Written by Neil Rivenburgh

The October Healthcare forum attendees were enthralled with the experiences of Jill Morrisey, CEO of Camp Twin Lakes. Jill began by sharing her impressive career running neuroscience programs at Piedmont Hospital and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.  She discussed how she is able to wear all of these hats and pull from the varied experience each time she faces a new challenge.

After years of working in large hospital systems, she was looking forward to a role that would be a fun and carefree experience – casual dress, working outdoors at camp.

Camp Twin Lakes provides a safe place for special needs children to meet others like themselves and have a development plan that helps them grow. “Through intentional play, we develop mindful and confident children who are prepared to triumph over challenges. By learning perseverance, resilience, and a sense of community, our campers leave transformed and capable of extraordinary things.”

It takes a big team to run the camp. Jill and her people work with about 65 partners to enable it to operate. It provides an experience for 10,000 kids. She spends a lot of her time raising funds to keep the camp running and growing.  Jill's passion to help kids build life skills, friendships and self-esteem propels her and camp volunteers to serve at Camp Twin Lakes.

Jill developed operational policies and procedures to run an efficient and sustainable camp. She shared an enlighten example of how project management was needed to manage and maintain Camp Twin Lakes farm. This farm consisted of 70 cows and 200 chickens who produces food for the camp. The importance of farm, led Jill to work closely with the camp farmer to develop a project plan that can be trained to other staff to run the farm efficiently end to end.

Jill talked about the importance of having contingency plans (“Think about Plan B … then Plan C … and Plan D”). She emphasized to “Plan as much as possible then think through every ‘what if’.”  Jill also address the need for Enterprise Risk Management for every project. Utilizing a risk matrix enabled her to plan for various risk that can occur.  Risk were ranked on a scale from “Remote” chance of occurring to “Very Likely” and how bad the impact could be from “Insignificant” to “Critical.”

Jill shared the project management process that is used for the camp.

• Program Evaluation
• Initiate Planning
• Program Design
• Training and Contingency Planning
• Implementation

She also stressed the importance of an effective communication plan. Effective communication is imperative especially for first time campers, as parents are very anxious when their kids have never been away from them. Therefore, frequent communication is needed to maintain parent’s confidence and trust in the camp abilities to take care of their kids.

Overall, Jill Morrisey delivered an inspiring message on how project management is used at Camp Twin Lakes to provide a wonderful experience to so many children.

Please join us Tuesday, November 27th from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. at the Joint Technology & Healthcare Forum for the: Keynote Presentation: “Living the Innovator’s Lifestyle” presented by Rob Wilson, Professional Speaker, Author & Storyteller

Location: Hewlett Packard Enterprise
5555 Windward Parkway, Alpharetta, Georgia 30004

About PMI

Atlanta Chapter serves Project Management Community in Metro Atlanta, and we're an active resource to corporations, community and government agencies throughout north Georgia. With over 5,000 members, PMI Atlanta is among the top 5 chapters in the world. Our professional expertise span across industries; we’re the professionals building healthcare information technology systems, the engineers developing smarter public transportation, and the planners growing our communities more efficiently.

Written by Neil Rivenburgh

On August 15^th, the attendees at the PMI Healthcare forum was informed and entertained by Dr. Jerrica Dodd, founder and CEO of Your Pharmacy Advocate, LLC. Your Pharmacy Advocate is a personalized pharmacy consulting service company. Her presentation “How to Leverage Your Project Manager Strengths in an Unfamiliar Role” addressed how a Project Managers can support a startup founder or a new business owner in driving multiple projects and initiatives forward.

Dr. Dodd has 20 years of experience in the pharmacy industry. Over the past year she has dedicated herself to growing a startup company called Your Pharmacy Advocate. She believes “everyone needs a pharmacist advocate in their life”. Her desire to pursue this opportunity spun from a series of medical situations with herself and her parents where she had to advocate for the best possible care. The average person would not been equipped to do so.

Dr. Dodd asked the audience, “Have you ever found yourself in an unfamiliar situation?” This is where she found herself when trying to grow and develop a start-up company. After some hesitation, she decided, “you just have to move!” And move she did.

As she started her new endeavor, Dr. Dodd realized she would need capable individuals in order to reach her goal. She enlisted a good Project Manager and other key roles to drive her vision forward. She considered her own role to be one of building future leaders and executives who would continue to grow the company.

Dr. Dodd’s suggestions for career success and development were outlined as:

• Understand the mission and vision of the organization you are joining      
• Learn the company culture and how to add to it
• Do your research – study the company’s social media posts and website
• Learn about the industry segment
• Understand the governing bodies
• Be Flexible
• Be coachable
• Commit to something bigger than yourself
• Commit to grow others around you
• Never stop learning

Please join us Wednesday, September 19^th from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. at the Healthcare Forum for the:

Keynote Presentation: “Population Health and U.S. Healthcare System: Opportunities for Project Management Applications” presented by Dr. Imoh Okon, Georgia State University/ Assistant Professor, Clinical Research PhD. MSc, MPH (c), PMP

Location: Philips Healthcare

PHA Academy
One Deerfield Centre
13560 Morris Road
Alpharetta, GA 30004

About PMI

Atlanta Chapter serves Project Management Community in Metro Atlanta, and we're an active resource to corporations, community and government agencies throughout north Georgia. With over 5,000 members, PMI Atlanta is among the top 5 chapters in the world. Our professional expertise span across industries; we’re the professionals building healthcare information technology systems, the engineers developing smarter public transportation, and the planners growing our communities more efficiently.

The PMI Atlanta Special Interest Team met in July in their Quarterly Retrospective Meeting to review best practices and lessons learned for our Q2 Industry Forum events. During the meeting, Kashif Choudry, VP of Special Interest, and Nevella Paul, AVP of Industry Forums, recognized Gray Terry and Nelly Eziashi, both volunteering for our Healthcare Forum.  Please read about our volunteers below:

Gray has been an integral part of the  Healthcare Forum success for the past 4 years. In 2014 he began as a volunteer with the Healthcare forum and transition to the Healthcare Forum Program Manager in 2016 -2017 term. Under his leadership, Gray did a phenomenal job leading the forum. As the current Logistics lead, he continues to be a huge contributor to the Healthcare Forum. He ensures the meeting room is set up appropriately and the environment is pleasantly appealing to our speaker and attendees. Gray is always ready to assist his peer volunteers with any task. No matter how big or small the task, Gray will get it done! His displays an unwavering commitment to the forum through his team work, high level of engagement and dedication.

Nelly has volunteered for the Healthcare Forum for 2 years. She has done an outstanding job managing the pre-forum logistics. She ensures all volunteer roles, responsibilities and registrations supplies/needs are covered for every forum. Nelly proactively takes on additional duties to ensure the team is equipped to provide a professional environment for our attendees.

Please take a moment to thank them for their efforts when you are at the next Healthcare Forum!  If you would like to become a volunteer to bring dynamic events and support our chapter, please visit vrms.pmi.org and create a profile!

Written by Neil Rivenburgh

The Healthcare Forum presented a polished presentation from Anjella Johnson-Hooker, MS., FAC P/PM III from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Anjella told the audience about leading a major project at the CDC and being the executive sponsor in modernizing the center’s three fragmented, antiquated systems in managing how vaccines are managed.

There had been 8 years of efforts and a lot of money was spent to update the systems, but there was a “0% ROI” to show for all the activity. Anjella took the lead role and said it would be done within the year. And after overcoming many obstacles, she did deliver the Vaccine Tracking System (known as VTrckS) within the timeline. There were many benefits that came from doing the project; from the original 64 distribution systems and more than 400 depots, the new process reduced this to 2 national distribution centers. This reduced the risks of storage and lowered distribution costs.

The crowd learned a lot about the process for ordering and distributing vaccines across the country. The ACIP committee approves which vaccines will be ordered for inventory. Funding was provided by the OMB and used a state match model and based decisions on demographics and area poverty levels. McKesson holds the national distribution contract. Before the upgrade, the end-to-end process too an average of 21 days. After the project was complete, that process was down to 3 days. The new system provides near real-time reporting on inventory and order status. The system manages the CDC’s purchase contracts, state budgets and spending plans.

Anjella stressed that the keys to success were getting buy-in from the right stakeholders, overcoming resistance to change, understanding that stakeholders would have a perceived loss of control, setting expectations, and “knowing what you don’t know.” She put a lot of effort into building and keeping trust with the stakeholders. She declared that an executive sponsor must be totally dedicated to the project. That meant delivering a clear message from the top that failure was not an option and the team must do what is required to succeed.

Please join us Wednesday, July 18th from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. at the joint Healthcare/Technology Forum for the: Career Month. We will have several leading recruiters and Staffing companies present to provide career and job hunting tips and advice.

Location: Philips Healthcare
PHA Academy
One Deerfield Centre
13560 Morris Road
Alpharetta, GA 30004