PMI Willamette Valley Chapter

Elections

Attention Chapter Members

 

2024-2025 Term Leadership Nominees

We have the following nominations for the 2024-2025 Board of Directors:

Chapter President

  • Jonathan Love  ** Elected

Chapter Vice President

  • Krista Cooper

Chapter Vice President, Technology

  • Conrad Rohleder  ** Elected

Chapter Vice President, Outreach

  • Art Jones
  • Travis L. Miller  **Elected

We are pleased to present the following biographies for these candidates.

 

 


PMI Willamette Valley Chapter 
2024-2025 Election – Candidate Information

Jonathan Love

Position: Chapter President

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Bio and Candidate Statement: I have had the good fortune to have lived and worked in a number of countries which include Zimbabwe, UK, Sweden, China, Malaysia and Australia. I have been employed with my current company over 19 years and this is where I started in project management having been a business consultant prior to this. I earned the PMP certification in 2011 and have maintained the certification since then. In addition to implementing our products and services for new clients, I was tasked with forming a project management university which a small team and I did and it ran successfully for over 3 years before we had a leadership change. A few years later the university concept is being resurrected due to its success and the need to provide employees involved in project management with opportunities to increase their knowledge and skills.I became more involved with the Willamette Valley Chapter in 2017 when a small group in Bend, OR attempted to form a branch of the chapter. This finally happened and by that time we were hit with Covid. I joined the Chapter board during that time as VP Membership and have remained in that position. I have been involved in the organization of 3 professional development conferences, one completely virtual, one a hybrid held in Bend in 2022 and the most recent held in Salem. Currently we have nearly 800 chapter members and so I look forward to work with a team that will make being a member worthwhile and encourage people who have the drive, willingness and desire to give back to be volunteers for chapter positions.

 

Krista Cooper

Position: Chapter Vice President

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Bio: Krista Cooper has been a project manager in healthcare for 20+ years.  She worked at St. Charles in Bend, Oregon for 25 years and is currently a technical project manager at Salem Health.  Krista has been on the PMI Board since 2021 and served as the central Oregon branch president until 2023, when she moved to the Salem branch president with her move from Bend.   Krista received her PMP in 2021.

Conrad Rohleder

Position: Chapter Vice President, Technology

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Bio: Conrad is a new parent, a recent transplant to Salem, and has an extensive history helping small teams succeed in big data environments. It takes a special insight to stitch together the marketing, operations, and financial component of any team, but Conrad’s focus on how tech helps people is what sets him apart. His diverse professional background means he feels at home as a project manager, despite his Chemical Engineering degree and his recent experience as an ERP implementation consultant. Today, Conrad looks forward to helping the PMIWV team find and manage their technology for the new era ahead.Candidate Statement: Stories are what connect us as humans. In today’s world, that story is more and more dependent on how technology allows the story to be told, to be received, and to be felt. As a consultant and entrepreneur, I helped small-scale, for-profit businesses manage very tight budgets while they invested in business management software. Often, these individuals had little understanding of the depth or breadth of the technology, or how to implement it best. Related, this was likely their first attempt to implement technology of such a scale and required trust at levels they had never needed to give to other contractors or consultants. My skills at listening and reflecting requirements are what allowed me to be successful. Let’s use a real example. This chapter uses Zoho to centrally manage as much as it can. Zoho has poor outbound-email deliverability scores, but offers a centrally-managed platform with many modules. I happen to like best-of-breed technologies for small organizations, meaning that each module is a different app that’s really good at what it does and may not be centrally managed. Think: MailChimp for email blasts, Google for internal emails, etc. My preferences aren’t what wins. What wins is how we talk about it as a team, how we assess the goals, and what “pain of change” we’re willing to endure as a team. I believe that managing change is going to be the trick for the next executive team. The PMI business model has changed, which means we need a new vision and new business model of our own. That new vision will necessarily have impacts on the technology. I have proven methods for elucidating the vision, clarifying the requirements, and producing robust, risk-adjusted business cases for technology change. It would be an honor to work with the new executive team to build and maintain the technology infrastructure required to serve you and all the members of the Willamette Valley chapter.

 

Art Jones

Position: Chapter Vice President, Outreach

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Bio: I have an intense interest in community be it at the state, city, and town level in Oregon as I make this home. Arriving in November, 2021 most recently from San Antonio, Texas and Charlotte, North Carolina, I want to see our PMI Chapter as a part of the glue binding the larger Oregon community together. My PM career began in 1978 with a yellow pad, scissors, and tape, my first project schedule appeared on an office wall at Lowe’s Companies in a remote North Carolina foothill town. The 115 task schedule rang true and accurate for our 5 person team over 9 months. The schedule represented a team collaboration with all the Agile trademarks. It was 1978. Since then, I’ve planned, scheduled and delivered projects with ITT/Alcatel, GTE, Modis clients, and others. My first 23 years in applications, 5 years in networking, 10 years in telecom and broadcast. Process Improvement, lean, TQM, … and other business side process and procedure development were part of my deliverables. I’ve seen projects from employee, contractor, consultant, perspectives. My functional roles round me further through applications, Operations, IT engineering, end user, and business startup. In 2012, I earned my PMP certificate in Florida after joining PMI chapter, finding it a professional home. I lined up speakers for 14 months for the VP of Programming in Tampa, FL Today, my spouse, Heloise, and I make home in Salem, Oregon. My interests center around community, in my neighborhood, church, and city. I want to apply my project management and analytical skills on community projects that show the will, commitment, and resource potential to carry through. I have an old house that takes some of my time too.Candidate Statement: The Willamette Valley Chapter Outreach as a unique business community for our membership to serve. Their sponsorship participation through job opportunities, sponsorship, and advocacy is a true measure of our club’s effectiveness. I want to help here. What I offer? My insights as a PM, who experiences first hand: • The Remote work challenges assailed with new tools & social change. • IT changes swirling around Networking, Cybersecurity, applications platform development, Ops Dev, Cloud, and AI. • Growing business expectations & confusion over the PM role to deliver against requirements as we apply Agile and it’s many facets with a changing workforce. My ideas for Willamette Valley in 2024-2025.• With the Willamette Valley team help assess current needs in the post COVID environment for membership business’ current needs. • Set goals with metrics to: • garner business support, earning their engagement. • deliver member needs to succeed personally & professionally. • VP of Outreach emphasis: • Business needs • Membership PM personal skills growth. Soft and hard skills • membership Tools & social skills growth. Post COVID related. My non-profit leadership includes Neighborhood associations has been informal. Leading an utility repair initiative for Asheville city to repair streets and water main leaks. My experience professional development and education program delivery includes IT operations in business, and my Director of speakers role at Tampa Bay’s PMI

Travis L. Miller JD, PMP, DASM, CIPP/US, CIPM

Position: Chapter Vice President, Outreach

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Bio: As an experienced IT strategy, project management, operations, legal, privacy and public affairs professional, I possess deep knowledge of state government operations, the dynamics of cross-agency executive leadership, project management, and public affairs. I am passionate about optimizing the delivery of essential services that the people of Oregon rely on and putting people at the center of digital transformation. I have held a series of executive-level roles within the State of Oregon at Enterprise Information Services (EIS), advising executive leadership on legislative affairs and issues of statewide significance, co-authoring both Cloud Forward: A Framework for Embracing the Cloud in Oregon and The Modernization Playbook: An Agency Guide to Digital Transformation, supported statewide initiatives like OR-Alert (a statewide system for emergency alerts, warnings and notifications on the Everbridge Platform) and Microsoft 365 (M365) Foundations to migrate the State of Oregon Executive Branch on to common digital communication tools, and developed strategic communications on behalf of EIS. Before returning to EIS, I served as the Senior Director of Operations for the Organization of Educational Technology and Curriculum (OETC)—a nonprofit EdTech purchasing consortium serving over 1,000 schools, colleges, universities, and libraries throughout the Northwest. During my initial tenure at the Department of Administrative Services (DAS), I had the opportunity to work across three of its policy divisions. I provided policy and budget oversight for a portfolio of agencies and worked to develop the Governor’s Recommended Budget within the Chief Financial Office (CFO). I also led cross-agency statewide initiatives on behalf of the DAS Director and Chief Operating Officer (COO) and built cross-sector advocacy coalitions within Oregon’s tech sector for EIS, including development and passage of legislation on cybersecurity, open data, and broadband. More recently, I served as the Senior IT Portfolio Manager (SIPM) for the Transportation and Economic Development (TED) Policy Area, overseeing a project portfolio of more than 30 initiatives, exceeding $360 million in total budget, and including several high-profile initiatives (e.g., UI Modernization and Tolling). In my current role, as the Assistant State CIO for the Healthy People policy area, I partner with health and social services agencies and a portfolio of health-related occupational agencies, boards, and commissions—supporting them in IT strategic planning, IT governance, enterprise alignment, and in working to optimize the essential services that the people of Oregon rely on. When not at work, I can be found working in the family garden, making Neapolitan-style pizza, trying out new recipes in the kitchen, doing DIY projects around the house, reading, traveling, and spending time with my wife and daughters.(Travis L. Miller, continued)Candidate Statement:Whether by accident or design, I have spent the better part of my professional and academic life focused on the study and practice of shared leadership, collaboration, and forging cross-sector coalitions to achieve collective impact—working to align shared interests and generate public value. I have built and lead teams across sectors (both public and non-profit), be it within the context of outdoor leadership as Crew Leader with Northwest Youth Corps during and after college or as a Director of Operations at OETC.During my tenure as doctoral candidate in the Hatfield School of Government, I taught US Government and Constitutional Law and had the opportunity to complete research fellowships with both the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board (OWEB) and the Oregon Community Foundation (OCF). In the former, I sought to redesign the Administrative Rules that govern the funding of largely volunteer and collaborative watershed councils—supporting adoption of effective governance and stewardship of public funds. Whereas at OCF, I completed a detailed study of how philanthropy and fund makers can support rural wealth creation through collaborative and sustainable approaches to economic development.Collaboration and cross-sector partnerships have remained a theme during my tenure with the State of Oregon. Whether in helping forge an effective broadband partnership (now LinkOregon) with Oregon’s four research universities (UO, OSU, PSU and OHSU), or building a cross-sector advocacy coalition with the public and private sector that laid the foundation for PSU’s recently established Cybersecurity Center of Excellence. In my current role, I am working to continue that spirit of collaboration in working to support the State of Oregon’s adoption of an agile mindset, principles, and practices—both in its delivery of technology and how it serves the people of Oregon.