but being able to demonstrate and communicate the value and results of program management will go a long way in winning support.”

Ms. Roland will be leaving Gillette in November to become vice president of program management for the over-the-counter pharmaceutical division of Novartis Consumer Health Inc., Parsippany, N.J., USA. “It's a very exciting opportunity,” she says, “which really capitalizes on my global program management experience.”

Joan Knutson, PMP

WHEN JOAN KNUTSON STARTED HER TRAINING CAREER at the American Management Association, she was the only woman in the project management branch. “They took a pool on not whether I would survive, but how long I would survive,” she says.

Ms. Knutson made sure nobody won that bet.

In 1976 she founded Project Mentors, a project management training and consulting firm that eventually grew into a $10 million business with a staff of about 75. As CEO and president, Ms. Knutson brought project management training to organizations such as AT&T, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Eli Lilly, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Indian Health Service and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation. “The difference the company made was by transforming a training event into a mentoring one focusing on project practitioners in groups as well as one-on-one,” Ms. Knutson says. “It's very important to mentor one-on-one, but if you can mentor 25 people at once, what a wonderful opportunity that is.”

For Ms. Knutson, the emphasis was on practical skills designed to help project managers in the trenches. “[The training] needed a model or a road map that people could relate to,” she says. “It needed to be very interactive. When you did a lecture, you had to texture it with a whole lot of different kinds of activities and work sessions. To add to that, it wasn't just about attending the class, but it was about how to take those skills and transfer them to the workplace.”

In addition to her consulting work, Ms. Knutson has written six books on project management and was once a PM Network columnist. She is also a frequent speaker at seminars and conferences. “When somebody comes up after a session and shakes your hand and says, ‘Boy, that really helped me,' or, ‘That's an insight I didn't have before,' that's what I'm most proud of,” she says.

Although she sold Project Mentors in 1999 and her speaking responsibilities are lighter these days, she still trains, presents speeches and participates in PMI's eSeminarsWorld and SeminarsWorld^®. She is also developing curricula and is a lead adjunct faculty member of the master's program in project management at the University of San Francisco, San Francisco, Calif., USA.

To meet the growing demand for leaders in the field, project management practitioners must continue to build their package of capabilities, she says.

Project management has “evolved into a very visible and very influential discipline within the business world today, in both the public sector and the private sector,” she says. “In the education I provide, I have the participant look at both the technical side of project management and also the human-behavior side. I try to have them not only look at the tactical issues within our discipline but also look at the strategic issues, the higher-level issues. It makes project managers stand a little taller.”

Renee Speitel

RENEE SPEITEL BEGAN HER MANUFACTURING CAREER IN THE AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY— where women were sparse and often overlooked. “In large manufacturing, women were not exactly accepted on the factory floor, so that was always a challenge,” she says. “Oftentimes I was dealing with very senior managers who came from an all-male work community, so it was a challenge to be acknowledged for my skills and capabilities.”

Over the years, she has learned that for women to be successful, they must remember three things. The first is to take the time to get your facts together and leave emotion out of it. The second is to be collaborative, “but be prepared to make the decision and make the decision quickly,” she says. The last is to be aware of your environment. “Be well-networked within your organization, both among your peers, among your management groups and within the people who work for you throughout the organization,” Ms. Speitel says. “Generally speaking, we women don't network as much as we could or should, and that has an impact on overall success.”

For the most part, sexism has become much less of an issue within the project management industry, she says, but admits it can still flare up in the international market, “in particular, in Asia Pacific or in countries where it is not customary to see women in managerial positions,” Ms. Speitel says.

Since 2002, she has worked for HP Services as vice president of the company's engagement program management office, where she has seen huge shifts in the way project management is viewed. “Project management is considered to be a profession in our industry, whereas when I started 25 years ago, anyone who was a technologist could be thrown in and manage a project,” Ms. Speitel says.

Her primary focus has been building an organizational culture centered on project management. She says companies must create “something that says project management is a valued and recognized part of the organization and building it up so that it is a core competency.”

Part of building that core competency at HP meant Ms. Speitel had to learn from those around her. “It is important to share information … both inside our own company as well as externally, to learn where the pitfalls are. I am a big fan of not reinventing the wheel, so if someone has done something that has worked well, try and emulate it, try and use their best practices moving forward,” Ms. Speitel says. “People don't have the luxury, resources or time to build something from scratch.”

Susan Hwee

SUSAN HWEE DEMANDS A LOT FROM HERSELF and her employees—and she's not afraid to tell them what she thinks. “I am quite candid and vocal with my views,” she says. “I have high expectations for myself and those around me, including the vendors and consultants. Hopefully we all help to raise the standards and the role of IT within the industry.”

As the executive vice president and global head of IT at United Overseas Bank Ltd. (UOB), Singapore, Ms. Hwee leads a worldwide team of more than 800 professionals. “My responsibilities include laying the strategic blueprint for an efficient and robust IT infrastructure for the group, both domestically and in its regional expansion, and the provision of IT services for all of our lines of business,” she says.

Ms. Hwee has served as CIO for several large banks throughout the past 16 years, setting a strong track record for implementing large-scale projects. This experience has taught her the virtues of having a team well-versed in project management. “Project management skills are essential for any professional discipline,” she says. “It is required as long as there are tasks to be planned, managed and controlled.”

Since joining UOB in 2001, Ms. Hwee has overseen two post-merger-and-acquisition IT integrations, including a deal with Singapore's fourth-largest bank, Overseas Union Bank. “The merger resulted in a 40 percent increase in our customer base and turned UOB into the second-largest domestic bank based on assets,” she says.

Following that merger, UOB has undergone rapid changes and is currently looking to expand. “[UOB's] vision is to build a premier regional bank in the Asia Pacific region,” she says.

As part of the expansion, Ms. Hwee is responsible for managing IT functions in various countries and facilitating the transfer of best practices. And this will require more than just technical competency. “We have to understand what drives the business before translating technology into a value-added solution for the business,” she says. “The process of building [and] designing technology with a business point of view to its commercial realization provides a sense of achievement.”

Vinuttha B. Mallikarjunaiah, PMP

WITHIN THREE MONTHS OF STARTING at Torry Harris Business Solutions, Vinuttha B. Mallikarjunaiah led an effort to boost her organization's maturity. Now she's out to increase the number of people who hold the Project Management Professional (PMP^®) credential at her company. As director of process excellence at the Bangalore, India-based company, she never misses an opportunity to talk up the credential to everyone from executives to human resources employees. “I make it a point to mention that the PMP [certification] is a good way to recognize people's potential to become better project managers,” Ms. Mallikarjunaiah says. She's also working on implementing some of the Organizational Project Management Maturity Model (OPM3^®) best practices.

Ms. Mallikarjunaiah's interest in management dates back to when she was supervising her high school's anniversary celebration. It wasn't until she made the full-time switch from engineering to quality control, however, that she was exposed to “end-to-end” project management and realized it was more than she presumed it to be. “I was always under the impression that people can be good managers if, and only if, they had good communication skills and leadership qualities,” she says. “I had the misconception that it was more of an art than a science. Luckily, I now believe I have a blend of both.”

Throughout her career, Ms. Mallikarjunaiah has been a member of several quality-control and assurance teams and views her role as an overseer of process adherence. “The quality team in any organization has visibility and reach, and is expected to influence and inspire the entire organization,” she says.

To get Torry Harris certified to the Software Engineering Institute's Capability Maturity Model Level 5, Ms. Mallikarjunaiah had to involve people from various departments, levels, domains and projects. “The most difficult challenge was to bring people together to understand the common goal and benefits of achieving that goal together,” she says.

It didn't help that Ms. Mallikarjunaiah was new to the company. “I was introduced to my team by my senior manager, and the team started looking at me as if I were an alien and I felt trapped,” she says. “But I took the challenge.” Building relationships and trust was an important first step in the project. “I met with the chiefs of each project and each department. I started engaging myself in discussion sessions during coffee and tea breaks, during lunch breaks, and whenever I got an opportunity I was discussing the benefits of building capability and maturity in the organization,” she says.

“The entire journey involved courage, coercion, cajoling and caring for the people who came from various backgrounds,” Ms. Mallikarjunaiah says.

Carol Wright, PMP

CAROL WRIGHT KNOWS A THING OR TWO about keeping executives interested in project management. As director of IBM's Project Management Center of Excellence, she continuously works to gain senior-level support by aligning projects with the company's overall strategy.

“To be influential in this role, I have had to be what I would call a collaborative leader,” she says. “I stay abreast of what is happening around me and how it affects our charter. I ensure that our actions and deliverables tie to the business' objectives and help to address the business issues at hand, both short-term as well as a systemic change.”

To secure executive buy-in, she keeps leaders informed of successes and completed objectives. “By setting an example and by using project management disciplines in delivering our own projects, others see the value of what we are doing and how they can also apply these concepts for their gain,” she says.

With a background in engineering, Ms. Wright joined IBM in 1978 as an associate programmer. At the time, she says, the field of personal computers was growing, and there was a strong need to integrate technology with people's capabilities. “Using many industrial engineering concepts, I applied project management disciplines, especially the organizational aspects, to the projects that I was assigned or managing,” she says.

Over the next 20 years, Ms. Wright worked her way up through the project management ranks. “As I developed as a project manager, I realized that what was really at issue was a consistent understanding and implementation of the basic organizational constructs of project management,” she says. “Given the speed and level of integration at which we wanted to deliver the projects, we needed to ensure that people were delivering consistently, and that there was a solid approach to how we organized work and teams across the organizational structure.”

Having helped improve project management at the organization's lower levels, Ms. Wright teamed up with a colleague to author a white paper recommending IBM start the Center of Excellence. They were charged with its creation in 1997, and she became director in 1998.

“I am most proud of the fact that during this transition [to a project-based enterprise], we have been able to demonstrate the value of the project management disciplines to not only the project management profession but to other professional areas that participate in project delivery,” Ms. Wright says. “I have moved project management beyond the realm of schedule, scope, and cost tracking and control to a true understanding of what applying project management discipline is about and how it can be applied to projects, programs and portfolio management.”

Michelle LaBrosse, PMP

MICHELLE LaBROSSE IS OUT TO BRING project management to the masses. “People tend to obfuscate what is a very simple activity,” she says. “Project management is both a profession and a day-to-day living task.”

This philosophy is the basis of Cheetah Learning, the Carson City, Nev., USA-based training firm Ms. LaBrosse founded in 2000. “People need a basic level of project management literacy, and if they have that, they are far more effective in their careers,” she says.

Increased awareness of project management also benefits the profession as a whole. “We need to raise the overall literacy rate of [project management] and as that happens, the profession will become more respected and more recognized as a profession,” she says.

Ms. LaBrosse began her career in project management working as an Air Force lieutenant and aero-space engineer. She started work on a doctorate in industrial engineering and became fascinated with how corporate culture and processes affect the reliability of products, but she never completed the degree. “I had a burgeoning business and two babies,” Ms. LaBrosse says. “I figured I could go get my [doctorate] later, but they'd only be babies once.”

The decision to pick family over school didn't diminish her interest in project management. “I started studying accelerated learning, and I put the pieces together in the late 1990s,” she says.

At the time, she was working as a research scientist at United Technologies, a systems engineering company in Hartford, Conn., USA. “We had 150 people in the research organization who considered themselves project managers and 150 ways of doing project management,” she says. “They basically were reinventing the way they worked every time.”

Ms. LaBrosse started exploring ways to couple accelerated learning with project management. “The goal was to teach in one day what other courses teach in five,” she says.

The systems she developed eventually led to the foundation of Cheetah Learning. At first she encountered difficulties raising funds because of her gender. “Investors don't embrace woman-run companies like they do a male-run business,” she says. “This is okay, though, as you learn how to create a business from sales and not investors, thereby creating a much more stable business.”

One of Ms. LaBrosse's main focuses is training to aid preparation for the Project Management Professional (PMP^®) exam. “I looked at how people were preparing for the PMP [credential],” she says. “With what I knew about accelerated learning, I said, ‘There are so many more effective ways that could really shorten their time.' A good project manager knows how to effectively use resources, and a major resource is their time.”

Ms. LaBrosse also incorporates lifestyle skills into the PMP certification training. “We teach them to put their brain in peak performance condition to make the most of their time,” she says. “That includes diet and exercise.” These techniques have resulted in a 96 percent exam pass rate.

For other women in project management, Ms. LaBrosse offers some advice: “Leverage your innate talents and benchmark on other successful women,” she says. “You don't need to act like a guy to be successful.”

Enid T. Vargas, PMP

BEFORE ENID T. VARGAS ACCEPTED THE POSITION of consulting vice president at Advanced Computer Technology (ACT) in 1996, she had one condition. “I explained that I had found PMI, and for me it's very important to see if we can apply that methodology in our operations,” she says. “I told them, ‘Without it, I don't want to work with you.'”

ACT agreed to implement project management according to PMI standards, and Ms. Vargas took the job. Shortly thereafter, she became the first person in Puerto Rico to earn the Project Management Professional (PMP^®) certification. Yet she still found herself having to promote the benefits of project management. Although she had secured the support of her new boss, who was interested in the profession, she had to convince the company's marketing department, which was skeptical about making the new focus attractive to clients. “It was not easy for me,” she says. “I had to sell and sell and sell [project management principles].”

Although her perseverance and proactive attitude helped, demonstrating bottom-line results proved to be the most effective way to influence people. “We started applying the methods and our customers loved the results,” she says.

Looking to further develop project management in Puerto Rico, Ms. Vargas searched for a PMI chapter or representative in the area and found none. “I couldn't believe it because we need so many tools, not only in projects in the IT environment, but for many other industries,” she says.

She approached PMI about starting a chapter and presented the idea to her company's board of directors. “The president was very excited about it because he knows the importance of project management for our company and also for Puerto Rico,” she says. “We presented a chapter charter and in 1998, a PMI chapter was chartered here. And after that, I only talked about project management.”

Under her guidance, ACT also developed a project management curriculum and became a Registered Education Provider (R.E.P.).

Ms. Vargas was president of the PMI San Juan, Puerto Rico Chapter from 1998 until 2004 and past president ex-officio until this year. She still gives presentations championing project management to organizations throughout the Caribbean and South America.

There are currently more than 250 PMP holders in Puerto Rico, and Ms. Vargas hopes the number will continue to grow. “I'm very proud of being part of that milestone here,” she says. “Many more people are aware of project management now, but we have so many things still to do. There are so many forums in which we can spread the word and speak about the importance of project management.”

Margareth Carneiro, PMP

WHEN MARGARETH CARNEIRO MOVED to Distrito Federal, Brazil, in 1996, she looked for a way to reach out to her project management peers. She'd been active in the PMI Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Chapter and knew it was a good way to make connections. So when she found no chapter in her new hometown, she decided to launch one. “I started with a few groups of people that I had relationships with. Distrito Federal is the capital of Brazil and deals with all kinds of federal government projects,” she says. “We worked hard in the beginning to get people interested.”

Ms. Carneiro served as the first president of Distrito Federal Chapter and remains part of its advisory group. Since those humble beginnings, the chapter has grown to 350 members and offers academic courses, seminars, congresses and monthly meetings. “The evolution of project management in Brazilian federal government agencies is amazing,” Ms. Carneiro says. “Year after year in local congresses, we have seen the successful cases of projects using project management methodologies, along with the development of training programs in the area and the establishment of project management offices in public agencies.”

PHOTO BY GREGG NEWTON

Now chair of the PMI Government Specific Interest Group (GovSIG), Ms. Carneiro says project management was a natural way for her career to advance. “I always say, ‘I did not choose project management, it chose me.' Even before I had this title, I had this role and responsibility,” she says. “When I began my career in 1983, I immediately started to coordinate groups and develop systems.” Four years later, Ms. Carneiro assumed the coordination of projects at Unisys, an IT consulting and services company, and later became an official project manager.

In 1999, Ms. Carneiro became one of the first people in Brazil to receive a Project Management Professional (PMP^®) certification. “It was important to become a model and inspiration to project managers in the Distrito Federal area,” she says. “We started to teach PMP classes in the Distrito Federal Chapter, to promote project management and to help others receive certification. As a professional, the PMP certification gave me credibility.”

As a volunteer, Ms. Carneiro has also worked on social and government projects. Last year, she was asked by a member of the Brazilian government to help plan a project of the Zero Hunger program, which works to fight the causes of poverty and starvation in Brazil. “The idea of the program is to provide food, but also promote a means of self-sustainability,” she says.

To ensure her professional life can coexist with her personal one, Ms. Carneiro now serves as executive director of her own consultancy, PMA Professional Management. “I have a passion for my work and PMI, and sometimes it is hard to balance,” she says. “My family complains when I pass the limit. To mitigate this, I started my own company in 2001, and I can make my own agenda. I have two vacations a year—no matter what happens.”

Vivian McDonald

WHEN IT COMES TO SECURING EXECUTIVE SUPPORT for project management, the secret to success is in the paper trail, according to Vivian McDonald, director of project services at ADP Time & Labor Management. “It's all about follow-up, document and follow-through,” she says. “Results will get you the respect you need.”

Ms. McDonald quantifies and tracks the success of her group on a project-to-project basis. “Each one needs to be successful on its own for us to have to done our job properly,” she says.

In her previous post of resource director, Ms. McDonald handled more than 100 projects a year with a team of more than 125. That experience provided her with a firm grasp of the intricacies of project management. It also gave her an edge when ADP was looking for a director for the new project services team. In her interview with the general manager, she likened the need for project management within ADP to the need for a “junk drawer in the kitchen. … It's all the things nobody wants to take care of but are important.” The manager bought into the philosophy, and she won the job.

Ms. McDonald first embraced project management methodologies 15 years ago while working as the manager of field operations for HHB Systems, a software development company in Mahwah, N.J., USA. “I kept finding myself implementing the same application over and over again at different client sites,” she says. After navigating the myriad pitfalls of an unsystematic approach, Ms. McDonald started to “map out the basics” to streamline projects. Although the systems were rudimentary at first, she nonetheless recognized the benefits of formal project management. “It just made sense,” she says.

After taking her talents to ADP, Ms. McDonald spent seven years working in the implementation department, driving revenue for the fastest-growing business unit in the region. With eight people currently on her staff, Ms. McDonald says she views the project services team as an internal consulting office. “We're here to make everyone's life easier,” she says. “We're breaking down the roles between departments and enabling them to do their jobs better.”

Janice Thomas, Ph.D.

JANICE THOMAS IS A FIRM BELIEVER that project management practice and theory aren't mutually exclusive—but she knows not everyone shares her views. “When I was taking my training, I was seen as a consultant. I was way too practical [for academia],” she says. “When I work today with a practitioner audience, sometimes people think I'm way too academic.”

Dr. Thomas is currently the Calgary, Alberta, Canada-based program director of the online executive MBA in project management program at Athabasca University. When she was developing the program seven years ago, Dr. Thomas knew of no other course designed for seasoned project managers—and she wanted to change that. “A lot of project management education in the past was aimed at delivering Project Management Professional (PMP^®) examination preparation and getting the basics out there,” she says. “Very little of it was for the experienced practitioner. The program I developed was aimed at people who wanted to go beyond the fundamental level.”

Dr. Thomas began her career in IT and became a consultant after obtaining her Master of Business Administration. After working at Andersen Consulting, she started to study why projects repeatedly failed. “The way they taught project management was, ‘Just do it right, and you'll come in on budget and on time,'” she says. “I couldn't do it, and I couldn't see anyone else doing it either. Nobody seemed to meet the ideal outcomes that project management training was promoting.”

Dr. Thomas started reading books and taking courses in search of a solution. In 1992, after 12 years of working in IT, she went back to get her doctorate in organizational analysis. “When I started my [doctorate], I really thought that the information was in the ivory towers and it just wasn't getting to the people who needed it,” she says. “I thought my job would be finding the information and getting it to people. But what I found was, the information didn't exist in the ivory towers. There were bits and pieces, but spread all over different fields. Nobody talked to each other. People did their own research, they didn't come together.”

So Dr. Thomas started combining disciplines and theories, though always with an eye to their practical application in the field. This tactic didn't always go over well in academia—one professor told her she would never be anything but a consultant.

Currently, Dr. Thomas is co-lead of the $2.5 million research project, “Understanding the Value of Implementing Project Management.” Sponsored in part by PMI, the study will span three years and is expected to demonstrate organizations' ROI from project management. In addition to the research project and her teaching at Athabasca, Dr. Thomas frequently speaks to global organizations. A deeper understanding of academic theory benefits the profession, she says, because it helps project managers make better decisions.

“Ultimately, what I'm interested in is making life better for project managers and teams within organizations, and reducing waste,” she says. “In project management, we have an awful lot of people presenting themselves as gurus and making flashy presentations. I want people to be critical consumers. If they have been working in project management for a while and they have some experience, they have to apply it to see if what people are telling them makes sense.”