Mary Rab Email & Phone Number

Somerville, Ma, Us

As a Project Manager at Northeastern University’s PMO, I lead and manage a diverse portfolio of projects that align with the university's strategic goals. My role involves collaborating closely with stakeholders, including faculty, staff, and external partners, to define project scopes, objectives, and deliverables. I am responsible for developing detailed project scopes, plans, and schedules; I monitor progress while managing risks to ensure successful and timely project completion. By utilizing project management methodologies such as Agile and Waterfall, I streamline processes to improve efficiency and enhance project outcomes. My efforts contribute to Northeastern University’s mission by ensuring projects are delivered on time, within scope, and on budget, while supporting the institution’s strategic initiatives and fostering cross-departmental collaboration.

At Newsela, I managed XL projects in the R&D side of the business primarily focused on delivering new product features and updating internal tooling systems on time. I worked closely with key stakeholders including product managers, software engineers, quality assurance engineers, internal customers, and high level leadership to create detailed project plans and facilitate project communication through weekly project team meetings and reports. Business impact:-Migrated 15,000+ legacy content to the new content warehouse to reduce maintenance effort on utilizing the legacy content warehouse-Increased customer activity by 4% and UI performance by 38% on the Newsela platform through the launch of the new UI page within the project timeline-Created process improvement artifacts for the PMO based on previous experience and project retrospectives to expand the PMO's library

Woburn, Massachusetts, United States

After strengthening my knowledge in the telecommunications industry, I shifted towards the real-estate side of the business within American Tower by transferring to the Land Rights team as an Aggregate Project Manager. My role involved obtaining landowner consents for projects as required by the ground lease in order for our customers to be able to install their equipment. I also negotiated with landowners to increase our ground space in situations where there was insufficient footprint in our agreement with the landowners to accommodate our customers' needs. This role gave me the opportunity to create financial models and build tactful strategies to counter the landowners' demands in negotiations. I took on these negotiations like a game of chess where information was our chess piece, and the timing of sharing information was our movement. Other than working with individual landowners, I established stronger relationships with third party aggregators who held easements in multiple sites to speed up the process for obtaining consent and additional ground space. In addition, I collaborated with cross-functional teams to resolve site contingencies that blocked the negotiations, such as possible land encroachments, improper site maintenance, and concerns regarding site access without advanced notice. Within the team, I ran reports to ensure we address data discrepancies and support the team by providing trainings on process changes relevant to the team.

Woburn

As an Account Project Manager, I managed over 150 projects on average while ensuring the projects were moving downstream from application submittal to close out within the forecasted timeline. When project contingencies occurred, I proactively engaged in strategic and transparent conversations with customers while maintaining customer satisfaction. I worked with cross functional teams to help bring the customers’ perspectives and needs into view; at the same time, I took the opportunity to learn more about our business and internal processes from the cross functional teams to increase efficiency in working on projects with similar scenarios. One of the challenges I enjoyed working in this position was connecting with both internal and external customers to work out a solution through a collaborative effort. Whenever we resolved a conflict, it was a reminder that we shared the same goal despite having our differences.

Waltham, Massachusetts

During the company's restructure, I supervised a team of twelve staff members located throughout five China offices responsible for processing student applications. I proposed and implemented improvements in the application process based on suggestions from Operations and Sales teams. At the same time, I managed a team of seven field staff located in the U.S. and China to support students' academics and homestay situation. As part of the company's reorganization project, I was a member of the Kaizen committee, a cross-functional team of certified Yellow Belt members responsible for identifying processes that could be improved by using the Kaizen methodology.

Waltham, Massachusetts

With a Yellow Belt Kaizen certification, I collaborated with cross-functional teams to improve process efficiency based on front-line staff and customers' feedback. My work included training materials for the global staff and operations manual guide for the Operations department.

Waltham, Massachusetts

I worked directly with Chinese students studying in the U.S. for their high school diploma to resolve conflicts caused by language barriers and cultural differences, averaging more than twenty student cases per month. I de-escalated student issues through phone conferences between school officials, students' parents, and host parents as a bilingual speaker, and provided insight on cultural awareness and social norms. As the Team Lead, I trained and managed six Program Solutions Associates while supporting them on resolving escalated situations, such as cases of eating disorder, depression, and/or illegal activities.