Dr. Jessica Parker, DBA, PMP®

I attribute my success to several key things. First, when there's an opportunity and they say, hey, we need somebody to do this thing, I always raise my hand. I'm like, yeah, I'll figure it out. I like to problem solve, and I have a love of learning, and those two things have helped me continue to learn and grow and gotten new opportunities. I've also been very fortunate in that multiple people throughout my career have seen that I'm eager to learn, I want to do more, I want to try new things, and given me that opportunity. So they've made a pathway that enabled me to have those opportunities. From the boss I had who helped as I founded the PMO - it didn't exist, he was instrumental in pushing for it to exist, and then made sure I had a hand in the process. He didn't have to do that, he chose to. I had another boss that shared a lot of wisdom with me and took a chance on my first leadership role, because you have to have the first roll sometime, right? He gave me a great perspective on the power of opportunities - that is, no matter what it is, everything is an opportunity. That person you can't get along with today? That's a personal growth opportunity. That problem you're stuck on at work? That's a learning development opportunity. Everything's an opportunity. When he first said that to me, I thought he was polishing the proverbial ball of poo, but the reality is, if you reframe it as an opportunity, you see it differently. When you see it as a problem, that mindset helps you overcome the most challenging of things. There's so many people who have reached out their hand and helped me. I'm just - I feel so grateful to so many different people for their help along the way. And I recognize that at my stage of career, I want to do that for other people. You can't necessarily help me in return, you can help somebody else behind you. Pay it forward, if you will. And I think that's been huge in my success - my own learning, and then the fact that others have been willing to help as well along the way.

The best career advice I received came at a point where I'd been in my job for a number of years - I think I'd been at that company for 5 years - and I'd hit a wall from a growth perspective, because it was back in the day, and unfortunately, my boss was awesome, but his boss had some sexist perspective, so that limited my opportunities. One of my friends said, hey, you know, let me put you in contact with this friend of mine, he'll take a look at your resume and let you know what he thinks. And when I spoke with that individual, he said, you know, have you ever thought about consulting? I'm like, well, I hadn't. And then he followed that up by telling me that he could pay me half again my salary to go to consult, and would basically help me get into that job. And I'm like, wow, yeah, I'm open to consulting. And consulting was really exciting, and continues to be something I enjoy doing, because you get to go to new companies, experience new industries and their cultures, and see the things that are similar across organizations, and the things that are different. Consulting isn't for everybody, but that opportunity was really exciting, and so trying consulting was absolutely an eye-opener and a door-opener for me.

Please enter the industry and stay. One of the historical trends is we've seen women leave after about 8 years in the field, and they'll go shift into a different career space. The more women who stay, the more diversity of opinion and ideas we can get into our tools, because bias is a thing. It's not conscious bias, necessarily. It's the information of the people in the field. They're the ones who are setting the rules. And no one person has complete 360 perspective on everything in the world. It's just - you can't. So please stay. There are women in the field. You can achieve great things. You can look at the leaders of some of these organizations who are women. I know that there are challenges, because it's still a male-dominated field. You can weather them, there are support systems, there's more women out there trying to help lift each other up than I've seen ever before in my career, and that's so encouraging and exciting. You need to show them that you can be a practitioner in this field. Computer technology is heavily dominated by males, and there will be times, many times, where you're the only woman in the room. The sexism is real, and it's in every industry, really. It depends on your perspective, but it's frustrating. Sometimes you think, well, gee, is it just me, or is it this industry, this company? You can find companies that are better than others, and you can also find companies that are worse than others, and if you end up in one of them, you might think that the right decision is to leave the industry rather than to find a place where you will be more appreciated.

One of the biggest challenges right now is the pace of change. AI has evolved so quickly with the generative AI tools and their capabilities, and it's moving so fast that organizations are struggling to keep up. And from an education standpoint, it's like, well, what do you train in? Because two years ago, generative AI was the big thing. This year, agentic AI is the big thing. In two more years, it could be quantum computing. It's hard to train for a moving target, especially when it's evolving at the rate it is. And I think that's one of the biggest challenges. The opportunity is for people who love to learn - the opportunity is limitless. You can step into your role today, and it will look very different in 3 years. And if you're comfortable with that, that's a fabulous time and opportunity to be involved with tech. Just in the time I was completing my doctorate, AI evolved tremendously from - it was just chat GPT in November 22 - to, by the time I finished, we had the arms race between OpenAI, Anthropic, Alphabet (which is Google's parent company), and DeepSeek. And, oh, yes, and can't forget XAI now with their chatbots. They're all in a race to see how good they can be. There's so many more players, and they're racing to see who can advance more faster.

Clearly learning - that continuous growth mindset. We are not stuck where we're at today. I can always be better tomorrow. And if I've learned at least one thing today, then it's a good day. That's key. Helping other people - do what you can. You can't fix everything. Again, there's only one of you. But when you have the opportunity and the ability to help, do so, because it's the right thing to do. Those underpin a lot of my decisions, darn near all of them, really - is, you know, is this better? Did I make it better? Did I improve a process? Did I help someone out? Are we moving things forward in the right direction? And if the answer is yes, then it's been a wonderful day. And the underpinning of learning new things, I get excited about that, because again, that's how I'm wired. I learned late in life that I have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and that brain is typically addicted to things, can get easily addicted to things. My brain's addicted to learning, and I'm very fortunate in that. It's such a blessing to be able to get the perspective from others and have people you can collaborate with and brainstorm to do wonderful things.