Exploring New Opportunities and Challenges: The Impact of AI on Supply Chain Management [SDS 2023 Presentation]

Danaka is PMP and Lean certified and has been managing projects in some aspect for most of her life. Danaka obtained her Bachelor’s in Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of British Columbia in 2010 while competing for Canada’s bobsled team. After working for several years, she decided to obtain more education and went to MIT where she obtained a Master’s of Engineering. She now works as the Regional Managing Partner of iota consultants, is a Sessional Lecturer at the Dhillon School of Business, and is a cardiac researcher and currently a Ph.D. candidate in Cardiology at the Cumming School of Medicine. 

As a Sessional Lecturer, she primarily teaches project management and reminds her students that their degree is a project; everything they learn in her project management course is directly relatable to their life. Danaka continues to apply various project management approaches to her research projects and any other research project she is asked to be a part of. Her work at iota consultants includes designing, managing, and implementing process optimization projects in a variety of industries — once again she relies on her project management skills. Moreover, Danaka has been an author with Stukent since 2021. She authored her first courseware “Principles of Supply Chain: Management and Operations” using a predictive approach and completed the courseware early. She also completed this “Project Management: Real-World Application & Methodologies” courseware early using a hybrid approach. 

Danaka attributes her success and ability to concurrently and successfully author courseware, perform research, publish research papers, teach, consult and manage projects, see friends and family, work out daily, and volunteer, to applying and using project management approaches. She often jokes that everything in her life resides in a giant Gantt chart — but she isn’t really joking. By spending time planning out what needs to be done and when it needs to be done, less time is spent trying to remember what should be done. Just check the Gantt. In the famous words of Edna Mode, “Luck favors the prepared.”