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 company’s 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 Mobile 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 federal-certified technology 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, an engagement lead for the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services, the child support director for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Department of Revenue COMETS HD, and the initiative director for the Michigan Child Support Enforcement System. She also is the author of the 2012 scholarly article, “Patented Network-Based Child Support Framework Network-Based Child Support Framework US 7,716,059 B1.” 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 on 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, the Texas Association of Governmental Information Technology Managers, and the State of Michigan Department of Human Services Poverty Summit Advisory Board. Ms. Walker Tuggle is a past board member of the Boys & Girls Club in Michigan and has volunteered with Lake Christian Ministries, which conducts community outreach to people living in poverty. In her leisure time, she enjoys boating, jet skiing, fishing, relaxing on the lake, hiking, walking her dogs, reading, watching classic movies, and swimming.
