PM Network - October 2016

Voices INSIDE TRACK

Creativity isn’t always one genius magically coming up with a brand new idea. At most organizations, it’s a collaborative process. To ensure that process always ends with a happy client, branding and marketing company VSA Partners two years ago picked Carolyn Frazier to lead its project management practice.

Whether it’s helping a global hotel chain promote its meeting and event-planning services or helping a major corporation constantly reinvent itself, it’s Ms. Frazier’s job to foster creative and strategic thinking from start to finish.

“My role is to elevate the reputation of the
project management team and to help the project
managers jell with their teams,” says Ms. Frazier,
who has almost two decades of marketing and
project management experience, including five
years as a vice president and project management
lead at DigitasLBi in Chicago. She oversees 34
project managers spread across three locations;
together, they manage between 400 and 500 proj-
ects each year.

What kinds of projects do you and your
teams oversee?

I oversee new accounts until I assign a project manager to them. Whether it’s creating a brand narrative for a startup or a digital annual report, we treat everything we do for our clients as projects. Most notably, we’ve recently completed an integrated commercial program for the Kleenex brand.