Elizabeth Byam has served as chief operating officer at Advisory Platform Solutions since 2009 and managing partner at BeneTechs since 2018. In these roles, she gets her finger into every little pie and it’s wonderful to experience, learn more about and be able to direct every aspect of the company, whether it comes from development strategies, priorities or social media. Ms. Byam makes sure the company is run with very strong and high ethics. They are a group that has a lot of fun and, at the same time, work very hard. They help companies find their own bottlenecks and things that would prevent them from moving forward. They also do a lot of messaging strategy work, swat analysis and promotional strategy.
Prior to this tenure, Ms. Byam began her professional career as a programmer at Coastal States Life Insurance Company in Atlanta in 1973, remaining in this role for two years before transferring to Southern Airways from 1975 to 1976, also serving as analyst. Consulting in computer programming in the Atlanta area for four years, she then served as a senior consultant and field manager at Computer Dynamics in Woodland Hills, California, for one year before founding and consulting for her own company, MEB Associates in Winnetka, California, from 1984 to 1992. Moving south, Ms. Byam was the enterprise applications program manager for Intel Corporation in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, from 1992 to 1997 and director of business solutions for Explore Reasoning Systems from 1998 to 2001. Before taking her current post, she was the senior program manager for Government Telecom Incorporated from 2002 to 2004 and program director of Advisory Platform Solutions from 2005 to 2009.
Ms. Byam had a contract with a company out of Pittsburgh that needed a database design. She took on the job as a DBA for a project involving gas measurement systems. Initially, the company tried to do it in-house, but were unsuccessful. They then brought in IBM to attempt it, but they were unsuccessful as well. The company decided to give it one last chance and brought in Ms. Byam. Within four to six weeks, she had felt that the project was too much too handle. One day, she woke up and had a breakthrough. She went into work and figured out the issue, and she came up with a working structure that also adapted to all of their other applications. This was one of the highest points of her career.
In preparation for her career, Ms. Byam pursued a formal education at Georgia State University in Atlanta, earning a Bachelor of Arts in 1972. She then completed postgraduate coursework at School of Law of Columbia Southern University in Orange Beach, Alabama, between 1976 and 1978. She went on to attain a Master of Business Administration from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque in 1997. Additionally, Ms. Byam is a certified project management professional and certified systems professional.
A frequent speaker on career planning and information processing at schools, professional conferences, meetings and radio shows, Ms. Byam served on the board of directors for the Opera Guild of Southern California in Los Angeles from 1984 to 1988. She also served the Data Processing Management Association as publications director of the Los Angeles chapter in 1988, treasurer in 1989, president in 1990 and national chair of the legislative affairs committee from 1990 to 1991. Likewise, she served the Association of Women in Computing as president of the Los Angeles chapter from 1985 to 1987 and national conference program chairman in 1986. Ms. Byam additionally continues to maintain involvement with the Project Management Institute.
In light of her many accomplishments, Ms. Byam was selected for inclusion in the first edition of Who’s Who in the Media and Communication, the 25th edition of Who’s Who in the West, and several editions of Who’s Who in America and Who’s Who of Emerging Leaders in America. Up until this point, she has worked to train people and always make sure she was indispensable so she could retire sooner.