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Suketu Nagrecha and Cornelius Fichtner

The Project Management Institute (PMI)® Educational Foundation is a charitable nonprofit organization, with the mission to inspire and empower people to realize their potential and transform their lives and their communities through the use of project management knowledge. This interview with Suketu Nagrecha, PMIEF Chair, was recorded at the 2016 PMI Global Congress in San Diego, California. We discuss:

• The history of PMIEF
• How PMIEF can help you with
  - Scholarships
  - Grants
  - Awards
• How you can apply for a scholarship, grant, or award
• How your or your employer can become a PMIEF donor
• And we'll hear a story from a project manager whom PMIEF helped in his career

Full disclosure: My own company is a PMIEF donor and offers certification scholarships. If you are thinking of earning a PMI scholarship but lack the means to do so then please visit https://www.project-management-prepcast.com/scholarships to learn how to apply.

Episode Transcript

Below are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only.

Podcast Introduction

Cornelius Fichtner: You are listening to the Project Management Podcast™ at www.pm-podcast.com and we are coming to you live from the 2016 PMI Global Congress in sunny Southern California in San Diego.

Podcast Interview

Cornelius Fichtner:   With me today is Suketu Nagrecha. You are the 2016 chair of the PMI Educational Foundation, did I get that right?

Suketu Nagrecha:    Absolutely, you did get that right

Cornelius:   Hello Suketu. Welcome to the program.

Suketu:   Thank you very much. Happy to be here.

Cornelius:   Yeah. Can you give us a high-level overview of PMIEF, the PMI Educational Foundation. What does the organization do?

Suketu:   The PMIEF was founded in 1990 and it’s the philanthropic arm of PMI. It’s a separate incorporator organization on the PMI and we leverage Project Management for social good. So that’s our primary objective and the way we go about it is we achieve our vision and mission through three different pillars as we call it in our organization. These are PM-Knowledgeable Youth, PM-Capable Non-Profits and PM-Ready Work Force. We have three different arenas that we work through and that’s how we try to get our programs done.

Cornelius: OK. Your role as the chair, what exactly do you do?

Suketu:   This is a Board of Directors that I’m on with PMIEF and we have responsibility for setting a strategic direction and we also have    shared responsibilities and performance of the organization that we monitor as a Board of Directors.

Cornelius:   And then you also have an Executive Team, I assume.

Suketu:   The Exhibitor Team with our staff team, they actually carry out the programs in detail that the Board set the direction for.

Cornelius:   So, the mission of PMIEF, where do we start it, what is the mission?

Suketu:   For the mission, I will read out the mission word by word, “is to inspire and empower people to realize their potential and transform their lives and their communities through the use of Project Management Knowledge. We feel that this Mission strongly represents the work of our Foundation.

Cornelius:   And it ties back nicely with the Project Management for Social Good, I think.

Suketu:   Absolutely, it does.

Cornelius:   What is the relationship between PMI and PMIEF these days? It was founded as a separate philanthropic organization.

Suketu:   Both PMI and PMIEF, they’re focused on the value, application and practice of Project Management. Boards are for the PMI’s strategic plan. The PMI they view Project Management as a professional competency and then they focus on the members than employers and 51 Million practice this across the globe. Whereas PMIEF, they view Project Management as a life skill, career skill or learning skill for everyone in the society. We like to say that 7 Billion people are our stakeholders as companies is 10 Million that PMI looks up to.

Cornelius:   You have a big challenge.

Suketu:   Absolutely we do. And we love getting their Project Management out to them.

Cornelius:   So we know PMI supports the PMIEF, how many other organizations around the world –do you have a number for us? How many other big organizations and small organizations support you?

Suketu:   All the PMI chapters are Registered Education Providers so our program has actually grown to all these organizations. There are a number of other big organizations they do support the donators of their time and cash donations which help carry out our PMIEF programs. Instead of naming a few and then leaving out a few, I would definitely say that if you go to our website, you will see the list of our major donors and at the same time I don’t want to miss out the individual donors because we have a lot of individual donors that actually contribute from a very small amount to significantly large amount and which helps us, PMIEF carry out our mission and vision.

Cornelius:   What is the total amount of scholarships and grants and awards that PMIEF hands out and gives out each year?

Above are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete PDF transcript is available to Premium subscribers only.