Q&A with Eleanor Kirtley, Senior Program Manager
Q:How do you spend your time as Green Marine Senior Program Manager?
Q: What’s your favorite part of the job?
A: When I get to meet in-person, on-site with a new participant – learn about their company, operations, and what they want to get out of being a part of the program. I love getting to put on PPE and weasel a tour of the industrial facilities or better yet, a boat!
Q: How has the pandemic changed your job?
A: Zoom fatigue is real! I used to travel for work about once a month and attend meetings locally at least weekly. It was a really nice balance of my introvert and extravertedness. I crazy miss my Seattle maritime community, but my family also likes having me home!
Q: What’s the hardest part of being a Program Manager?
A: Reaching consensus! Each year, as we review the performance indicators in the program – we have to weigh the balance in level of difficulty, cost, and benefit for our criteria in our framework of Levels 1 to 5. Criteria should be broadly applicable and flexible to define a common metric across the diversity of our participants, but also specific enough for consistent and clear implementation and peer-to-peer benchmarking. When different participants all have different priorities, constraints, experience, etc; reaching consensus means finding ‘good enough’, to be honest!
Q: Can you share some good news with us from the last year?
A: Yes! I was honored with a 40 under 40 Award from the Puget Sound Business Journal. I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to open the first branch office for Green Marine back in 2014. The last six-plus years have been challenging, gratifying, and fun. For our program’s success and my industry engagement to be recognized among the leaders in Puget Sound was extraordinary good news, and I’m for sure thankful to my colleagues, champions, role models, mentors, and friends who helped get us this far!