During our last week of our blog series spotlighting Protiviti’s Women in IT, we would like to introduce everyone to Keri Bowman.
Keri is a manager in the IT Consulting practice with a focus on ERP Solutions – SAP. As an intern in the Protiviti Dallas office the summer of 2008, Keri decided to join Protiviti after graduating from Baylor University in May 2009 with a B.B.A. in Management Information Systems and a minor in History. Keri has moved during her career from working and servicing clients in our Dallas market to now working as a part of our Atlanta practice.
When we had some time to connect with Keri, we asked her the following questions:
- What attracted you to Protiviti? “The people and the culture first and foremost, but also I really identified with and found value in the clear path to progression with well-defined goals that helped build a career path and skill-set for my chosen field.”
- What excites you the most about your work in IT? “It’s always changing. I can do the same “type” of project for a new client and it’s completely different from the prior client because the environment is slightly different, or how the business utilizes different functionality, customizations or upgrades that have been performed, etc. It’s all still the same concept of my based area of expertise, but it’s always changing and evolving and I love the challenge of learning new things and being able to build customized solutions for the client to fit their specific needs.”
- What has been the biggest challenge you have faced working in IT? “Being a young woman in IT when most of your industry client counterparts are at least twice your age and male can be challenging. You have to learn to navigate those conversations – everyone gets questioned when they are young and making process-changing recommendations, but it’s learning how to present yourself and your ideas in a manner that effectively communicates and demonstrates your knowledge and background. Always being prepared for any question you might get and having a ready answer – people respect that, no matter your age or gender. Having strong female management team members to look up to and emulate, and having the support of my project management teams has helped me develop and build my client presentation and management style that have led to me becoming a respected Subject Matter Expert (SME) in our practice regardless or my age or gender.”
- Where do you see Protiviti in the IT space in the next 5 years? “Protiviti is continuing to grow quickly and build a name for ourselves as we do more and more pure consulting work. In 5 years I see us having become even more of a recognized name in the IT space, delivering expanded services as well as more depth of service lines for our clients.”
- Who has played a critical role in the development in your career? “My career advisor and the senior management team for my practice (ERP) have really made it a point to give me challenging projects and always to push me to develop and perfect new skills, constantly taking on new challenges with their support to help me grow. This includes new client projects as well as internal company projects like being the Atlanta office G2E strategy champion.”
- What do you enjoy doing outside of work? “My closest friends from college now live all across the country (San Diego, Denver, Austin and Charleston) and we love to plan trips to visit each other. I have a West Highland terrier (Griffin) who takes up a lot of my time, and I also love doing anything outdoors (sports, hiking, etc.). I also love a good book and watching movies.”
Thanks Keri for being one of our Protiviti Women in IT spotlight professionals. We appreciate your valuable career and life insights.
