Women's History Month | US Spotlight: Tess Trudeau

"I’ve been at Adapt US since pretty much the beginning - I started during the pandemic. Adapt at large has been around for much longer - 20+ years, but the US business unit is the newest and fastest growing.

My initial conversation with Doug Sisko (Managing Director) was about QA on a project I had heard about from an old colleague, but very quickly it became a surprise project management interview, and before I knew it I was the part-time Senior PM on the Tufts account and wondering where this new opportunity would lead. 

Fast forward four years, and I’ve become an integral part of the core Adapt US team, as the Director of Delivery. And I can unironically say it still feels like a family here."

"I fell into project management pretty early on out of college. It was a pretty good, if unplanned, meld of my English and Psychology degrees, and I’ve always been drawn to organizing things. I can’t stand following rules unless I know their reasons, and I can’t resist making processes work better as I learn what works and what doesn’t.

I started at a local Northampton, MA agency manually entering keywords for SEO at the tail end of projects. But those projects needed some help staying on track, and pretty soon I had carved out a new role that hadn’t existed there.

It was the sort of place where people got their start and then graduated to “real” agencies, so I graduated up a few times until I had my daughter, and found about a year into motherhood that working 50 hours a week while paying for two different part-time daycares was not going to work for me anymore.

I ended up pausing my “career” to run my own home daycare for three years, so I could get real time in with my daughter and still pay the bills. That was an interesting exercise in a whole new type of stress (keeping 6 kids alive and happy all day every day), and it wasn’t exactly fewer hours. It also somehow had more bureaucratic hoops to jump through than I’d ever dealt with before.

In 2020, not wanting to invite toddlers from six different families into my house during the beginning of the Pandemic, I put that on hold and reached out to various old colleagues of mine, and found some part-time digital work here and there, until I was introduced to Adapt."

"I think a lot of PMs in their early career focus so much on the details that they don’t think they have time to think about the big picture. They are tracking too many budgets, scheduling too many meetings, and answering too many emails. That really takes up your time in a way that isn’t conducive to effective Delivery Management. Combine this with the “old fashioned” perception that project management isn’t really a valuable part of a project, and you find a lot of PMs being overly polite and careful, hiding their time within other categories, and boxing themselves in by trying to look small and unobtrusive or trying to make sure clients know they aren’t taking up too much space.

One brilliant thing that has happened over the past twenty years is that clients have become more mature even as digital agencies have. This means they understand that without the role of a delivery manager, the entire project can go off the rails very quickly. They understand a delivery manager can lead the entire project in a way that allows for all the other silos to be effective at their expert roles without colliding. A way that allows all the parts of a project to interact with and inform each other in critical ways. These days, sometimes one of a prospective client’s biggest criteria in choosing a digital partner is knowing who is managing the project.

Being a delivery manager in this modern digital era that boasts seasoned delivery teams and mature clients is as rewarding as it is challenging, because I get to use my whole brain (in addition to my gut). Trusting both of those and communicating decisively is something that took me many years to achieve.

So what makes for effective Delivery Management? You still have to track the details, but I find I stay one level up from where I used to be (e.g. sprint goals and milestones as opposed to tickets). I go into projects now knowing something big will change from the original plan, as opposed to crossing my fingers it won't. And that has the effect of letting me see things early, then have candid conversations with the real humans on the client team and my own to solve the challenge together. It also has the effect of letting me create better and better (though never foolproof) plans for the next project.

I find these days that I have a great deal of opinions, and while I am always learning from the other perspectives in the room, I’m no longer afraid of voicing them. Perhaps what I’ve learned is simply to trust in my own experience and my own value, but honestly, that’s a lesson some people never learn."

"I think there is a lot of low-hanging fruit when it comes to what organizations can do to create more inclusive environments.

Flexible hours and remote work are great for anyone with a family, but women especially, since often house and child responsibilities fall to them at an unequal rate.

Providing what I consider the bare minimum for maternity leave (3 months paid), and having that policy clearly documented and accessible, should be something any business that considers itself successful can offer.

Companies should have transparency (and equality) in their salary structure for different positions.

A big, obvious one is to simply (and I say this knowing it actually takes a great deal of effort) hire more diversely.

Companies should actively fight against conformity bias (i.e. WANT to hear multiple perspectives, because they make us stronger) and work to eliminate other unconscious biases in the workplace as well.

Ideally, companies can also be active members of their own community, supporting people or helping give people a leg up into that type of career."

"Women are taught (consciously and unconsciously) many things in our society, like making sure they show active listening (i.e. smile and nod when someone is talking) and make sure not to interrupt. I find I have to fight these habits every day to be respected and heard, because if you are too deferential, that reads as subservient, and if you always wait your turn, you may never get one.

I find that as long as you are respectful of others’ opinions and expertise as well as your own, if you are a humble expert and a kind person, you’ll be hard-pressed to come across as rude. This may sound obvious, but it’s a lesson most women are never taught.

I think at this point, at least in the digital agency world, most people respect women for being decisive and clear. But most people also don’t notice when a woman isn’t being heard, even if they have good intentions. So it comes down sometimes to “taking it” as opposed to “waiting until it’s given to you.”

Lastly, trust your gut, voice your opinions, and remember to say no (“No, I don’t agree,” or ”No, I’m not available at that time,” or “No, you are not hearing me.”) "

"I do see a trend of women being delivery managers and men being programmers. I imagine this is in part due to societal norms, and more women could be invited into the coding space from a young age (and vice versa!)

I know there continue to be fewer female Directors and CEOs as well, even as the numbers are going in the right direction.

I think we have a lot of allies in the digital agency world, but we need to take one more step forward. There is a difference between men giving women “extra space” or “extra consideration” and men just treating women like people - treating them the same. This can show up even in the way a conversation is handled (e.g. don’t apologize for swearing in front of a woman). But it also tracks back all the way to proactively making sure your female employees are paid equivalently to men who hold the same position."