@Work

What I Did

In addition to an Ownership & Senior Management role, I was the Senior Project Manager for the Web development team assigned to Qwest Communications, mostly the corporate Web site but Intranets as well. Our team built and maintained Web pages & completed digital projects as necessary to support multiple clients across multiple business groups to implement key Internet initiatives.

Duties included staffing, personnel and resource management, proposal writing, quality control, client relations and billing. Accustomed to producing a quality product under high stress, and on tight timelines.

What I Learned

Experience is the best teacher and my tenure at Peak Systems added numerous lessons to the bank. Significant lessons towards project, team and client management practices was fostered by appropriate process, competant mentors and overly capable team members. Working with both enterprise level and smaller-to-medium sized business clients allowed exposure to those vastly different worlds and their often disparate needs.

In addition to learning heuristic techniques for expectation management, I experienced unexpected instances of self-discovery about my personal ability to handle stress, controversy and intransigent obstacles. Those remain handy.

Why Aren't I Still Working There?
In the summer of 2002, I ended my in-office role and became a work-from-home contractor. Peak Systems rebranded themselves UpTop in 2015 and very much remains in business today. I sold back my ownership shares in 2013 but remain working with UpTop as a vendor on various projects.