PMI-NEFL Mentors

• Agile Coaching
• Delivery Principles and Methodology
• Leadership & Executive Presence
• Soft Skills & Communication
• Work-Life Balance

• Conflict skills
• Active listening
• Boundaries
• Understanding and improving delivery systems
• How to navigate complex projects
• Agile transformation
• Building high-performing teams
• Leadership
• Kanban and Scrum

PMP / CAPM Exam Prep: Helping candidates understand project management principles, situational thinking, exam preparation strategies, and how PMI concepts translate into real-world project environments.

Career Transition into PM: Helping professionals identify transferable skills, reposition their experience, build project management credibility, pursue appropriate certifications, and develop a practical transition strategy.

Leadership & Executive Presence: Developing leadership confidence, strategic thinking, executive communication, decision-making, influence without authority, presentation skills, and the ability to operate effectively with senior stakeholders.

Agile Coaching: Supporting Agile, SAFe, iterative, and hybrid approaches, including team collaboration, facilitation, continuous improvement, adaptive planning, stakeholder engagement, and selecting approaches appropriate to the environment.

Technical Project Management: Applying practical project management principles to technology, cybersecurity, digital transformation, AI, systems, modernization, and other complex technical initiatives.

Soft Skills & Communication: Strengthening stakeholder engagement, active listening, facilitation, conflict resolution, negotiation, strategic communications, relationship building, difficult conversations, and cross-functional collaboration.

Building a PM Career Path: Helping mentees develop intentional career strategies, identify capability gaps, select certifications and developmental experiences, build professional networks, pursue leadership opportunities, and progress from project execution into program, portfolio, and executive leadership.

Portfolio & Program Management: Supporting the management of complex programs, interconnected projects, strategic portfolios, governance, prioritization, dependencies, resource allocation, risk, performance measurement, and alignment between strategy and execution.

Industry-Specific PM Guidance: Sharing lessons from consulting and advisory engagements across government, defense and national security, technology, cybersecurity, healthcare, higher education, nonprofit, professional-association, and commercial environments.

Other: Enterprise Transformation, Organizational Change & Strategic Leadership: Mentoring in organizational change management, enterprise transformation, strategic planning and execution, governance, quality and process improvement, workforce transformation, AI and digital transformation, stakeholder alignment, organizational politics, high-performing teams, risk and resilience, and translating strategy into measurable outcomes.

This selection set also gives the chapter considerable flexibility when matching you with a mentoring circle: you can effectively mentor someone preparing for the PMP, transitioning into project management, becoming a stronger PM, or moving from project manager → program/portfolio leader → strategic/executive leader.

I am a PMP-certified project, program, and enterprise transformation leader with extensive experience leading complex initiatives across government, defense, intelligence, cybersecurity, technology, consulting, and nonprofit environments. I can offer mentees both practical project management expertise and the broader leadership capabilities required to successfully navigate complex organizations and build sustainable careers.

My project and program management experience includes strategic planning, project initiation and planning, scope and requirements management, stakeholder engagement, risk and issue management, governance, performance measurement, communications, organizational change, process improvement, workforce transformation, technology implementation, and project execution. I have worked with predictive, Agile, SAFe, iterative, change-management, quality, and hybrid approaches and can help mentees understand not only the methodologies themselves, but how to determine which approaches are appropriate for different environments.

One area in which I can provide significant value is stakeholder management and influence. Many technically capable project managers discover that their greatest challenges are not schedules or project tools, but competing priorities, unclear decision rights, resistant stakeholders, organizational politics, communication breakdowns, and insufficient executive alignment. I can help mentees learn how to map stakeholders, understand competing perspectives, communicate at different organizational levels, facilitate difficult conversations, build coalitions, manage resistance, and influence outcomes even when they do not have formal authority.

I can also support mentees seeking to strengthen leadership and executive presence. Throughout my career, I have advised senior executives and led multidisciplinary teams in complex, high-consequence environments. I can help emerging leaders learn to communicate concisely, brief executives effectively, frame recommendations around outcomes, ask stronger questions, make decisions under uncertainty, lead through change, and transition from managing tasks to leading people and outcomes.

My experience in enterprise transformation provides another dimension I can bring to the mentoring circle. I have led and supported initiatives involving cybersecurity, digital transformation, workforce modernization, governance, quality, organizational change, strategic communications, operational excellence, and emerging technologies. For example, my work supporting USCYBERCOM/MARFORCYBER contributed to an approximately 85% reduction in audit findings and 45% improvement in workforce proficiency, while transformation work within a Joint Staff environment contributed to approximately 35% greater efficiency and 40% improvement in decision accuracy. These experiences provide practical lessons about managing complexity, risk, stakeholders, organizational change, and performance—not simply delivering a project plan.

I also understand career transition and professional development from both sides of the mentoring relationship. I have mentored more than 200 entrepreneurs, students, veterans, emerging professionals, and leaders, helping individuals clarify goals, identify transferable skills, strengthen professional positioning, build leadership capability, navigate transitions, and translate experience into new opportunities.

For individuals pursuing the PMP, I can share lessons from my own certification journey while helping them connect PMI concepts to real project environments. I would particularly emphasize understanding the principles behind project management practices rather than relying solely on memorization.

Above all, my mentoring philosophy is centered on capability transfer rather than advice-giving. I listen first, ask questions, help mentees examine assumptions and alternatives, share relevant experiences, and then challenge them to determine and own their next actions. My goal is for mentees to leave the program not simply with more information, but with stronger judgment, greater confidence, an expanded professional network, and practical tools they can continue using throughout their careers.

• Leadership & Executive Presence
• Soft Skills & Communication

Building high-performing teams. I've always described project management as a blob and by the time the project is over, you'd be surprised how you no longer have to ask for people to stay late or be committed, they volunteer.