A Skilled Workforce can Deliver Successful Projects and Business Outcomes
Interview with Sierra Hampton-Simmons
Vice President of Certification
Project Management Institute (PMI)
Interviewed by Yasmina Khelifi
International Correspondent, PM World Journal
Paris, France
Introduction to the interviewee
Sierra Hampton-Simmons is a leader in professional credentialing with a career spanning more than two decades. She began her career as an educator, becoming known for finding novel ways to validate skills beyond multiple-choice items. Her passion for commercial training and skill proliferation has followed her from the classroom to the board rooms of the largest professional credential brands worldwide.
Sierra currently serves as the Vice President of Certification at the Project Management Institute (PMI), where she oversees credentialing programs including, but not limited to, the PMP®, CAPM®, and PMI-ACP®. She can be contacted on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sierrah/
Interview
Q1: First of all, thank you for accepting an interview request from PMWJ. What are your responsibilities as Vice President of Certification?
Sierra Hampton-Simmons: As PMI’s Vice President of Certification, I lead the design, development, and management of PMI’s certifications, including the Project Management Professional (PMP)®, Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM)®, and PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI- ACP)®. I am also responsible for assessing product/market fit for our solutions, identifying the needs of the profession, and achieving differentiation within the PMI product portfolio.
Certifications are the cornerstone of PMI products, and we are committed to providing the highest standard of certification value, innovation, exam integrity, and operational excellence for aspiring and established project professionals worldwide.
Q2: Let us now deep dive on the new enhanced CAPM. Why is there a new CAPM?
Hampton-Simmons: As part of PMI’s commitment to providing the highest standard of project management certifications, we periodically review and update our certifications to ensure they meet the needs of the profession, including for project professionals on the job and the organizations that hire them.
For the new CAPM exam, there was an opportunity to update the content to expand users’ foundational knowledge of project management and their confidence through a sharper focus on principles, business analysis, and agile. In addition, the exam includes new features like animation-based scenarios, comic strips, and media-rich test questions, and we’ve integrated a 10-minute break into the exam process.
We’ve also updated how candidates prepare for the exam. We just launched The Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM)® Exam Prep course, the official PMI on-demand course to prepare for the new CAPM certification exam. There is also an updated Exam Content Outline, a Study Reference Guide, and the option to train with an Authorized Training Partner.
Q3: For whom is this new CAPM?
More…
To read entire interview, click here
How to cite this work: Khelifi, Y. (2024). A Skilled Workforce can Deliver Successful Projects and Business Outcomes: Interview with Sierra Hampton-Simmons, VP Certification, PMI; PM World Journal, Vol. XIII, Issue III, March. Available online at https://pmworldlibrary.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/pmwj139-Mar2024-Khelifi-Interview-with-Sierra-Hampton-Simmons-PMI.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/
