My name is JuAnne. I'm a Senior Program
Manager at Google. I'm a first-generation
Chinese American. My family and I came to the United States
when I was young. My parents worked really
hard when I was growing up and I spent a lot
of time by myself, basically just having
to take care of myself; planning my meals,
doing my homework, taking care of chores. I feel like I got a little bit of my program management skills from just being really organized, having to be really
organized all the time. My path to being a
project manager really started as a business
systems analyst. I was writing requirements or gathering requirements
for our customers and translating them
into documentation for our engineers so that
they could implement it. Through that process, I
became a project manager. I started to manage
the timelines, manage the tasks,
understand all the pieces, and who needed to be involved. There you go, you have
a project manager. I think the funnest
part about being a project manager is really
working with people. You get to meet all
different kinds of people, different
personalities. Sometimes you get
to travel to places to meet them but
even when you don't, just meeting new people and understanding
how we interact, how people interact and
behave is fascinating. I think if you build
a relationship, focus on the relationship, and really understand
what their style, where they're coming from, what their concerns are, it will help your working
relationship much better. You can communicate with them in the style
that's necessary. You can work with them in the style that's
more receptive to them and that would just make the project
better all around.