E100 Celebrating 100 PMOH Episodes with Asya Watkins and Kim Essendrup
In this episode of Project Management Office Hours, PMO Joe celebrates his 100th show milestone with special guests Asya Watkins and Kim Essendrup!
Making it to the 100th episode of a podcast is a milestone worth celebrating and taking time to reflect on the people and stories shared along the journey. As successful podcast hosts themselves, Asya and Kim also share the lessons they’ve learned, the guests with the biggest impact, the guests who they are chasing, and the communities they’ve built.
Asya is the host of the Women of Project Management podcast and founder of the WoPM community. She started the community because she couldn’t find one that already existed to match what she needed. Asya shared with us, “I know a lot of people when they start businesses, they do the research and who else is out there? And I really couldn’t find it or I would have just joined it. And so, I just decided to go ahead and start it. And so now I’m just so grateful that we get to have these beautiful conversations, we get to learn. But it is something also about being able just to see other women that look like you and that are thriving in their careers and that there’s no titles, they let down those titles, there’s no ego and we share.”
We also reflected on some of our favorite shows and guests. Kim is one of the co-hosts of Project Management Happy Hour with his co-host Kate Anderson. Kim shared one recent show and a discussion they had with Tim Creasey, Chief Innovation Officer at Prosci. He shared, “I have to say, I have a professional man crush on Tim Creasey. It’s just brilliant. I just love any conversation we have with him.” He added, “It was really nice talking with him. He had a number of different topics he talked us through when it came to change management. And so many of them were really so profound that I found myself quoting content from the show to my colleagues, to my partners and then at home, which I like what you’re talking about, but it just really changed the way I think about change and the way people go through change. It was really profound for me”
Connect with Asya:
Company Website – https://womenofpm.com/
LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/asyawatkins/
Connect with Kim:
Company Website – https://kolmegroup.com
LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/kim-essendrup/
To see the guest list for upcoming shows – https://www.thepmosquad.com/podcast
Thank you to THE PMO SQUAD and The PMO Leader for sponsoring this show.
The PMO Squad is a leading provider of PMO and Project Management services in the US. They assist clients building and improving PMOs, provide Project Management Consulting services, deliver custom Project Management Training and provide Project Management staffing services.
Learn more about The PMO Squad – www.thepmosquad.com
Where do PMO Leaders go for Information, Learning, Networking and Services? The PMO Leader community has “Everything You Need to Become a Great PMO Leader”. One PMO World, One Community!
Learn more about The PMO Leader – www.thepmoleader.com
Kolme Group is a project management consultancy providing top-tier Project and Portfolio Management services for medium to large enterprises. The Kolme Group team has decades of industry experience, and are ready to help you succeed with your critical projects.
Kolme Group are premier partners for Planview Clarizen and for Clickup.
Kim Essendrup is a PMI certified Project Management Professional and career project manager.
He co-founded Kolme Group in 2017, a Project & Portfolio Management consultancy which helps project delivery organizations succeed through best practices implementation of project management tools and processes.
Kim is also co-host of the Project Management Happy Hour Podcast. Kim and his co-host Kate tackle real world issues in project management. They do it in a way that’s not too dry, though it may get a bit salty sometimes.
Connect with Kim on LinkedIn.
Women Of Project Management® is the Only community created to support & amplify the voices of women & women of color in every specialty of the project management industry worldwide. 
Asya Watkins is the Founder Of Women Of Project Management. Asya’s career spans 20 years as an in-demand expert in the project management industry working with top-tier brands like Walgreens, CVS/Caremark, Optum, & United Healthcare.
She has also served as the Director of Mentorship for the Project Management Institute (PMI) and was one of the creators of the 1st Women’s Network for Walgreens Corporation.
Featured in Forbes for International Women’s Day as a leading voice in the project management profession, Asya is an International Speaker, serving as the Keynote Speaker for the Project Management Institute (PMI) in Beijing, China as well as top tier Organizations, Leadership Conferences, as well as the Featured Guest on numerous Podcasts including the Project Management Institute (PMI) Podcast, Projectified™.
Asya earned her Masters of Business Administration from National University with a concentration in Organizational Leadership, her PMP® (Project Management Professional) global certification from the Project Management Institute, her LEAN Six Sigma Certification from United Healthcare’s Center of Excellence, and her undergraduate degree in Biology & Chemistry from the illustrious HBCU, Xavier University of Louisiana.
Connect with Asya on LinkedIn and Instagram.
ABOUT PROJECT MANAGEMENT OFFICE HOURS SERIES
Project Management Office Hours is intended to provide Project Management professionals a place to drop in and discuss Success Stories, Best Practices, and Lessons Learned. Project Management Consultant Joy Gumz has shared with us, “Operations keep the lights on, strategy provides the light at the end of the tunnel, but project management is the train engine that moves the organization forward.”
Each of us has a unique story to tell, but collectively we share a message that organizations who embrace Project Management Best Practices perform better than those which don’t. Organizations which align Projects to Strategy perform better. Organizations with Engage Executive Sponsors deliver better results. Organizations which measure Project Management performance outperform those which don’t.
During our Project Management Office Hours, we hear directly from Industry leaders how to make an impact in our profession. How we, collectively, will Advance Project Management Best Practices, One Listener at a time!
ABOUT YOUR HOST
Joe Pusz started THE PMO SQUAD to bring real world PMO Leadership experience to the consulting space and to advocate for Project Management through his blog PMOJOE.com. The old saying is “Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.” Following this mindset Joe left Corporate America in 2013 to start THE PMO SQUAD and work with fellow Natural Born Project Managers to advance Project Management Best Practices.
ABOUT OUR SPONSOR
THE PMO SQUAD focuses exclusively on PMO and Project Management consulting. Corporate America is full of Accidental Project Managers running projects who haven’t been trained to be PMs. To help solve this problem THE PMO SQUAD is on the Leading Edge with PMO As a Service. PMO As a Service allows our clients to focus on their respective core competencies while THE PMO SQUAD delivers Project Management expertise. Contact Joe at 678-591-7868. Follow The PMO Squad on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.
Where do PMO Leaders go for Information, Learning, Networking and Services? The PMO Leader community has “Everything You Need to Become a Great PMO Leader”. One PMO World, One Community! Learn more about The PMO Leader – www.thepmoleader.com
