Her Story
About Natasha
My background is in engineering - I had a passion for constructing things and bringing things to life, which led me to work in engineering projects and became the gateway to project management. In that capacity, I realized that I like to bring people together and unite them under a shared vision, and to allow things to take shape in a way that exceeds a client or customer's vision and has a really positive impact on the client's operations. My career was very much focused at a tactical level in the beginning, but in time, I started to see how implementing projects at a ground floor impacted the strategic vision and direction of organizations. That led me to do an MBA in the UK, and since then, I have been working in positions that combine both aspects of my expertise - not just project management, but also strategic implementation, strategic consulting, and business process improvement. To date, I've worked with organizations in complex sectors, nonprofit sectors, health sectors, and government sectors, working with them to create a very strong foundation, what I call infrastructure, to allow them to achieve their strategic goals, whether that is managing very complex projects, whether that is putting in place project processes that allow them to be more efficient, or whether that's working for the very top and helping them to shape their strategic vision and implement that. I've been a project manager for close to 20 years. A significant shift in my career was moving from managing projects to stepping into more managerial roles within organizations and taking ownership of specific operations within organizations in a more managerial capacity - stepping away from supporting operations to shaping and transforming them.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Natasha
01What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
The advice that I would give them is to have faith in themselves. This is super important - to trust the self, to trust themselves, and to listen to themselves. Everyone has a unique perspective, and I think once they do that, it allows them to see where they can give value. Everyone can give value in whatever environment, in whatever project or whatever process they're in. So, I think if they are there, they are there for a reason, and to kind of trust that and be able to experience themselves from that place. When I started out my career as an engineer, I was an electrical engineer by trade. My first job out of college was in the field of architecture. I didn't know how to read blueprints, but faith and my excitement and my curiosity allowed me to excel. So I did not allow the gap in knowledge to kind of be a deterrent. I just kind of hit the ground running and jumped in. And last but not least, you don't need to have all the answers. You just need to know how to leverage the people around you and the resources around you to inform what it is that you're doing.
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