VIDEO
In this panel of TPMs, Cynthia Harbor (CACE), Linda Avendaño (fmrly Google), Shayla Gibson (Treasury Prime), Stephanie Pei (Roku), Yulia Eskin (Envoy) share their insights on technical program management (TPM) career paths, career pivots and leadership.
In this ELEVATE session, Shayla Gibson (Treasury Prime Technical Services Operations Manager) moderates a panel about technical program management (TPMs) with Cynthia C. Harbor (CACI Senior Technical Program Manager), Linda Avendaño (formerly Google TPM), Stephanie Pei (Roku Senior Director, Consumer Experience Program Mgmt), and Yulia Eskin (Envoy Staff TPM) share their insights on technical program management (TPM) career paths, career pivots and leadership.
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Transcript of ELEVATE Session:
Shayla Gibson:
Thank you. Thank you. I want to kick it off while giving everyone time to introduce themselves and tell a little bit about themselves. Linda, you want to start with yourself and then we’ll just go around from there?
Linda Avendaño:
Sure. My name is Linda. I studed software engineering. I came to the Bay Area in 2009.
I did a master’s degree in software development and I work in companies like Electronic Arts, Netflix, and then I transitioned to technical program manager, where my last team was at Google, where I learned a lot about organizational collaboration and transformation in finance space.
I am a daughter, a sister, an auntie, a wife, and I love weddings. I’m planning my fourth wedding already with the same person the three previous times. That’s my story.
Shayla Gibson:
I love that. Yulia, you want to go next?
Yulia Eskin:
Thanks. That’s a great story, Linda. Hi, I’m Yulia Eskin. I started my career path as a computer science student. I did my bachelor’s and master’s at the University of Toronto in Canada, and then I moved to the Bay Area in San Francisco about 11 years ago.
Before doing that, I spent some time in academia doing research and then realized that I don’t have the passion for that, so I ended up moving here, working at healthcare tech startups as a software engineer for seven years.
I ended up taking career break and investing in becoming a career coach for immigrant engineers. And then in the last two years I’ve been working at Envoy, a visitor management platform, as a technical program manager.
Shayla Gibson:
Thank you. Thank you, Yulia. Stephanie?
Stephanie Pei:
Yeah, I’ll go next. Hey, everyone, I’m Stephanie Pei. I’m in Santa Monica right now. I work at Roku, in case you haven’t seen the Roku surfboard behind me. I lead program management on the consumer experience side, also have worked on the corporate side at Roku. I have also helped build our women’s Roku group, employee resource group at the company, something near and dear to me.
Prior to Roku, I was at Disney for some time, worked on the business side and also really built out my TPM career there as well. Looking forward to chatting more. Thanks for having me.
Shayla Gibson:
Yes. No, thanks for being here. Your surfboard is getting a lot of attention in the chat. Cynthia, why don’t you take us home?
Cynthia Harbor:
All right. Hi, everyone. I’m Cynthia Harbor and I’m a senior technical program manager with CACI International. I’ve been in IT a little over two decades, so my journey through the tech world has been rewarding at times, it’s been challenging at times. I’ve held several roles over the span of my career so far, navigating through positions such as a business analyst, knowledge analyst, project manager, and now a technical program manager for the past 11 years.
I have the privilege of leading a multi-generational team of about 89 people based in Atlanta, Georgia, where we extend our expertise and support to our clients at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. I manage a unique blend of STEM professionals ranging from epidemiologists, statisticians, public health analysts, data scientists, business analysts, project managers, software engineers, testers and support analysts. Together, we embody a diverse range of skills and experiences united by a common goal to be ever vigilant.
In my role, I navigate the delicate balance between the tactical and the strategic. This means not only managing the intricacies of the day-to-day project operations, but also steering our efforts towards achieving overarching business goals and objectives. Leadership and management are different to me, and being both a leader and a manager, one thing that intersects is nurturing of talent. I’m deeply involved in the recruitment process and I take pride in coaching, mentoring, sponsoring the incredible individuals on my team. Their growth and success are my priority, as well as managing my program’s P&L, and also growing my program through business development efforts. I do some proposal writing as well. Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Shayla Gibson:
Thank all you ladies for being here today. For the audience, definitely use that reaction button. If you like what they’re saying, give us a round of applause for these amazing women. As we mentioned at the top, I am Shayla Gibson. I’ll be the moderator here, and so I have some nice juicy questions for these ladies and I’m ready to get started.
This first question is going to just open up the floor to anyone that wants to answer. And I’m seeing we have a lot of different people in the audience from different walks of life. In your opinion, what is the difference between a technical project manager, program manager, product manager, all the TPMs, and how would you explain it to someone who’s unfamiliar with the term?
Linda Avendaño:
I can start by saying the difference between a project manager and a program manager.
A project is something, it’s a goal, where you have a team, you have a budget, you have a timeline. It’s like doing your bathroom, you want to redo it, you want to paint it, you maybe want to change the vanity. It’s all very defined, but when you are managing a program, it’s a set of intertwined, inter-collaborative projects that need to go through a final overarching goal. It’s more like remodeling your whole house. You need to tear down some walls, you need to change the electric installation. You might need a new faucet somewhere or new electric plugs. You have to call several contractors and you have to actually check their budget, see if they fit with the overall project, coordinate the times and the days where they can come into your house, coordinate their priorities because the electrical things need to be there before you actually get your appliances delivered to your house.
That’s what the program manager does: coordinating several projects with different teams with different timelines with different priorities to go through or to deliver a final call. I can add for the product manager, a lot of product managers does what I just described, but actually the product manager is the one setting the guideline, the strategy when we talk about a set of features and functionality that needs to be delivered.
The program manager works with the product manager, when the two are together, basically the product managers define these strategy and the program managers understand the technical part, understand the priorities on team and help to align those same features and products into a timeline with a budget and with a team or resources.
Yulia Eskin:
Something to add to this is that when we think about programs, sometimes they don’t have a timeline. It can be ongoing programs such as engineering onboarding is something I run here at Envoy.
Another thing that I do as a TPM that’s completely not project related, in fact, I almost do no project management at all, is create processes for my organization. I work in the engineering product design organization, and so I work on our release management process, on our incident management process, and that means designing it with all the stakeholders, aligning everyone on it, getting everyone to agree, and then rolling it out and often being the first person that will be the operator of that until it can be handed off to the right people.
Stephanie Pei:
I think something to add here is, it depends on… both of these responses, spot on, but it also depends on the environment you’re in, a bit of the company culture in terms of how they view, in some ways value program management project and product. Sometimes there is overlap. I think there’s not necessarily a one template answer.
It depends on the industry, depends on the company culture. I work at Roku and program management here is awesome, I love it, and so I actually do work on strategy areas. I work on a lot of structural things and so it’s different on the business side, it’s different on corporate, it’s different on the technical side. Depends on the needs of the organization and also it’s also on you on what you want to work on too.
I think we are drivers of our own career and have to navigate that. That’s just my quick comment. And Linda, I love what you said about the house ’cause now I’m gathering if you need to redo a house, talk to Linda and if you need to plan a wedding, talk to her as well. I’m taking down the notes, so thank you.
Shayla Gibson:
I know, I’m going to be reaching out to Linda so often after this.
Linda Avendaño:
Thank you for the call-out.
Shayla Gibson:
All right. All right. I think I want to touch back on all of your amazing backgrounds that we talked about earlier today, and I’m going to ask a question to Yulia and Linda, but Stephanie and Cynthia, please chime in. Your background, you started more on the tech side as software engineers. Can you tell us more about your journey to technical program management?
Yulia Eskin:
Sure. When I worked in software development, I worked for about seven years and the last three years of those seven years I was a tech lead. Definitely as a lead you start to experience what it means to work cross functionally and more collaboratively with other teams.
What I enjoyed is I enjoy working on complex problems with very technical people. And as a software engineer or lead, you’re very, very, very in the details. You do call reviews, architecture, you know all of the details. I would say that I had a meaningful interaction with a director that joined, director of engineering, and she asked me, where do you want to be in five years? My instinctual reaction in my own mind, I didn’t say to her, was that I don’t want to be doing this. It kind of surprised me that I had just a very quick instinctive reaction and it took me a couple of years to really understand this, but what I realized is that I really loved connecting the dots.
I really loved making sure that we are executing and moving towards the same direction. What I realized after doing it for seven years is that I just wasn’t as interested anymore in solely the technical pieces of it and that I really wanted to grow more in leadership and management. I think that just became the first turning point for me. Then I left that job, it was the pandemic.
I took a career break, started investing in my leadership skills, became a coach, and two years later I wanted to go back to tech, but I just didn’t feel like being an engineer manager or software engineer was just the right fit anymore. I wanted something bigger impact than that and that kind of what led me to the technical management role. I think that the technical parts of my experience definitely helped me excel in this role and it’s something I use every day. But I would say that I think the biggest surprise to me was that it’s completely a leadership role and I don’t think I realized that moving into this role initially.
The best analogy I can make is that it’s quite similar to a director role where you are kind of sitting in the organization managing multiple, not managing directly as a people manager, but you’re working with a lot of teams, driving initiatives, aligning stakeholders. The work you’re doing is very organizational and leadership based. Yeah.
Linda Avendaño:
As a software engineer, I was also a tech lead, especially at Netflix. And because of the nature of the team I was working on, we had to collaborate with very different things from the content creation teams. The one that create the stills, because we sent emails about the upcoming releases at Netflix. We had to deal with that kind of team, but also we managed translations across the UIs and across our messaging. I also had to deal with translators and people in the editorial part, and I guess the bias played in a little bit because I was the only woman at the team. Every time we had to interact with a new team, I was sent there to establish the collaboration, right?
I realized that I was very good at talking to non-technical people about technical stuff and they liked me and I came back to my team and say, hey, these are their ideas.
I already talked to them, the technology can do such and such and such, so let’s plan and do something for them. The role rowing me just because I wanted to help these teams to work with us to achieve a higher goal, right?
One advantage for me is that because I was already technical, it was easy for me to move to the project management side. I took some courses, I did some educational programs, and I found my big break at Google where I was actually contracted or employed as a technical program manager.
I love it. I just love to help people, especially my own co-workers, enable them to use the technology that we can develop in-house for them to do better their day-to-day work.
Shayla Gibson:
I think we got a great question that also relates to this. What are some of the managerial responsibilities or responsibilities at all for program management? And that’s open to anyone.
Cynthia Harbor:
It could range from anything to operational things like, well, for me, in my experience, I do federal contracting, right? We support the federal government in different capacities, but it could range from anything like time cards, that’s a big one because we have to get paid. That’s really important, but it also means professional development for staff as well. It could also mean addressing a new business need and sort of unpacking that.
We recently did some work around some analysis and reporting type work and some data visualizations and stuff. You create an effort around that. I may have to assign a project manager, work alongside them, making sure I’m interfacing with the executives, that they’re getting the information that they need so it can kind of run the gambit. It kind of gets back to what Stephanie said earlier, it really kind of depends on the environment that you’re in, right?
Shayla Gibson:
Thank you. Thank you. You know what, Cynthia, I’m actually coming to you. I want to hear from you more. I would love your opinion on how you prepare your teams and the programs for the integration of AI, machine learning and all the other cutting edge technologies that are coming out there. You’re unique in that you have seen both sides of the coin. You’re an entrepreneur and you work in a government capacity. What does that look like for you?
Cynthia Harbor:
Right, challenging. I love it. I love it. I do run a small business, Knowledge Maven Media. It sits at the crossroads, technology, culture and community empowerment. For example, through my company, I offer mentoring for women in tech at inclusivelyher.com. But whether it’s machine learning, AI, data visualizations, fire, any type of innovation, whatever it is, it’s important to remember that technology is simply the enabler and not the… We are using it to what end?
We’re getting efficiencies, we’re getting improved ROI. It plays a role. It is a tool. Ways in which you can get up to speed on what innovations are happening in the industry is platforms just like this, Girl Geek X. I think I sent this [ELEVATE Virtual Conference] to about 50 people.
And other industry conferences alike is where you need to be. Companies that are doing bleeding edge tech, read their press releases, read their white papers, go to their booths at conferences, read industry rags, magazines, newsletters, blogs, YouTube.
I read Fast Company, CTO, IT Professional, I read the PMI Journal and I also read Stanford Social Innovation and MIT Tech Review, okay. You join professional organizations dedicated to specific tech. There are tons of community practices and other affinity groups that probably speak to what you’re interested in. Those are different ways to sort of stay on top of the latest and greatest and things that are happening.
One thing I do love about the company that I work with is that they have an amazing learning management system. There’s a connection to LinkedIn, to Linda, all these different platforms that will sort of bring in the type of education needed and to fully understand what’s happening in the current marketplace. Those are some ideas.
Yulia Eskin:
I can add also that in my company, one thing that we did is we gave everybody ChatGPT licenses. It’s like $25 a person a month, not too bad, just to allow people to explore. It wasn’t even for any particular use case. And of course people started to adopt it.
Another thing that we did is we ran a hackathon related to AI and that had a huge success. And of course we use tools, Zoom nowadays, a lot of related tools like Kriwatch, Gong, they already have an AI integration where they summarize the recordings and things like that. And that’s definitely something that we use as we send it out to meeting participants.
Linda Avendaño:
I just want to add that even though it’s enticing to say we are going to go full AI in our company or with our programs or with our product, it’s wiser to sit down and understand what’s the business case for us to use AI.
Because AI, it’s a great tool, but there are a lot of implications around AI that even the companies that do AI haven’t been able to fully understand. Cynthia is going to talk a little bit, or maybe you already touched on this, about the legal implications, the privacy implications, if you want to grow it in-house, you have to have the knowledge for that. If you want to outsource it, what are the things that you need to take in account regarding security, privacy, IP, et cetera, et cetera. Just something to think about before really jumping AI full mode.
Shayla Gibson:
That is a good point. We’re living in a technology age, so make sure we do our research before we definitely dive into those technologies. All right. We’re getting a lot of questions in, so ladies be prepared afterwards. But the next question I have is actually for Stephanie, and I think actually someone asked this in the chat as well. For individuals that are listening in and moving through their careers, what advice do you have for them moving from a mid to senior level roles?
Stephanie Pei:
Sure. Well, I can share a little bit about what I’ve done and then maybe some advice. Everyone’s a little different. It’s never cookie cutter. From a program management side, I actually started on the infrastructure like data centers, and then I moved into software at Disney. And then I worked so closely with engineers, worked on some product stuff, but then I wanted to learn more about the business.
I naturally have this curiosity, and I think what’s really important to stay curious and just look around in terms of what are the opportunities you can learn. Then I moved over to the business operations side for Disney Studios. First I learned around how to launch direct to consumer products, and then I wanted to learn, well, how are we making money off that? I learned the business side and it’s eyeopening. And I moved around.
I used the fundamental program management skills and basically moved around based on my interests. If you have the basics down, you can adapt just around to anything. And so with that said, I made the move to Roku and I worked on corporate program management, a little different. I worked on mergers and acquisitions, worked on, not sure if you remember Quibi, that was one of our really fun deals that I got to work on, building out due diligence, risk planning, getting to day one, 30, 60, 90 day planning. Very much mergers and acquisitions, government affairs, legal, finance, people space, very much the corporate area. Helped build out a team there, loved it.
Then I moved over, was asked to help build out the similar structure for consumer experience. I’ve moved around, but it’s also, you have to be in the driver’s seat of your career. If you stay doing the same thing for a long time, that’s fine, but you become very specialized in that one area and the industry is constantly changing. I like to mix things up.
I’ve just moved around and with every move I was really fortunate to maybe get a promotion or some sort of pay increase while I made those shifts. I think staying curious and looking around, asking questions, that’s what you’ve got to do, I think, to get those opportunities.
Cynthia Harbor:
I love that answer, Stephanie. I would add to that, ask to be invited. Get in the room where decisions are being made and all of the projects are being discussed. That way you get exposure.
And that way from a program perspective, you can kind of see what are all the connecting dots, because being manager requires that you have sort of a high-level overview of everything that’s going on. Ask permission to get in the room where the decisions are being made or where people are discussing all of the projects or the program. It couldn’t hurt
Stephanie Pei:
And not everyone has a luxury to sit at the table and be there, but there’s a way in of, hey, do you need help with something? I see you doing these materials, do you want me to help you get some of those together? Do you need me to help you build out whatever XYZ roadmap, help write the executive summary for you? There’s ways to position yourself to be really helpful and then that’s kind of how you get invited more to, I think, more opportunities.
Yulia Eskin:
I would definitely add that that’s, I think, the secret sauce of a good program manager is you identify the problems before anyone else is and you don’t even offer to help. You jump in and do it a lot of times. And then people start to see you as that person that just gets things done. You don’t need to be told, you don’t need to be even asked. You just see it and you do it.
Shayla Gibson:
Stay curious, ask to be invited and keep asking questions. It’s the theme that’s going on here and I love it. All right. I have a hot topic that’s going on, a lot that usually gets asked quite often and this is open to everyone. I know you all had some experience in mentoring, whether being a mentee or mentoring someone else. What are your thoughts on mentorship programs specifically for women in tech? Have you participated in them? Any thoughts you have on that?
Linda Avendaño:
I’ve been both a mentor and a mentee. When I’m a mentor, I like when my mentee already knows or has an idea of how I can help because that’s also something that you need to define as a mentee with your mentor, exactly what kind of help or what kind of resources are you looking from them? It’s their time and you have to respect that. And for me, my best mentors have been the people that have been my manager for some time and then I transitioned to a different team or a different role and then they mentored me to continue growing my career.
They have helped me to move to different teams to be better at current roles, even to get hired at some companies. That has been good for me to have those mentorship relationships. When I am the mentor, my main goal is to help, especially women, but also anybody to don’t self-doubt about themselves, to know that they are in the right place at the right time and they can take up the challenge, right?
Let them know that they already have the skills so they can grow the skills, and to make sure that we as women have better visibility. Because also that happened to me in the past. I was doing a lot of work, but zero visibility. Then I realized that that was a problem with me not getting the big projects, right? That’s something I tried to give my mentees to make sure that their work is also visible.
Stephanie Pei:
I think something to add to what Linda said is I think as a mentee, you’ve got to be intentional, know your goals and what you want to achieve, because if you have a sense of what you want, then it makes the mentorship mentee relationship easier. I’ve been a mentor, I’ve been a mentee. I’ve built out mentorship programs also, and they’re actually very hard and it’s because it’s a two-way street. And as a mentor, it takes time and it’s energy. You’ve got to make sure you’re making the most out of that time.
Some advice for mentees is as you find the right mentor for you, depending on what your needs are and what your goals are, opening up that two-way street and really showing, hey, I know you’re helping me, but I can also help you. Find ways where it’s a mutually beneficial relationship because then the mentor, they’re benefiting too. That’s just something that has worked for me.
Cynthia Harbor:
Well, I will add to that, that if I’m privileged enough to mentor someone, I don’t take it from of the position where I sit high and look low. I see myself more as a coach. And even in my own life I have mentors for different aspects of my life. There’s a mentor that I have in my personal spiritual life. I have a couple of mentors in my professional life because there are different aspects of my professional career that I’m focused on. Being an entrepreneur, I have to have a mentor for that. Being someone who’s trying to grow her career in corporate, I have a mentor for that. Don’t look at it just sort of like one person. It could be multiple people providing support for you in different facets of your life as well.
Shayla Gibson:
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. I think it’s important when we’re talking about mentorship to also talk about sponsorship as well. And sometimes we do need both a mentor that shares knowledge and provides guidance in all aspects of our lives, but also someone who says our name behind closed doors and advocates for us as well. I think this is a really good conversation.
Stephanie Pei:
Decisions are made for you when you’re not in the room. You’ve got to ask yourself, who’s going to speak up for you? Who’s going to say, oh, this program’s coming up, this cool thing we’re working on. Who’s going to say your name? And that’s what a sponsor helps with, positioning you for those opportunities. That next pay raise, that next cycle of when you’re looking at reviews, who’s going to speak for you? I think those are important things to think through. Anyway.
Shayla Gibson:
You guys are dropping gems, all types of gems. All right. We’re getting close to the top of the half hour, our time here. Just a few more questions. I’ll definitely take some from the Q&A as well. If you guys have questions in the audience, make sure you come in there. But this is a special day. We’re all here for a reason. What does International Women’s Day mean to you? And feel free to jump in.
Linda Avendaño:
For me, it’s about celebration. I think we have come a long way. Even I can see it from when I started my career to now because as I was having my first job, it was not until I got my first job that I learned that technology is not a field for women.
I was lucky enough that when I was growing up in my house, I said I wanted to be an engineer and everybody was just delighted about that. I never heard, oh no, don’t do that because that’s a man’s team.
It was until I get my first job that I start hearing that message. Now we are here 20 plus years later and I think we have gained very good battles in taking our place here in the STEM field and be good at it and be recognized at it.
I know we still have to walk more and gain some more models, but for me, we are heading in the right direction. I think we are achieving what we should be achieving as women in terms of getting visibility, closing the pay gap and really make sure we are in the room where the decisions are made, as Stephanie mentioned.
Cynthia Harbor:
My grandmother used to say that you can be a maid or a doctor, it doesn’t matter, but the problem surfaces if that’s all you think that you can do. We had very limited archetypes for me growing up, I only saw women in certain roles. Wives, teachers, commendable, love teachers. My mentor is a teacher.
I grew up along the coast of South Carolina, so big tourist area. Working in kitchens, dishwashers, cooks, maids, janitors. That’s what I saw. And these are admirable careers, these are hardworking people. But that’s all I saw.
Something inside me said, this is good, but is there different? Not necessarily better, but I looked for different. And so what this day means to me is it’s potential, it’s possibility, and it’s also me feeling empowered enough because I’ve seen enough and I’m curious enough, Stephanie, to sort pursue that passion, those things that I’m most interested about. It really comes back to possibilities. What do you want? And go get it.
Shayla Gibson:
Go ahead and get it.
Cynthia Harbor:
Go get it.
Yulia Eskin:
For me, being raised in a Russian Jewish home, this holiday is actually one of the biggest holidays. It’s like Valentine’s Day in Russian culture. And so my dad would always get a bouquet of flowers for myself, my sister and my mom, separate one for each girl.
The older I get, the more I realize that in terms of my identity and femininity, it’s something I want to bring fully into work. I struggled with that earlier in my career. I felt like I needed to be more like the boys and be less emotional and less, less, less, less. And now it’s like, no, that’s my strength. That’s who I am. I want to bring my full person into work.
Stephanie Pei:
It’s your superpower, Yulia. We all have it and we’ve been told to hide it. It takes courage and support to be our full self. I think back to your question around what this day means. I have such mixed feelings because I’m blessed and grateful, but I also know there’s more work to do. I look at it of the progress we’ve made in the last few decades, but then I’ve got this fire in me of, I don’t know if it’s anger, but well, we still got more to do.
When I say we, it’s not just us in this room, it’s allies, advocates or male counterparts. It’s just there’s a lot to do still. And I’m excited for it and I think it’s part of my purpose, to be honest.
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