After nearly a decade in the Navy, Shaelyn Ventrano found herself in charge of a team of 50+ cross-functional military and civilian employees – and realized that she thrived in a project management role. Shaelyn is passionate about teaching others what it takes to succeed in Project Management and dispelling some of the myths surrounding the profession. We’re so fortunate that Shaelyn is a part of the Urban Emu team.

Q. You’re a Senior Project Manager at Urban Emu. Can you tell me what a typical day looks like in that role? 

A. My day consists of a lot of communication. I check my email first thing in the morning to check for any client or partner agency emails. There are usually some internal communications to discuss any emails or what is on our collective plate for that day. I also attend a lot of meetings and Scrums so I spent time making sure that I am prepared to lead calls. After calls I usually have some action items like emails or ClickUp tickets to create or even sometimes quick internal meetings to make a plan for what was discussed in a client meeting. I spend a lot of my time creating and reworking timelines, emailing clients, and tracking budgets. I also spend time tracking and facilitating workflows for upcoming deliverables and making sure our team is on track to hit our deadlines.

Q. Before working at UE, you were in the US Navy. Can you tell me a bit about your experience there and some of the lessons you took with you from that time in your career?

A. My time in the Navy was a really formative time as an individual and a professional. I’ve always been drawn to leadership roles, but I had a hard time with being assertive and confident in my communications and delivering directives to my peers. I was lucky to have some Navy leadership take an interest in my professional development and they pushed me to be more assertive and to take control of situations. They consistently provided me with challenges that forced me to push past my reservations and helped me exercise my leadership muscles and develop a confidence that ultimately made me a very successful leader in the Navy.

As I continued to take on more leadership roles, I found that I really thrived in that environment and enjoyed the challenges that came with resolving problems and leading a team. I also learned how to lead my peers and friends. In the military, you develop a very unique bond with your peers; you spend a lot of time together, and sometimes, it can be difficult to change your hat from being a friend to a peer or leader. The Navy constantly challenged me in these ways.

Q. How did you first get into Project Management?

A. I’ve always had an interest in business and loved to talk to my dad about his work as a manager and what I was learning in business class during my undergrad degree. I knew I was interested in business, but my introduction to leadership and management in the Navy really propelled my interest in Project Management. For years, a career in Project Management really felt out of reach because of the number of experience hours the Project Management Institute requires (36 months with a bachelor’s degree or 60 months without a bachelor’s).

However, during my final Navy assignment, I was working as a division chief for a large cross-functional team. It was the most challenging, rewarding, enjoyable, and transformative year of my Navy service. I was put in a position that challenged me and threw me into the deep end in the most valuable way possible. I showed myself and those around me that I could handle it, and I am really proud of that assignment and how I performed and grew in that role.

During that assignment, I met a Navy vet (and now friend) who turned out to have her PMP and who was able to break down the process for me and guide me on how to translate all of my valuable military experience into Project Management experience to qualify for the certification process. She really helped me realize that I did have the skills and experience needed to become a PM.

Q. You’re a certified Scrum master. What does that mean?

A. A Scrum Master is actually a role on a team and it is different from a Project Manager but shares a lot of the same responsibilities. Scrum is a type of management and workflow methodology that prescribes how to run a project. It outlines the roles on the team (Product Owner, Scrum Master, and Development Team), the types of meetings that should be held, what format the work should be completed in, and other important project documents that make a project successful. It was a very valuable certification to obtain as a PM and I think project teams can learn a lot from Scrum methodology to conduct work more efficiently. I’ve been able to use that certification and the skills I learned from it to develop and implement some new processes at UE and help make our development process more efficient.

Q. What do you think it takes to succeed in Project Management?

A. I think one of the most important aspects of Project Management is emotional intelligence and the ability to connect with people. PMs are communicating all day long with internal teams, external teams, and clients, and all of those teams and individuals have different ways of communicating. It’s so important for a PM to detect how an individual communicates and appeal to that in order to keep teams and clients happy and harmonious.

As a PM, when you first kick off a call with a new client, you have to very quickly learn how that client communicates and determine the things that are very important to them. You have to learn to pick up on intonations and tone changes to be able to really understand them. Then you have to take this knowledge and communicate it with your team and not only be an advocate for your client’s interest but also advocate for your team. As a PM, you are doing more than creating timelines and tracking tasks and budgets; there are a lot of soft skills that go into making things run smoothly, keeping teams working together, and ensuring that everyone feels heard and understood.

This is part of what makes me so passionate about PM; no project is ever the same. While projects may have the same deliverables, the stakeholders are different, and the material is different. So it makes every challenge and every success so rewarding. Because I am so passionate about PM, I love to help others break into the field. I love to show people that PM is not out of reach and that they really just may have the skills needed to be a successful PM. I have helped several people on their journey into PM and certification and I would love to continue helping other professionals find their PM career as well.

Q. What do you think are some of the preconceived notions about Project Management that aren’t true?

A. I think a lot of PMs would agree that PMs are often misunderstood or even treated like administrative assistants, doing tasks like writing emails, scheduling meetings, and taking meeting notes. But while these tasks are important, they often take time away from important responsibilities that a PM has to do each day, like managing relationships, communications, schedules, workloads, budgets, scopes, timelines, deliveries, team mediation, and more. We have to be very quick on our feet to resolve issues or address curve balls and quickly and efficiently communicate them with our teams or clients.

Q. What’s your favorite thing about working at Urban Emu? 

A.I absolutely love that Urban Emu has allowed me to develop my style of Project Management and has provided me with challenging projects that have given me ample opportunities to improve my skills and grow as a professional. I have also appreciated the opportunity to be a part of Urban Emu’s continued growth and help establish and implement processes to enhance and improve how we do work at UE.

We’re so grateful to have Shaelyn on our team to make sure our projects run seamlessly. Stay tuned for more teammate spotlights.