General Information :: UMT-PMI Component Scholarship Recipients

To further promote education in project management, UMT offers a scholarship program for IT & Telecom SIG [UMT press release] and PMI Washing DC Chapter members [UMT press release].

Fall Recipient: Mr. Victor Grigorascu (Germany)

Mr. Grigorascu is a senior project manager with European Computer Telecom, München, Germany. In this role, he has managed projects consisting in delivery of customized solutions for value added services, implemented to several telecom operators in Europe.

Previously, he had various leadership positions in telecommunication industry and government.

Between 1997 and 2006, he worked at the Romanian Ministry of Communication and the Romanian Telecom Regulatory Authority, where he contributed to the restructuring of the Romanian post and telecommunication sector. Among others, he participated to the negotiation of the strategic sale of a stake in the Romanian telecom operator, he served as member of the board of the Romanian Postal operator, and he lead several projects aimed at drafting, negotiating and adopting policy and regulatory documents at national level (interconnection, SS7, competition, licensing, etc).

For about a year, he worked for the United Nations missions in Kosovo, where he contributed to the restart of post and telecom services, interrupted following the airstrikes in 1999.

His credentials include a PhD in Automatic Control and Signal Processing from the University Paris Sud (France), a “Mastere Specialise” from Institut National des Telecoms (Evry, France), an Engineer Diploma from the Polytechnical Institut of Bucharest and a Diploma in Law from the University of Bucharest

He is fluent in Romanian, French, English, and German.

Spring Recipient: Mr. Rogério Manso (Brazil)

Rogério Prado Manso is the Senior Project Coordinator at the Domtar Corporation. He is responsible for support of a team of Project Managers, providing coordination, communication and control functions.

A highly experienced Project Manager with more than twenty years of experience within the framework of the information technology and more than five years as project manager, worked for several companies in Brazil especially in the finance industry at Banco do Brasil and Caixa Econômica Federal.

At the Bank of Brazil managed the implementation of a workflow system at Legal Department in using electronic document imaging. In 2006, worked in the PMO of Caixa Econômica Federal holding the responsibility of projects quality assurance

Worked at X25 Technology, a PMI R.E.P in Brazil, taught the PMP Certification Preparation Course for more than 200 students in the last three years.

Credentials include MBA in Strategic Administration of Information Systems at Fundação Getúlio Vargas and a B.S. in Data Process Technology at Centro Unificado de Ensino de Brasília – UniCeub.

With high interest in studies about project management and IT service management, obtained PMP certification in 2005. Also, ITIL and COBIT foundations certificated.

As volunteer at IT&Telecom SIG, I worked at ProjectWorld 2008 in Toronto and currently developing a job as mentor in the Mentoring Program supported by IT&Telecom SIG.

Fluent in English, French and Portuguese, moved to Montreal in 2008 with wife Luciane, son Lucas, daughter Juliana and stepdaughter Amanda. Planning to continue the professional career as Project Manager.

Fall Recipient: Mr. Giancarlo Duranti (Italy)

Giancarlo has been working in the Communication Wire-line & Wireless industry for over 17 years and he is well experienced in managing projects in different international and national business contexts. Giancarlo is PMI member, PMP certified, and a Practitioner. Given to his process skills and technical experience, Giancarlo’s employers gave him the responsibility of running several start-up turnkey projects, among which were Timbrasil in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and the latest in Havana, Cuba. In Cuba, Giancarlo was in charge of a whole three-year consultancy contract to enhance the national operator’s network and IT systems. Giancarlo has also consulted for other overseas companies. He is also a trainer at IIL for project management certification programs and soft skills courses. For IIL he has taught at EMC2, NSN, Siemens PLM software, Alstom Power, Alcatel. Giancarlo has given numerous talks on project management topics for PMI, IPMA, and IBM.

Spring Recipient: Ms. Xiaowen He (China)

Xiaowen, also is known as Amy, is a product manager in the consumer market division at Bell Canada. She takes overall accountability for marketing initiatives and process improvement projects to generate and identify revenue opportunity. Previously, she worked for Nortel in different roles with progressively increasing responsibility. During her 8 years serve at Nortel, she mainly worked as a project manager and later a team leader for Asian Pacific market. She acquired expertise in managing lifecycle of contract implementation and projects on business planning, new product introductions, and business process improvement. Her excellent performance for project management and revenue recognition won her two merit awards at Nortel.

Xiaowen has extensive working experience in the Communications and Telecommunications industry with in-depth knowledge of B2B/Consumer Market, global supply chain operations, marketing, and customer service.

Xiaowen, a Chinese immigrant in Canada, holds an IMBA (International Master of Business Administration ) degree from Schulich School of Business, York University, a Bachelor degree in English and Foreign Trade Study from Jina Universtiy, China. Now, she is working on PMP.

Xiaowen is fluent in Cantonese, Mandarin and English, and she is studying French.

Fall Recipient: Mr. Venerando G Tangco (USA)

Venerando G. Tangco, PMP is known by his friends and colleagues as Randy. He has been in the I.T. industry for about 15 years primarily in the banking sector. His work has mainly been concentrated with payment systems such as those dealing with credit and debit cards, automated teller machines (ATMs), and all other VISA and Mastercard electronic fund transfer (EFT) projects. He has served in various capacities as customer support, programmer, systems engineer, unix administrator, oracle database administrator, computer operations support, business support manager for the card center, and project manager. He has conducted a presentation to promote the project management profession in Kuwait through the Information Technology Professionals of Kuwait (ITP-K).

He had worked with National Bank of Kuwait and Commercial Bank of Kuwait where he primarily contributed to the success of the business units’ revenue generating projects; in retail banking and cards business. He is an active member and volunteer of the Project Management Institute and its IT-Telecom special interest group. He graduated with a Bachelor in Information Technology from the Polytechnic University of the Philippines.

Spring Recipient: Mr. Gabriel Epelbaum (Argentina)

Mr. Gabriel Epelbaum obtained an Electronic Engineering degree, from Universidad de Buenos Aires - Argentina - in 1985.

After a year in IBM Argentina in 1985, implementing Series/1 systems, he joined in September 1986 Telettra - later in 1991 taken over by Alcatel - as a Microwave Transmission Engineer. He played different roles in Alcatel until April 1999: Manager Telesupervision Engineering systems, Manager Wireless Engineering Systems and Marketing and Business Development Manager. During his career in Alcatel, he projected and managed project teams in charge of projecting and implementing hundreds of High, Medium and High Capacity, PDH and SDH, Linear Transmission Microwave and Point to Multi-Point access systems for as Telefonica and Telecom Italia/France Telecom in Argentina. He also was Alcatel’s technical representative in Argentinean Commercial Chambers and the Telecommunications Administration and during the period 1998-1999 started Alcatel’s strategic marketing activities for the Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay Region.

In 1999, Gabriel joined Nortel Networks as Wireless Marketing Manager for the Southern Cone, position held for one year, after which he became Wireless Sales Engineering Manager for the Southern Cone. He introduced GSM technology in Antel, and wireless and wireline access technologies in Impsat.

In the January 2002 - November 2003 period, he carried out Project Management activities as a consultant, to deploy wireless access networks for the Coopenet in Argentina. He also worked as Sales Associate in the Latin American region for Intelligent Compression Technologies from Boston, USA, and sold the first acceleration solution for the region. In December 2003 he immigrated to Toronto, Canada. He worked since January 2004 for Contestix as a Sales Associate and since July 2004 for QiiQ/Ecocarrier/Airvenue. He currently holds the Sales Director-Special Projects Position in that company and pursues a PMI certification by next year.

Along the period 1986-2004, he got training in Telecommunications Technologies, Management and Project Management, Human Resources and Marketing and Communications.

Ms. Nancy Summers

Ms. Summers is a Project Team Leader at IIF Data Solutions. There she coordinates Role Player Support in direct support of the National Guard's 2008 Vigilant Guard exercises throughout the United States. These exercises provide realistic, scenario relevant injuries and casualty symptoms that can be readily identified, evaluated and processed. Scenarios range from high yield explosives disasters to structure collapses with mass casualty injuries. These multi-day exercises test the coordination capabilities between military and civilian jurisdictions as well as local hospitals, air transport capabilities and communication systems.

Ms. Summers hold a B. S. degree from Virginia Tech in Computer Science and is currently pursuing her Masters of Information Science at the University of Management and Technology. She has completed 7 Ironman triathlons.

Fall Recipient: Mr. Subhash Tuladhar

Subhash Tuladhar, PMP holds a Masters Degree from the Carnegie Mellon University. At the Carnegie Mellon, his research work focused in project scheduling systems. He has a strong background in project controls and project management software with special interests in the management of time and cost. He is also strong believer in the application of the earned value and earned schedule management systems.

Mr Tuladhar has ten years of combined industry experience and has been engaged in a wide variety of projects. In his first two jobs between 1997 through 2001, he served as a project engineer and then as an engineering management consultant in two separate multi-million dollar World Bank financed projects in Nepal. Following that, he worked for the Asian Development Bank where he gained extensive analytical experience analyzing the Bank-financed portfolio consisting of over 20 projects. In 2004, Mr Tuladhar joined CDM as a project engineer where he was part of the project management team providing consulting services to Fairfax Water. Since 2006, he has been with Quality Planning Solutions (QPS) where he is currently providing scheduling services to the Washington Dulles International Airport among other project. For his clients at QPS, he is also spearheading the migration to the latest project scheduling software technology including its integration with building information models.

Spring Recipient: Mr. Mohammad Malik Sakil

Mohammad Malik Sakil is the Senior Project Officer, International Development Division at the International Reading Association. He manages multi-million dollar grant funded literacy projects around the world. Previously, he served as a Program Manager for Capacity Building and Advocacy at World Learning for International Development, Program Coordinator for Child Welfare League of America's International Office in Washington, D.C. He also worked for SIT-BRAC Global Partnership and The Asia Foundation's Democracy Partnership Program, CARE International, PRIP Trust (Former PACT/USAID Project) in Bangladesh, and the Advocacy Institute, Washington D.C.

Sakil, a native of Bangladesh, holds a Master of Arts degree from the Aligarh University, India, a Bachelor's degree in Commerce from Dhaka University, Bangladesh and an International Diploma in Peace and Conflict Studies from the European Peace University in Austria. He has recently started his PhD Coursework at University of Maryland, College Park.

Sakil is a development worker, project manager, trainer, and facilitator with extensive experience in international and development management in the areas of NGO and socio-cultural development, project design and planning, policy advocacy, organizational development, gender, small-enterprise development and micro credit, cultural competence and workforce development. As a development worker, he has a thorough understanding of cultural, political, economic and social issues in developing countries.

Sakil is fluent in five languages, Bengali, English, Hindi, Urdu, and Arabic. Sakil has published his articles in international newsletters and journals.

Sakil lives in Laurel, Maryland with his son Shafin, daughter Samreen and wife Mary.