Sarah Kassell

Presentation: You Can Advocate for Change Management Best Practices

Abstract: Understanding and implementing Change Management best practices is a skill everyone can learn. This presentation aims to provide attendees with the knowledge, vocabulary, and confidence to initiate and advocate for activities and planning that yield successful lasting changes within their team, amongst peers and throughout their organization. As a certified Change Manager and Project Manager, I propose a seminar addressing the following key topics 1) Why people resist change, 2) Best practices to proactively mitigate resistance to change, 3) High impact, low time-consumption actions you can do tomorrow to make change successful. This will not be a lecture only seminar, there will be intermittent group activities to engage participations and hopefully shed light on solutions to their current change related problems.

PMI Talent Triangle: Leadership

Biography: I started as a Proposal Manager, but have since realized to succeed I must wear multiple hats; I must be a Project Manager, a People Manager, and a Change Manager. I’ve been in multiple positions change was bottom-up, with top-down support, but with very little understanding of how to successfully manage the desired change and ultimately achieve the business result. I began studying Change Management over two years ago, and am glad I did. Today, I am Google’s first, and only, Proposal Manager overseeing State, Local, and Federal government solicitations [proposals are a type of project]. I’m building processes and tools that never existed before relying heavily on my change knowledge to win everyone over. I will continue to lean on my change knowledge to keep pace with Google’s ever changing internal and external goals.