Nothing is more important to the health and sustainability of the PMI Phoenix Chapter than getting highly qualified, engaged, skilled, passionate people to work together to further their project management professional development journey – whether serving as a knowledge transfer agent or obtaining advice and guidance from a seasoned project management professional.
Come join this fall Mentorship Program as either Mentor or a Mentee. For Mentors, this is a great way to give back to the chapter. For Mentees, this is a great way to jump start your professional development and network with other project management professionals, and (of course) earn PDUs!
The PMI Phoenix Chapter is proud to offer members the Professional Mentorship Program. This program is designed for project management professionals working in the field who need the short-term support of someone more senior. Mentees will engage with their mentor weekly for a few months, in an on-demand, unstructured setting to reach specific personal and professional goals. Mentoring may include a resume or LinkedIn profile review, a mock job interview, career advice, an individual development plan, and insights and recommendations on professional certifications to enhance your skillset.  
Mentoring Requirements

•     Be available at least weekly to a paired Mentee to advise and counsel
•     Help set and achieve concrete, realistic goals
•     Create an open environment for working togethe
•     Communicate effectively and be empathic to how others are engaging
•     Provide encouragement
•     Facilitate learning
•     Give thoughtful, constructive, kind feedback and offer suggestions
•     Recommend resources and professional development opportunities
•     Maintain enthusiasm for the mission of the PMI Phoenix Chapter

Mentee Requirements:

• Be available at least weekly to a paired Mentor to learn and grow in project management skills and abilities
• Develop and achieve concrete, realistic goals
• Create an open environment for working together
• Listen to my mentor’s advice and guidance
• Be open about what may be getting in the way of my goals
• Be willing to try new things (webinars, classes, workshops, strategies)
• Acquire the skills needed to be successful in my professional development
• Maintain enthusiasm for the mission of the PMI Phoenix Chapter

If you have an interest, don’t wait! The Mentorship Program cycle kicks off now!  

APPLICANT DEADLINE: September 16, 2022
Mentors: Click here to apply.
Mentees: Click here to apply.

Our conversation was looking at our projects in general and the importance and role that people, process and tools play in successful project management. Have the vision to identify gaps where technology can improve quality, efficiency or effectiveness for our members.  Every project is dependent upon people, processes, and tools and all three should be kept in balance. Any time that a tool is adopted, it will necessitate process changes or even elimination since processes that once worked perfectly may now be inefficient at best or error prone and costly for us as a nonprofit. 

The irony is that if you do that successfully, you might practically eliminate the need for a Project Manager and put yourself out of a job, but that’s the right thing to do so you can move onto another challenging opportunity 

When Henry is not working professionally in the cloud space and volunteering for the chapter he focuses on whittling down his extensive bucket list, being positive to others and taking road trips around Arizona, Nevada and California with my wife and my German Shepherd. Henry’s hobbies are enjoying music and video editing and production.  His goal is to get better on Guitar and Piano by taking online lessons. He also loves “tinkering with Web Development technologies such as Asp.NET, REACT, PHP and some low code - no code platforms such as Power Apps and Bubble IO.” 

I discovered that he is a creative, innovative person who looks at things with an agile mindset. 

Henry Jones shared his volunteer words of wisdom, “The chapter has a variety of departments and activities where you can get involved.  So, pick out something where you can lend a hand.  If it isn’t what you like find another department.” 

Mom’s Pantry was built on the bedrock of a single goal; that no man, woman, or child go hungry.

Mom’s Pantry was created because a significant community needs to help families with their struggle against hunger. In Arizona, one in five families cannot provide enough food to feed the entire household.

Our founders and donors have been blessed with food on their table and believe that no individual should ever have to go hungry. Through the collaboration and generosity of a local family and interested parties, the vision and mission to combat hunger brought Mom’s Pantry to life. Mom’s Pantry is always stocked and ready for the next visitor.

As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, Mom’s Pantry aims to serve the community and distribute resources that will provide essential nutrition to adults and children. They certainly lived up to our chapter partner's expectations.

Many of you may already know Frank Balogh, PMP since he has served PMI since the early 2000s. For those who do not, let me introduce you to our Mentoring Program Director, the June Volunteer of the Month.

Frank’s journey started when the chapter developed and facilitated our PMP boot camp, and these materials were part of the foundation of what we know of as the Study Group today. From the beginning, he was a volunteer PMP test prep instructor, academic outreach resource, and presenter on project management trends and professional development. His passion was mentoring and sharing his knowledge.

His volunteer journey initially began by accident – “I was at a company where no manager was a PMP, and a new CTO came in and asked, “why do we have all these IT PMs who are not certified?”. Suddenly, I was quite popular. My manager at the time told me that I had a knack for presentations and mentoring and the PMI chapter had opportunities to grow this skill.”
Over the years, he has been a presenter on PM topics, especially migrating one’s skills to non-traditional roles and adopting Agile and Agile at Scale practices and thinking. Frank Balogh has also worked with universities whose engineering students had capstone PM projects that needed advice from a practitioner. And he was one of the initial mentors in the San Francisco PMI chapter.When asked what has been rewarding about your volunteer service, he responded, “it’s been mostly to see people who could not initially see a path forward to their goals light up when they use something I’ve suggested, and then they can sort out a solution themselves.”
Frank Balogh’s word of advice for new volunteers. “Don’t be concerned about being perfect or an expert. Use the volunteer experience to learn and expand your knowledge.”On a personal level, he likes cruises where he can have a chance to dress up and tie a bowtie. There is no driving or flying involved—his proudest moment “was when he finished his first sprint triathlon. For years I had seen people do this and thought it was something I could never do myself, and I broke down and cried in joy and wonderment after it was over.”
An interesting bit is that he took ballet lessons. I had a traditional fencing coach in college who determined that we were not supple enough, so they sent us to classes. Years later, I joined her when my 5-year-old daughter came home from school and demonstrated a few ballet steps. Her immediate reaction was, “Daddies aren’t supposed to know these things!”

I recently reviewed my LinkedIn Profile and noticed that my PMP credential there was expired. This issue was concerning because I didn’t want anyone to think I had let it lapse. I work hard to ensure that I have enough PDUs to renew each year, as all of us do, and I want it to show on my LinkedIn Profile. I soon realized that I hadn’t updated that entry since Credly acquired Acclaim. If you are unaware of PMI’s digital badge program, you can click on the link and read about it. A quick summary is that Credly, a digital credential network, manages the program. They allow you to share your digital certificate on social media, email, and websites. Embedding the credential this way into your LinkedIn profile will enable it to be automatically updated by PMI and Credly when renewed. The issue I had is my entry was from Acclaim and didn’t update. When I checked Credly, it was showing expired as well. They had not received my renewal info from PMI. I was able to email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. support, and they fixed it the next day. I updated my profile with the link to Credly, and everything is now up to date. If you’re not using the digital badge program, you should. It’s free as part of your membership and lets others know about the certification you worked so hard to obtain.

The chapter is still accepting nominations for the upcoming board election this year. If you or someone you know is interested, please fill out a nomination form here, and the election committee will reach out to you.

We have a lot of events on the calendar and some great collaborations that will be announced soon for the fall.

If you haven’t attended a PMI Chapter Xchange event, you should sign up for the one next Friday. The topic is Project Management for Supply Chain Management, and one of our members will be a panelist this month. It’s a timely topic and something that is affecting all projects.

If you have any questions or suggestions for the board, you can contact us via the Contact Us Form on the website or email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Heather Cardosi shared that "responsibility and acceptance should be considered by everyone and we should embrace our differences. It doesn't matter what race, creed, or ethic background you are, what matters is that you are not hurting others. The story of your world is what you make it, dont be a douche. We make our story, we decide, we put forth that perception out to the universe. The world is the way it is because we put it there, people always complain that this is not the way the world works but we make the world. We need to put out the effort to make if better or the way we want the world to work."

Heather's project management work supports a satelite heathcare for kidney diallis to provide better health and education so they do not get to to the medical state of needing diallis. She is an infrastructure group manager who supports the programs using a hybrid waterfall approach to shift the mindset to new ways and doing things.

Her passion is to work on envionomental issues, perhaps with a non-profit to repair the damage caused by not using sustainable practices. She has a GPM-b (Certified Green Project Manager – Level B) whidh is the foundational, knowledge-based sustainability certification that supports the commitment of those in project management to maximize sustainability within the project lifecycle, to improve the construct and delivery of goods and services produced as project deliverables, and to use measurable standards to consider and account for social, environmental, and economic impacts in projects.

Learning green project management basics and how you can apply it to any projects by not using the key points like impact should be the measure, money should not be the key metric. Profit might be less but the impacts would be thinking longterm for a better way of life like not letting our cell phones ending up in a landfill. This mindset can be applied to any project.

Heather shared that "even when you fail, you are not a failure until you stop tring." As a kids hockey coach she teaches that we are here to have fun not to win we are here to have fun and if you fall down, get back up. You are not trying hard enough." This is a good lesson for all of us.