A Day in the Life of a Director of Program Management and Development
Mar 05, 2020
My day starts at 7 am when I wake up to my radio alarm, I love listening to music in the morning to kick off my day. Once up I’m quickly getting myself ready and out the door to the train station for my commute to the office. I have 30 minutes on the train which is usually spent catching up on messages to friends or reading my book. I always begin my day by checking my emails to see if anything urgent has come in overnight. I like to keep my inbox with no more than 10 emails in at any time and this helps to keep stress at bay. I open up my physical diary and lay it out in front of me to refer to all day. I refresh myself with any appointments and calls I have and then I organize my to-do list in order of priority. My role consists of planning and managing my own meetings plus mentoring the team of program managers and various vendors. Planning a meeting is never boring. Every meeting is different and brings its own challenges and rewards. I love that I get to work with so many different people on a daily basis, from a client to our travel agents across the world to the hotel event manager to our AV suppliers. We also have personal communication with every attendee that is invited to the meeting and it’s great when I finally get to meet everyone face to face at the meeting. Sometimes it can be challenging being responsible for so many moving parts and deadlines, but it motivates me to be efficient and to make decisions quickly. The hard work is all worth it when you see the meeting come together on-site and every little detail of planning and organization is appreciated by the client and attendees. Part of my day is also spent helping the team of program managers. I enjoy any challenge they may bring me and I find it rewarding to use my knowledge and experience to give them my ideas and/or advice. I’m grateful to work with a friendly team where everyone works together in a positive atmosphere. Suddenly it's 6 pm and time to go. My advice to anyone interested in Program Management would be to always keep a checklist, don’t procrastinate and remember even the tiniest of details still matter.
