QuickTalks: New Speaker Night!

This month, we're excited to introduce three Quick Talks from three new voices. Join us as we introduce:

• Rodney Chau will share his approach and thinking as a leader in an agile environment,
• Sailesh Sarathi has an interesting perspective on the impact of the last two years and how it's forced him to change his perspective & thinking, and
• Roselyn Bevis will share some of her experiences in tackling life's uncertainties and challenges personally, and what we can learn from her experiences.

Full descriptions of their talks, and of the speakers can be found below.
In keeping with our Quick Talk format, each of these talks will be under 10 minutes long and provide us with an introduction to some great people we've not heard from before, sharing some personal experiences that we can apply to our own lives, both personally and professionally.

Roselyn Bevis: Cultivating Resilience with a Growth Mindset

We hear the importance of a Growth Mindset as we bring more agile principles and values into our ways of working. But what if we could apply this same mindset, to all areas of our lives? Through the adoption of a Growth Mindset, we can navigate life's uncertainties, cultivate greater resilience, and elevate our personal lives. Through her work at the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA) and at Conestoga College as Head Badminton Coach, Roselyn had the opportunity to see firsthand how having this outlook on life can impact people. In this session, we'll briefly explore the benefits, and how we might embrace this approach in our own lives.

Sailesh Karthick: The impact of a pandemic on an agile transformation

There's no doubt that things are moving fast in our world. Business needs are constantly changing in response to evolving customer demand. And the imposed adjustment of hybrid working environments has only added to the challenges for everyone, including agile enthusiasts. As an agile enthusiast, I've had to change my thinking about transformations. Join me as I share how I've had to evolve my thinking, and some of the key ingredients involved in a transformation I've been a part of over this time.

Rodney Chau: How I try to be an Agile leader

"Make my team Agile". All too often, we see organizations take this approach as they start on the Agile transformation journey. With a focus at the team level, they miss the opportunity to engage with the organizational leadership teams. The result is often a misalignment, with multiple levels of leaders working and thinking the same way as they always have, creating conflict with how their teams are trying to work. Ultimately, this results in upending company operations and performance. Having been a part of this exact situation, I've evolved my approach to leadership through study, observation, and experimentation. I’d like to share what I've found it means to me to be an effective Agile leader, and how I pragmatically fulfil leadership roles in organizations to enable people and teams, and the organization to succeed.

Bios

Roselyn is a business consultant, real estate investor and empowerment and transformation coach. In 2020, she started her own consulting company, providing services to small business owners in project management, quality improvement, and servant leadership. She earned a Bachelor of Applied Health Information Science (Honours), Health Information Science from Conestoga College and is a certified Project Management Professional.

Sailesh considers himself both an agilist and a technology evangelist. He's taken that passion to find a way to help his organisation make progress with its agile transformation. He has over ten years of experience in software development, with a focus on agile & lean approaches for the speeder delivery with improved quality and a delightful product experience for the customers. He is a continuous learner, constantly learning new technologies, tools, and operating models to further his knowledge.

Rodney is a senior leader, helping organizations better bridge technology and business teams to maximize value delivery. His journey began in Project Management, earning his PMP, leading Waterfall Project Management Offices. Since then, he's earned his CSP and has led Agile Delivery teams. Today, he enjoys supporting others as an Agile Coach as he's continued his ongoing professional journey, making an impact on teams, leaders, and organizations.