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Athena Project Consulting is excited to showcase interviews with both emerging and seasoned project management professionals. By sharing their experiences and insights, they are giving back to our community and helping to inspire and inform others in the field. Would you like to be interviewed and included as a featured project manager? Please complete our contact form expressing your interest.
Aldean Jakeman - PMP, CCMP, PSMI, ACC, ITILv4
Describe how you started in project management
My start in project management involved an evolution of job titles from facilities admin. to process management to change management and finally to project management. My earliest projects were office and telecommunications projects, an internal controls over financial reporting project and then leading process improvement initiatives and change initiatives. Eventually I was assigned the formal title of "project manager" and attained PRINCE2 and PMP credentials leveraging previous experience leading projects as experience hours.
What has been a project accomplishment or a challenge that you have overcome that you feel most proud of?
Throughout my career, I have often had people question my competence, but did not give up. When I got my BPMN certification, others said that I was an admin support rather than a real process professional or business analyst. When I got my CCMP from ACMP, people at work spoke of me as having a major in process management and a minor in change management. Getting my CCMP and my ACC proved to me and others that I wasn't just a process geek. Then, getting my PMP proved that I wasn't just an OCM resource to projects. With every credential, I proved my own competence and qualifications time and again whenever it became yet another time to prove it again.
What is one fun fact about you?
I once accidentally attended a Leon's Furniture job interview. My work team kept moving the location of their team meeting at a local hotel. I showed up early and thought I was talking to a hired facilitator (was wondering why he asked so many questions about furniture). It turned out to be an HR rep who was booking the hotel conference room for Leon's Furniture hiring interviews and I was in the wrong room. He was very impressed by my knowledge of office furniture (Herman-Miller beehive cubicles, etc.) until we both discovered that I was in the wrong location for my team meeting. It was the most relaxed that I've ever been in a job interview since I thought that we were just having a conversation and didn't realize it was actually an interview.
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