Higher Education CoP: Finding your Path: An Exercise in Skillset Exploration

Abstract

This event will help participants review and reflect on their personal and professional skill sets. Upon completion of the workshop, participants will have a better understanding of their personal strengths and be able to compare them with the basic skills needed to enjoy and excel in the project management profession.

Participants will be separated into small discussion groups. Each individual will be asked to utilize the STAR method to share a real-life experience in which they were able to exercise problem-solving skills to resolve an issue. Group members, guided by a moderator, will then engage with the narrator to ask questions and evaluate the skills, passions, and values reflected in the narrator’s experience.

At the conclusion of the workshop, each participant will have an external assessment from other professionals regarding individual strengths, which can be used for career exploration or career advancement purposes.

Learning Objectives

Participants will

• Learn and practice the STAR interview methodology
• Assess their skills, passions, and values
• Compare their personal strength with the basic skills needed to enjoy the project management profession

Speakers

Jose Sanchez

Jose is a Project Manager Professional, engineer, and certified Professional Scheduler, a result-driven professional, enthusiastic about delivering innovative and safe solutions for the company and clients. Jose has participated in energy, oil and gas, and technology projects during his career in Italy, Canada, Nigeria, Argentina, Venezuela, and Colombia. Today, thanks to project management versatility, Jose has shifted his career from conventional hydrocarbon projects to the nuclear generation of energy and medical application. He is a project coordinator, planner, scheduler, and controls with 10+ years managing Primavera, Microsoft Project and @Risk, facilitating consensus between the client’s necessities and the technical insight and documenting it in a resourceful plan, schedule, and cost. Jose inspires, removes barriers and ensures transparency to develop a collaborative teamwork environment. He is a critical thinker, where the fundamental part of creativity rationalizes connecting requirements, analysis, strategy, principles, and techniques with solutions. He is an architect of energetic teams and professional relationships; his target is to collaborate and cooperate to construct homogeneous and efficient workgroups and partnerships.

Delisa Clay, PhD

Delisa Clay, PhD is a Senior Project Manager within Global Medical Affairs at Horizon Therapeutics and has over 8 years project management experience from pre-clinical to post-market products, including the CRO and Biopharma sectors. She earned her undergraduate degree in Biology at Virginia Commonwealth University where her research focused on Developmental Biology and Biomedical Engineering. She then went on to pursue a PhD at Duke University where she studied Developmental, Stem Cell, and Cell Biology. Delisa joined the Duke PMCoP in 2020 as a graduate student intern and worked on a small team to establish the DEVELPMNT (Developing Project Management Trainees) Program, a training program geared towards exposing trainees to project management as a career and skillset. She currently serves as the Assistant Director of the Duke PMCoP Mentorship Committee.