Lifting Layers and Leveling Up: The Frost PMO Practice Head, Part 1

In this limited series, we’ll tell you their stories of struggle, sacrifice, and success, and we’ll share how these people earned their stripes as esteemed Frost Practice Heads.

The year was 2010. Smartphones were still in their infancy, and the world of app development was pretty much the wild, wild West. Working in one of the biggest names in the tech industry – Novare Technologies – as a freshly minted Project Coordinator, Leigh de Joya - de Guzman was facing the biggest challenge of her career so far.

At the time, the Project Coordinator role was still new for Leigh. Thankfully, her work in the past has already earned her the trust of both the Managing Partner and the Senior Vice President for IT in Novare. This trust was enough for them to give Leigh a massive task – produce a Proof of Concept for an app and present it in the boardroom of their biggest client in front of senior executives and company shareholders.

A Proof of Concept, or POC, aims to show how viable a product can be. To do this, you build its most basic functions and demonstrate them working. For anyone in app development, POCs can mean the difference between turning their dream app into reality or canceling the whole project altogether.

For a newbie Project Coordinator, this was a daunting undertaking.

Humble Beginnings

“Back in college, I was a ‘pure developer.’ My classmates knew me as a nerd!” Leigh recounted with a chuckle. In 2000 to 2004, the IT industry was starting to grow in popularity and many graduates were opting to take the technology path. She was one of them.

“IT and programming weren’t really my interests during that time,” she continued. “It wasn’t a career I planned to pursue. My mom was pushing me toward actuarial fields because my siblings are both good with numbers.

“When I decided to take IT in college, my mom just assumed I’ll excel in it because I was also good with numbers. I was good at math and logic.”

In reality, Leigh struggled with programming. “I remember one time in programming class, everyone was already in exercise number 10. Meanwhile, I was still stuck in exercise number 2!”

She was already known for her math skills and had already built her a reputation of being a good student. Everyone just assumed these basic exercises would be easy for her. Because of this, she didn’t tell anyone she was having a hard time. It was a rocky start to say the least.

Instead of shying away from the difficulties she was facing, she decided to buckle down and do the work. To add more hurdles to her college journey, as an IT student, she had limited access to a computer. Her family, at the time, had an old computer that was nowhere near what she needed for class.

Leigh hailed from a modest working class family —her mother was a high school teacher and her father ran a small business. Their finances weren’t lacking but they were tight. When the financial crisis hit, her parents worked even harder to make sure she and her siblings finished school.

The only way for me to learn some of our programming lessons was to imagine how the code would run on paper.

Leigh

Chief Executive Officer

“The only way for me to learn some of our programming lessons was to imagine how the code would run on paper,” Leigh decided. She might not have a good computer at home but she had a pen and paper. She can code using those. “To follow the whole logic of how the program is being processed in a computer, I would run the sequential steps on paper. That was how I learned.”

It would be months of writing down code on paper before things would start clicking. Doing it on paper also gave Leigh a unique perspective on how certain programs worked. By that time, she was already beginning to gain a deeper mastery of computer programming. She still needed to test if her lines of code would work, of course, so she decided to ask her professors to let her work in the computer labs at school.

It was rough, but Leigh’s struggles would pay off. In her senior years, she would become one of UA&P’s top students, mentoring lower years and entering into intercollegiate competitions to put her university on the IT map.

Leigh possessed the drive to power through what seemed to be insurmountable odds. She would carry this drive throughout her career as she purposefully put herself in challenging situations, situations that would test her and push her more and more toward her goals.

Fast forward to 2010, her new role as a Project Coordinator in Novare was her choice. She knew she wanted to gain more insight into how projects are completed so she asked her superiors to move her into Project Coordination, with the bigger goal of Project Management in sight.

As a Project Coordinator, she took on plenty of challenging projects, but none were of the size and scale of the POC she was being asked to present. This POC was the fruit of over 4 months of working closely with her team, their client, and their client’s partners.

The project required full stack integration with their telco client's infrastructure, multiple platform providers and phone manufacturers. Moreover, it also needed integration with Android. The goal was to provide rich but cost-effective mobile internet access. At the time, it aimed to be the breakthrough that would be perfect for an emerging market like the Philippines.

With her background in development, Leigh knew the ins and outs of the technical content of the POC. However, the presentation itself – the performance, the public speaking – was a different dragon to slay altogether.

The First Hurdle

Today, as the CEO of Frost, Leigh is no stranger to giving killer presentations. Her ability to build and develop relationships with people has given Frost numerous opportunities to showcase its many talents.

Watching her navigate negotiations today, it’s almost unbelievable there was a time when public speaking used to be a terrifying prospect for her.

“I wasn’t that great at presenting in college. I wasn’t that great at speaking, either,” Leigh recalled, laughing a little. “If you asked me to present, my whole body would start shaking.”

She remembers when, as a student speaking in front of a class, her classmates would ask her to speak louder. “Despite the fact that I knew my topic, my voice, my manner of execution, would make it sound like I’m not confident,” she said.

This weakness would follow her past graduation and into her first few jobs.

Being a talented programmer only took her so far. She was often pulled into meetings where she was expected to present solutions. It was in these meetings where she realized she needed to work on public speaking.

“I talked like a developer,” Leigh explained. “You know how developers talk? It’s very straightforward. It’s very direct.” After several months, she knew she needed a different environment to sharpen her communication skills. She needed to learn how to talk to clients while also being able to understand the more technical aspects of projects.

I chose Solutions Consulting mainly because it’s customer-facing. I wanted to see if I could marry technical know-how with communication skills.

Leigh

Chief Executive Officer

“I chose Solutions Consulting mainly because it’s customer-facing,” she continued. “I researched that job for months. I was finally convinced to take it because I wanted to see if I could marry technical know-how with communication skills. Hopefully, in the process, I’ll improve my communication skills as well.”

The drive she brought from her early college days, the motivation to always seek out to be better, was what pushed her to make the shift. She was already confident about her programming skills. She was already a rising star in the development world. Now, it was time to let other people see that too.

In her new role, she would ask to join talks with clients to see how she could contribute. Secretly, however, she was observing how her seniors were handling talking, taking notes, and readying herself to do the same. Her first big test came in the form of a meeting with a high-ranking officer from one of her clients.

“I remember thinking, ‘Okay, I’ll set up the meeting with our client’s product manager to discuss details,” she said. “But I also brought someone with me who is not from Solutions Consulting. I brought one of our HR personnel with me because I knew she had a relationship with the product manager.”

“I pleaded with her, ‘I’ll buy you Starbucks after! Please come with me to this meeting,’” Leigh cracked up as she recalled asking her colleague. Bringing her friend with her proved to be valuable. The meeting was a success and the product manager signed off on her proposal.

This success was only the first of many. The more Leigh closed deals and agreements, the more her confidence grew and, as a result, so did her communication skills. Years later, as she is preparing for the big POC presentation at Novare in a Project Coordinator capacity, these skills would serve her well.

In Part 2 of our PMO Practice Head feature, we’ll see Leigh take on bigger projects, innovate solutions, and learn more about her growth as a professional.

The First Hurdle

Watching her navigate negotiations today, it’s almost unbelievable there was a time when public speaking used to be a terrifying prospect for her.

This weakness would follow her past graduation and into her first few jobs.

I chose Solutions Consulting mainly because it’s customer-facing. I wanted to see if I could marry technical know-how with communication skills.

Leigh

Chief Executive Officer

In Part 2 of our PMO Practice Head feature, we’ll see Leigh take on bigger projects, innovate solutions, and learn more about her growth as a professional.

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