For certified professional project manager Jamie Walker Tuggle, her career in information technology unwittingly started at home. Her father was a systems analyst, and she would later study the industry, having already developed an early, keen interest in processes and how to improve them. She was a programmer at the beginning of her career nearly four decades ago when she had to constantly prove herself because women in the field were scarce and not taken seriously. Steadily persevering, progressing, and excelling at incorporating high-level IT with expert business practices, today, Ms. Walker Tuggle is the executive director of Actium Inc., a nationally recognized management consulting, technology services, and outsourcing company that specializes in the design, development, and implementation of large-scale health and human services systems.
Now as an analyst, Ms. Walker Tuggle consults with the public service directors and is the liaison between the business, programs, and all individuals who require an understanding of the many nuances and applications of technology. She meets with executives to strategize where they want their program to be in the next two to three years by analyzing their current business process and whether it’s meeting goals or has performance gaps. An early career highlight that would later help prepare Ms. Walker Tuggle was working her way up the ranks at Mobil to become an information engineer. The oil company was starting a new initiative to replace systems within its marketing and refining division, and she re-engineered the way its products were talked about so that the company could be more flexible in distinguishing between them. A separate achievement Ms. Walker Tuggle is proud of is having implemented five federally-certified child support systems.
Ms. Walker Tuggle says her success results from lots of hard work, being open to listening, lifelong learning, and applying lessons to situations. She believes she can see similarities across various problems and bring adjusted solutions to meet multiple conditions, which she considers one of her strengths. What separates her as well is her ability to bring technical IT and non-technical people together and bridge the gap by translating for both. In addition, key mentors have greatly influenced her knowledge and self-confidence, including one executive she recalled as being especially innovative, not accepting the status quo concerning diversity and inclusion, and caring about outcomes for families.
Alongside her role at Actium Inc., Ms. Walker Tuggle is a business strategy analyst for the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services and an engagement lead for the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services. She also is the author of the 2016 scholarly article, “Adding Up to Success,” published in the American Public Human Services Association’s Policy & Practice magazine. Previously, Ms. Walker Tuggle was the executive director for the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services and the senior project director at Accenture in Massachusetts, Michigan, New Mexico, and North Carolina, along with a host of other senior project management and child support division and enforcement roles in Texas and Oklahoma and New Mexico.
Certified by the Project Management Institute and by the Six Sigma Global Institute in Scrum project management principles, Ms. Walker Tuggle holds a Bachelor of Science in commerce, with a concentration in management information systems, from the McIntire School of Commerce at the University of Virginia. In the next five to 10 years, she wants to continue advocating for child support and build the child support practice at Actium Inc. As she approaches the end of her career, she is also considering retiring and becoming more active in her local community, but she still wants to keep learning new things and staying active in IT.
Keeping her busy in tandem with working are her memberships in the National Child Support Enforcement Association, the American Public Human Services Association, the Michigan Council of Women in Technology, and the Texas Association of Governmental Information Technology Managers. Ms. Walker Tuggle is a past board member of the Boys & Girls Club in Michigan and volunteers with Lake Christian Ministries, which conducts community outreach to people living in poverty. In her leisure time, she enjoys boating, fishing, relaxing on the lake, hiking, walking her dog, reading, watching classic movies, and swimming.