Project Managers who upskill will thrive!
Interview with Sam Sibley
Global Head, Emerging Products and Innovation
Project Management Institute
Interviewed by Yasmina Khelifi
International Correspondent, PM World Journal
Paris, France
Introduction to the interviewee
Sam Sibley is an ex professional tennis player turned business leader who has a passion for emerging technology and how it is changing the way the world operates. Sam is the Global Head of Emerging Products & Innovation at the Project Management Institute (PMI). He leads PMI’s Emerging Products & Innovation group that includes AI and is based in London, UK.
Interview
Q1: First of all, thank you for accepting an interview request from PMWJ. You are a former professional tennis player. How did you move from Tennis Pro to the corporate life?
Sam Sibley (Sibley): I realised that I wasn’t quite good enough to make it to the top of tennis so I had to make a change. I was also coaching professionally but always had a passion for technology and entrepreneurship which is why I moved into corporate life. Playing a professional sport at the highest level is a gift but for those who just come up short (like me), it is a hard industry to make a decent living from. I found my transition from sport to business quite easy to adapt to. I set up a tennis academy where I coached some of the most talented children in the country. This also taught me the basics of how to run a business in a highly competitive market, how to build a good offering that solves a need in the market, how to market to the audiences whom I wanted to engage with, and how to ensure the business had good financial stability. I did this for a few years which gave me a really strong foundation to build on as I moved into business life.
Q2: At PMI you are the global head of emerging products. What are your responsibilities?
Sibley: I am responsible for some of PMI’s new emerging product portfolios, but the main focus is on emerging technology and how areas such as AI are impacting the project management profession. My role is to ensure that we are building strong capabilities to support our global community for the future as the profession continues to evolve.
Q3: What do you think AI can bring to project management?
More…
To read entire interview, click here
How to cite this interview: Khelifi, Y. (2023). Project Managers who upscale with thrive: Interview with Sam Sibley, PMI; PM World Journal, Vol. XII, Issue XII, December. Available online at https://pmworldlibrary.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/pmwj136-Dec2023-Khelifi-Interview-with-Sam-Sibley.pdf
About the Interviewer
Yasmina Khelifi
Paris, France
Yasmina Khelifi, PMP, PMI- ACP, PMI-PBA is an experienced project manager in the telecom industry. Along with her 20-year career at Orange S.A. (the large French multinational telecommunications corporation), she sharpened her global leadership skills, delivering projects with major manufacturers and SIM makers. Yasmina strives for building collaborative bridges between people to make international projects successful. She relies on three pillars: project management skills, the languages she speaks, and a passion for sharing knowledge.
She is a PMP certification holder since 2013, a PMI- ACP and PMI-PBA certification holder since 2020. She is an active volunteer member at PMI France and PMI UAE, and a member of PMI Germany Chapter. French-native, she can speak German, English, Spanish, Italian, Japanese and she is learning Arabic. Yasmina loves sharing her knowledge and experiences at work, in her volunteers’ activities at PMI, and in projectmanagement.com as a regular blogger. She is also the host and co-founder of the podcast Global Leaders Talk with Yasmina Khelifi to help people in becoming better international leaders.
Yasmina can be contacted at https://yasminakhelifi.com/ or LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yasminakhelifi-pmp-telecom/
Visit her correspondent profile at https://pmworldlibrary.net/yasmina-khelifi/
To view other works by Yasmina, visit her author showcase in the PM World Library at https://pmworldlibrary.net/authors/yasmina-khelifi/
