Portland Portfolio and Project Leaders Forum
About Us
The Portfolio and Project Leaders Forum is a group of senior leaders who share common problems and solutions about how to lead project-based organizations. Our members lead organizations that manage a large volume of projects, are currently implementing portfolio management techniques in their organization, are running a project office, or are seriously investigating these things.
This is a forum for confidential and open discussion. Current members come from a wide spectrum of commercial industries, government agencies, and not-for-profit organizations.
The Forum meets quarterly to listen to speakers, share experiences, and discuss current issues. Currently these meetings occur on the second Thursday of February, May, September, and November from 7:30 AM to 8:45 AM via Zoom. Members also meet up for social gatherings and informal small group meetings on topics of special interest to them.
Membership is by invitation only. Anyone interested in membership must be a practitioner in the areas listed above and should attend a meeting as a guest of a current member to discover whether there is a good fit.
For more information, please contact a group administrator by emailing pplfportland [ at ] gmail [dot ] com.
Welcome New Members
2021
Renee Busey is Director of Project Management at The Vancouver Clinic.
Colby Parrott is Director of Organizational Effectiveness at The Vancouver Clinic.
Rachael Fuller is currently serving as Assistant County Administrator at Washington County. Prior to that she was City Manager for the City of Hood River and Assistant City Manager at the CIty of Gresham where she sponsored the design, roll out, and refinement of a citywide project management toolkit that built up the City's project capabilities.
Josh Robben is the manager of the new Portfolio Management Program at the Bureau of Environmental Services at the City of Portland.
2022
Jacob Farkas is an Information Technology Program Manager at Multnomah County and is currently the Multnomah County Library Capital Bond IT Program Manager.
Kevin Currie is Senior Manager IS Engineering, Program Management at Providence St. Joseph Health, where he recently transitioned into a technology PMO leadership role.
2023
Susan Barbero is Manager IT Office of Project and Portfolio Services at OHSU, where she manages a group of project managers, project coordinators, and other project resources for the Information Technology Group. Her team is currently trying to improve upon project management capabilities as well as development of program and portfolio management.
Jason Tolentino is an associate principal consultant at Linea Solutions, where he is establishing processes and procedures for project operations, helping the company standardize their work efforts and identify metrics for success. He previously was an associate director and solutions manager at Vitech.
Tami Aders is Executive Director of the Enterprise Portfolio Management Office (EPMO) at OSU. She has held similar roles for the Oregon State Lottery and Performance Health Technology, so she has about 15 years of experience as a strategic leader in portfolio, program, and project management.
Melanie Smith is the Research and Development Portfolio Manager for BPA's Technology Innovation Department. She specializes in measuring the performance and outcomes of components in the portfolio and that they support BPA's research priorities.
Jacob Farkas is an Information Technology Program Manager at Multnomah County. He is currently the Multnomah County Library Capital Bond IT Program Manager, focusing on the $387M bond passed by Portland voters in 2020.
2024
Brad Ring is a senior consultant in the Local Government Practice Group at Berry Dunn. He has 30 years of experience with projects in both the public and private sectors and is a certified PMO developer.
Patrick Firth is a senior project manager in the EPMO at Moda Health. He has worked in quality improvement and project management for most of his 20 years at Moda.
Tom Green is global portfolio manager in R&D for Thermo Fisher Scientific, Material Science Division. He's responsible for the global project prioritization process, including basic portfolio infrastructure such as BI tooling for visualizing and gaining insight into the portfolio.
Talon Wood is the IT Project Support Manager for Project Solutions, Office of Information Services at the Oregon Health Authority. He works on project, program, and portfolio management practices for the Oregon Health Authority and the Oregon Department of Human Services. He also serves as the Chair of the Oregon Project Management Advisory Board.
Ida Hadgu is IT Portfolio Manager at Portland Community College. She oversees an IT portfolio that has 80 - 95 active projects, with 1 - 2 new ones arriving every week.
Alex Beelke is Director of Project Management Operations for IES Communications. He's responsible for monitoring and support of high value and high risk projects; process, standards and governance; training and development; systems and tools; and project audits and lessons learned.
Presentation Archives
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Member Profiles
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