Transcript: Women of Project Management with Asya Watkins

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Today we are talking with Asya Watkins, a new but becoming a dear friend of mine in the project management community. Asya is the founder of Women of Project Management, the only global network connecting women and women of color in the project management industry. She also has this fabulous membership program that we are going to talk a little bit about today as well. She created a career as an in demand expert in the project management industry working with top tier brands like Walgreens, CVS, Caremark, Optum, and United Health Care. She’s also served as the Director of Mentorship for the Project Management Institute and was one of the creators of the first women’s network for Walgreens Corporation. 

Asya:
Thank you for having me Laura.

Laura:
Absolutely. So before we dive into all the reasons it’s incredibly important to support women in our community, why don’t we start with you giving a little bit of a background of your career and how you landed in project management?

Aysa:
I’ve worked my whole career in pharmaceutical, the pharmaceutical side and project management. And when I first started my career at Walgreens, it was a great group. I started as a project coordinator trying to understand what project management was about. I had a great group of guys that I work with, but there were no women on the team. They were great mentors and I’m friends with all of them to this day. However, it, it took a long time from me and my career for me to even work with any women. And it was also hard to find women who looked like me and just industry. So that was kind of where I came from really enjoying the project management industry, enjoying all the different opportunities, all the great projects I got to work with. But I also wanted to start the, the Women of Project Management because I also wanted to create a space for what I wish I had earlier on in my career of just being able to network with other women and women of color who looked like me in the industry to just help support one another.

Laura:
Oh, that’s fantastic. Yeah. I know for me, throughout most of my career, if it wasn’t that I was the only woman on my team, often when I built the PMOs, I was able to create more of a balance. And the way I hired was based on strengths and, when I did that, it ended up being usually a pretty even split, if not even more women than men on the team.

However, when I was in meetings with my peers, with executives, I was often the only woman in that room. And I remember feeling that it was a little bit uncomfortable because I was different.

Aysa: Right. I mean it’s it’s perspective cause people I think sometimes think, you know, diversity, they only think about race but diversity is just different backgrounds and that includes just being a woman and sometimes being the only woman in the room and providing that valuable different perspective.

Laura:
So let’s talk about that a little bit because you’ve built this membership as a part of your company called Women of Project Management. And I’m curious to know how that got started and what that membership spell about and then why it’s so important that we support women in our community this way?

Aysa:
It’s really important because for me, I did a lot of bumping my head and trying to figure things out and how the industry and my career path would look for me as a woman in project management. The men that did aid in leadership, it was great. It was perfect in the sense from their perspective. But how would the industry look for me as a woman?

How do I kind of walk in my truth? How does, you know my leadership look in the industry? So I didn’t really have that. I had to figure it out. A lot of us do, I’m sure you can attest to the same. You just kind of figure it out and you go along with it and, and it can be fun, but it can also be better. And so I it when I created Women and Project Management, because one, the amazing thing about project management is that there’s so many different opportunities.

It’s laced through every, you know, just about every single industry and it’s global. And so I said, “okay, I want to start something that I wish I would have had.” I can help other people earlier in my career and that can bring people together, all stages of their career. And so that’s why after I started thinking about it, I was like, “okay, I’m just going to create exactly what I wanted, which is a space for women to just let their guards down. It doesn’t matter what your title is, where you’re at in your career. We’re all here to help each other. It’s an every industry of project management and it’s global.” And so it’s been amazing. And so I wanted to initially, um, I thought, okay, do I open this up to everyone initially? And then I said, you know, my roots are, you know, just kind of helping women have what I wish I had.

That’s why I kind of focused it on women. You know, it’s a male dominated industry. And so I wanted something that could connect all of us. But I also wanted to call out women of color because that’s who I am. And sometimes, you know, when there’s different networks for women, unless you call out women of color, we don’t always see that as our invitation. We kind of see it as, okay, there’s just a, it’s a broader network and it’s women and that’s great, but when you call it out for women of color as well for all women, women of color as well, it really opens the door to women. Especially since it’s a global membership. It really opens the door to all women to realize that, okay, this is a space that I want to be a part of. This is a space where I’m not only going to meet other women, but I’m going to meet other women of color.

And because it’s global, you know, not just me being an African American, but I mean a lot of different women who identify as women of color all around the world, they’ve really been able to, we’ve been able to have these really great open discussions, um, for when they, once they become members and they start interacting with other members.

It’s really been a really good conversation that we’ve been able to have and share our different experiences. We have a member who’s in the Philippines, she is the only woman that she knows in construction. And so she wanted to join just like she could see other women in construction, even if they were on the other side of the world and that she could talk to them. And women talking about having that as a table as women, as women of color, because it does look different to women and we all have different perspectives in the industry and we’re all supporting one another and kind of validating all of those experiences.

Laura:
Yeah, definitely. And I love how you identified a challenge or a gap that you experienced in your career and then said, “I’m going to go solve that.” I love that IMPACT driven attitude and the, you know what? This is a gap. I want to help people and this is a way that I can do that in a space that is often overlooked. And quite frankly, that’s why I started my company PMO strategies, the same kind of thing. I felt like when I first built my first PMO in 1999 I didn’t have, you know, I couldn’t go to Google and search how to build a PMO and find 8 million results like you can today. I couldn’t, I didn’t have any peers that I knew of that were doing this work. I didn’t know it was hard to find classes. There weren’t a ton of books out there and those that were frankly were, so I would say outputs focused, that it didn’t match what my executives were looking for.

And that was the big difference is that I was paying attention to what my executives were asking and you know, they weren’t asking for tons of templates and tools and process. They were asking for business problems to get solved and get solved yesterday. So I feel like I struggled not having access to those resources. And now more than 20 years later doing this PMO work, I have this huge network of all of these brilliant minds that really understand what it takes to drive IMPACT with the PMO. And I kept thinking to myself, I have to share that with people.

I have to help the former me. I really me that you felt this calling to give back to the community, especially women in project management this way. And I think that’s great.

I also think that it’s really important what you said there about helping specifically calling out women of color because they don’t necessarily see a group for women or community of women as their invitation. And I think that’s critically important because that’s not something that I would have considered because when I think, you know, and I guess it’s my perspective, right? Because I would, I think, well you said women, so that means all women of course. Um, but your perspective is a little different and I think it’s important that you’re bringing that to the table, that you’re highlighting that for people. And so for all of our IMPACT drivers listening, remember the perspective, the seat you sit in, you may not understand, you may think that you’re making a big effort and still you haven’t really made an environment that people feel welcomed to engage with.

That’s just incredibly important to me. So thank you for doing that.

Aysa:
Thank you. I appreciate you saying that. Absolutely.

Laura:
So one of the things for me as a woman that was often in a, you know, male dominated fields in male dominated meetings and in that kind of an environment for me, I found that there were very few women around to get support from. And those that were around would say that they were trying to support me, but I always felt like they were really just kind of like tugging on this string to kind of pull me back, if that makes any sense.

I know you’re trying to create, the whole purpose of what you’re trying to do is to help women not feel like they’re being held back by other women, but for women to reach behind and pull others forward. So do you find that a lot of the women that you engage with that come to your community are having that same experience?

Aysa:
Well, it’s kind of, I guess two different perspectives. So for, for me and my career and then also the other perspective of the women of the community.

So for me and my career, I had some of that. Especially early on, it was definitely, some just kind of dangling the carrot and sometimes they had no interest in helping. And then sometimes it was honestly that the other women were just trying to survive themselves. You know?

And so I have definitely experienced that in my career. I think things had evolved, but maybe people don’t know exactly how to reach that hand back like me and you. I don’t know if it’s confidence or iIf you just get fed up and it’s like, “well, who’s going to do it?” You know? If we’re not going to help, who’s, who’s going to do it?

So my frame of mind is at least let’s just try. There’s no blueprint for us doing this, but we just know what we want in our career. Our experiences are best blueprint.

I would also say a lot of the members and the membership, it’s interesting because you meet all these brilliant women, whether they’re in, you know, in college and grad school, or they’re majoring in project management or grad school with a major in project management, which didn’t exist when I was in college. Neither one. I mean, that’s amazing that it does now, you know, but it didn’t exist then. So when they join they have no clue, right? Because they don’t have a whole bunch of experience in the industry.

But then we also have women who are CEOs all around the world and they’re starting these amazing companies that are women driven too, to help support women.We also have executives at big companies too because they’re joining because there’s always something to learn from somebody, but they’re also joining to help mentor other women too. Which I think is amazing.

So I think probably because of the way we positioned the platform for Women of Project Management, it’s what we try to do is, you know, we kind of put it out there very, you know, in the beginning of we are a platform to help women. We are all here to support women. We are all here to shed your titles. There’s no ego because you founded that this company or you know, you’re an executive or there’s nothing to be, you know, intimidated by if you’re, if you’re a student or you’re a grad student, you know, we’re all here to help each other and help each other, you know, avoid some of those pitfalls and we all have something to learn from one another.

I always talk to new members, we have an introduction call. So I’ll always talk to them to try to make sure that, you know, the community is supporting them. But that’s kind of where I get that feedback of kind of understanding where they fit in it. And then they kind of understand too of, “okay, we’re all here to support one another and it’s everybody’s duty to help someone else, you know, to help each other.”

I think its more of a positive environment because that’s the best way to tackle it and help each other and the membership. It works to combat that culture outside of the membership, what we’ve experienced at our nine to five that’s not always that supportive. I guess mentoring one another in a sense that way. So with the hopes that hopefully as you grow in your leadership roles that you kind of extend that to others too instead of having more, we don’t want to have more stories like we had where we didn’t have that support in our career.

Laura:
Oh yeah, for sure. Sure. And I think, you know, wherever I worked from the first job I had working full time, putting myself through school full time when I was getting my computer science degree all the way through still today, I always sought mentors and coaches and guides and look to the people that I wanted to emulate and learn from what they were doing.

Even from way back in the beginning of my career, I was almost always the only woman in the conversation. And I wasn’t yet in project management officially, but I was in the computer science department. I was getting my computer science degree. I was one of four women in my graduating class. And we still all kind of connect and stay engaged on Facebook and you know, are trying to do to bring other women in it forward, et cetera.

So I know what it’s like to truly feel like a minority. And I stuck out like a sore thumb, which anybody that knows me would not be surprised. And then my first job, full time in college, I was working for the computer science department, doing some really big transformational work.
Virginia Tech was the first school to require their students to do their thesis or dissertation electronically. And I helped build the software and the website. You know, this is way back and I am totally dating myself, but this is way back when a website wasn’t much. I mean Yahoo was just getting started, you know, which by the way, we were one of the only websites out there and they stole a picture from me, so I’ll never forget.

We were all just trying to figure it out back then. Everybody I worked with was men. Even when I first started, when I was graduated and first started working, I was, I think the only woman that was doing the technical work on our team. There were definitely other women around. It was much more diverse.

The more I time I spent in financial services and the higher up I went in the hierarchy of the organization, the fewer seats at the table there were for women. And in my experience, one of my favorite female mentors, and we didn’t spend years together, but she had a huge IMPACT on me.

This woman was the highest ranking female at a particular very large organization we worked in. I can 100% tell you she was not treated fairly. Yeah, the things she did, which were half as aggressive as the men around her. Of course she was, you know, called all kinds of things because of the way she was doing things. And I, you know, I really was curious about her and her experience because I saw her, this abuse, if you will, um, being the highest ranked female and trying to drive really important initiatives forward.

I just was curious as to how she did it, how she survived it and kept such grace, you know, and was just so smart. And so, you know, I would just, I just really looked up to her and we, she agreed to spend some time with me. She took me out to lunch, she did a lot of mentoring and guiding me and giving me the truth.

One of the pieces of advice that she told me was because I said, “you know, it seems like the women in this organization are the ones holding me back?” And she said, “absolutely.” And I said, “why in the world would that be?” And she said, “because the higher up you get in the organization, the fewer spots are perceived or maybe actually available for women. And so they’re going to fight for them. And so if you move forward, it means they won’t, is kind of was the mindset.”

And what she told me was, “Laura, it is incumbent upon you as you grow in your career, that you take every opportunity you can to reach back behind you and bring other women forward.”

And it just hit me really hard. I didn’t want to be like these other women that were, if you don’t, you know, wear pants every day and if you don’t cut your hair short and if you don’t look like a man, then you won’t be treated equally kind of a, you know, peer pressure.

Right. And I didn’t, I just had one in no part of it, you know, and she, it really was important to me that she was a one taking the time to share this with me and just be brutally honest about what it was like. But then, um, hold me accountable for not allowing it to continue and to push me to do better than that and not to fall into the norms of that organization or any other I had been in.

And that’s why I think it’s so important, important that us is women in leadership roles are taking the time to reach back behind us and bring other women along. And that’s just what I love so much about this community that you’ve created in this environment and the way that you engage with your community and the way that your community engages with each other. It just feels like a very safe place for women to support other women, which I think we certainly could use a ton more.

Asya:
Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate that. And once I, that you were saying that just made me kind of, I took a quick note about it is one thing is it was a definitely a gift that she even took that time out, right? Because as we both know that that doesn’t happen all the time. It should, but it doesn’t happen all the time just to kind of talk to you and validate your feelings.

Everyone does not have that same mindset of how can I help women, you know, how can I offer progress? And you know, I have my own goals and dreams, but how can I also help others? That’s also a part of my dream.

I think a lot of women that have but maybe not have the courage all the time to speak up and say it, because it does take courage to, to really just kind of walk in your own path and figure it out, you know, as you go. Um, but, but yeah, I think that that was amazing. I thank you for saying those kind words too about the community.

Laura:
Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. So can we talk a little bit about this series that you created that were shared as a part of the PMO IMPACT Summit this year called A Seat at the Table?

Asya:
Thank you for one, letting me share this area. So it’s a six part series. Yeah, it’s a six part series and it’s kind of, you know, you would have been great in it. I’m sitting at the table too, so, right.

Anybody who’s familiar with Jayda Pink’s Red Table Talk. It’s basically the same concept. But for my community that I created Women of Project Management. So basically where we’re at a round table, a hired a film crew, and we just wanted to film all of our different experiences.

It’s myself, and three other members at the table. AWe’re all at different stages of our career. We all work in different industries, we all have very diverse backgrounds. And so what the goal was was basically for everybody to just, um, to, to share their experience.
We have people who have been in the industry like myself for 20 years. We also have someone who’s worked in project management without that official project management role. She’s thinking about officially getting into project management and just kind of really covering all those different perspectives that I see who join up for the membership. We kind of have somebody representing all perspectives. Um, and the intent is that, you know, you watch the series and you hopefully have your cup of tea or your coffee and you identify what some of these women you take away a different perspective.

We’re just talking about a lot of, we’re talking about everything under the sun. It was just a very, um, fluid conversation. We talked about from how we got started in the industry, different perspectives of how we negotiate, what it feels like to be the only woman at the table, how it feels to be the only woman of color on a $1 million project. We talk about working with these huge consulting firms and they’re trying to figure out, do we trust you with our client to implement this project? Sometimes it does come down to race or, or your sex or anything. It’s just like, “Oh crap, are you good enough for me to trust you with my client on this multimillion dollar project?”

We talk about all these different perspectives. We even talk about work life balance because at the end of the day, I think it’s a conversation men and women should have. But you usually hear women talk about work life balance. When we talk about work life balance its not just the fufu stuff, but the real stuff, “how do you run a business and work a nine to five and you’re working towards your goal?” Sometimes it’s a matter of as simple as after dinner I asked my husband to do the dishes and I asked him to have bathtime with my five-year-old and then I go back to working from eight o’clock to, you know, 10 o’clock just to get a few more hours to build my business.

So it’s really everybody just sharing their different perspectives. And one of the things that I’ve found is that we have hundreds of women in the membership from all around the world. And project management looks different from the US to the UK sometimes. But we are all so much more alike than we are different and we all have these same things.

We try and balance, you know, this and that and issue that work and being the only woman, and I mean we had women from all around the world. We’re still talking about the same different, um, the different issues. So I thought having this series of A Seat at the Table was a great way to be able to share with the PMO IMPACT Summit and just kinda share our perspectives.

I’m sure whether you’re a woman or a man looking at it, I think you’ll be able to identify either way.

Laura:
Oh my goodness. Yes. And that was going to be one comment I wanted to share with people is that this series that was a part of the PMO IMPACT Summit as well as this podcast episode is for men and women. It’s not just for women to talk to other women.

A lot of the challenges that we want to overcome are not because of men. Certainly not because in my perspective and in my experience, it was almost always the men that were pushing me forward. It’s been the men that advised me on my business that are encouraging me, supporting me, and helping me to find more ways to support women in my community.

As a matter of fact, and in my career, the men that mentored me guided me formally, informally were great. So for me personally, and I’m not saying it’s always that case, but for me personally, it was usually the men that were more supportive and helping me. So I think a podcast like this, this episode is really important for men and women that see that the table series really important for men and women from every background, from everywhere in the world to understand the perspectives. So with that in mind, as you think about the people that listen to this, it’s PMO leaders and project managers and those wanting to make a big IMPACT with project management.

What advice do you have for them to help empower women in their teams? And in their organizations?

Asya:
Yeah. I think, um, one thing that PMO leaders can do to make sure that they empower their teams and the leaders on their team is just to make sure you give them the tools to be able to feel like they are empowered.

So for example, I have worked in the past as a leader, and you feel like you may not always have the tools or the support. Going back to your point where I did have leader at one point in my career who was a man and he was one of the best leaders I’ve ever worked with. And so one of the things that he did was he made sure we had anything and everything that we needed to make sure that we were empowered to feel like we were leaders in doing our jobs because we had so much work.

want to make sure you’re supported. Do we need to have another person come and help you on here? Do I need to help you at at his position? I had never heard, and I still haven’t heard anyone say that that much, you know, supports you that much. Um, longterm wise he made sure that he fought for our team. He fought for all of us to be able to get certified and that the company paid for it. So there would think there’s things that you can do. Those are just a few examples are ways that PMO leaders can make sure that they support their team. I mean, I think it kind of boils down to making sure you just see them as a person, you know, and putting yourself in their shoes sometimes and making sure of, okay, well what can I do to make sure that this person feels supported?

You know, its the small things, but making sure that they feel supported. Maybe short term, but also making sure for longterm they have the tools or certifications needed. Even just talking to them about their long term goals and what they’re good at. Let’s do more of that. We’ve had a lot of those conversations.

I think those are things that are great. I’ve had some really amazing women and leadership roles too that have done the same thing. I’ve had a handful in my whole career, but those people made a huge IMPACT. And those were men and women, but they were always the people who talked to you like you’re human, they knew your kid’s name, you know, they know your husband’s name, they talk to you, as if it’s just work, work, work. They make sure they support you on a daily basis, but they’re also supporting your long term goal. I would say those are some really good, tangible things that anyone in leadership at any phase of their career could do to really empower, not just women, but anyone on our team.

Laura:
That’s excellent. Thank you so much. As we wrap up here today, I know we’ve talked about your membership and I want to make sure that everyone knows how they can find it and I think you’ve got a special gift that you’re going to offer. Can you tell everyone about your membership and how they can connect with that?

Aysa:
Fnd that womenofprojectmanagement.com, and for all the listeners for PMO Strategies, I have $30 off of our membership. And so you can just use the code PMOstrategies, all one word and that will get you $30 off membership.

Laura:
So while this is a community specifically for women, I think that you have shared that a lot of men really support this program, buy it for their teams and are making sure that women in their organization have access to it. Is that right?

Asya:
Absolutely. Absolutely. We have a wonderful member, um, the wonderful membership for women, but we have a lot of men who support us and buy memberships for their teams. So yep.

Laura:
That’s excellent. Thank you so much. Well, thank you for being a part of this program. Thank you Asya for helping to support women in your community. Women of Project Management from around the world and helping us all see how we can support and empower women in our PMOs and in our projects. Thank you so much for being here today.