{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"People At Pyramid","title":"Project Manager by Day, Movie Buff by Night W/ Elena Varela","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":799,"description":"Be a guest on People at Pyramid: https://feeds.transistor.fm/people-at-pyramid\nProcess improvement, Lean Six Sigma, and the planning that decides a project before the work even starts, with our member Elena Varela.\nThis week on People at Pyramid, we're spotlighting our member Elena Varela, a business manager at Drexel University who spends her days making complicated projects run smoothly. If you have ever watched a big initiative stall, drift, or collapse under its own weight, this conversation is for you.\nElena works in process improvement, and she is a believer in the Lean Six Sigma approach and the DMAIC framework: Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control. But the heart of what she does is simpler than the terminology sounds. Before any project starts, she gets the requirements clear and builds a charter everyone can agree on. Skip that planning, she says, and it always comes back later as bloat, rework, and a timeline nobody signed up for.\nShe also talks about the human side of the job. A big part of managing projects is managing people: getting experts in a room, keeping them pointed in the same direction, and building the trust that keeps the work moving. Elena calls it herding cats, and she clearly loves it.\nWe get into where AI tools fit, too. Elena and Vince trade stories about using them for the parts of the work nobody wants to do, and about what happens when you hand them the hard part instead. Then the conversation turns to something closer to Elena's heart: movies, storytelling, and why she is drawn to stories about human connection.\nMeet Elena, and hear why she is the kind of member who makes this community what it is.\nCHAPTERS:\n0:00 - Meet Elena Varela, Business Manager at Drexel\n3:00 - Project Management Best Practices\n7:40 - Movies, Storytelling, and Human Connection\n10:30 - A Show Recommendation and How to Connect\nGUEST LINKS:\nElena Varela on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elenajvarela/\nABOUT PEOPLE AT PYRAMID:\nPeople at Pyramid is...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/7zpDIN0cDjQT4oOFLA2IVP7-TtS6tmEt5ulDpWznvv8/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS8xYTIz/MTc4NmY2YWE3YmFi/YTk3ZWE5ZGY2Yjcz/ZGMwYS5qcGc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}