Speakers

A leader in the field of portfolio and programme management, Martin Parlett is currently Head of Programme Management Office for the Government of Montserrat, responsible for the delivery of the country’s ambitious portfolio of transformational change, including national infrastructure development. Prior to his Caribbean posting, he led the establishment of the Enterprise Portfolio Office, together with the portfolio management framework, for managing $2.5bn annual investment at Sellafield Ltd – the world’s most complex nuclear site. In 2018, he was named as one of Confederation of British Industry’s 35 Under 35 business leaders and served on its committee. Parlett was a campaign manager for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign in Virginia in 2008 and is a published author, charitable trustee, and board director. A proponent of contextualised, fit-for-purpose and people-centric implementation, he is the recipient of the Association for Project Management’s PMO of the Year Award 2020.

Michelle Ward is an interim Programme Lead currently working at Defra and is responsible for the delivery of the Unified PMO Programme across Corporate Services plus parts of Defra group. Partnering with Wellingtone PPM, Michelle and her team have successfully deployed Project Online and Power Bi across Corporate Services Portfolio to enable a single way of working for the PPPM community. Michelle uses her experience in leadership, strategic thinking, PPM practice, business change and communications to facilitate the delivery of her stakeholder’s vision. Her previous programmes include Smarter Ways of Working, delivering PAS3000 initiatives across the Public Sector, & BT’s acquisition of EE, leading on pre-merger discovery & post-merger commercial efficiencies.

Ricardo is a Project Management professional with more than 15 years of professional experience leading projects, programs, portfolios and project offices in more than 40 countries, in Europe, Africa, Asia, North and South America, in the technology industry, working for multinational companies like Ericsson and Telefonica. A firm believer of the project economy and promoter of the project manifesto principles, like: “We believe that ideas are made a reality through projects”. Involved in multiple pro bono activities like mentoring project managers, small and medium businesses and start-ups.

Stephen is rated as one of the top 3 lecturers at one of Europe’s top MBA Business Schools; Cranfield. He has a reputation of taking complex management concepts such as Project, Programme Change and Crisis Management and being able to distil them down, into highly informative and fast moving lectures – often using “storytelling” techniques. His attitude is “if you haven’t done it – you shouldn’t be teaching it!”

Unusually, for an academic, he has actually has spent most of his working life in real business and still runs his own, highly successful, Project Management Company.

Stephen is an unusual blend of Academic, Businessman and Teller of Tales. He has taught across the World and has appeared on National Radio and TV.

Toby Lumber is an independent PPM consultant currently working with a central government department to design, rollout and embed a project and programme management capability. Toby has considerable experience across the project and programme delivery lifecycle in various domains including IT, construction and utilities, as well as experience in commercial management and audit functions. With a strong IT background, he has worked extensively across the software development lifecycle in various capacities including analysis, development, delivery, PMO, and latterly co-led the setup and management of an IT Offshore Delivery Centre in Asia. Toby maintains an IT focus and specialises in Microsoft tools including Project Online and Power BI, as well as the desktop tools and 365 platform capabilities.

Laura has been instrumental in bringing PMOs and Project Management to the strategy table for almost two and a half decades. She knows just how hard it can be to drive effective and sustainable change in organisations, having spent 15 years in the role of PMO leader and now she helps organisations accelerate business growth, evolution and sustainability leveraging the power of project management and the PMO. She has developed a unique and powerful system for growing organisational project management competency with a deliberate focus on driving high-IMPACT outcomes on every project.

Considered a thought leader in the Project Management community, Laura shares her insights and stories on the PMO Strategies Podcast, where she is shaking up the way the industry thinks about our role in driving strategy realisation. Laura welcomes you to join her community of IMPACT Drivers at PMOStratetgies.com.

Laura runs several training and coaching programs that help organisations and individuals deliver high-IMPACT outcomes on their projects and drive organisational change. Laura is best known as “the PMO lady” for her 20 years of experience in building and running PMOs that Get. It. Done. while developing a high-performing team of IMPACT Drivers that become an invaluable asset to any organisation. Laura believes that project managers are uniquely positioned to help organisations have a greater impact.

She is the Founder and President of Project Management for Change, a nonprofit organisation whose mission is to raise the profile of the project management profession by showing the value of project management across the globe as the most effective enabling resource for delivering sustainable change in the nonprofit sector. Their signature event, the Project Management Day of Service (PMDoS)®, brings together thousands of project managers with hundreds of nonprofit leaders to change the world, one project at a time.

Laura served on nonprofit and corporate boards for 16 years including multiple Project Management Institute (PMI) chapters, Virginia International University, Goodwill Industries, and Computer Aid. Laura has a Computer Science degree from Virginia Tech, a Project Management Institute (PMI), PMP certification, and a Prosci Change Management Practitioner certification.

Emma-Ruth Arnaz-Pemberton is the Director of Consulting Services at Wellingtone; a PPM consultancy with offices in Windsor (UK), Madrid (Spain) and Dublin (Ireland). She is a Fellow of the Association for Project Management (APM), is part of the PMI UK Board, member of IPMA AEIPRO, PMI Spain, an Axelos P3M3 Assessor, and an NLP Master Practitioner with a Diploma in Modern Applied Psychology.

Emma-Ruth is a PMO, PPM specialist with extensive experience in the change management industry and a particular focus on collaboration, reminding us that we should be human first and change champions second.

She is involved extensively with a number of organisations; notably the ResponsiblePM.Org, Project Management Without Borders, Project Managers Against Poverty, and PM4Change. Emma-Ruth organises Wellingtone’s two flagship annual events; the FuturePMO conference and Project Management Day of Service.