PM-Mastery

From Chalkboards to Computer Screens: A Transformation Tale with Elizabeth Grace

• Walt Sparling • Season 1 • Episode 39

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In This Episode:

Ever thought about making a major career shift but are uncertain about what lies ahead? Join us on a journey as we sit down with Elizabeth Grace, a former educator turned tech enthusiast, now ardently crafting her path in project management. Elizabeth brings to light her transformative journey from the realm of education to the dynamic world of tech, driven by her deep-seated desire for a balanced work-life harmony. She lays bare her aspirations and navigations within tech, ed tech, and healthcare industries, giving us a peek into the robust 'why' that fueled her transition into project management.

We also crack open the complexities of communication challenges inherent in project management with Elizabeth, and how she deftly maneuvered them in her past role. Listen as she uncovers the tactics she employed for team management and the vital tools she found indispensable. The conversation takes a fascinating turn as we explore the promising opportunities available for educators keen on project management. We shine a spotlight on the plethora of transferrable skills – customer service, conflict resolution, and account management to name a few, that educators can leverage. Whether you're contemplating a career switch to project management or hungering to enhance your own skills, this episode is a treasure trove of insights. 

Let Elizabeth's story fuel your own journey's inspiration.

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Intro:

Welcome to the PM Mastery podcast. This podcast is all about helping you master your project management skills by sharing tips, tricks, tools and training to get you to the next level, while sharing the stories of other project managers on their journey in project management. Now here's your host, Walt Sparling.

Walt:

Welcome everybody to the current edition of PM Mastery. Today I have Elizabeth Grace, who recently served in a PM-centric role, was laid off and is now looking for a new adventure. Welcome to the show.

Elizabeth:

Hi, I'm glad to be here, thanks.

Walt:

Glad to have you on, so why don't we start out by finding out a little bit about who you are personally?

Elizabeth:

So that's kind of a hard question, because I'm actually very many things I'm a wife, I'm a mom, advocate, leader, friends, and there's just a lot more to that. But eight months ago I did transition from education into tech as a client strategy coordinator. I've explored and learned a ton of new skills and met several amazing people. Just unfortunately, I have been laid off recently and I am pursuing my passion in project management. This just means that I'm currently pursuing my next grand adventure, so it's pretty exciting.

Walt:

Good deal. Well, I'm glad to have you on the show and normally I would say what do you do for your job? But maybe you can tell us what you did.

Elizabeth:

Hey, I can. So as a client strategy coordinator, I supported a team of five account managers. I helped coordinate several projects. I was in charge. It was kind of one of those where it's like all hands on deck, so I had several responsibilities. I was also in charge of coding out new workstation products, coordinating different meetings and communicating all the time with different leadership members and clients and different people in charge of several accounts. Just it was kind of all around a large amount of responsibilities that I had, but a lot of it was PM centered. So I feel like it has really, really prepared me for my next role, to be a project manager.

Walt:

And so to get there, what are, what are you envision? Do you have like a specific role that you'd like to do, or do you just want to kind of get in more of the PM circles and see what you can learn?

Elizabeth:

That's a really great question. I really am looking at either project coordinator or project management roles. It's not necessarily so much as a specific title I'm after as much as like specific industries. So I'm more interested in, you know, staying in the tech field that have grown quite a passion for it. I'm also interested in ed tech as well as healthcare. So there's just several routes that I envision it could go. So I'm super excited about the possible prospects. My ideal position would be in tech but, you know, maybe life has a different route for me.

Walt:

Well, you, I'm going to say you, probably have opportunities to do all of that.

Elizabeth:

I think so, and I think I'm going to be a badass at every single one.

Walt:

Okay, good deal. So why do you want to do this? What's your why?

Elizabeth:

That is a fantastic question and, honestly, it's just because I have grown such a passion for it. So my background is in education. I've done lots of teaching. I've coordinated several projects in education anywhere from like integrating new curriculum into a school as far as coming up with new data analysis systems and new database management and so I always had a passion for being able to implement those types of projects, working with all the people, getting everyone coordinated. I just kind of felt like it was my jam, like I was good at it and I don't know, it got to the point where I needed more work-life balance One day when my youngest son came up to me crying into the living room because as an educator I worked all hours, all the time and I definitely can become a workaholic, especially if I'm stressed and have too much going on.

Elizabeth:

So it was my workaholic base and my young one came in and was just like hey, mom, you should quit your job. And he was just tears, crocodile tears, come down. And I'm over here like, oh, what now? And this is a second grade, or, mind you, at the time he was in second grade and I'm like what now? And he's just like mom, you need to quit your job. You never spend time with us, you don't see us anymore. You're here, but you're not here, and I was just like he's in second grade. He doesn't know what he's talking about. So I continued working and put him to bed, continued working a little bit more, and then I went to sleep, or I went to bed. As I tried to fall asleep, though, those words kept hitting me really, really hard. It was just one of those things where I was like you know what this little bugger is? Right, I am. All I do is work. I don't ever spend time with my family. So that was the start of a journey of determining what my new priorities should be and making that a reality. So that was in February of 2022.

Elizabeth:

And so in June, I left. So last June I left education, and then from there, I was like okay, what on earth am I gonna do now? Coming from education, you don't really know that there's anything else out there. Whenever you go into education, you plan to live, breathe and die there, because there's nothing else. That's your plan, that is your life. And well, unfortunately for me, it was not, and so it's just like huh, what am I gonna do? Well, I started following several amazing theaters. Logan Langen was one of the first ones I connected with Kristen Adonisio, although it took, it was a little bit later before we actually developed the awesome friendship that we have now John Connolly. So I started following them and I was like huh, what is this whole project management business? And as I started reviewing more of their content, I'm like wait a second that was my jam in education.

Elizabeth:

That was what I was good at, that's what I loved and that's me finding my newfound I wouldn't even be newfound, it's just my newfound knowledge that I have a passion for project management. So it's been what I've been pursuing ever since, and so my first role was not actually like titled a project manager role. I kind of took Logan's advice. Logan is a very big proponent of saying get the job before the job. So I was like, huh, okay, what could that look like? Well, so I started looking into different industries that might be free stuff out and wanna get into, and tech was just something I've always been interested in.

Elizabeth:

I love dabbling in computers and learning how different things integrate together and work. I was just like, huh, so let's just see if there's any. You know companies hiring around my area in the tech industry Concept technology was one, and so I interviewed there and I got the position and it was a fantastic way for me to really get a good handle on what you know IT is kind of what goes into it, how it kind of integrates with every other profession out there. It's like once you're in tech, you can kind of go anywhere. So that was something I just absolutely loved about it and you know I kept growing and learning and you know, unfortunately I was laid off but I feel like that has set the groundwork for me to really really be successful in whatever next project coordinator or project management role I get.

Walt:

Now you got this passion for project management, you started following some content creators. Obviously, you've mentioned some really good ones, some of those I've actually interviewed on the podcast here. How did you, and how do you continue to do your learning?

Elizabeth:

That is also a great question. So I do continue to follow those amazing creators. I read several newsletters that I get from my local PMI chapter. I just kind of bit the bullet and decided that I wanted to go ahead and join, and it has actually been quite helpful. I've even been to a couple of meetings and I've met some fabulous connections, even in my area. On top of that, I am still studying.

Elizabeth:

I received, you know, I obtained my CAPM last November and I was just like wait a minute. As I started doing my research. I'm like I've got enough experience for the PMP, I'm gonna go for that. So a lot in my research, as I was looking for different positions and just kind of looking around, because even while I had my last role, I still had the long range goal of becoming a project manager with the actual title and I'm just like, okay, so a lot of these roles are looking for a PMP. I just wanted to make sure that I was still gonna be considered a candidate for some of those roles, because I know I could do it and if a PMP certification is the only thing that was gonna make me not a candidate, I wanted to at least have that opportunity. So I decided I'm gonna go ahead and shoot for my PMP at the end of the year.

Walt:

Well, I just finished interviewing and I haven't posted yet. It's probably going to be posted today, so probably two weeks. Melissa Chapman yeah, and she's a former educator and she talked all about her struggles of getting the PMP and convincing them that she was qualified. So that's a great interview That'll be coming up in a couple of weeks. That's definitely one I would listen to.

Elizabeth:

Her and I are in each other's comments all the time. We're over here like, oh, PMP, oh PMP. So I plan on reaching out to her, and Christina D'Angio has also been gracious enough to be like hey, because she also has an educator background. And then she's like, hey, you know, I'd be happy to help out as well. So I haven't actually filled out the application yet, but it's coming.

Walt:

Well, you know, different people do different approaches. I think when I talked with Melissa and I've talked with some others they filled it out and submitted it and then, when they got audited, they went to the companies and said, hey, you're going to have to verify all this. I was almost paranoid. So I filled out the application and I did it under version five, which the application was different. I sat down on the spreadsheet, did all my history, did all my projects, description of what I did on each one, how many hours I did into each different I can't even remember what they were called now, but the different aspects of, because I know that new one doesn't do this, they don't ask the same things, but you had to have so many hours in each area and did all that out. Then I went to the two companies that I had the most experience with, went to them, went to the owner, said, listen, I'm going to turn this in.

Walt:

If I get audited, they're going to call you or contact you and you're going to have to verify all this. Yeah, well, drop it off, let me look at it and I'll see. If I see anything odd, I'll let you know. So he looked at it and both of them are like no, we're fine and I didn't get audited, so that was great. Different people approach it differently. It's the application process, for some is harder than the test. It's just documenting everything. I think it's gotten easier, but it's still. The whole PMP process, from start to finish, is a project in itself.

Elizabeth:

Yeah, that's what I heard. That's what I said. By the end of the year, given myself a few months, and all the people, even the ones that are sad.

Walt:

Oh man, I smoked it, I got. Was it above target in all my areas? Would you want to take the test again? Hell, no, no, I'm going to get my PDUs and be done with this.

Elizabeth:

Yeah.

Walt:

Yeah, it was a struggle and you have to have all those stacks of papers and notebooks and cue cards and index cards and I'm pulling them back out. Well, the test, the material is very similar, yes, so that's a good test run. I have a PM that got her CAPM, then got her PMP and her Scrum Master and did this during COVID, so, and she's a rock star, so glad to have her.

Walt:

That's awesome. All right Challenges. Now, we know you have a challenge right now, but do you want to talk through that or do you have another challenge that you'd like to maybe talk about?

Elizabeth:

Well, you know, I can talk about my current one and maybe a challenge that I faced in my last role with that.

Walt:

Perfect.

Elizabeth:

Perfect. So you know, as we've kind of said before my most recent challenges, I've been laid off and you can always look at that one of two ways. You can either look at it in a very positive light and hurrah, this is my next adventure, or you can be very negative. Well, I'm not a negative person and in my experience, nothing good ever comes from being negative. So I chose to be positive and so I'm just like all right, let's go, let's see what else is out there. It's just time for the next chapter, and so that's kind of what I'm doing now.

Elizabeth:

So, you know, obviously, traditional job seeker type thing, you know, you're networking, you're sending out applications, all that jazz. Now, as far as you know, in my last role there were a couple of challenges that I would face, but at times it could be really challenging to kind of get all team members on the same page. If we were, you know, working on a certain project. I can remember we were working on trying to roll out a new security awareness training, and sometimes it could be a little bit difficult to get everyone on the same page because everybody wants different things or need different things at different times, and so it was just, you know, making sure to have really good communication, making sure that everyone was updated on all aspects that was going on, keeping everyone in the loop, and so that would be. That was kind of how I remediated that one, so just making sure that I was available if they had any questions or any concerns and just getting those answers for them.

Walt:

Yeah, communication is key. It's one of the major skill sets for a PNM. All right, I know we talked about this a little bit earlier, but do you have any favorite tools?

Elizabeth:

I do. I have tried out several. I've tried out Asana, I've tried out Jira, I've looked at Monday. Well, I was just kind of my favorite one to just pick up and go. You can use it with any, any type of project. I mean, you can use it for your work, which I did. I used it to help me keep up with tasks in my last role, but you can also use it for any everyday projects you have. Or if you're planning a long trip, you know, to kind of help you.

Elizabeth:

What are the steps that you need to do? Where are you going? Have you done them in the correct order? And it's you can set it up very similar to a Kanban board and it's just, it's super easy. It's like you've got to do in progress and done as far as like your column titles, and you just move your little steps. A cop. It's great. I like how customizable it is. It's very petty. That's part of why I also love it. You can make it very visually appealing and I love colors and happy things. So little bit of sparkle. So chelo, it is for now okay, I Hadn't heard.

Walt:

I think I brought that one up. I used to use it a lot in earlier years and it was. It was tough to transition out of it, but it's, it's tried and true. It's been around a long time and I, it's true, it can be pretty not that I ever need my pretty, but you know Secretly that you love pretty things and that you probably did just a little bit anyway, that silence is confirmation.

Walt:

Let's see, I Want to. I don't want to jump right to the, to the big question. As a former educator, and now Seeking and and already working a little bit in the role and you got your CPM and you've talked to a lot of educators who have made the transition. What do you think are some of the key skills that educators have that can transition them and to help transition into project management?

Elizabeth:

Almost every single skill that an educator has can be transferable. Educators do not realize that on a Like, on the daily, they are managing projects. It could be implementing a new curriculum, it could be a, a new lesson that they had to come up with and actually implement, or like a new set of lessons. They're like trying to get student scores to race from here to here within a certain amount of time. All of this and all the stuff that you have to do in between, all of that as a project, and then, even more so, special educators. So I actually come from a background in special education, so I worked heavily with students with reading and math disabilities and writing disabilities and and let me tell you, they have. Depending on which state you're from, it's called something slightly different, but it's an individualized education plan or program. So IEP and Every single one of those is a project. You have to work with a team of stakeholders. Stakeholders can include the parent principles, the students. It can include Any educators that they work with, any outside providers. All of those are stakeholders that you have to coordinate and get together To for the betterment of this child. You have to create goals for this student, for them to be able to improve in many, many areas.

Elizabeth:

A lot of times it's academically and behaviorally and socially. So you're hitting so many things and it's just crazy to me that I never, never even thought of it that way. It was just something I did every day. But most special educators have a caseload of between 20 and 30. In my last School that I was part of, I had 50 and I'm dressed over here like, wow, I did a damn good job first, but secondly, I managed so many projects. So it's just, it's just interesting that you know educators have so many skills. They have good communication skills, they have good customer service Um, account management is even part of that. Working with stakeholders, conflicts, negotiation all of the things educators have.

Walt:

Detail oriented documentation organization. And to me that the the favorite one I like is that they're used to dealing with children. So in our projects sometimes we feel like we're dealing with Children at times like hurting a bunch of cats. Yes.

Elizabeth:

Yeah, there's some great cups out there on.

Walt:

On those kind of things like right, it's just like riding a bike. Yeah the bike's on fire and you're in hell.

Elizabeth:

Yeah, kind of like that. Yeah, but you know what, you can pedal that bike just quickly enough and you'll stay right out of the heli.

Walt:

And I told you earlier. Like you know, sometimes people talk about their day was like a dumpster fire and I had. Yesterday was Monday and while I was at lunch I got a call that there was a dumpster fire on our construction site and I had to get back to that A literal dumpster fire. Yeah, so it happens.

Elizabeth:

Oh, in my previous workplace there were a couple of days that you know, a couple of days when my friends would come to me and say, hey, it's a dumpster fire at work today. You know, it's all hands on deck. I'm like, okay, cool, we're going to put them out. But then you said that to me earlier and I just burst it out laughing because you literally meant a dumpster was on fire. It was hilarious.

Walt:

It was. It was crazy. Ah, okay, Favorite. Did you know what do you?

Elizabeth:

got? Oh, okay, so this is probably my favorite question that you asked. Did you guys know that anyone is capable of being a project manager? Literally anyone. You can come from almost any backgrounds and be a project manager. There are so many skills that are transferable from almost any industry and they need project managers in almost every industry. Whatever your passion is, you can go for it in project management. You don't have to know everything about that specific industry if you're trying to transition, and you don't have to go and get a ton of certifications, because it can be based a lot on experience. But there are tons of transferable skills that you probably already have in your current role. And, of course, if you need any help or have any questions, don't hesitate to find me on LinkedIn and send me a DM. Or Walt, because Walt's a pretty often dude or any of the previous people I've mentioned, like Jeremiah Hammond or John Connolly, logan Langen, kristen Adonisio all of them are fantastic.

Walt:

Indeed they are, and true, there is nearly every industry that I can think of there's some form of project management role. Some have dedicated departments for it. If you know and you have some, there are some skill sets that would be good to have, like communication and organization and detail orientation, but if you're willing to go forward and learn what you're missing, there's a huge gap out there and need for project managers. People have brought that up over and over again.

Elizabeth:

And it's just funding to grow. There's thousands of jobs that are supposed to be opening up in the next several years.

Walt:

Millions. From what I understand, and Kaylin McGuire was on here a couple of weeks ago and one of the things she does independent consulting in project management and she actually was talking about how many of opportunities there are for freelancers that are project management consultants or freelancers Lots of work out there. I think there was over 120,000 opportunities.

Elizabeth:

Nice. That is something even I've been considering just looking at for fun and maybe even a side hustle, so it's definitely something. There's a lot of nonprofits out there that, if anybody is just needing to get that experience for experience and have that project manager title, lots of nonprofits out there are looking for people to catch up.

Walt:

That's a great. That has come up multiple times as well, and you mentioned it earlier. You don't need a certification. Certification might help you with some knowledge gaps. It might give you a feel because, if you're thinking about it, if you don't have a lot of people to lean on, you probably should pick up some books. John Connelly's book, the was it the unready?

Elizabeth:

project management yes.

Walt:

And there's a couple others out there where there are people that are working as project managers, that don't even have the title but they're doing the work, or they have the title but they came from marketing or administration and they were just thrust into this new role, or they were designer and they grew from being just a designer to it Not that that's bad, but to a project manager designer where they maybe manage the design that's got handed out to the designers. There's lots of opportunities for project management.

Elizabeth:

There really are. And one of the most common questions I get from transitioning educators because, especially so for a little while, I got a little bit less active just because life was busy, work was busy, all the things were busy, and so I was only posting a couple of times a week and I was only able to respond to all messages maybe once every four or five days. I am posting a lot more and I'm on a lot more right now, obviously, but the most common question I think I get right now is they see that cap on behind my name and they go do you think I need to have the CAPM or the cap on certification to get a project management job? I've really been considering it and I'm like so the honest answer is no, you don't have to have it.

Elizabeth:

The reason I got it was because I am a person that has to have deadlines in order to make myself learn things, and so I needed to have a reason to go and learn all the terminology and all the processes, because even if you've been doing project management processes, it's still a hefty haul to try and learn all of the terminology, all the processes and kind of what everything called, and that's kind of why I did it. It's because I needed something to hold me accountable to do all that learning. Has it helped me get any role? No, but it did make me have to learn all the terminology and processes and become a lot more comfortable doing PM speak.

Walt:

Yeah, I can tell you that I did project management for I think eight years before I went for my P&P. And I say eight years, that's when I had my first job where they called me a project no-transcript I had done. You know, once you do that, you realize I ran a company for a while. There's a lot of project management going on there and so I had done it for a long time, but officially eight years before I got my PMP. So I did pretty well in those eight years without a certification. And when I went to take my certification the first time I did not pass. It took me two tries. But, like you said, the knowledge that you get from taking the test or studying and I think really you got to take the test because if you're just going to read up on it, it's not like reading a book for pleasure. Those books are not something you sit down and go oh, we're a little hot cocoa, this is so cool, you do not?

Elizabeth:

read a book.

Walt:

There's a lot of memorization. There's a lot of terminology, they talk about processes and got which group are they in and which phase, and you got to remember all that. But when you're out there working, doing projects, I remember when I started working for a company that actually followed. They had the five phases. They followed the typical layout of a project's lifespan and you start with initiate to do your planning, do your design, do your builder construct or whatever that it execute into your monitoring and closing. When I got in there I was like, oh wow, I get this because I had studied it and tested for it. But every place I worked before that at being a project manager, we didn't do any of that. You just did those things and didn't know that they had a special name.

Elizabeth:

Exactly, and I did the same thing in education. I have no idea what all that was. I didn't know what those names were. They tell you hey, do this. And you're like, okay, and you make it happen. That's kind of what project managers do. They're like here, you need to do this project. Make it happen. It was like cool, Totally got you, I will. And then I come out and I realize that there's a whole new profession for it that I had didn't know existed and I'm like, okay, this will be it.

Walt:

Well, it's been a pleasure talking with you and I know in the past interviewed a couple of people and they were like just starting at two individuals that just started a new job like the week after the interview. So I did All right, we're going to do a one year follow up to see how it worked out, because both of them were actually Well, no one of them was transitioning from a completely in different industry. She was coming from the military and so that was a big deal for her to get her first PM job. The other one was just going from one industry to another, but still at the end. So I would like to put on the calendar or year out and see what's happened to Elizabeth in the last year.

Elizabeth:

Oh, that would be so exciting and let me tell you, if you follow me, you'll see all the adventures Coming along anyway. However, I would absolutely love that. I do enjoy just kind of I don't know, just future best, Where's future. Bet that, and how much has she grown since then? You know that's a cool thing.

Walt:

I will get an invite out after we hang up and thank you for coming on and thanks everyone for listening to the current episode of PMS Street.

Elizabeth:

Absolutely. Thanks, guys. Have a wonderful time and if you have questions, don't hesitate to reach out.

Intro:

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