Work

Narrative:

High-School Internships 2000-2002.

Josh Penman started work at age 15 with a two-year internship at Swift Freight International, where he started in the warehouse and moved through finance, IT, HR, Operations, Reception, and Marketing before finishing as sub-assistant to the CEO in 2002.

He started his first 80 hour/week internship at age 16, for an online stock-photography startup. He did web research, product pricing, and digital media workflows with Photoshop in the same living room as another, better-known start-up (Dubai-based KnowledgeWorkx)

Personal Impact in Sudan 2005-2006.

After graduating from high school Josh developed and taught an English Communications curriculum at the Aslan Center for Education in Khartoum in Spring, 2005. The curriculum stressed critical thinking and employed strategy games, simulations, and group discussions to build marketing and management skills.

Then he started an internship with SudMedia International, the largest non-profit media production house in Sudan, in the summer of 2005. Over the course of four months he became Script Editor, Research Director, and then Producer for Sudan's national HIV/AIDS prevention media campaign: two 30 minute films and four music videos, dubbed into 8 languages and shown on national TV. The campaign was used by government, UN departments, and NGOs, and lauded for its cultural sensitivity. With the project on track, he left SudMedia in May 2006 to attend the film and philosophy/great-books programs at Biola University.

Process Improvement in California 2006-2010.

From August 2006 on Josh worked as a Media Technician for Biola's Media Services department, where he provided customer care and technical support for students and staff, advised people on solutions for their project needs, and edited audio and video in Final Cut Pro. For the next four years Josh worked 25-35 hours per week for a variety of departments while taking the maximum number of units possible.

The summer of his freshman year of college (2007) managed the Audio/Visual department of Thousand Pines Camp & Conference Center. Josh led a team of 3 to produce three video segments; two DVD masters; logistics for sound and video systems at 8 locations; and 23 live multimedia events per week. 300-500 copies of the camper activity DVDs (included paintball, rock climbing, mountain biking, and skate park) were distrubuted each week. His team hit full-production capacity in the first week (3 times faster than previous teams), and he charted and streamlined workflows for a 66% improvement in efficiency, which reduced staffing hours for the team of 4 from 270h/week to 180h/week (from 67.5 to 45 hours per week per person.)

In December, 2007 Josh started night shifts as a Gate Attendant for Biola Campus Safety in addition to his job at Media Services. At Campus Safety, he initiated customer service and efficiency studies, and then worked with his superiors to apply his recommendations, revise training materials and procedures, and digitize workflows. His input improved customer processing times 562% (from 45 seconds/customer to 8 seconds/customer) and information collection 440% (improving from 20% compliance with collection & retention procedures, to 88% compliance). In 2010 Josh worked with Lacey Sullivan to perform an organizational communication analysis of all departments in campus safety and identified further opportunities for improving efficiency and customer service. He received a Distinguished Service Award from the Chief of Campus Safety in December 2010.

Office Management & Startup Companies in the Middle East & East Africa 2010-2011.

After graduating with a BA in January 2010, Josh started as an intern with Humanitarian International Services Group in Nairobi, Kenya. He worked on 56 projects over the next six months, including:

• Training programs for Holistic Integrated Sustainable Transformation and the Dynamic Business Start-up Program.

• 11 proposals for projects, including schools: orphan relief, agriculture, biogas, a $240,000 Open Hospital Management Information System, and an HISG Consulting Group.

• Networked with NGOs and government agencies, including the Regional Disaster Management Center of Excellence (RDMCOE, which was already sending out warnings about the famine that came to international attention in mid-2011).

• Started 3 micro-businesses (importing smartphones, educational teaching aids, and video production).

• Started 28 internal projects including an online Web-Portal, project management system; stress testing, personality type testing, intern placement, 360º evaluations, security training, a visa guide for expatriate workers, and an intern orientation packet Developed internal proposals for a new grant proposal system, a short-term micro-finance account, and a vision & strategy document for HISG. He was HISG's Nairobi office manager when funding cuts due to the global financial crisis cut short his time at HISG, and he moved on to Dubai-based startup Intentional Engineering in September 2010.

At Intentional Engineering Josh led development of business plan, organizational structure, and hiring. He was also responsible for construction technology research, and over the next 8 months he developed the company's ICT, finance, HR, marketing, and task management infrastructure, and company website.

In July 2011 Josh took an internship at KnowledgeWorkx while waiting for a visa to lead Intentional Engineering's second eco-friendly construction project, in Ghana. In August 2011, he led development of a new KnowledgeWorkx website; developed communication workflows, process charts, and strategy; managed the company ghostwriter, and authored blog posts. Between August and September 2011 he also took on responsibility for print and video media for KnowledgeWorkx, and information technology in early October, 2011.

As technology manager, he developed a company-wide knowledge management system based on MediaWiki, and ported it to Google Sites sites when wiki code proved too high a barrier to staff adoption.

In December 2013 Josh recruited and trained a replacement communications manager (Fountain Abani) and left KnowledgeWorkx for an M.A. in Positive Organizational Psychology & Evaluation at Claremont Graduate University.

Evaluation, Knowledge Management, and Organizational Consulting in California 2013-2015

In April 2013, Josh joined the Office of Institutional Effectiveness at Claremont Graduate University as an analyst. In the summer of 2013 he developed a mentoring program for students to mentor faculty on the use of academic technology, and piloted the program with Jean Lipman-Blumen, professor of Public Policy and Organizational Behavior at the Drucker School of Management, and DeLacy Ganley, director of CGU's teacher education program. In the fall of 2013 and spring of 2014, he started projects that looked at the use of BPMN 2.0 in OIE initiatives and the use of technology in student-centered class management. This included projects on wiki meta-analysis and the use of knowledge management systems in classrooms.