Program Manager

This week, Sarah Herrero from Bach Prep Tutors explains how autism makes her an effective tutor. We also talk about her journey to becoming self-employed and how she has become a successful entrepreneur.

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Erin loves her job as she manages her company’s look and feel. Her boss and coworker are autistic, too, so we get a good look at how different (and nice) that environment can be.

Tink re-imagines how we access support services. And she does it with flair and an army behind her! You can find her website for AUsome Supports here: ausomesupports.com.au and her Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/AUsomeSupports/

Marina McAdam tells us about the exciting life of a divorce coach and how she found herself doing it. She has a unique set of skills that make her great at it. She also teaches us about the importance of balance in life. You can find her at https://www.marinamcadam.com/ and her Facebook group is here.

We have a great time with Elise, who saves animals with numbers! We love it when our guests can mix their special interests and passions together at work.

Kim tells us about her journey to discovering what work works and what work doesn’t. And what it’s like spending 10 years in management at Microsoft.

Barb shares her excitement for chemistry with us. How she dealt with the sensory experience of a forensics lab and how she’s using her skills now.

We have a blast learning about Andrea’s job as a Project Manager and her journey to becoming one. She outlines some amazing accommodation requests and leaves us with some great advice. Transcript Today we are talking to Andrea. Andrea is an IT Project Manager. And we are looking forward to chatting with her about her job. Hi Andrea, welcome. 00:14 Hello. Good morning. How are you guys? 00:15 Good morning, we’re doing great. 00:17 Good. Awesome, I’m excited to be here. Virtually. 00:21 Thank you, us too yeah. Alright, so Andrea tell us what an IT project manager does and what kind of what a day looks like for you. 00:30 OK sure, so an IT project manager, kind of in the generic sense, would help all the different technical teams and the business teams get on the same page about what we’re trying to do, what the goals are, and then work with each person and group to figure out the tasks. And then the project manager will literally put them all in order and figure out what has to happen in a certain order. And then the important thing is to figure out the super critical things that can’t be late, or the whole project’s in danger, 01:06 OK. 01:06 so that’s that’s called the critical path. So 01:09 Oh 01:09 it’s basically organizing a whole bunch of people and helping them not be stressed about what we’re trying to get done, ’cause we you know, breaking it down into bite size pieces. 01:19 OK, so you take the stress so everybody else can 01:25 do their part, right? 01:27 It doesn’t stress me out though 01:29 No? 01:29 because I like making order out of chaos 01:33 Yes. 01:33 so. So I I love it and I and I like UM when people feel relieved because now everybody is on the same page, so they count on me to bring up difficult topics. And you know, force conversations and get us to get to a common understanding so people 01:54 Yeah. 01:54 will tell me things outside of the meeting. And then I’m the one that brings it up and makes us get to a solution so. 02:01 That’s interesting, I like that. That’s awesome. What kind of projects do you guys work on? 02:08 Oh gosh, uhm. Well, I would say that I’m a project management generalist, 02:15 OK. 02:15 so any widget I could manage a project, so anything from like building a house to, like moving all of those things. But for work lately we’ve done some pretty big things like, we did we had to replace 24,000 computers for the Windows 7 to 10 migration. 02:38 Oh wow. 02:40 And so, uhm. I’m a senior program manager. Is my official title, so it’s a little bit different than a regular project manager because I’ve been doing this for 20 years. I actually design a whole system of communication and process 02:57 i 02:57 flow so that project was originally estimated to take two years and then I got involved and I helped us figure out ways to get it done in less than a year. 03:08 Wow fabulous. 03:09 So it’s basically that big systems thinking and seeing way more data points than most people can see. 03:17 Yeah. 03:17 And then my brain organizes it and I figure out how to communicate it and we do it. So that’s one example. Also, did we moved to a new building so I didn’t manage the construction part, but I helped everybody figure out the people moving part. 03:33 OK. 03:33 So like it was consolidating...

We were wowed by the wisdom and wit of the wonderful Julian. He tells us about running his business and the autistic strengths that got him there.