Empowered - Vol 10/2022 December 2022

Who are we?

A global network of individuals who believe that everyone has some unique skill. We just PowerUP! We consist of a group of passionate individuals (of all genders) who are positive, with make-it-happen and lead-by-example attitudes. A peer-to-peer network to support and PowerUP each other! Do I need to be an expert to be a part of this group? NO. We just need to be good enough. Good enough to own up to our limitations, be willing to respond to others, and be social and acceptable.

Leader's speak - Priya Patra

Dear Community members, It is that time of the year when we take time to reflect upon the good things we have… like our partnership with you.

We appreciate our relationship and hope that the holidays and the coming year will bring you happiness and success.

What a year it has been 2022. It has been a year of celebrations and achievements.

We started the year with a bang – our annual conference -Onwards and Upwards attended by 150+ attendees across 14 countries. We organized 10 events with speakers and participants from atleast 10 countries.

We celebrated our relationships, created new connections, and revived the old ones, namely with the PMI Buenos Aires, Argentina Chapter , PMI Slovenia, Ljubljana Chapter PMOXperience , IAPM International Association of Project Managers and Agile in Education USA(AiEUSA)

We converted our reel relationships to real ones. This April, I met Hanna I. -our then North America lead in New York and last week, I met many of our community members in Las Vegas. Cecilia Boggi – our Latin American lead, Lee R. Lambert Lambert– our mentor and advisor and Sandra (Sandy) H. – our member

I cannot, but think how grateful I am for these awesome moments in my life, and I wish I will meet each one of you sometime and somewhere.

To gratefulness, for long-lasting relationships of Powering each other up for 2023 and beyond!

Happy Holidays from everyone at the Women PowerUP network team. We hope your holidays will be filled with joy and laughter through the New Year.

 We will be back again next year!

From the Editor's desk - Anuj Jain

It is my pleasure to introduce the last newsletter of the year.

We start with Leader's speak - on celebrating relationships and achievements by Priya Patra

Enjoy the beautiful visual quote on celebrating small, big and in between moments by our visual thinker Fernanda Freytes Ramos

Be inspired by the quote of the month by Dian Yuanita Wulandari, CPM , and our dynamic member under spotlight Preeti Agarwal

A quick recap of our Nov month's event on sustainability and finally we close the year with book review of "The Xchange Effect" - stories from across continents cultures and countries. Read on for more

And here is a beautiful visual summary of what celebrations means to us as a community by Fernanda Freytes Ramos

Quote of the month -  Dian Yuanita Wulandari, CPM

"A balanced life is a starting point of sustainability."

Member Spotlight: -  Preeti Agarwal

How would you describe yourself in 1 word? Balanced

What is the most cherished moment of your career ( describe in 3 sentences ) ? What I cherish the most is my transformation as an individual. In all these years, I cherish the fact that I have gracefully evolved to be a Decisive and Accountable leader, an Innovative and Passionate trainer, a Supportive and Observant Mentor, a Dedicated and Focused employee, Creative and Caring Mom.

Your advice to the members of this community? Wake up women! Defend your worth, Grow your ambition and win the world.

Past Power Connect: 

Enable Leadership for Sustainability with Neeveditah PARIAG-MARAYE, Dian Yuanita Wulandari, Natalia Wiedemeyer

Session Moderators : Marjana Skubic/ Linda Ottamann 

How to make a more sustainable world and leave a better place for future generations? This is a question that many people are asking themselves these days - and that's a good thing. Sustainability is one of the so-called megatrends, which means that sustainability will accompany us in the coming decades. Sustainability, which consists of the three pillars of ecological, environmental, and social sustainability, influences many areas of our lives. On the one hand, it affects our private lives, but it also affects our professional lives.

 We discussed Corporate Sustainability, Social Sustainability and Environmental Sustainability. Watch the recording here

Here is a visual summary of the session by our talented graphic recorder Fernanda Freytes Ramos

Missed the event ? here is the recording

Upcoming Power Connect: 

Don't forget to subscribe, follow, connect with us, to stay updated on out latest news and events. Let us know what your wishes are in the new year 2023.

Special Feature : The Xchange Effect - by Dhammike Mendis, Priya Patra, Arief Prasetyo, Rocio De La Cuadra Vigil, Yudha Pratama and Aneta Wareszczak

The Xchange Effect is a phenomenon where diverse connections across continents, countries, and cultures lead to innovative solutions with a compounding effect, one diverse connection at a time.

March 2020 was a moment that few saw coming - practically at a turn of the calendar the world that we know of, was suddenly estranged. Everything that we learned about interactions and networking suddenly took on another dimension. And the world of the Project Management Institute's local chapters' models suddenly became inadequate.

As "social distancing" became the norm - face-to-face meetings, the staple of local PMI Chapters' network channels receded to the virtual world, the chapter member engagement become crucial. Almost every chapter is looking for ways to improve members' engagement.

Everywhere, except for a fledgling initiative coming from the PMI Chapter in Mumbai, India. The PMI Chapter Xchange is experiencing record growth in terms of members' engagement from all over the world.

In this book you learn:

• The genesis of the PMI Chapter Xchange
• How the journey started and how it evolved
• How the Power of the Xchange scale
• The Team and the Engagement Model
• The future of the Xchange

You can experience the experience here

About the authors:

Dhammike Mendis

Founder & CEO of Ceynocta ,Co-Founder & Director of Daytaintel

Executive Vice President /Chapter Secretary & Board Director at PMI Sri Lanka Chapter

 Dhammike is the CEO of the software product engineering Company, CEYNOCTA and co-founder of the data science company DAYTAINTEL. Leading multiple teams on global and local software product development while contributing the country’s target of US$ 5 billion exports in the ICT industry. A computer Engineer by profession turned into tech entrepreneur with 20+ years of experience. He Started volunteering with PMI Colombo Sri Lanka Chapter in 2010 which he actively continues to date. 

Priya Patra

India Leader Quality Engineering and Testing – Energy, Utilities and Chemicals, Capgemini

Vice President Outreach – PMI Mumbai chapter

Priya is a mother of two, Author, Blogger, Women Empower believer, Dreamer, Creator and a Futurist

An Agile Evangelist and a Program Manager spearheading the quality engineering – India team for Energy- Utilities and Chemicals sector

She Leads Agile Community of Practice within the organization of 700+ members, across 40 countries evangelizing Agile practices across all levels in the organization

She is speaker for national and international conferences on Digital, Agile and Project Management

Priya lives in Mumbai with her husband and two kids. In her spare time, she loves volunteering. She leads the Outreach portfolio for the PMI Mumbai chapter as Vice President – Outreach.

Since Jan 2020, she has been building a women community Women PowerUP Network – a virtual community of around 800 women across the globe. #BeingGoodEnougIsAmazing #WePowerUP

Arief Prasetyo

Senior Integration Project Manager, Schlumberger

Vice President Communications – PMI Indonesia

Arief has worked his 18-year career in 8 different countries in the oil and gas industry. Shortly after graduating from Diponegoro University, he started his early days as an oilfield engineer working in the deserts of Mexico to the cold Caspian Sea. He has taken on various management roles from service delivery, training, and operations management. He currently works as a Senior Integration Project Manager for Schlumberger in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, leading a multi-cultural and multi-disciplinary team to deliver oil wells to the customer.

 Arief co-leads a 4,000-member community in project and program management in the company, and he has taken on numerous volunteering work for PMI. He was involved in the revamp of PMI-RMP exam outline, and he currently serves as VP Communications for PMI Indonesia Chapter.

 Arief holds an MBA from Binus University, Indonesia. Originally from Semarang, Central Java, he enjoys running outdoors and sharing afternoon conversations with friends over a cup of coffee.

Rocio De La Cuadra Vigil

Economist, MBA. PMO, Portfolio Management, Innovation and Product Development.

 Rocio is a Senior Executive professional with experience in major transnational companies, leading transformation strategies in Product innovation within the entire product life cycle and adapting product development models.

At present, she is working in Yanbal International, as a PMO New Product Manager. She implemented new product development Stage-Gate agile model, through management with multidisciplinary and geographically dispersed project teams, deploying monitoring to achieve portfolio performance.

 One of the great aspects from Rocio is that she is a trainer of high performance and motivated teams.

 During 2015, she started her volunteer pathway with the Young Generations in many universities from Peru. She discovered his passion, sharing her knowledge. As a result, she is a professor at prestigious universities in Peru and speaker at national and international conferences.

Also, following the volunteering, she was involved in the Board of Directors of PMI Lima Peru Chapter, and she is the Past President 2021. This volunteer path getting possible to be a LIMC 2020 Alumni.

Yudha Pratama

Sr. Technical Program Manager - Agile Coach & President - Puget Sound PMI

Yudha Pratama is responsible for program management, tracking, maintaining, reporting and ensuring the timely delivery of committed initiatives and features from apps development, web development, data analytics, advertising, infrastructure, engineering and SRE team. He introduced and coordinated cadenced planning and agility workshops that resulted in improved quarterly delivery performance predictability of the digital organization from 63% to 94%. He introduced and coordinated agile community of practice. He is trained and certified software development manager (SDM), product manager, product owner, agile team members and leadership in scrum, Kanban, lean-agile and SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework).

Outside of Sinclair, he is a Lecturer in Portfolio, Program and Project Management at Northeastern University – Seattle campus teaching traditional project management courses as well as advanced agile courses.

In his spare time, he enjoys photography, traveling, hiking and working on his book project. He authored and published the book "Building Agile Team: One Parafable at a Time" - the book is a collection of popular parables, fables with an added twist agile principles with the goal of building a strong performing team. The book is available worldwide via Amazon.com. He is currently working on a second book "Scrum - a Beginner's Guide"

Aneta Wereszczak Aneta began her project management career as a Project Manager in 2013. Managing projects during the standard working hours was not enough for her and she joined the local PMI Poland Chapter community in 2017.As a PMI volunteer, she started with organizing visual thinking workshops, Women in Project Management events and multiple PMI seminars. The major milestone for Aneta was serving as a Project Manager of the conference "Psychology in Business & Project Management" that gathered more than 300 participants. In 2018, she received an award in the "Volunteer of the year" contest in the best team member category. She soon became marketing director for the PMI Wroclaw Branch and in 2020, was elected as the PMI Poland Board Member responsible for marketing. She currently also supports the PMI Chapter Xchange initiative and is fond of getting to know different cultures and perspectives. She lives in Wroclaw, Poland with her husband. They both enjoy hiking, playing board games and drinking Colombian coffee. She is the conqueror of the crown of the Polish mountains.

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