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Member of the Month: Karthika Saravanan

Member of the Month

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This month PMI Toronto recognizes another member of the Business Analysis (BA) Community, which recently held another exciting event on March 23rd—Project Managers and Business Analysts: How Do We Relate? The BA Community has been busy bringing events to our community and its Vice Chair, Karthika Saravanan, is at the helm of organizing such events with her co-volunteers.

Congratulations to Karthika Saravanan on being acknowledged as a dedicated member to the PMIT community. It’s because of such committed volunteers, like Karthika, that events are planned and delivered to offer great value to our members.

Education & Career Growth

Karthika earned her Honors B.Sc in Life Science with a minor in Environmental Science from McMaster University. Starting her career in health care and research, Karthika worked for over eight years in various roles including a Research Assistant at Princess Margaret Centre, UHN and Immunodeficiency Canada, a not-for-profit organization.

Turning her attention on a career in business administration and project management, Karthika started working in the government sector. Since 2015, she has worked for the City of Toronto in various roles including support staff, an accounting assistant working on various projects. She earned her PMP designations in 2020 and has since expanded her repertoire to include HR management. Karthika is focused on her volunteer commitments as well as her career now working toward a designation of Payroll Compliance Practitioner (PCP) from the Canadian Payroll Association. It is through her diverse career that she has been able to contribute to the various events hosted by the BA Community.

Karthika’s experience is vast and she has some key takeaways she has learned along the way. Her biggest takeaways has been change is inevitable. She explains, “change is crucial to self-improvement and personal/profession growth. Learning to accept and adapt to change in any project or organization will allow a professional to become a great leader.”

As project managers we can relate to this lesson and hope we take it with the same ease as Karthika expresses.

Giving Back to the PM Community

Karthika is passionate about project management and it’s the reason she decided to start volunteering.

Speaking to other volunteers and colleagues about PMIT and their passion towards volunteering coupled with my passion for the PM profession inspired me to join and contribute to the PM community.

Karthika joined PMI Toronto in March 2021 as a Project Manager for the Branches and Communities (B&C) team. She was responsible for assisting the director of B&C with planning and executing projects for PMIT. Seeing an opportunity to revitalize the BA Community’s portfolio she took on the role as Vice Chair. Her current position with the Chapter has been a great experience to give back to our members and the BA Community has held some successful and interesting events.

I absolutely love the team I volunteer with and spending time building this community team, recruiting more volunteers, and focusing on event planning for the BA community.

Expanding Her Education

Karthika keeps busy with work, volunteering, and completing the PCP designation. She says that her PMP certification has helped her “acquire the theoretical knowledge on the PMBOK standards and given me the opportunity to meet many other PMs whom I have learned and still learning many transferable skills.”

She is interested in earning her PMI-PBA and PMI-ACP in the future. Since the world is moving towards agile projects, earning her ACP certification Karthika says will “enhance my skills and knowledge of agile projects and current project trends in Agile Project Management.”

More About Karthika

Karthika is dedicated, hard-working, ambitious, charismatic, and a self-starter. She is a strong believer that hard work always pays off.

As long as you are willing to invest your effort, you can succeed in anything! Sky is the limit!

Karthika stays busy with family, work, furthering her skills, and volunteering. She knows how important it is to find a work-life balance. Even though days are busy she aims to find at time to mediate or write. Given her busy schedule we are beyond grateful for Karthika’s commitment to the PMI Toronto Chapter and the BA Community and look forward to seeing what great events she and her team plans next.

Favourite Quote: Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.

Work Passions: I absolutely love learning new things and being challenged by change. Being flexible and adaptable to change motivates me with any work I perform.

Personal Passions: I enjoy reading, abstract painting, and travelling.

 

Nominate a Fellow PMIT Member

We are always looking for ways to showcase our dedicated and invaluable members. Take some time and nominate a fellow PMI Toronto Chapter member to be featured in our Member of the Month series. Please send your nomination suggestions to communications@pmitoronto.ca and tell us why the member should be featured.

 

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