Tell us about yourself.
I was born up in Kenya and grew up on Karen Blixen’s farm (from the movie Out of Africa). When I was 8 my family moved back to Denmark where I lived until I moved to South Korea for two years and then immigrated to Canada in 1993 to take my Master’s degree. For the past 20+ years I have worked in Business Process Optimization and Reengineering. I have worked in many different industries including Aerospace, Automotive, Information Technology, Military, Retail, Food and Consumer Goods, Federal, Provincial and Municipal Governments. My background is Lean/Six Sigma. Having managed large reengineering projects over the years I intuitively incorporated some change methodologies, but was never formally trained in Organizational Change Management (OCM).
How did you get into Change Management?
In 2012, I started working for Sierra Systems here in Vancouver and joined their OCM practice along with the Business Process practice and was privileged to be trained by and work with many Change Practitioners with 20+ years of experience. Sierra’s change methodology is very thorough and meets the ACMP standard that was published in 2014.
Why did you decide to join ACMP Vancouver?
Two Sierra change practitioners initiated the two groups that started ACMP Vancouver and ACMP Victoria around 2013. I joined ACMP Vancouver to start networking with other change practitioners.
What are you working on?
In 2016, I started working at DXC Eclipse (a DXC Technology company) and was hired to support the Business Process team and help develop an OCM methodology for Eclipse.  At Eclipse, we implement Microsoft Dynamics (ERP) systems for customers and offer Business Process and OCM support to our customers. Recently, Eclipse leadership decided to include the Change Readiness Assessment (including identifying and tracking change metrics) and mandatory leadership training/coaching on OCM on all our customer projects. Our hope is to convince all our customers to invest in OCM throughout their ERP project to increase adoption and utilization and realize their ROI. I am currently working with different people at Eclipse to incorporate this into our project methodology. We will run a pilot early in 2018 and hopefully have another success story to tell in the spring on the benefits of OCM! By June 2018 we plan to start selling these OCM methodologies on all our projects.
Do you have any recommended change management books / resources to share?
My favorite two books on Change Management are Dean Anderson and Linder Ackerman Anderson’s books ‘Change Leader’s Roadmap’ and ‘Beyond Change Management’.
How do you like to spend your time outside of work?
Outside of work I spend a lot of time in the B.C. outdoors – just did the West Coast Trail with my family. We also love travelling. In 2007 my husband and I backpacked for 6 months through South East Asia with our three kids (7, 9 and 12 years old) and homeschooled them on a tropical island (Tioman) on the east coast of Malaysia for 3 months. The best times of our lives! I also volunteer on two boards of directors – for a non-profit (The Cleaning Solution) and a charity (Awkward Stage Productions). Lots of fun and very satisfying work.