Katie Valerio — Year Review
Cultivating independence while learning to scheme together in harmonious collaboration is key for workplace growth. We sat down to chat with Project Manager and Marketing Coordinator Katie about how she’s been growing and adapting in her role as she nears the end of her first year at Little Taller.
Little Taller: What is your title, and what is it you actually do every day?
Katie: Technically, I’m a project manager, but my email signature says Marketing Coordinator. I help make sure projects get done within their deadlines and make sure we do the projects within budget. It’s a lot of managing the team and being the middleman between the client and the team to make sure everything gets done to the quality it needs to be and that we’re meeting the client’s needs.
Little Taller: How did your journey with Little Taller start?
Katie: I had Kyle as a professor my senior year at Grand Canyon University. When the pandemic hit, he posted that he needed a copywriter with a background in Marketing. So I started at Little Taller as a copywriter, so I wrote many social media posts and website content for clients. A couple of months in, I started doing market research and working with systems like Active Campaign, which I enjoy. I picked up some of the smaller marketing-related clients along the way as a project manager and quickly started taking on larger projects.
Little Taller: What’s your biggest takeaway from the past year?
Katie: My biggest takeaway is speaking up and participating in a project definitely helps you grow more than you would expect. If you sit back and do the work and move on, you aren’t necessarily allowing yourself to grow, let alone open the doors to new opportunities. I never thought that I would be into project management or CRM integrations, but here we are.
Little Taller: How are you balancing remote working in your everyday life?
Katie: I enjoy working remotely, and I enjoy my job, so sometimes I’ll look up at the clock, and I’ll realize that I didn’t stop to take a lunch or it’s already time to log off even though it felt like I just started my day, so that’s definitely something I’ve been trying to get better at. I would say I’m balancing it well, but I can always improve the work-life separation and really make sure I am “offline” when the day is over.
Little Taller: What’s the greatest skill you’ve picked up/learned in the last year?
Katie: Definitely talking to clients. I’m a pretty quiet person because I don’t necessarily like drawing attention to myself, but being a project manager has definitely helped me grow my communication and leadership skills in new ways that you typically wouldn’t see in school. Don’t get me wrong, I can speak up when I need to, but I rarely ever had to until now. I’m finding that it’s easier for me to confront conflict and help delegate work without feeling like I’m overstepping my boundaries too, which feels like a pretty great personal milestone to accomplish.
Little Taller: What is your favorite thing about being a project manager?
Katie: I love working with the variety of people on our teams. When I was just the copywriter, I would go all day without talking to anyone except Alex. Now that I am a project manager, I get to meet everyone on the team and work with a lot of them very closely. I think my favorite part of the day is when we’re all in zoom joking around, and we’re tying in the culture of our whole team, whether they’re from Phoenix, New York, or Nicaragua. Your team really becomes your work family, and it’s something I wouldn’t have gotten to experience if I wasn’t in this position.
Little Taller: Is there any advice you’d give to a new project manager?
Katie: I would tell a new project manager that communication is key and don’t be afraid to ask questions or speak up. As project managers, we tend to spend the same amount of time as our team learning a project, so if we don’t ask questions to help understand the project, then it makes assisting the team difficult. I would also tell them that even on the chaotic days when it feels like you have 50 things on your plate and haven’t marked any of them complete, you still moved projects along and helped others complete their tasks — which is still a successful day.
Little Taller: What are some of those fun projects you take on on the side?
Katie: I don’t necessarily have projects, but I have a background in photography and painting, so I try to always do that when I can. I also started my career with event marketing, so when I can, I try to help out at some of the local events and committees with my old mentor and friends.
Little Taller: What is it you like most about working with Little Taller?
Katie: I love the community and the culture. It’s a very fun and upbeat place to work, so getting to express your thoughts and ideas and knowing that the whole team will piggyback off of it and see about making your schemes come to life is something really cool to experience and not something you would necessarily see in other organizations. The people at Little Taller really care about you and your goals personally and professionally, and they will do whatever it takes to help you reach them.
Little Taller: So looking to the future, what are you looking forward to in the next year?
Katie: I’m looking forward to working closely with the engineering team and helping organize their processes a little bit more. They work a lot with systems and custom work, which I enjoy myself, so it’s pretty cool getting to connect my knowledge of the systems with the technical aspect that they know and love. I guess I look forward to collaborating with the boys and building some really cool projects in the future.
Little Taller: What was your biggest challenge in this past year, and how did you overcome it?
Katie: I would say my biggest challenge was learning how to run projects on my own without having to lean on the other project managers for a lot of help. It’s definitely an ongoing learning process, but having practice and having the support from the beginning has set me up to be able to do that on my own.
Little Taller: So this one has nothing to do with a Little Taller, but if you can be an expert at anything, what would that be?
Katie: I would like to be fluent in languages, not necessarily one specific language either. Working with team members and clients abroad has opened my eyes to how important it is to know another language and see things through the lens of another culture, so to be able to speak in someone else’s primary language would be really cool. Plus I think it would be pretty funny to not tell anyone and then just randomly start speaking another language and surprise everyone — a language superpower if you will.
Like so many of us, Katie has found value in this unusual year in connecting and collaborating with others, growing alongside our band of merry makers. We’re looking forward to seeing how her role continues to change and develop as she finds new alleyways to travel down and new projects to, well, manage!
