This episode focuses on changing career from postdoctoral research to project management. Ruth Winden talks to Leeds alumni Dr Shirley-Anne Paul, Project Manager at Drax plc.
With a background in Psychology, Shirley made the switch to project management after nine years as a postdoc at the University of Edinburgh, the University of Leeds and the University of York. She has had an illustrious project management career ever since, starting out in the Workers' Educational Association (WEA), then moving to Health Innovation Yorkshire & Humber, the University of Leeds, the fintech sector at My Money Matters, and most recently to Drax Power Station in North Yorkshire.
Key highlights from the podcast conversation:
- Postdocs possess many transferable skills that are ideal for project management roles, such as organisational, time management, stakeholder engagement, and strong written and data analysis skills.
- Making the move from academia to project management can feel like a significant leap of faith, even involving a period of grieving over leaving one's research behind. But PM offers fulfilment and a rewarding new career path.
- Experience in different sectors and organisations can give project managers a distinct advantage, allowing them to manage diverse projects, work with different stakeholders, and adapt to multiple project management methodologies like Waterfall and Agile.
- To be successful in project management, Shirley-Anne Paul recommends that researchers who consider project management roles connect with other project managers 9also via LinkedIn groups), pursue formal project management qualifications, and strategically transition first into roles that align closely with their previous postdoctoral experience, to ease the move. After securing that first project management role, it is common to move into different sectors and roles, as PM is such a flexible and varied career option.
Technical Terms used:
SME = Subject Matter Expertise | Project Management Methodologies: Prince2, Waterfall and Agile.
If you'd like to find out more about Shirley's or Ruth's career path, please go to their LinkedIn profiles: Dr Shirley-Anne Paul | Ruth Winden
All of our episodes can be accessed via the following playlists:
Welcome to the Research Culture Uncovered podcast where in every episode we explore what is research culture and what should it be. You'll hear thoughts and opinions from a range of contributors to help you change research culture into what you want it to be.
Ruth Winden [:
How to make a career transition from research into project management is the topic of our podcast episode today. My name is Ruth Winden and as the Careers with Research Consultant at the University of Leeds, I have worked closely with a good number of postdocs who discovered their love of managing projects whilst doing their research. For them. It was a natural progression to move full time into project management and make a career out of it. And today my guest has done exactly that. I'm delighted to have Dr. Shirley-Anne Paul as my guest. Shirley and I have known each other for many years and I can't think of a better person to share her experience of building a formidable career as a Project Manager, after quite some time as a postdoc. And when I say formidable, I mean it.
Ruth Winden [:
Her move between roles and sectors as a Project Manager has been breathtaking. I'm so pleased to have you with me Shirley-Anne. And I'll just tell you a little bit about her so you get a real appreciation of her background. Shirley holds an honors degree, Master's degree and PhD in Psychology from the University of Dundee and she spent nine years working as a postdoc at the University of Edinburgh, Leeds and York. As a postdoc she specialized in developing, delivering and evaluating large scale research projects primarily aimed at promoting educational and health outcomes. Whilst working as a postdoc, Shirley gained her Prince2 practitioner qualification in project management and left academia in 2019 to begin a career in Project Management. Her first role was Senior Project Manager for the Workers Educational Association (WEA), a national adult education charity, then as a Program Manager for Health Innovation Yorkshire and Humber here in the UK. She then returned to the University of Leeds as a Senior Project Manager on a large scale research project before moving to a startup in the fintech industry, a company called My Money Matters. She's currently a Project Manager for the Drax Group based at Drax Power Station in North Yorkshire.
Ruth Winden [:
Shirley has received several awards and letters of recognition from organizations for her performance and hard work on delivering projects. And in her spare time she is a dedicated volunteer, having held various trustee and governance roles with her most recent role being Operations and Governance Director for a national charity. Givto. My word, Shirley, you have gained so much cross sector experience in project management and so many accolades. I can't wait to explore with you how you managed to do all this. Welcome.
Shirley-Anne Paul [:
Thanks, Ruth. Hi. Thank you very much. It's really great to be invited to do this podcast. Yeah.
Ruth Winden [:
And as I said, I can't think of a better person because, I mean, your career has been breathtaking. So I'll just start with a question. You know, in my view, you're such a fantastic role model and I know many researchers who will listen to this episode will find your experience really fascinating. And also listen carefully to, you know, how did you make all these transitions? So for starters, when you were a postdoc, and I remember those times when you were a postdoc at Leeds, what got you interested in becoming a project manager?
Shirley-Anne Paul [:
Well, great starting question, Ruth. So my interest in project management began when I was a postdoc. So back then I worked on a lot of large scale research projects which involved using both my research and project management skills. I think that when I started out as a postdoc, I wasn't really cognizant of the fact that a lot of what I was doing was effectively project management. And one of my earliest postdoc projects was the REACH project, a project headed up by Dr. Paula Clarke at the University of Leeds. So in the REACH project, we developed two different reading intervention programs which we implemented with secondary school pupils who were behind in their reading ability. So I was a sole postdoc on the project and responsible for its day to day management, and the management and delivery responsibilities on that project were really quite significant.
Shirley-Anne Paul [:
So we recruited a large number of schools across Yorkshire. We trained and coordinated a large team of teaching assistants to deliver the reading interventions to pupils in schools. And we also trained up a number of research staff to go into schools and collect research data for evaluating the success of the reading programs. So this was a lot of people and tasks to coordinate to very tight time constraints. So working on that project involved me drawing really heavily on my organizational, time management and people management skills, all of which are crucial skills of a project manager. So I think working on REACH was my first experience of managing a really large project with multiple sites and stakeholders. And I think I realized very early on in my career that I enjoyed managing and leading on large initiatives. And this became more apparent to me as the years went by.
Shirley-Anne Paul [:
And I think what was also becoming more apparent was that I enjoyed the management and delivery side of things far more than undertaking data analysis and writing research papers. So I began to think about a future career in project management.
Ruth Winden [:
Because all those skills as a project manager, you know, they, they played to your strengths, didn't they because you're such a people orientated person. And what a first big project to do and get a taste of project management. So many different stakeholders. That's quite something. So Shirley, what do you think - why are postdocs so well suited to project management roles?
Shirley-Anne Paul [:
Well, I think, so, as I've just discussed. I mean, postdoc roles harness many of the key skills required in project management since they involve delivering projects to tight timescales and leading teams of project staff, and often managing very senior internal and external stakeholders. And you just alluded to it a minute ago. But as any project manager will tell you, being good at stakeholder and people management is a particularly crucial skill in project management, as you need the buy-in. Essentially you need to be able to get people to agree to undertake the tasks you need them to do and then ensure that they do them. Postdocs also typically have excellent written skills, having written up their mammoth PhD thesis, and they have years of experience of writing essays and research reports. So writing project reports in the project management world should be a walk in the park to most postdocs. And the data analysis skills always come in handy too. So I find that I'm able to interpret quantitative data and reports really quickly, but I know that I wouldn't be as good as that if I hadn't had the prior research training.
Ruth Winden [:
Great points. And I'm also very aware researchers always work under time pressure and within certain timescales, so they always have deadlines. I mean, every researcher I work with talks to me about their Gantt charts and their systems that they use, you know, and I think for a lot of them, they don't look at their research from a project management point of view, they look at it from a researcher point of view. And very often they say, and when we talk about, you know, the similarities with project management, suddenly you see, oh, you know, something's clicked. And because it's such a popular career direction at the moment, A), because we have more and more project managers in Higher Education, so people often want to stay in the field. Or, project management as a role as a profession is growing rapidly. Who does not do projects these days? And so it's a really nice transition into something new. And you've obviously done a lot of that. And you know, I wanted to ask you, when you made that transition, was it 2019? I think it was, wasn't it, 2019? You'd had quite a few years as a postdoc under your belt and then you made that first transition into management role.
Ruth Winden [:
How did you make that? Because I think you were very clever and very strategic about it.
Shirley-Anne Paul [:
Yeah, there's a few things to say here. So, I mean, prior to making the transition, I thoroughly researched what a typical project management role entailed and that really helped provide me with the validation that I had most, if not all of the transferable skills required to be a project manager. But as well as doing my homework on the role, I do want to say that deciding to leave academia did involve a massive leap of faith and that the, well, the initial transition out of academia wasn't easy at all. So in terms of my story, I had known for years that I didn't want to become a full blown academic. So whilst I did enjoy doing a bit of teaching here and there and writing the odd research article, I never wanted teaching or writing to be the main focus of my work. I just wasn't passionate enough about these aspects of the job and as a result never enjoyed them as much, I guess. I sat and thought about the aspects of the postdoc work that I really enjoyed the most and I realized that this was the people in project management side of things. And then I also realized that these were the parts of the job that I was most successful at.
Shirley-Anne Paul [:
So I think the penny dropped that passion and enjoyment are prerequisites of success. And I am really ambitious and have always wanted to have a successful career, so I needed to go and follow my dreams and ambitions. And actually your Career Architect program really helped me work through this process as well. So thank you for putting me on such a wonderful program, Ruth.
Ruth Winden [:
And it's interesting, isn't it Shirley? I remember it so well because I remember it was hard, but you did it. And I think what you did so well was, you know, becoming very clear about, you know, what do I enjoy, what am I really good at, what comes easy to me, what are my strengths. And then seeing that similarity with project management. But then I think you were also really clever about where you went first because I think that's what I think people don't always understand. I always talk about, you know, the 'low hanging fruit', you know, what is closest to your background to make that step out that makes it a little bit easier. So because you started with, with the education sector, didn't you, in project management?
Shirley-Anne Paul [:
Yeah. So my first project management role was for a national adult education charity which was a natural fit given my many years of experience working in Higher Education, and that included six years in the School of Education at Leeds University. So it was fairly easy to make a strong case for why I was suitable for that particular role. I really enjoyed working for the education charity and in that role I co-led a major business transformation project which enabled continuity of adult education service provision during COVID19. So yes, I really, really enjoyed that role.
Ruth Winden [:
And I'm a big fan of the WEA and I was so pleased that you chose them because they are a wonderful organization, aren't they? And then. But you didn't stop there. And what I find so incredibly interesting about your career in project management is you didn't just stick to what you knew, and that was the education sector. After the education sector you went into health, then you went into Fintech in a startup and then you went to the energy sector. And that is pretty remarkable because it's not just a change of role, but it's also a change of sector. And obviously, you know, completely different topics, different language, different technical aspects you need to understand. So, I mean, I call you the 'queen of transitions', surely, because I don't know any of the postdocs I've worked with in the last 10 years who've been so good at making the transitions. They've often stuck to one thing.
Ruth Winden [:
But, you know, you have driven yourself to lots and lots of new opportunities. So how did you manage to transition so regularly into these new roles and sectors?
Shirley-Anne Paul [:
Yes, really great question, Ruth. I suppose the first thing to say is, so I have faced redundancy a couple of times, so if it wasn't for that, you know, I might not have moved so often during the last few years. But when I left the role at the WEA and I moved into my next role for Health Innovation Yorkshire and Humber, well, I guess the motivation there was based on the fact that I'd spent a year working as a postdoc in the University of York Trials Unit and I gained some really brilliant experience of managing high profile health trials which were funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research. So I'd already gained experience working on health projects and really enjoyed those too. So again, it was quite easy for me to make a move into a health organization. I guess my motivation and reasons for moving into Fintech are a bit less explicable because up until that point I had no real experience of either working in the private sector or working in finance or technology. But I guess at that point I just fancied trying my hand at project management in a new industry and sector. And I guess what's interesting is that perhaps by that point in my career my confidence had grown massively So a few years prior to that I could not have imagined jumping head first into a new industry or sector.
Shirley-Anne Paul [:
I mean actually, I mean I lacked the confidence initially to leave academia. As a student I had various part-time jobs in different organizations and but for 18 years all I knew was Higher Education institutions. I had nine years studying for my degrees and nine years working as a postdoc. So I guess on some level I'd become institutionalized and it took a lot of sort of confidence and a giant leap of faith to leave academia. And I think I did struggle for my, with my confidence for quite some time. But I think after a few years of working in project management and feeling really, you know, secure and feeling that, you know, I'd made the right career choice, it just gave me that confidence to leap into a brand new sector and industry. So when I was working for the Fintech company, I did embark on a really steep learning curve. As I said, I had no experience of finance or working on IT projects at that point point.
Shirley-Anne Paul [:
But I was able to apply my project management training and experience and successfully deliver another major business transformation project. And I even won an award in this role. So I received 'Best Newcomer of the Year'.
Ruth Winden [:
Hey, fantastic. Well done, Shirley. Thanks. And thank you for being so honest because I think, you know, it, it is a major leap of faith and how often do I hear from postdocs. I've been in the system for so long, I have never worked in a different sector, I feel institutionalized. You know, I hear this so often and it's really inspiring. It didn't stop you from moving forward. And when you then find that sweet spot and you find that place where, you know, I can do a really good job here and I can really make a difference, the confidence then comes, doesn't it? And you've built it and build it and, and every time you try a new challenge and you try a new sector and a new role and you see, oh, I can do Fintech too and I can even get an award because I've only been here for a year and I get recognized so quickly, you know, that that is obviously really helpful in, in, in helping you find that confidence.
Ruth Winden [:
So thanks for being so honest because I know that's a lot of people feel, oh, can I really do it? And I have the privilege. I have worked with many, many postdocs in these situations and I have been part of those journeys and I know it's possible, but when you're on your own in that situation, I think it can be really hard to, to see it like that, can't it?
Shirley-Anne Paul [:
Yes. And I suppose the other thing to add is that when you have spent many years building up your research career and you've managed to get your research to a level where you're becoming somewhat of an expert in a specific research field, to let go of all that work that you've built up over the years can be really quite difficult. And I did go through a bit of a grieving period immediately after leaving academia. Because quite simply, you can't take your research with you, so there's no time, space, opportunity to continue, you know, research in the private sector. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Leap of faith.
Ruth Winden [:
Leap of faith. And also going from being an expert at something to something very new where you have to find your feet. And you probably don't know that much yet, you know, it's. That's also a very uncomfortable feeling. So, Shirley, tell us about your current role at Drax.
Shirley-Anne Paul [:
Well, in terms of my current role, first of all, I came across the advert for the project manager role at Drax, and I honestly felt that the advert had been written for me and had my name all over it. So they were looking for a generalist, someone with experience of delivering projects across a wide variety of skills, specialisms. Well, that's me! Yeah, yeah. So I eagerly applied and accepting my current role is easily one of the best decisions I've ever made. I love my current role. I have a great mix of projects, my team are fabulous and I have a really wonderful, supportive manager. So I've definitely fallen on my feet.
Ruth Winden [:
Wonderful.
Shirley-Anne Paul [:
But in terms of being able to make that transition so regularly, I think once you have a few years project management experience under your belt, it becomes easier to transition into new industries and sectors. I mean, after all, as a project manager, I don't need to have the Subject Matter Expertise (SME). We bring SMEs into the project team to provide that expert knowledge. So as a project manager, I just need to be able to apply best practice project management principles and techniques, draw upon experience and lessons learned, and use all of those other sort of soft interpersonal skills required for effectively managing and delivering projects. If you do already understand your subject area, then that clearly does give you a starting advantage. But because I've now delivered countless projects where my sort of knowledge of the project area was effectively close to zero, this, this doesn't hinder me at all. And I think successful project managers are generally, you know, clever people. They can quickly assimilate new information and get up to speed with projects really quickly.
Shirley-Anne Paul [:
I've often found actually that having little knowledge of a particular subject area can sometimes help me to be a more effective project manager as it forces me to ask more questions and really get under the skin of a project. And I think interestingly, you'll find that a lot of project managers work as self-employed contractors. So it's fairly common for project managers to frequently move roles and sectors.
Ruth Winden [:
And you know, that really makes me think because researchers are in a similar position, you know, they change subjects, sorry, not subjects, but you know, contracts, often research groups, often they teach themselves a lot of things, they have to get to grips with new research areas really, really quickly. So in many ways I can also see, see the parallel there with project managers who really have to embrace a whole new area very quickly. But you know what I find so wonderful is that you say, actually it can be really helpful if I don't know everything because I ask really good questions and you bring a different perspective. So Shirley, with your rich and varied background in project management, do you see your diverse experiences in different sectors and different types of organizations, from very large to very small and startups, Is that an advantage in project management?
Shirley-Anne Paul [:
Yes, absolutely. I mean, first of all, my experience across the different organizations and sectors has definitely been diverse and diverse in many ways. So I mean, the first thing to say is that I've gained experience of delivering lots of different types of projects. So I've delivered large scale business transformation initiatives including workforce redesign and a major program of work which enabled business continuity during the COVID19 pandemic. And for the Fintech company I worked for, I delivered a project which developed new finance products and brought them to market. I'm currently working on a suite of projects which cut across IT and engineering and I'm heading up the work stream of a major business critical project. So I have a great mix of projects at the moment and I really like the device, the, sorry, the diversity that this brings in my day to day work. And I've definitely gained diverse experiences from working in the different sectors as well.
Shirley-Anne Paul [:
So for example, and as we all know, there is often more money in the private sector than in other sectors, meaning that there are often larger budgets for funding projects. This makes a huge difference and can make project delivery easier in many ways. But then on the flip side, it's really rewarding on a personal level to deliver a project in the public or charity sector where budgets are often much smaller, but the impact can be greater. So I really do enjoy working on initiatives that make a real positive impact on people's lives. So I think that my experiences in these different sectors, different organizations, and of working on different types of projects, it's a definite advantage. I've learned so much about different ways of working and it's definitely improved my skills in stakeholder management as I've worked with so many different types of stakeholders and at all levels. And I've learned new methodologies along the way as well. So until recently I was primarily qualified and experienced in delivering projects using Waterfall methodology.
Shirley-Anne Paul [:
So that's a methodology where we manage projects by stages. But I've gained recent experience in using Agile methodology and I'm now able to blend these approaches which can really help to better manage projects and teams. And I think what's interesting as well is that I've observed that organizations differ in terms of their project management capabilities and maturity. So I've worked in some organizations where they have dedicated project management offices which provide clear frameworks and tools for delivering projects. And having that structure and resource in place really makes my life as a project manager easier. But I've worked in other organizations where that setup wasn't in place and that can make project delivery more difficult and means that things can take longer as well. So when you're initiating a project, for example, that can take longer as you have to set up the governance and the reporting structures from scratch. And I think what some project managers will find is that in some roles there's an expectation that they will be responsible for developing the project management artefacts and processes to enable delivery.
Shirley-Anne Paul [:
So in these instances, the project manager effectively undertakes some of the responsibilities of a project management office manager. And I have experienced that, but quite enjoy setting up processes and templates. So I don't really mind.
Ruth Winden [:
It's so varied, you know, the life of a project manager. And one thing that stuck with me and he said that to me a while ago when we spoke and that was a good project manager is a good people manager. And what I'm always fascinated, fascinated by is considering that mostly the people you do projects with, you don't line manage them. They're your project partners, they're stakeholders. How do you get people to commit and deliver when they will also have other priorities?
Shirley-Anne Paul [:
Well, that really is a brilliant question, Ruth, and I'll tell you why. Because it's one frequently asked during interviews.
Ruth Winden [:
Oh, is it?
Shirley-Anne Paul [:
Yes. So if I don't know the answer answer to this, I'm in trouble.
Ruth Winden [:
I hope this doesn't feel like an interview though, Shirley.
Shirley-Anne Paul [:
No, no, not at all. But funny. Yeah. So the answer is then: well, in terms of getting stakeholders to commit and deliver, well, it's about first of all, you know, explaining the project aims and objectives to them and the expected outputs and outcomes and how all of that aligns with business strategy. It's about having a shared vision for the project and getting the, getting the buy-in. Right? So at the beginning of a project, I will meet with the stakeholders to agree their roles and responsibilities on the project and I'll have them sign off on that. And we typically document that information in a Raci Matrix.
Shirley-Anne Paul [:
And then I guess once expectations have been conveyed and agreed, it's about setting up regular touch points with stakeholders to keep them informed or to hold them to account. Yeah, depending on their role. And I mean, open communication and full transparency are absolute key when managing people. And it's always important to make sure they're listened to and that they have a channe-l for providing input and feedback. So a good project manager will be able to listen to all perspectives but provide a clear and logical justification as to why a particular decision is being made. And coming back to the accountability aspect, I mean, many stakeholders will have multiple projects and priorities. So it's about keeping them aware of key milestones and due dates by sharing the project plan and holding them to account and their delivery dates.
Ruth Winden [:
So communication is everything and I guess, you know, establishing trust early on, you know, how can we motivate people and how can we get them to commit and yeah, it's absolutely fascinating. I wonder how many people will decide to become, become project managers after this conversation with you, Shirley. There we go. And on a serious note, yeah, we talk a lot about AI and careers at the moment. It's really important to have a think how does AI impact a profession, especially for researchers who want to change career. So I wanted to ask you, you know Shirley, from your perspective, how do you see AI impacting your career as a project manager? Is that something that is on your mind? Because it's so people focused, I think AI will not replace us as people. But in terms of processes and methodologies, what's the impact of AI on the career, the profession of a project manager?
Shirley-Anne Paul [:
Well, I mean, first of all, what I would say is that so far AI has positively impacted my day to day work as a project manager. So I have primarily used it for generating meeting notes and actions. So as fellow project managers would tell you, a lot of our work is leading focus meetings to move projects forward or to bottom out issues. And in those meetings we are responsible for ensuring that key meeting points and actions are captured. So I use AI to help capture these for me. It saves me so much admin time as I don't need to type up my meeting notes and it's also really useful if I've missed something key in a meeting. But in terms of AI's long term impact on the field or on my career, it is hard to say. But I certainly don't see AI replacing the need for project managers.
Shirley-Anne Paul [:
While there are many project tasks that can probably be automated in the future, there are many which can't. So as long as we still need humans to undertake project tasks, we'll still need project managers to manage the humans to do the tasks. So that, that's my very simple take on it. I probably need to use my research skills to, to further investigate and understand this. But yeah, yeah, that, that's my simple take on it.
Ruth Winden [:
Yeah, and it sounds very familiar with our roles at the university. You know, we're using AI to, you know, to help us with meetings and records of things and oh, it's such a godsend in that regard because it's so time consuming and then we can use the time in, in more meaningful ways. Absolutely. And you. Absolutely. I also agree with, you know, the day we don't need humans at work anymore. What is the point of it all? You know, I cannot see AI going that far. What a world that would be.
Shirley-Anne Paul [:
Hopefully not.
Ruth Winden [:
Hopefully not, exactly. So you're obviously such a role model for so many postdocs and I can just imagine people saying, oh, I wonder how I can follow in Shirley's footsteps. So Shirley, when you look back over your career, what advice would you give researchers in academia who are thinking about moving into a project management role?
Shirley-Anne Paul [:
Yes, another great question. And I do think that I do have some words of advice. So thinking first of all about what I said earlier. From a psychological perspective, researchers do need to be mentally prepared to let go of their research work. Obviously that doesn't apply to just those going into project management, it applies to any researcher leaving academia. But as I said earlier, I did experience sort of a period of grief when I gave up my research career. So it's just about sort of acknowledging that and being prepared to walk away from your research. But I think once that's been reconciled, I would encourage researchers to reflect and be truly honest with themselves about where their passion and their skill strengths lie.
Shirley-Anne Paul [:
So again, as I mentioned earlier, my passion has always been leading and managing people and projects. And that passion is therefore highly positively correlated with my skills strengths. So if other researchers also recognize that within themselves then I would absolutely recommend pursuing a move into project management. I know it sounds like a cliche, but you really need to think about where you want to be and where you see yourself in five years' time. And I guess I would also recommend that researchers moving into project management follow my strategy of initially moving into a role which is fairly closely aligned to their area of subject expertise. This can help make the transition go more smoothly and feel less daunting, I think. And then of course is experience. Experience is built up.
Shirley-Anne Paul [:
There's nothing to stop people from setting their sights higher and further afield.
Ruth Winden [:
Absolutely. And it's interesting when I look at postdocs I've worked with in addition to you, Shirley, at the University of Leeds. You know, some people have gone into project management roles at the university, you know, managing research projects but not doing the research themselves anymore. Others have gone to professional associations. So I know some postdocs that were in engineering and they moved then into associations there and had a fantastic career. Some have gone into the government. I mean, there's project management everywhere.
Ruth Winden [:
So anything else you wanted to share, Shirley, that we haven't covered?
Shirley-Anne Paul [:
Yeah, sure. I mean, just to sort of finish off the conversation we just had there, what I would like to say actually is, having been out of academia for a few years now, I am pleased to say I. I don't miss it at all. And so whilst there was that initial grieving period, as I've referred to it a couple of times now, I am well and truly over and past that and not missing it at all. And I'm very happy in my new chosen career. You know, I have really enjoyed sharing my story so far and I say so far because I still have many work years left, right? And I'm determined to continue climbing the project manager ladder. So my dream is to one day become Chief Operating Officer.
Shirley-Anne Paul [:
I guess, for anyone considering a career in project management, I would recommend connecting with other project managers and project management groups on LinkedIn. It's a great resource for learning more about the world of project management and I've gained lots of useful tips and insights which has helped me in my day to day work. I would also recommend studying for a formal project management qualification. So most of the project manager roles I've worked in have asked for a project management qualification as well as a degree. My higher degrees haven't mattered for any of these roles and neither have any of my published papers actually. So yes, it is worthwhile studying for one of those qualifications.
Ruth Winden [:
Yeah, that's great to hear because we have an initiative at Leeds and we're, we're helping people getting and postdocs getting an accreditation in project management. So wonderful. Shirley and I have no doubt, I mean if anyone can get to that level it's you. And we're connected. I really hope we'll stay in touch and I see your career flourish on LinkedIn and thank you so much for being such a loyal Leeds alumni and coming back and obviously also a Career Architect alumni and coming back and sharing your experiences. And I found it utterly fascinating because one thing I haven't mentioned is: I actually started out as a project manager. It was my second job in the UK and I totally fell into it. It was totally unplanned and I absolutely loved it and I made it to senior project manager and then I moved out. But the irony is I obviously have a lot of projects, you know, as part of my work. It's just not in my title. So I totally understand the fascination with project management and what a joy it is to work well together with people and make something happen and make a big change and make an impact.
Ruth Winden [:
So Shirley, you're wonderful and all the best and thank you so much for today. Bye-bye.
Shirley-Anne Paul [:
Thank you Ruth. Bye-bye.
Introduction [:
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