Pragna Mehta: Senior Program Manger

Pragna Mehta is a senior program manager at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. She manages a range of technology projects, as well as a program that helps to train, mentor, and place young people in tech jobs within the bank.

Please describe your job.

I manage projects from the point of inception all the way through execution and delivery. As a project manager, I look at the project from an overall perspective, including deliverables, timelines, risks, and constraints. My role is to understand the broader picture about the project objectives and ensure the project team can meet its deliverables within a specified timeline.

A large part of my job is making sure everybody understands what's going on and communicating the project status. I engage with people at all levels of the organization and provide reports. With any project, there will be a lot of different personalities and opinions, and diplomacy is required as situations arise. Part of my job is understanding how to handle all those different people, building relationships, and ensuring everybody is working together.

Can you describe what you do on a typical day at your job?

Each day is different. Depending on where we are in the project, part of my day might be spent preparing an update for senior leadership, facilitating a team meeting to understand how the project is progressing, following up on action items, meeting with other teams whose work may impact the project, etc. No one day is the same, but the key is always knowing where you are on the project and looking for problems before they occur.

Can you talk a little bit about your journey and how you ended up in your current career?

I went to university in England and did a 4-year degree called Applied Computer Systems–it consisted of business and computer science courses. As part of my degree, I also completed three 6-month co-ops.

The company where I completed my third co-op offered me a full-time position when I graduated. I started out as a developer and found that I enjoyed the analytical part of the work – really trying to understand and define the user requirements - even more than I enjoyed coding. I liked understanding the impact on the end user. Over the years, I progressed into a systems analyst role. I was the bridge between business and technology.

In 2001, I moved to the United States from England and took a break for approximately six years to focus on my children and be a stay-at-home mom.

When I decided to re-enter the workforce, my technical skills were out of date, so I returned to work in a business analyst role. Within a few months, my manager saw that I was capable of doing more and promoted me to a project manager position. I realized I was a born organizer, very detailed and diligent and naturally very good at interacting with people, building relationships, and helping teams work with one another. What I also realized is that project management skills aren’t limited to the STEM field.

What do you enjoy about your job?

I'm a people person, so I enjoy working with different people. I like the challenge of starting a new project, and since I am very organized, I enjoy creating the project infrastructure, managing the project team, keeping everything on track, and delivering the final result. I like the fact that projects have a clear start and end and that there’s always an opportunity to learn something new.

Project/program management is a skill set that can be applied to many different areas of a company, including technology.

Can you describe some of the projects that you’ve managed or are currently managing?

One time, we were trying to implement software that had been bought from an outside vendor to replace a system that the client currently had in place. There were multiple groups involved, and they had been looking at this software for 18 months. No one was managing the project from an overall perspective, so each group thought that somebody else was doing something, when really they weren’t. Nothing was getting done. When I was brought in, I was given six months to turn it around and get the software implemented. The first thing I had to understand was who were all the key players? What was it that needed to happen? How could I put a structure and timeline in place? What issues needed to be addressed? That's where the analytical part comes in–understanding all of the different moving pieces. It was hard work and required coordination amongst multiple teams, but this is where the skills of communication and relationship building played key parts. I did turn the project around and delivered it in the timeframe specified.

My current project is building and executing a program to improve our entry level technology talent pipeline. We work with community-based workforce development partners to source talent who want a career in technology but who don’t have a traditional background. Most of the program participants are young adults (18-26), non-degreed, ethnically diverse, maybe low-to-moderate income, who have never worked in a corporate environment.

Initially, my role included building the program, developing a training schedule, working with an outside vendor to provide technical training, engaging stakeholders from within the organization to provide permanent roles on their teams for the program participants, identifying and matching mentors, establishing feedback routines with stakeholders and program participants, and providing coaching/mentoring to the program participants.

Since the program started, I have placed three groups of participants (approximately 65 people) across our technology organization. I love the work I do because it is very impactful – I help young people who might not otherwise have the opportunity to start their technology careers in a corporate environment. I especially enjoy coaching and mentoring the program participants because I see the issues they face and help them figure out how to overcome them.

My current role is not a traditional program management role but I still use all the skills I listed before–communication, relationship building, being organized, being detail oriented, identifying and addressing problems before they occur, and understanding the broader picture of what my company is trying to do.

What are some qualities that you think are important for someone to have in program management?

You need to be analytical, structured and organized, and you need to be good at understanding the big picture. You must be a good communicator and a problem solver. You must not be afraid of holding people accountable. When someone's not getting something done, you can’t assume the worst. You must be very diplomatic and figure out how you can help.

Do you have any advice for young women who want to go into STEM?

Be open to different options. Don't say that you’re only going to do one thing. Be prepared to learn and explore, and take time to really figure out what you like and what you really enjoy. Technology is always evolving so much. Jobs that exist today didn't even exist 15-20 years ago. You have to change with the times so be prepared to be flexible and be open to learning.

Some personal takeaways:

• While Ms. Mehta’s role as project manager sounds interesting, given a choice, I think I would prefer a more hands-on, technical job. Instead of being the one organizing everything, I would prefer to be the one who works on the projects.

• Ms. Mehta mentioned that a project manager needs to be very analytical and organized. I think I do have these skills and could do a good job of running and organizing a project, if it came to it. In school, I tend to be the one to take charge of group projects, delegate the work, and make sure it gets done. If there were a project management job that also involved some technical work, perhaps that could be an option for me.

• I really enjoyed hearing about the program at Merrill Lynch that allows for young adults to be trained for a technology career. I think it is very important to help those who may not know about STEM, or just not have access to it to learn more about it. I have always said that I want to help others in some form, and helping someone get into the field that I enjoy would be a wonderful way to do that.

• I liked that her job is different each day. I do well with some routine, but I don’t enjoy doing the exact same thing all of the time. I definitely prefer a job with some variety.