Darya Schwarz-Fradkova in Germany
Let’s get to know Darya Schwarz-Fradkova:
City, Country: Berlin, Germany
Title:: Manager
Industry: Consulting
Number of years of work experiences: 10
Languages: English, German, Russian
Diploma: Master of Science in International Business, Bachelor of Arts in Political Science
3 Passions: Travelling, Meeting new people, blog on women in project management
Social Media: Linkedin
Website in German: www.die-projektmanagerin.de
How would you describe yourself?
Born in Moscow, I moved to Germany when I was four years old. During my studies of Political Science and later International Business, I had the chance to spend some time abroad and get to know different people and cultures. I joined the consulting industry, first in the private sector and later in public sector because I was interested to work in different settings and projects. Ever since I enjoy the variety of topics offered by the consulting industry and consider myself as a generalist.
How did you become a project manager?
As data show, most female project managers did not choose this profession on purpose. The same is true for me. After joining the consulting industry driven by project delivery, it became clear that project management skills are an essential asset to this job. While digging deeper in this direction I learned about myself that I really enjoy this profession. Consequently, I concentrated on broadening my skills as a project manager.
You have a blog about women in project management: how did you come up with this idea?
A couple of years ago I was looking for female role models in the project management industry. As I did not find any in my near environment, I started to search systematically and interview the women I found. The gathered information I believed would be also useful for other females in that profession and so I started the blog. The share of female project managers is 30% and this number has remained stagnat for years. The aim of my blog is to give female project managers a voice by sharing their stories, achievements and challenges and to increase the female share in that profession.
If you have one tip to give to a new woman project manager, what would you say?
Stay curious and take on projects in various environments / branches (work, voluntary activities and private settings).
Do you have any resources to recommend?
Successful project managers are excellent communicators and networkers. My first recommendation is the book “Give and Take” by Adam Grant which helps to better understand human reciprocal relationships. The second book is called “Deep Work” by Cal Newport. It depicts the importance and value of deep uniterrupted focused work in our fast-paced and social media dominated environment. Project managers in particular are very much driven by ad-hoc incidents and tend to spend a huge amount of their work day in meetings. This style of working leaves very little space for solving strategic and future-oriented questions which endangers the project success at last.
