Season 5, Episode 6 – From Data to Impact: How Epidemiology and Project Management Power Community Health 

Dr. Joyee Washington (00:32)

Welcome to another great episode of the Public Health Joy Podcast. Today we have with us Alexandra Pajakowski, who is a public health consultant, epidemiologist, certified project management professional, and founder and CEO of Piat Public Health.

 

She has over a decade of experience helping public health agencies, healthcare organizations, and community coalitions turn complex data into actionable strategies through community engagement and strategic planning. A dedicated mentor and community advocate, she also serves as co-vice president of the Toronto Council on Aging. So Alexandra and I know each other from LinkedIn and just kind of being in the entrepreneurial space.

 

when it comes to public health. So I thought it would be a really good conversation for us to have about her experience, especially thinking about the intersection of epidemiology and project management, because I don’t do either one. So I’m going to pass it off to Alexandra. Tell us who you are, what you got going on, what you want the people to know. Just take it over from here.

 

Alexandra Piatkowski (01:46)

Yeah, thank you so much, Joyee And thanks so much for having me. I feel like you introduced me really well. So I don’t want to be too repetitive and just list off all my titles. you know, those all accurately describe me. mean, professionally, yes, I’m an epidemiologist, public health professional, project manager, and now public health consultant. And I have my own company that I recently launched, which is called Piat Public Health. So we’re all about bringing data.

 

equity, communities and strategy together. really exciting work that I’m excited to talk about. Personally, you may have heard that, like Joy said, I am on the board of directors of the Toronto Council on Aging. So I live in Toronto, Canada, ⁓ originally from Kitchener, Waterloo, which is a couple of hours away from there, but lived in Toronto for the past 10 years. So, you know, consider myself.

 

local now and really love it here. I love spending time with the people I care about, ⁓ getting out there and exploring the city and other places, love to travel and just explore new places as much as I can and connect with people. So really excited to be here.

 

Dr. Joyee Washington (03:04)

Awesome. And so one question that I think we can start the conversation with is what got you into epidemiology? And really, it really is a two-part question. So what got you into epidemiology and then what got you into project management? And I will say this for me, I realized it wasn’t until I got a project manager and I started realizing some things about project management and I was like, ⁓ I don’t, I don’t do any of this.

 

Like there’s a whole science to project management itself, but you intersect the two. So I would love to know what got you into epidemiology and then what got you into project management.

 

Alexandra Piatkowski (03:32)

Mm-hmm.

 

Yeah.

 

Yeah, great question. So for as long as I remember, as cheesy as it sounds, I wanted to do something that helped people, you know, and make a difference in the world. I knew pretty early on that I wanted to do something in health. just, for whatever reason, knew I was interested in that and was just fascinated by health. A couple of my favorite shows growing up were called Dr. G Medical Examiner.

 

and mystery diagnosis. I don’t know if you ever watched either of those, ⁓

 

Dr. Joyee Washington (04:14)

⁓

 

let me think, me think. Mystery Diagnosis sounds familiar. Dr. G sounds familiar. I think mine though was, I used to love watching Diagnosis Murder, which is totally different, but Diagnosis Murder, Trauma Life in the ER were mine. But that, yeah, Trauma Life in the ER was mine for a long time.

 

Alexandra Piatkowski (04:28)

yeah, I that one too.

 

Mm-hmm. Yeah, that was a good one. mean, yeah, not necessarily good, but interesting one. And yeah, these weren’t necessarily happy shows could be a little bit morbid, of course, but I just found them very interesting. And, you know, the challenges that people would go through to get a diagnosis and people who passed away just trying to find out for people’s families what happened and yeah, very interesting stories. And I always really loved

 

Dr. Joyee Washington (04:39)

Yeah.

 

Alexandra Piatkowski (05:02)

the kind of detective aspect of it, like gathering the evidence and just figuring out what was going on. So I feel like that was kind of an early precursor to epidemiology. ⁓ I decided to do a general undergrad in health sciences because I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do in health early on. think it’s a very common story in public health, but I thought maybe I’ll do something clinical.

 

didn’t really know about all the different options that were out there, but I’m so glad I did the program that I did because it was a Bachelor of Science, but it also had a lot of social science and learning about health policy, the health care system, all the determinants of health and really enjoyed that and made me realize that I was a bigger picture person who wanted to address health at a population level and just understanding all the injustices in.

 

our society that really can’t be addressed at an individual level. We have to look at them at a community and population level. So that was really appealing to me. I also knew I really liked data. And so I knew I wanted to do something in public health and I liked data. really, Epi kind of seemed like a natural fit for that, you know, bringing together the data with the public health and just

 

Like I saying before, you basically doing that detective work of understanding, you know, what makes people and populations healthy and less healthy and what can we do about that? And I can get into the project management too. I’ll pause there first.

 

Dr. Joyee Washington (06:40)

Well, do want to pause there because there are

 

two phrases that you used that I thought was important, which was the detective work and then the bigger picture. And it’s causing me to reflect on, like you’re talking about those shows that I used to watch. that’s, if I remember from my perspective, just remembering. now that it’s

 

Alexandra Piatkowski (06:53)

Mm-hmm.

 

Dr. Joyee Washington (07:05)

Dr. G Medical Examiner is coming back into my brain now. Like it’s taking me some time to like think about these shows. And you know, like that’s the thing that like hooks you is like they take you through the case and they’re trying to solve it. Like another show that I thought about was House. Did you remember House? Yeah. And like this person, this patient comes in and they can’t figure out, you know, what’s going on, right? And they go through all these different…

 

Alexandra Piatkowski (07:22)

Yeah, yeah.

 

Dr. Joyee Washington (07:31)

tests and series of reasoning and the textbooks and all the different things to arrive at a solution. And we are data detectives like all the time in public health. Like somebody needs, I don’t know if somebody has that business or whatever, data detectives, I don’t know, but that’s a good name. I’m sure somebody will take it if it’s not taken already. ⁓ But you know, just thinking about the detective work.

 

Alexandra Piatkowski (07:51)

Yeah.

 

Dr. Joyee Washington (08:00)

that we do, being able to, in a lot of those cases when you’re talking about those shows, they’re talking about one patient, one person, one case. But when we’re talking about public health, there’s this expanded view to look at the bigger picture. And so it’s really just causing me, just when you said that, it’s just, of course, my wheels start turning.

 

Alexandra Piatkowski (08:09)

Mm-hmm.

 

Dr. Joyee Washington (08:24)

And so it’s causing my brain to think about, we really are like the data detectives and we trying to look at the bigger picture to see what’s going on. So I appreciate that perspective. It’s just as you were talking, our brain is putting the pieces together.

 

Alexandra Piatkowski (08:24)

Mm-hmm.

 

You know.

 

Yeah,

 

yeah, for sure. Yeah, sometimes when people ask what epidemiology is, I say it’s like a disease or a health detective in the simplest words, because it’s not necessarily a commonly understood term or field. So that can make it a little easier to understand.

 

Dr. Joyee Washington (09:00)

Yeah, yeah. So yes, feel free to move into project management. I just wanted to pause there because I was that’s a really good way to frame it.

 

Alexandra Piatkowski (09:05)

Yeah, for sure.

 

Thank you. So with project management, I didn’t necessarily set out to be a project manager. Maybe some people dream of being a project manager when they’re a kid. I’m not sure, but wasn’t necessarily the case for me. But I kind of feel like fell into project management a bit by accident and kind of discovered it along the way. you know, after my undergrad, I went on and did my master’s of public health in epi

 

And then after I graduated, I was working in epidemiology and in program evaluation as well. And I was starting to play more of a leadership role in the roles that I was in, like not necessarily taking the lead on whole projects, but taking the lead on aspects of projects. Like maybe if I was a program evaluator, I was taking the lead on an evaluation or being the analysis lead for.

 

a project. And I feel like I kind of started to pick up those project management skills along the way. And I was working with other project managers and just learning from them and kind of like you were saying, Joy, like, discovering that project management was really a science. And I didn’t really necessarily realize that before, too. I was just like, okay, you just manage projects, lead projects. I didn’t know about all the technical aspects. So

 

that was really interesting to learn about. And I realized, wow, this could be something that’s really like a useful skill to learn. ⁓ So I feel like I first kind of learned it through practice and then just kind of thrown into it. Like I started to take the lead on full projects. And, you know, at my next job after that, I started out as an epidemiologist in that role, but then I became

 

Dr. Joyee Washington (10:52)

Mm-hmm.

 

Alexandra Piatkowski (11:00)

an epidemiologist and project manager, they actually changed my job title to that because they were like, ⁓ you’re managing projects as well. So I kind of just started doing it and I didn’t necessarily know exactly what I was doing at first. Like I wasn’t necessarily following the standard processes of project management, but I was figuring it out along the way. And I feel like that’s the best way to learn project management is just by doing it.

 

⁓ But then I realized, you you can be a more effective project manager if you learn about some of the tried and true methods and the science of actually doing it. So then I decided to pursue that more and, you know, take a course in project management. And once I got enough experience, I decided to pursue my PMP, project management professional certification, which is kind of the most well recognized one in the world. So yeah, you have.

 

you know, an educational component, experience component, and you write an exam. So, you know, that was really useful to do just kind of gain more of that technical project management skillset. ⁓ And quite honestly, the PMP is it really helps you to kind of set yourself apart as a project manager, learn the language of project management, and then it’s just very well recognized so it can help you get more jobs.

 

in that area. So that’s kind of how I started off in project management. I wasn’t necessarily doing it intentionally, but I found that it was a really useful skill set to be able to be a more effective leader and to take the lead on projects and combine that with the other skills that I had.

 

Dr. Joyee Washington (12:46)

And I feel like I have heard people say, now I’m not saying it’s true, I’m just saying I’ve heard people say that like, if you have a project manager, it’s basically like having a babysitter, right? A person who babysits the project and it’s just kind of there and stuff. But I know from experience, like having a project manager can be really helpful. and especially it doesn’t matter if it’s a large project or small project.

 

Alexandra Piatkowski (12:59)

Thank

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Dr. Joyee Washington (13:13)

but you need somebody there to handle the small details, keep up with the timeline, the deliverables and the, you know, those types of things. But I would love to hear from you, especially for those who may not be as familiar with project management. Like you kind of feel like, ⁓ it’s obvious, like a project manager is somebody who manages projects. But like, what does that really mean? Like what really goes into project management, especially from the public health and epidemiology side, because it might be something that

 

Alexandra Piatkowski (13:32)

Mm-hmm.

 

Dr. Joyee Washington (13:43)

we often miss, like, especially for people who might be on big teams, like, they might not even realize that there is a project manager and the importance of their role to the project. So tell us a little bit about, you know, what is it that a project manager actually does? And is it more than just babysitting?

 

Alexandra Piatkowski (14:02)

Yeah, actually, I don’t hate the babysitter analogy, because I feel like honestly, that’s part of it. So mean, a huge part of project management is stakeholder engagement, like making sure that you have the right stakeholders involved and that they’re involved from the start and that they’re engaged in the appropriate way, you know, throughout the project. And so kind of babysitting is

 

is a good comparison to that. that’s definitely part of it. But yeah, I feel like ⁓ there are so many different things that go into project management and managing a project. So yeah, stakeholder engagement, but you’re also looking at things like risk, like what are the risks of a project? What are the risks? If you don’t do a project, ⁓ how do you manage particular risks if they come up? ⁓ Quality, like…

 

you know, the quality of ⁓ the work and the end product of the project, ⁓ communication, how is communication going to happen for the internal project team, external project team with all the different stakeholders? ⁓ You know, are you having weekly meetings, monthly meetings, emails, project management software, a lot of documentation, of course, keeping track of everything, I think.

 

Documentation and communication are really unsung heroes. ⁓ You just gotta keep track of what’s going on to make sure you’re actually being effective in what you’re doing and you follow through and do what you say you’re gonna do and that people are involved with what’s happening and aware of what’s happening. ⁓ So those are just a few things I could go on about all the different components that are.

 

included in project management, but all that to say is like there’s so many different components and kind of like what we’re talking about before, the big picture. Project management is a very like big picture ⁓ role as well. Like you might have people with particular roles on the project and subject matter experts and they’re really focusing in on a particular part. With project management, you’re really looking at the big picture and how those different parts.

 

fit together and managing them all at once. And then, you know, there’s program management and portfolio management as well when you’re looking at a bunch of different projects and you’re managing them or you’re managing like a whole program and all the different pieces that fit together.

 

Dr. Joyee Washington (16:44)

Mm-hmm.

 

Yeah, and I love what you said, like documentation and communication are the unsung heroes. Because if you’ve ever been a part of a project that has been disastrous, oftentimes it’s because there was a lack of communication or somebody didn’t document something and now there’s miscommunication along the way. so when I think, and honestly, okay, for those of you who are listening,

 

Alexandra Piatkowski (17:01)

Mm-hmm.

 

Dr. Joyee Washington (17:11)

If you listen to my podcast enough, you know I have these visualizations and I try to make stuff like extra concrete and like put it together for people to understand. So like the thing that came to my mind when you were talking was a jigsaw puzzle. Like when you are thinking, like the documentation to me and the jigsaw puzzle is what is the picture supposed to look like? Like that’s our documentation. That’s what we’re trying to achieve. But we got all these little pieces, all these, you done any of those like

 

Alexandra Piatkowski (17:19)

Mm-hmm.

 

Yes.

 

Dr. Joyee Washington (17:40)

thousand piece jigsaw puzzles. You got all these different pieces that have to be put together. And then what do you do? You assign a pile of stuff, a pile of jigsaw puzzle pieces to one person, a pile of jigsaw puzzle pieces to another person. And you’re trying to look at the sides, right? Look at all the little details and put the pieces together until you’re able. And you have to communicate, right? You have to communicate and say, I think this piece goes with this piece. I think this piece goes with the piece that you have in your hand, right?

 

Alexandra Piatkowski (18:10)

Mm-hmm.

 

Dr. Joyee Washington (18:10)

And so that documentation and communication helps you put all the little pieces together so that you can achieve seeing the big picture. Seeing it all together. And that’s what project management does. It helps you to identify all the little pieces and get them in order and connect them so that they can help you get to

 

Alexandra Piatkowski (18:21)

Mm-hmm.

 

Dr. Joyee Washington (18:38)

the big picture. I don’t know. That just came to my brain.

 

Alexandra Piatkowski (18:41)

Yeah,

 

no, that makes perfect sense to me.

 

Dr. Joyee Washington (18:44)

So in that, in thinking about, you know, project management and epidemiology, what does it look like for you to see that bigger vision or that bigger picture and the outcome of like, how are communities being affected or impacted by your work being the babysitter, right? Or being the project manager in this space of epidemiology. How do you see

 

communities being impacted by your project management skills and what does that look like in the client, the type of clients that you work with?

 

Alexandra Piatkowski (19:21)

Mm hmm. Yeah, I think project management, epidemiology and public health in general are an awesome combination. So if anyone is remotely interested in project management or just kind of leadership within public health in general, I definitely recommend, you know, considering that as a path to take and how you can combine those different skill sets together. Because a lot of people, you know, you can gain project management skills and be a project manager, but there’s something special about bringing that.

 

public health and epi expertise together with project management. And like if you’re managing projects in that area, you have more like something special to bring rather than someone who just has project management skills that they’re bringing to a project like that. It can be really useful. ⁓ I think project management has a huge impact on health equity and it’s very important for health equity.

 

In communities, let’s say, you know, a lot of the projects that I worked on in communities have been around needs assessments, like community health assessments, community health needs assessments, and project management has been super applicable for those. So just back to what I was saying before about stakeholder engagement, making sure the right stakeholders are involved from the start, really spent a long time, like making a list of all the possible.

 

stakeholders who should be involved and, you know, these assessments are done regularly. So yes, who was engaged last time, but who wasn’t engaged last time, who wasn’t at the table who want to make sure is at the table from the start this time, and how are they going to be involved? we going to have regular meetings and checkpoints? How are they going to have the chance to feed into the strategy? Who from

 

the community do we want to engage with and how and just having a really clear plan for that from the start so that it’s not like we’re part way through the project or at the end of the project and we say, wow, we really should have engaged that organization or with that group of people and we didn’t and you know, now it’s too late and we don’t want it to be just a check the box or an add on at the end. We want it to actually be intentional from the start.

 

And then I think also for like the implementation of projects, you know, with needs assessments, often afterwards we’ll do like a community health improvement plan or implementation strategy. So what do we actually hear from the community in terms of needs and what do coalitions in the community want to prioritize in terms of addressing those needs? So they’re going to focus on.

 

mental health or chronic diseases or housing or a combination of those and how are they going to come together to address those and what’s the actual plan to do that. So not just saying, okay, we’re going to implement this program, but okay, how are you going to implement that program? Who’s going to be responsible for what what are the measures that we’re going to track to make sure the program’s actually

 

being effective, what’s the timeline ⁓ and tracking that over time to make sure it’s actually happening. Because unfortunately, a lot of the time, plans are made and then they never actually get implemented. ⁓ Can have the best of intentions, but need to have an actual plan to get there. So I think project management is incredibly helpful for that too.

 

Dr. Joyee Washington (23:08)

And what I hear is project management is really important and critical for the relationship building process. When we are working with communities, relationship building is key. It’s top of mind for everything. But like you said, with documentation and communication being those kind of unsung heroes, those two pieces right there are super important as far as

 

Alexandra Piatkowski (23:18)

Mm-hmm.

 

Dr. Joyee Washington (23:38)

the relationship building process. If you’re talking about engaging your stakeholders or interest holders, your community members, know, whoever it might be, you have to think about how do you consistently engage that group or those individuals because it’s important. Like you’re relying on that in order to make impact.

 

And whoever you are, if you are running a project and it is not going well, you should probably ask yourself, do you have a project manager? If you do have a project manager, is that project management process, are they aware? Is it something that the project manager is doing or not doing?

 

Alexandra Piatkowski (24:29)

Mm-hmm.

 

Dr. Joyee Washington (24:29)

Are they

 

documenting something? Is something getting miscommunicated? But a lot of times I see a lot of projects go left, for lack of better words, in a way that we don’t want it to go because there hasn’t been someone who’s assigned, who is in charge of managing the project, keeping track of the due dates, keeping track of all those little pieces. And it’s just catastrophe. And then you’re sitting up there wondering, like, what went?

 

wrong. And it’s like because you forgot to have somebody who’s managing and looking at, I have a mentor who calls it a 35,000 foot view. Like who’s the person looking at it from a 35,000 foot view so that they can see all the different moving parts. They can see the bigger picture and they can see where you are missing.

 

Alexandra Piatkowski (24:59)

Mm-hmm.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Dr. Joyee Washington (25:28)

some piece somewhere that’s causing the project not to go the way that you want it to go. Because when a project doesn’t go the way that it needs to go, you end up breaking trust with communities. And so I’m interested to hear if you have any stories or experiences with where you have seen that in action, like where maybe project management should have been there and it wasn’t, or…

 

Alexandra Piatkowski (25:56)

you

 

Dr. Joyee Washington (25:57)

where poor project management led to something happening with the community. Just interested to see if you have any experience with that.

 

Alexandra Piatkowski (26:05)

Yeah, yeah,

 

that’s a really good point. I think there’s not always not a project manager because people don’t want a project manager. It’s sometimes a question of resources like in public health, healthcare, community based organizations, obviously, everyone’s facing a lack of resources and everyone’s playing like 10 different roles. And sometimes people, you know, they might be

 

like a community health educator, and they’re taking on a role of a project manager and a million other things. So it’s not that people don’t necessarily want to manage projects or value the importance of it. They just don’t have the time. And it can be really difficult to balance a million other roles and also trying to be the project manager. So I think, you know, obviously it’s ideal if someone can just be the project manager, but it’s…

 

not the world we live in, unfortunately, and it’s not always possible to have a dedicated project manager. But I’ve definitely seen the impact of that. think going back to like community health improvement plans or CHIPS, often those plans will get made and, you know, say, you know, this person or this organization is going to do this and these are the activities and this is what we’re measuring. And this is the timeline. if there’s not that dedicated person, even just to set up

 

the meetings, because, you know, those are, all around coalitions, like bringing together like the health department and the hospital and the local community based organizations, even someone who’s just dedicated to setting up those meetings, making sure that they’re happening like on a quarterly basis, let’s say to check in on the progress of the plan. And they’re following up with like different working groups, like if they have like a mental health working group and a housing working group and a childcare working group.

 

like following up with those working groups and working group leads. And like you said, making sure that documentation is happening on the progress of the plan. ⁓ If that’s not in place, then plans often just sit on shelves and collect dust, unfortunately. But I think that can kind of somewhat be a way around it. ⁓ You you don’t necessarily need someone who’s managing the whole project. You can kind of have that shared leadership model and everyone’s

 

taking on a piece of it, but even if you just have someone who’s dedicated just to booking meetings and doing some basic documentation, that can be helpful.

 

Dr. Joyee Washington (28:39)

Yeah. And, and you are absolutely right. Everybody does not have the resources. oftentimes that when, when we see times where they don’t have the resources, it gets, it just gets put on the back burner. Like, so it’s interesting to, to be more open and think about, okay, project management is, it’s a necessity. How do we make it work?

 

Alexandra Piatkowski (28:53)

Mm-hmm.

 

Dr. Joyee Washington (29:07)

even if we don’t have a dedicated project manager, like what is the thing that we’re going to use? Even if it’s incorporating AI or incorporating that project management tool. Like I know one that I use all the time is ClickUp, right? If you have something, an automation process that supports you in the project, in the project management, like there are so many creative and innovative ways to think about it. Even if you don’t have that dedicated

 

Alexandra Piatkowski (29:16)

Mm-hmm.

 

Thank

 

Dr. Joyee Washington (29:37)

project manager and like you mentioned the shared leadership model everybody can take a responsibility for a piece of the project management process and also thinking about project management on the front end so when you are applying for funding or writing the grant and things like that like think about incorporating a dedicated project manager in the budget because there’s a lot of times where we miss

 

Alexandra Piatkowski (30:06)

Mm-hmm.

 

Dr. Joyee Washington (30:06)

to put the project manager in the budget on the front end and account for it. ⁓ Even if that budget has to be split between people to get it done, just account for it in the budget and in the planning phase because it will make a world of difference to just take it into consideration. So do you have any other tips or what would you tell people?

 

or if you have anything else that you would like to share about, know, if they’re struggling with project management or maybe they don’t have the resources for project management, what would you like to share with

 

Alexandra Piatkowski (30:48)

Yeah, that’s a great question. I really liked your point around the AI and automation tools. Those are obviously becoming huge and definitely found those save me a lot of time. So definitely look into those. I love Asana. I haven’t used ClickUp, so, you know, I’m always looking for more tools to learn about as well, but I’m a big Asana person. Yeah, I’m trying to think of if I have any…

 

Other advice, ⁓ I think just if you have the opportunity to learn about project management, do it, whether it’s on the job or more formally, there are a lot of free resources or low cost resources out there in terms of learning about project management and specifically how it applies to public health too. think that’s something I honestly struggled with a little bit, like doing my PMP certification and taking the project management courses.

 

They’re great and learn about project management and all the terms and everything, but it’s not always the most directly applicable to public health when all the examples they’re using are around construction and technology projects. You can take things and apply it to your work, but it’s sometimes a little bit more of a stretch. So anything you can learn about that’s specifically how project management applies to public health and in the real world as well. ⁓

 

I think if people are familiar with waterfall and agile project management, ⁓ waterfall is more kind of like the traditional project management process. Like, okay, we do the plan and then we do the project and then we do the follow-up. ⁓ Agile is more kind of adapting along the way, which I think can be really useful for public health.

 

don’t always know what our budget is gonna be upfront, or if there’s gonna be a budget, ⁓ or like what the human resources are gonna look like. ⁓ And Agile can be really helpful to just be more creative and flexible and kind of adapt on the fly without having to know what everything’s gonna look like upfront. So that’s kind of a methodology I’d recommend.

 

Dr. Joyee Washington (33:11)

Yeah. And I think you’re right. Public health, the intersection of specifically a public health project manager is a super needed skill and organizations are looking for. just, I literally just supported someone in applying for an RFP and it was for like a research Institute. But they were looking for specifically a project manager to support in those administrative tasks.

 

but the person who I was helping, their strength was that they do project management in public health. And that’s different because when you, you know, if you go through the RFP process and you’re able to ask questions. And so I was coaching them, you know, through the process, like, okay, you need to ask these types of questions. And when we got the questions back, you know, sometimes you can see everybody else’s questions.

 

Alexandra Piatkowski (33:50)

Mm-hmm.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Dr. Joyee Washington (34:08)

And you could tell by the way that other people ask questions that they were project managers, they weren’t public health project managers. So when we started writing the response to that RFP, we made sure to highlight the strength that we are project managers specifically in public health. Like that is the strength. Like we understand the importance

 

Alexandra Piatkowski (34:32)

Good.

 

Dr. Joyee Washington (34:35)

of project management when it comes to research. We understand the importance of project management when it comes to evaluation. We understand the importance of project management when it comes to your stakeholder engagement. Like those are things that are not gonna slip through the cracks with us because we are public health people who do project management. And that’s a difference. And that is something like if you are thinking about

 

Alexandra Piatkowski (34:55)

Yeah. Yeah.

 

Dr. Joyee Washington (35:03)

If you’re listening and you’re thinking about going into project management or you’re a public health person and you’re like, I’m not sure what I want to do or whatever. And you like planning and organizing, look into project management because there is definitely a need for it. And they need project managers who have specific expertise in public.

 

Alexandra Piatkowski (35:18)

Mm-hmm.

 

Yeah, absolutely they do. And you also don’t have to have the job title of project manager to be a project manager. You can apply it to so many different roles, even though that’s not exactly what you’re doing. It’s never gonna hurt you to learn about it. Like all of these things are very useful and are gonna help you.

 

Dr. Joyee Washington (35:45)

Yeah, and there’s so many ways to learn. mean, YouTube University, for one, if you have access to LinkedIn Premium, especially if you have it through your job or something like that, I’m sure they have project management courses. ⁓ There’s another platform called Allison, your Coursera, Udemy, all those places. You can find project management courses any and everywhere and in our public health circle. If you’re in our public health circle on LinkedIn and stuff like that,

 

Alexandra Piatkowski (35:57)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, they do.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Dr. Joyee Washington (36:14)

There are tons of project managers who are in public health who know that world. So definitely tap in and get to know people like Alexandra, people who are in the project management space. So definitely do that. But as we get ready to wrap up, I do have one last question for you. And that question is, what brings you joy in your work?

 

Alexandra Piatkowski (36:23)

Mm-hmm.

 

So what brings me the most joy is hearing from people that I’ve engaged with for a project or initiative or just through my work in general that me or my team help them to feel heard and listened to. And especially when we’re actually able to do something with what they shared with us, like when a particular need or experience was shared and we can do something based on that. I love that. And then

 

I also love mentorship. Kind of similar, know, mentorship is a lot about listening and making people feel heard and supporting them. So I just absolutely love doing that and supporting the next generation of public health professionals.

 

Dr. Joyee Washington (37:36)

Awesome. And if people want to get in touch with you, if they want to learn more about your consulting company, how do they get in touch?

 

Alexandra Piatkowski (37:46)

Yeah,

 

so you can follow me on LinkedIn, Alexandra Piatowski. You can also follow Piat Public Health on LinkedIn, P-I-A-T. Our website’s on there, piatpublichealth.ca. And you can also feel free to send me an email. It’s just alexandra, my first name, at piatpublichealth.ca.

 

Dr. Joyee Washington (38:08)

Well, thank you so much, Alexandra, for joining us. And this is going to wrap up another episode of the Public Health Joy Podcast.

[END]