What is the gender-inclusive term for Jack of all trades? Renaissance person? Utility player?
Whatever it is, that’s our Innovation & Strategy team’s new Innovation Orchestrator Tally Aumiller. She loves learning so much that, back in college, she couldn’t pick just one major. She took courses in social psychology, education, economics, visual/digital art and feminist thought to create her own degree: Social Marketing & Design.
Tally’s curiosity and broad perspective make her a great fit here at Mind Over Machines where her team leader, Chief Innovation Officer Tim Kulp, has a degree in religious studies and art history, and our founder and CEO majored in the comparative history of ideas. Our staff boasts many career-changers, several from the education field. We are teachers, learners, creative problem solvers, and big idea people. Tally is one of us.
Getting to Know You
MINDs human-centric approach is what first attracted Tally because that’s how she always tackles challenges too. When she worked in asset and wealth management for JPMorgan Chase, she loved interacting with clients, tuning into each person’s unique psychology of money. When her career took a project management turn, she stayed centered on people, motivating teams to implement projects on time and within budget.
While interviewing, Tally was impressed with our MINDs’ externally-focused creativity and passion. “There was no internal rat race. No ‘How can I prove I’m the best solution architect here?’” she observes. “Instead, it was always, ‘How can we build the best solution for this particular client.’”
And once on board, Tally’s first team meeting was a symphony of strengths-based, appreciative inquiry. “It wasn’t, ‘Here’s what you suck at, and here’s how we’ll help you suck less.’ We each named our strengths and then discussed how we could play on each other’s strengths while compensating for each other’s weaknesses so the team could not just succeed, but excel.”
In case you’re wondering, Tally’s self-proclaimed strengths are out-of-the-box thinking, connecting with people of any and all types, and getting things done. She takes new ideas and makes them tangible, brings them to life.
First Up on the Docket
Tally is hitting the ground running with two projects. She will turn fresh eyes on our enterprise application solutions offering, the comprehensive software integrations we design and implement for clients. While solidifying our framework for building and delivering collaboration systems, she will help us reimagine enterprise platforms where automation capabilities are no longer an add-on, but a native component.
She will also be experimenting with project story development for internal and external clients. Project story is a relatively new framework for project management. It stands in marked contrast to the old iron triangle, which sees a project primarily through the 3 forces constraining it: time, money, and scope. Project story starts from the premise that our brains are wired for story, as author Lisa Cron puts it. Storytelling is how humans connect, make meaning, and rally to effect change. It’s how we get stuff done, and the business world is just starting to harness its power.
Orchestrating the Future of Tech
Mind Over Machines is thrilled to welcome Tally Aumiller as a bridge-builder, engineering and paving the way from innovation to implementation. Her multidisciplinary, human-centric approach fosters empathetic collaboration. As her Innovation Orchestrator title suggests, Tally arranges and combines ideas, people and processes to achieve maximum impact.
Even as Tally works to bring colleagues’ and clients’ big ideas to life, there is an overarching magnum opus she and many others are orchestrating: a diverse tech industry. Expanding and increasing the variety of voices in tech will benefit individuals, the industry, and the world it serves.
“It starts with just having more women and minorities present – in the company, at the table, on the project. Mentorship programs with a mix of genders, races, abilities and ages are important too. But it’s also understanding that language matters, representation matters. Why are we always ordering disembodied female voices around? We need more male virtual assistants! You gotta start somewhere… and everywhere,” Tally muses. “We all have a role to play in orchestrating inclusivity.”
