Deborah Ballinger

I attribute my success to honesty. I'm honest about what I do and what I don't do, what I know and what I don't know. I don't sugarcoat it. I let you know if I don't really know something, but I'll get back with you. I'm very honest, and that's what has made me successful throughout my career.

The best career advice I ever received was to be honest and to just always keep learning. Let the sky be your limit. When I was a co-op student working at the bank at a young age, I had a problem because I was a leader and I had all these older people that I had to lead. One of my supervisors encouraged me, saying don't ever let people back you in the corner. She told me to keep excelling, keep doing well, and keep on going. She said reach for the sky, and that's what I did. That advice has kept me going my whole career, and I've always been a leader in every position that I've had because of it.

My advice to women entering project management is to be fair. You're not just responsible for you, you're kind of responsible for everybody, so you have to be fair. You have to be very understanding that the time you're able to spend on something isn't always the same amount of time that someone else can. So be fair about how you delegate, who you delegate it to, and when you expect results and deliverables. I think just being fair and being open about what you're trying to attain is important. Sometimes we don't deliver it properly and it gets kind of not good. People don't realize how important things are, so you need to communicate clearly.

The biggest challenge in project management, especially in the medical field, is the timeline and just having enough work. There are a lot of project managers out there and a lot of companies, especially in the medical field, that you're competing with. When I worked for Blue Cross Blue Shield, we kind of ran out of work at one point. It was like, okay, so we're not getting the projects in like we were getting in the beginning. The work itself was the challenge, just getting the work was the challenge at one point, which is why I ended up going to compliance.

Authenticity is the most important value to me. Just be real, whatever it is. My mom says it takes all kinds of people to make the world go round, so you gotta take the good and the bad and the sugar and the salt. I found that as long as a person is authentic, you know, you're not going to be cast out because people know what you're about. I love that, just authenticity in people.