Notes

Judith Haddad – My mentor

Working with Judith Haddad has been one of the best work experiences. It was a huge honor when I was assigned to her team at PRMI while she was CIO/CTO. We were able to work closely together as we focused on ensuring the company’s technology was functioning properly. She was so patient with me when I was still learning how to do my job, and I honestly attribute all my success to the help she gave me.

Judith had a lot of work ahead of her, as she was responsible for ensuring the IT department was cleaned up and expanded to the right people. The changes she was able to make to that department were amazing despite the many challenges she faced. For example, she initiated department-wide training to get everyone up to speed on what was happening in the IT world. We didn’t realize how far our department was behind until Judith Haddad came and showed us what the newest trends were. After we reviewed those trends, we determined as a department what we believed would be the best fit for us. Rather than telling us what we were doing that was right or wrong, she was so patient as she helped us come to the understanding of what we needed to change. We had way more success in that than we could have ever had with someone who told us we were wrong and had to change.

I was also impressed with her ability to take care of each individual employee. Everyone knows that businesses hate change because many employees do not always understand the change. Rather than firing the employees who were lost in what was happening, Judith worked with them individually to help them understand and excel. New employees were offered extensive training as well. There are a lot of companies that don’t train at all and just expect people to know their job on day one, so I was impressed with Judith’s ability to understand the importance of good training.

Most of all, I loved that Judith had big ideas and was able to execute them. She paid close attention to what was in the news and what other businesses were doing. Haddad would look at all the new trends and analyze whether or not they were going to be successful before even approaching our team with them. PRMI needed someone like Judith to come in, revolutionize our IT department, and leave us in a much better place than we started. I’m so glad that I was able to learn from her, and I hope that one day, I can help mentor someone as well as she mentored me.