Helen the Hub

ImageHelenHub

Helen is one of the founding members of Adelante and is 1 of 5 members of the management group, which include Angelina and Bart, that effectively run the company. She is however, not responsible for the long-term strategic thinking of the company, although she participates heavily in those discussions. Instead Helen is the company's lead program/account manager. She is responsible for launching new loan products, project roadmaps and schedule, gathering and defining requirements and documentation.

She does not interface with the company's investors and potential business partners very much other than to give project updates and to present and field questions about the roadmap.

Due to her unique position: down in the trenches with the individual contributors, yet a focal point of intra-communication within the team, Helen is the first responder when it comes to identifying logistical and/or structure problems within the team that need to be addressed. Someone has the wrong role and needs to be moved to a different part of the team. An area of the project is being neglected and someone new needs to be hired, etc.

Personal life

Helen is 36 years-old, married with 2 year-old twin boys. She lives a hour from downtown L.A. in Hermosa Beach and carpools into work with her husband everyday in their Prius. The boys are dropped of at day care on the way and one of them has to make it back to daycare by 6PM to pick them up.

She is physically active and runs three times a week for half and hour. She works hard at maintaining a healthy work-life balance, but is committed to her work and career.

She spends her whole day with her laptop, half of it in meetings. She also uses a legal pad to take notes and capture ideas and questions that pop into her head or that members of her team need answers to.

Calendaring

Helen spends a lot of time communicating with the various members of her team via email, framing discussions, asking questions, following up with summaries and decisions. She schedules 1:1 weekly meetings with every individual contributor on her team as well as group meetings to work through specific issues, review proposals and share status on progress.

In her 1:1 meetings, Helen reviews the individual contributor's task list with them, making sure the lists are up to date, flagging open issues that need follow-up, (re)prioritizing tasks, trying to figure out if certain issues need to be discussed with more people in the room.

Helen also prepares regular project summaries and status reports to the management group.

Collaboration

In order to do her job effectively, Helen relies heavily on Bart, the Busy Body / Coordinator and even sometimes Ivan, the Individual Contributor to help her pull the content of her communications together.

Technology and Tools

Helen has a PC desktop at work and a Thinkpad laptop which she carries between home and work. She doesn't know what kind of cell phone she has, it came free with her plan and she's had the same one for almost 4 years. The batter tends to fall out and she keeps it held in place with thick rubberbands from the produce section of the supermarket. She has an old PC desktop at home that she doesn't really use anymore. Recently, her husband got her a Treo, which she's been meaning to use for email and calendaring. But thus far, she's only managed to set up the contacts management part of it. She usually forgets it at home.

Helen's House

Taken from here

Helen's Thinkpad

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Helen's 'Came Free with the Plan' Cellphone

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Helen's Neglected Treo

Taken from here