Senior Manager Elena Tran joined EPAM’s Business Consulting team in November 2020 as an Organizational Change Management (OCM) practitioner with 10 years of experience. Below, Elena shares a glimpse into what her role looks like, what it's like to work with EPAM's Business Consulting Practice and her experience as an Asian-American female in technology.

What does your day to day look like as a Senior Manager of Business Consulting for the OCM competency?

As an OCM practitioner, I drive organizational transformation and change to realize the business value of strategic programs. I do this by transitioning and enabling the workforce to adopt new organization models, culture, processes, operating models, roles, technologies and systems. 

In addition to OCM engagement responsibilities, in business consulting, we are focused on value-driven relationship building with clients and prospective clients. We often achieve this by connecting clients’ strategic priorities to EPAM’s offerings, solutions, partnerships, capabilities and people. 

The diverse mix of business and industries makes EPAM a great place to learn and continuously find new ways to grow. In the four months that I have been here, I have had an opportunity to work on projects in private equity, energy and financial services.

Tell me about why you chose to join the OCM competency at EPAM.

The very first thing I saw when I visited EPAM’s website was “Engineering the Future.” I knew from that moment that there would be plenty of organizational change management opportunities in this software engineering company. Companies invest significantly in creating digital platforms, but if people do not adopt them and change their ways of working, companies will not fully realize the value of their investments. EPAM’s engineering superpowers provide ample opportunities for change practitioners to help clients adopt solutions and, hence, unlock expected business value. 

The products and solutions that EPAM creates for our clients are cutting-edge, so project team members are working to enable the adoption of a major transformation. Between the project teams and practices, there is a significant effort to collaborate and share knowledge. This is woven into every team meeting I have participated in, and there is so much to share!

The projects at EPAM often come with a global collaboration component; I truly enjoy partnering with my peers based in Eastern Europe. The scale and complexity of the programs that we engage in are remarkable opportunities to make a difference, be challenged and evolve one’s consulting capabilities. 

What is it like being a woman in technology at EPAM?

As an Asian-American woman, I know that EPAM is a place where I can thrive because my thoughts, ideas and leadership are always welcomed and respected. It’s a culture of women supporting women. 

For instance, as part of International Women’s Day 2021, EPAM celebrated all of our women innovators, leaders, technologists and creators. Globally, employees were invited to participate in 35 different talks with more than 90 speakers who all focused on women’s leadership topics. The conversations and success stories were anchored around empowering one’s self and others and building successful teams. 

Even locally, we’ve had the opportunity to connect and support each other. Recently, the women from our business consulting team based in Houston got together to get to know each other better, network and bond. 

There is no shortage of opportunities to contribute. One just needs to step up, ask a question, form a hypothesis and take action to be embraced by this community. Empowerment is real. The support is there, and I feel that my leadership, peers and team have my back.

If you’re interested in working with talented EPAMers like Elena, visit our page on Organizational Enablement at EPAM.