Learning Objective: Increase analytical and problem-solving skills Description: What are the most valuable skills in today’s business world? Technical skills, people skills, and management skills are all critical skills needed to create impact. However, it is the integration of these skills that support professionals in increasing capacity to analyze and solve problems. The perspectives of the science involved in the technology, other people involved in the work, and ultimate effect on the business, must be considered for a solution to be successful. This session will feature an expert panel that will share their winning strategies and approaches to analyze and solve problems, and apply these models to complex business challenges.

2. Welcome to our panel,
The Skills to Master Growth
Moderator:
Upma Kapoor, Lead Technologist and User
Experience Strategist at Booz Allen Hamilton
Email: Kapoor_upma@bah.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ukapoor36/

3. The Skills to Master
Growth
Dr. Karen Rodriguez

4. Karen Rodriguez, PhD
Division Vice President Corporate Engineering
Abbott
EDUCATION
Doctor of Philosophy, Biochemistry, Molecular Biology
and Cellular Biology, Northwestern University
Bachelor of Science, Biology, Purdue University
CERTIFICATIONS
Executive Certificate in the Business of Life Sciences,
Kelly School of Business, Indiana University
Lean Six Sigma Green Belt, ASQ
Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, ASQ (lapsed)
Project Management Professional, PMI (lapsed)
COUNCILS
Abbott Engineering Executive Council, Chair
Warren Blue Line Hockey Association, Board member
Abbott Diagnostics Women in Action, Chair
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
Division Vice President Corporate Engineering, Abbott
Director Process Engineering and Technology Transfer,
Abbott
Senior Director Manufacturing and Supply Chain,
Sysmex-Inostics
Global Lead Chemistry and Manufacturing Controls,
Astellas Pharma
Senior Manager Global Manufacturing Technology,
Abbott
Technical Product Support (multiple roles), Abbott

5. This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-NC
1996
2000
2003
2005
2008
2015
2018
2019
First job – Abbott
Technical Specialist
First leadership role, first child
Team Leader
Divisional restructuring, second child
Technical Support Manager
Promotion, first engineering role, third child
Global Manufacturing Technology
Position eliminated, moved to Astellas
Senior Manager Medical Affairs
Moved to Sysmex-Inostics for Director-level role
Senior Director Manufacturing and Supply ChainReturned to Abbott
Director Process Engineering
Promoted
Division Vice President of Corporate Engineering
2020
My professional journey
Project Management Professional
certification
Lean Six Sigma Green Belt, Black
Belt certifications
Executive Certificate in the Business
of Life Sciences
Engineering Executive Council Chair
Diagnostic Women in Action Chair

6. What did I learn early on?
• Subject matter expertise
• Independent thinking
• Formulate your position
• Convince yourself, then others
• Basic technical skills
• Data analysis
• Statistics
• Experimental design
• Leadership
• Own the overall effort

7. How do you build basic
technical skills?
1. Participate in workshops
2. Take on assignments that require these
skills
3. Seek out experts as mentors
4. Give updates
5. Tackle new problems
These steps
build on each
other

8. This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-NC
Workshops
Classroom assignments
Real world assignments
Present your work
Learn from the experts
You’re the expert

9. Basic technical skills
build on each other
Failure to learn the
basics will prevent you
from developing more
advanced skills in the
future

10. How do I create value?
Technical acumen
Leadership
Facilitation
Problem-solving
+
Technical acumen
incorporates subject
matter expertise and
technical skills
Leadership means
owning the overall
effort
Facilitation means
engaging the right
people and guiding
them to work
together productively
and efficiently

11. This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-NC
1996
2000
2003
2005
2008
2015
2018
2019
First job – Abbott
Technical Specialist
First leadership role, first child
Team Leader
Divisional restructuring, second child
Technical Support Manager
Promotion, first engineering role, third child
Global Manufacturing Technology
Position eliminated, moved to Astellas
Senior Manager Medical Affairs
Moved to Sysmex-Inostics for Director-level role
Senior Director Manufacturing and Supply ChainReturned to Abbott
Director Process Engineering
Promoted
Division Vice President of Corporate Engineering
2020
Navigating bias
Characterized as nice
Recognized as technically astute
Needs to focus on young family
Excellent leader, gets things done
Empathetic, technically astute leader
who leads high-performing teams and
inspires others to achieve excellence

12. Know the
business
inside
and out
Organizational savvy
Corporate performance targets

13. What is it?
Understanding who does what and how their
work supports the business
How do I develop it?
• Networking across functional domains
• Progressing through different functional roles
• Leading cross-functional teams
Organizational savvy

14. Corporate performance targets
What are they?
The financial and social objectives the business
seeks to accomplish in a given time period
example – organic growth versus acquisition
How do I contribute?
• Build your knowledge base
• Show your capabilities and deliver results
• Take on special assignments

15. Polishing to perfection
• Solving complex problems requires intensive
cross-functional efforts
• Organizational savvy is needed to recruit
experts with the appropriate technical acumen
• Skilled facilitation is a must to maintain focus
and deliver timely results
• A clear leader is needed who is accountable
for the overall outcome

16. Michelle-Elizabeth Valle
LEAD TECHNOLOGIST, BOOZ ALLEN HAMILTON
Email: valle_michelle-elizabeth@bah.com
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/michelleelizabethvalle
Fun Fact: Initially on track to obtain a PhD in East Asian History. Not a
trained Technologist.
EDUCATION & CERTIFICATIONS
SANS Technology Institute
Undergraduate Certificate
Applied Cybersecurity (In Progress)
University of Hawaii at Mānoa
Master of Arts
Asian Studies (China)
University of the Pacific
Bachelor of Arts
Communication, Chinese Studies
CERTIFICATIONS
PMI PMP, Security +, Certified
Scrum Master, SAFe Program
Consultant, ICAgile, ITIL v 4, Group
Facilitation
COMPETENCIES
• IT Governance
• Stakeholder Engagement
• Agile / Scrum
• IT Process Improvement
• Project Management
• DevSecOps
• IT Change Management
• API Test Automation
• UI Test Automation
• Test Driven Development
• Behavioral Driven Design
• Microservices Design
• Cyber Policy and Governance
• Identity & Access Management
• Secure Web Application Testing
SKILLS, TOOLS, FRAMEWORKS
• Java, Python, SQL
• GitHub, OpenShift, AWS, Liquibase,
ELK Stack, PostgreSQL, Atlassian
Tools, Intelli-J IDE, Postman, 508
Accessibility Tools, Jmeter, Metasploit,
Wireshark, SailPoint, CyberArk, Splunk,
Docker, Jenkins
• Selenium for UI Automation, Cucumber,
Gradle, TestNG, Maven, FISMA,
FedRAMP, RMF, CI/CD/CM

17. Strategy & Approach
Skill up
• People skills: emotional IQ, interpersonal comms, Toastmaster, public speaking, facilitate more meetings, leadership
courses
• Technical skills: coding language, technical frameworks, emerging tech, Agile
• Management skills: project management, Agile, financial management
Cert up
• People certs: meeting facilitation, certified scrum master
• Technical certs: AWS, Security+, IT Governance
• Management certs: PMP, CSM, SAFe
Speak up
• Public speaking events such as Toastmasters
• Engage with your customer / client in demos (particularly great for technical-minded folks to practice soft skills)
• Set up brown bag lunch & learns
• Meeting facilitation
Manage up
• Lead from within your team
• Start up an internal initiative
• Meeting facilitation

18. My Strategy &
Approach
How I Skilled Up
• People skills: Facilitated client demos, Scrum Master on Software Delivery/Engineering Life Cycle teams (SDLC/SELC)
• Technical skills: Java, Python, cyber work on cross domain solutions, working as a QA analyst, technical strategist
• Management skills: worked as a project manager, engage in client strategy solutions
How I Certed Up
• People certs: Meeting Facilitation certification
• Technical certs: AWS Cloud Practitioner, Security+, ITIL v.4, SAFe Program Consultant, ICAgile, Applied Cybersecurity
• Management certs: PMP, CSM, ICAgile
How I Speak Up
• Served as the go-to to demo technical feature delivery to client
• Periodically present at Community of Practice events at my company
• Facilitate internal team calls with analysts and engineers
How I Manage Up
• Leading effort to transform analyst team to a full functioning scrum team
• Regular cadence meetings with project/team leadership to strategize solutions
for client
• Leading a whitepaper effort to illustrate impacts of diversity in STEM

19. Application
LEAD TECHNOLOGIST, BOOZ ALLEN HAMILTON
Email: valle_michelle-elizabeth@bah.com
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/michelleelizabethvalle
Fun Fact: Initially on track to obtain a PhD in East Asian History. Not a
trained Technologist.
COMPETENCIES
• IT Governance
• Stakeholder Engagement
• Agile / Scrum
• IT Process Improvement
• Project Management
• DevSecOps
• IT Change Management
• API Test Automation
• UI Test Automation
• Test Driven Development
• Behavioral Driven Design
• Microservices Design
• Cyber Policy and Governance
• Identity & Access Management
• Secure Web Application Testing
SKILLS, TOOLS, FRAMEWORKS
• Java, Python, SQL
• GitHub, OpenShift, AWS, Liquibase,
ELK Stack, PostgreSQL, Atlassian
Tools, Intelli-J IDE, Postman, 508
Accessibility Tools, Jmeter, Metasploit,
Wireshark, SailPoint, CyberArk, Splunk,
Docker, Jenkins
• Selenium for UI Automation, Cucumber,
Gradle, TestNG, Maven, FISMA,
FedRAMP, RMF, CI/CD/CM
Skilled up

20. Application (cont)
LEAD TECHNOLOGIST, BOOZ ALLEN HAMILTON
Email: valle_michelle-elizabeth@bah.com
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/michelleelizabethvalle
Fun Fact: Initially on track to obtain a PhD in East Asian History. Not a
trained Technologist.
EDUCATION & CERTIFICATIONS
SANS Technology Institute
Undergraduate Certificate
Applied Cybersecurity (In Progress)
University of Hawaii at Mānoa
Master of Arts
Asian Studies (China)
University of the Pacific
Bachelor of Arts
Communication, Chinese Studies
CERTIFICATIONS
PMI PMP, Security +, Certified
Scrum Master, SAFe Program
Consultant, ICAgile, ITIL v 4, Group
Facilitation
Certed Up

21. Application (cont)
LEAD TECHNOLOGIST, BOOZ ALLEN HAMILTON
Email: valle_michelle-elizabeth@bah.com
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/michelleelizabethvalle
Fun Fact: Initially on track to obtain a PhD in East Asian History. Not a
trained Technologist.
COMPETENCIES
• IT Governance
• Stakeholder Engagement
• Agile / Scrum
• IT Process Improvement
• Project Management
• DevSecOps
• IT Change Management
• API Test Automation
• UI Test Automation
• Test Driven Development
• Behavioral Driven Design
• Microservices Design
• Cyber Policy and Governance
• Identity & Access Management
• Secure Web Application Testing
Speaking up
Managing up

22. Panel Q & A