How to Practice Your Serve as a Project Manager

Mishirika Scott is the Director, IT PMO at UCLA Anderson School of Management, ad former Project Manager of Student Success Systems at California State University, Los Angeles (Cal State LA). She is the managing partner of Riche Professionals, LLC (a jr. project manager training company) and she values robust engagement with emerging professionals.

  Career Development  

Extraordinary project managers can sprout from the most unlikely places—even from the humble beginnings of being a candy boss!

I grew up in South Central Los Angeles, where I attended public school. With a beginner’s entrepreneurial spirit, I noticed the popularity among my peers to want unique, hard-to-find candy. With a $20 weekly allowance from my mother, I found a wholesaler willing to sell limited edition candies to me in bulk. I tuned up the price a bit and sold these rarities to my classmates.

Besides turning a profit, this venture taught me about managing my talent, budgeting, customer engagement, negotiations, and tradeoffs. Not a bad start for a candy boss turned project manager! I learned a valuable lesson along the way: When I invest in my talent, it becomes value that I can exchange for profit, competitive compensation, and opportunities to practice my serve.

In this article, we’ll explore what it means to practice your serve (leveraging your talent to earn, save, invest, and develop in big ways). PMI-certified project managers typically have high earning power and access to global networks that can make a world of difference in unlimited ways to give back.

(A quick disclaimer: I am not a certified financial expert, so please consider my insights as general ideas rather than replacements for professional financial advice. Always …

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