This episode, the first in a series featuring highlights from University of Maryland's 2020 Project Management Symposium, focuses on culture and the importance of fitting in. We examine the hiring process, and maintaining a culture designed to retain top-notch staff. We also learn about a unique approach to stakeholder management. By observing organizational culture through an ethnographic lens, PMs can detect patterns and probabilities, and address potential gaps before they become serious roadblocks to project success.   Host Kendall Lott delves deeper into these topics with the presenters from the UMD Symposium.   Listen, learn, and get a free PDU! PDU Information Use the following information in PMI’s CCRS system to register the PDUs for this podcast: PDU Category: Online or Digital Media Provider Number: 4634 PDU Claim Code: 46345J2V33 Activity Number: PMPOV0076 PDUs for this episode: 1 About the Speakers: Nikola Ivanov serves as the Director of Operations at the Center for Advanced Transportation Technology Laboratory (CATT Lab) where he manages operations and technical development, and oversees every aspect of software implementation from conception to deployment. He has extensive experience with big data and information visualization, focusing on translation of data into actionable information. Over the last 15 years, Nikola has worked with state and federal agencies to build situational awareness tools for transportation operations and safety, emergency management, and security applications, using big data. Wendy Wickham, MA, MS, PMP, has spent over 20 years in the IT implementation trenches as an educator and project manager. Her projects have ranged from early EHR implementations to enterprise-level Unified Communications installations, and she specializes in Learning Ecosystem architectures. Wendy holds a Masters in History from the University of Georgia and a Masters in Instructional Technology from Towson University. To listen to these presentations in their entirety, you have until April 2021 to register for the 2020 UMD Project Management Symposium. Go to pmsymposium.umd.edu/pm2020.