Our senior pup, Hunter, improves a professional portrait

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🧭 Navigating this Page

Okay, so there’s a lot here. If there’s something specific you’d like to jump to, use the table of contents adjacent to this panel (to the right on desktop, and below on mobile).

If you’d like to consume it all chronologically, feel free to scroll down! ⬇️

Starting at the top, I first highlight some of my most influential references, including methodologies, frameworks, books, and tools I enjoy utilizing as a coach to give you an idea of how I like to operate. After that, I explain my top 5 CliftonStrengths in order to share insight into what makes me tick. Everything else is the stuff resumes are made of; my professional accomplishments, career history, education, and certifications.

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🧮 Influential References

Over the years, I’ve participated in countless corporate leadership trainings, soft skill bootcamps, and business bookclubs, and some were even worthwhile! 😂 Here are some of the most influential references that I strongly value and carry with me to this day:

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• Co-Active Coaching

  • This is my main coaching methodology which boils down to this: connection is the foundation for growth.
  • “Co-Active recognizes a fundamental truth: the answers you seek already exist within you, and within the space you hold between you and others. These growth opportunities emerge powerfully, not through isolated effort, but through authentic connection. Being Co-Active means holding every person as naturally creative, resourceful, and whole.”

• Situational Leadership II

  • This model radically changed the way I view human learning. “Good” leaders are ones who adapt their leadership styles to the individual they are supporting based on that individual’s task-specific competency level and their associated confidence in completing that task. “Bad” leaders - the micromanagers and seagulls of the world - are those who apply a one-size-fits-all mentality to leading regardless of the task-specific skill levels or confidence of those they are leading.

• CliftonStrengths StrengthsFinder

  • This is my favorite of the various online personality assessments. Instead of ambiguous labels that I believe encourage stereotyping like Myers Briggs, enneagrams, or DiSC, StrengthsFinder “is an online personality assessment tool developed by Gallup that identifies your natural talents, which are defined as naturally recurring patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving that can be productively applied.”

• Atomic Habits by James Clear

  • This book has given me language and systems that have enabled me to intentionally curate the habits and behaviors I’ve wanted to incorporate into my life.

• The Change Triangle by Hilary Jacobs Hendel

  • This tool has enabled me to regulate myself through emotional distress and back into my calm and connected self. It’s helped me unblock myself in both my personal life as well as my professional career.

Please note: I’m not compensated by any of these entities, and there are no referral links herein. The reason I’m sharing these influential references is purely for educational purposes, and to give insight into the tapestry of my personal philosophies.

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Suzie and her partner, Stephen, on a walk around Capitol Lake in Olympia, Washington

💪 My top 5 CliftonStrengths

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For detailed insight into what makes me tick, my top five CliftonStrengths are as follows:

1. Learner - I have a great desire to learn and want to continuously improve. The process of learning, rather than the outcome, excites me.
2. Strategic - I create alternative ways to proceed. Faced with any given scenario, I can quickly spot the relevant patterns and issues.
3. Relator - I enjoy close relationships with others. I find deep satisfaction in working hard with friends to achieve a goal.
4. Responsibility - I take psychological ownership of what I say I will do. I am committed to stable values such as honesty and loyalty.
5. Arranger - I can organize, but I also have a flexibility that complements this ability. I like to determine how all of the pieces and resources can be arranged for maximum productivity. </aside>

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📑 Accomplishments

Instead of compiling my experience chronologically which is the norm when it comes to resumes, I’ve organized my accomplishments into three buckets: People, Processes, and Technology.

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👤 People

• Hired, developed, and mentored a new Program Management Office (PMO) of 31 project managers, program managers, and portfolio leaders to manage the organization’s prioritized project work.
• Created level-specific interview panel processes for nine roles across three job families to ensure candidates received consistently positive interview experiences. Worked backwards to design the process for interview panel teams to identify and mitigate non-ideal candidates quickly to mitigate future regrettable attrition risks, resulting in zero new hire churn over two years under my leadership.
• Led leadership workshops for each of the four phases of group development (Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing), successfully mediating cross-functional teams through the Storming phase using Situation-Behavior-Impact (SBI) communication framework.
• Implemented several programs to increase executive and team interaction and support, including:
  • Virtual Gemba Walks for executives and senior leadership to understand line-level waste opportunities.
  • Coffee Chat mentorship for team members to get to know executives and senior leadership in a 1:1 format.
• Elevated six portfolio leaders into strategic roles to enable personal ownership of portfolio road maps.
• Authored and presented a ‘Creating a Culture of Accountability’ training to over 1,500 employees. </aside>

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🔁 Processes

• Partnered intimately with executive stakeholders and partner teams to understand their needs regarding a successful PMO.
• Blended industry best practices with company culture to meet customers' needs with scalable, tailored solutions.
• Initiated scalable PMO framework at the start of the PMO implementation, including:
  • Led kickstart workshops with executive teams to draw out organizational goals and key drivers in order to build a flexible, weighted prioritization schema for ranking and prioritizing project work with company goals.
  • Worked backwards from key stakeholder user stories to plan all deliverables, reporting back regularly on progress against each user story.
  • Collaborated with leadership to develop scope for projects, followed by project leadership through delivery.
  • Established dedicated processes and teams for the initial project request intake and scoping, business requirement review, project template(s) implementation for all project plans including risk management and asset allocation, prioritization, goal tracking, portfolio categorization, and project manager assignment recommendation based on current and projected workloads.
• Designed and managed Weekly Business Reviews (WBRs), Monthly Business Reviews (MBRs), and Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs) to enable inter-team awareness regarding critical project work for each portfolio.
• Implemented a lightweight continuous improvement incentive program, rewarding participants quarterly for top new idea submissions from across the organization. </aside>

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⚙️ Technology

• Championed early partnership with Business Intelligence to plan for project reporting operations.
• Built standard project status report templates to update relevant business stakeholders and senior leadership.
• Developed dashboards to measure impacts of goals, progress on initiatives, and returns on investment in order to ensure tactical efforts effectively support strategic visions.
• Provided recommendations to evolve processes and lead implementation of new tools and methodologies.
• Researched, selected, and deployed a Project Portfolio Management (PPM) tool to over 1,200 employees across 18 teams in a phased approach over nine months with 94% adoption rate. </aside>

🏢 Career History