Yulanda Campbell

I've been in the information systems field for about 25 years now. It's funny how I got here - I took a computer class in high school in my small town, and I thought I would just teach computers. When I went to college, I majored in information systems, then changed to education, then did a summer internship at a non-profit for kids and realized 'whoa, this is heavy. I don't think I could do this.' So I switched back to information systems, and voila, ended up here. My first career job was at St. Joseph Hospital as a business analyst, and I moved through roles as business systems analyst, project manager, and program manager before starting contract work. I've been in different industries but doing the same work. Today, with AI, people think AI replaces things, but I do program management where you're understanding patterns in people and bringing those systems together. My secret sauce is bringing the people together and helping them, because when you bring the trust and the people together first, then you can work on the process. When you're stressed and in tension, you can't really think, so until you help people to trust and relax, the creativity comes and you get good solutions. It's all about bringing people together, helping them to relax, understanding their patterns, so you're not bashing them or trying to create anything harder in their life, but showing them how we can do things better. Then you're able to come up with good processes and systems and be successful in your project. I love this work because I'm creative, so you're able to be creative in the space but still bring people together. You're understanding and learning new processes, new ways of doing things, and since I get to go to different companies, you're learning different cultures and what they're doing. It's constant learning, and that's the cool part - it's like, oh, this is cool, I didn't know that.