Elena has more than 25 years of experience in IT, having worked at various times as a developer, BA, tester, project manager, program manager, practice manager, and executive.  She has incubated programs for several multi-national organizations which included an internal consulting practice for implementing ERPs at the University of Chicago and a business analysis practice for NAVTEQ with analysts based in Chicago, Slovakia, and Mumbai.  Also at NAVTEQ, she coached the teams that piloted the first cross-departmental projects using agile techniques.

Elena has teaching experience both in the academic environment (teaching English Literature to students at North Park College and the University of Chicago), and in the business environment, starting with public Dbase III training in the late 1980s (those were the days) and progressing forward to today's endeavors as a trainer for ThoughtWorks in the areas of agile fundamentals, project management, and business analysis.  She is an experienced corporate change facilitator and is currently leading an internal effort at ThoughtWorks to better align two of our business units.

Elena has a PhD in English and half an MBA.  She is an unapologetic PMI Project Management Professional (PMP) and fiercely Scrum Master Certified, but like the rest of you she feels the proof is in the pudding and trust must be earned.  She will be presenting at the Agile 2011 conference in Salt Lake City on the topic of agile project portfolio management.  She looks forward to seeing you there.