Project Manager | Project Management Career Coach | Helping early-career professionals (0-5 years) transition into project management roles in the IT industry.

I never planned to work in mining.
I never planned to shift from project management to communications either.
But careers aren’t always linear and mine is proof.

After years in IT and project management, I made the leap into a completely new industry and role, handling internal communications, global training, and office operations.

Now, I document this journey to help professionals see what it really looks like to:
🌍 Transition industries & roles without starting from scratch
🧠 Build adaptability and communication skills that stand out
💡 Reimagine success when you’re starting over in your 30s

On my profile you’ll find:
🔹 Stories & lessons from inside a global mining company
🔹 Corporate career and life lessons
🔹 Honest reflections on career transitions and identity shifts

If you’ve ever thought about starting fresh, moving industries, or re-entering the workforce in a new role, my content is built for you.

👉 Follow me here on LinkedIn for my weekly posts & livestreams, and join the community I’m building for professionals navigating change together.

Mary Tresa Gabriel

Was it scary to move from IT into a completely different industry like mining?

Short answer: Yes. Very.
Long answer: It was scary, uncomfortable, and also one of the most growth-heavy decisions I’ve made.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned through this transition, it’s this:

Your career doesn’t change overnight.
It changes through questions, conversations, and courage to try.

Moving from IT to mining was more about:

• Letting go of being “the expert”
• Asking basic (sometimes embarrassing) questions
• Rebuilding confidence from scratch
• Translating transferable skills instead of job titles

What helped me navigate the shift (still in-progress) 👇

1️⃣ Owning the beginner phase
Not pretending I knew it all, and being okay with learning publicly.

2️⃣ Leaning on transferable skills
Stakeholder management, problem-solving, coordination, skills travel even when industries don’t.

3️⃣ Having real conversations
Most clarity came from people who had already made unconventional moves.

Career pivots are messy, emotional, and deeply personal.
But they’re also where growth hides.

#Createmomentum

Operations Coordinator at Weir | Documenting my career transition | Project Management Professional (PMP) | Work Abroad, Culture, Corporate life & Career Coach

📖 First book of 2026

This arrived at the perfect moment, just before I put away my Christmas tree.

Dare to Lead is my first read of the year, sent by the Nordic Business Forum, and it feels like the right way to start 2026: with courage, conversations, and intention.

Also, I’m such a sucker for handwritten notes, thank you Heli Hänninen and team. It truly made my day. 🫶 

What’s your current read for 2026?

It’s NOT uncomfortable to me that you moved abroad and are starting over in your career.
That you’re figuring things out, learning the system, and finding your footing.

What IS uncomfortable to me is:

using this as an excuse for 6+ months
not applying or networking consistently
avoiding visibility because it feels awkward
and putting in zero effort to actually get better

Because it’s NOT possible to stay bad if you’re putting in the reps.

I’ve seen people move countries with
no local experience,
no network,
sometimes not even the language.

The confidence they have today isn’t talent.
It’s hours.
Weeks.
Months of showing up anyway.

So please, stop telling yourself:
“I’m struggling because I’m new here.”

That explanation doesn’t age well.
And it expires much faster than you think.

Send this to someone who’s capable of more than they’re currently doing. 💌 

#CreateMomentum

Last year, I realized I had built my entire motivation system around validation at work.

Here are 3 ways I wouldn’t recommend chasing validation as a corporate softie:

1. Waiting for praise to feel competent
No Teams message? No “great job” in a 1:1?
My brain instantly translated silence into you’re not enough.

2. Overdelivering just to be noticed
Every deck, every email, every extra task came with an unspoken hope:
Someone will see this and say I’m doing well.

3. Treating feedback as emotional currency
Good feedback = dopamine high.
No feedback = self-doubt spiral.
That loop is exhausting.

This is how I do it instead:

1. Work from my own standards.
I do a good job because it aligns with my values, not because I’m hoping someone claps.

2. Let feedback be information, not identity.
Useful? I take it. 🙂 
Neutral? I don’t take it personal. 🙂 

3. Give myself credit first.
External praise is a bonus now not a lifeline.

Remember:
If you’re constantly refreshing your inbox for a “great job” message, it’s not a motivation problem, it’s a validation loop.

Building an internal feedback system is one of the softest, strongest things you can do for your career.

✨ If this resonated, you’re not alone. 💌 

#CreateMomentum

Focusing on tiny, low‑effort habits you can stack into your week now is how you stay visible at work all year without waiting for the next “fresh start” or promotion cycle to finally take yourself seriously.

Save this carousel, if you want micro-visibility habits that feel low‑maintenance, low‑overwhelm, and actually doable on a busy Tuesday not a 5am miracle routine you’ll drop in 10 days.

#CreateMomentum

7 micro visibility habits

If I were starting (or resetting) my career today, 
here’s how I adapt Lagom to my work life and how YOU can too 👇

✅ Work within clear hours 
Not because I lack ambition, but because I respect my energy.
Focused hours > stretched days.

✅ Prioritize deeply, not endlessly
One or two meaningful outcomes a day beats juggling ten half-done tasks.

✅ Use systems instead of constant effort
Checklists, routines, and structure so I don’t rely on motivation alone.

✅ Upskill with intention
I learn what’s relevant to my role and next step. (one skill or tool at a time)

✅ Use breaks intentionally
Short check-ins with coworkers, have unplanned conversations. (that's what makes workplaces humane)

What would you add in your current routine to make it a little more lagom?

#createmomentum

How to practice letting others move at their speed:

1. Stop racing clocks that aren’t yours
2. Treat comparison like background noise, not instructions
3. Build a pace you can actually breathe in

Many of us (including me, guilty as charged 🫣 ) get stuck measuring our progress against someone else’s highlight reel.
Promotions, salaries, titles, timelines : they start to feel like scorecards instead of stories.

There will always be someone earning more, moving faster, or posting bigger wins.

Now, REPEAT after me :

Instead of using their timeline as a weapon against myself,
I’m choosing to build a career I can actually enjoy living in.

Slow enough to notice it.
Steady enough to trust it.

#createmomentum

Everyone says being a “soft girl” at work means you’re sweet, emotional, and just lucky to have a good manager and honestly, I disagree.

Not because softness doesn’t matter, but because most women are using it in the "sit quietly and hope they notice" way.

Most corporate women are trying to be the “nice colleague” everyone loves, when in reality, softness is a leadership strategy you can actually build.

Empathy, calm energy, and emotional intelligence are not fluffy extras, they’re the exact skills modern companies say they want in leaders and people managers.​

The more you protect your time, the more high‑impact projects you can own.
The more you document your work, the easier it is for leaders to see your value.
And the more you show up as your soft, honest self, the more people trust you with the big stuff.

Being a soft girl in corporate is about becoming the kind of woman who naturally attracts opportunities because her boundaries, communication, and consistency make her impossible to overlook.

So no, you don’t need to “toughen up” or become a different person to move up.
You need to stop hiding behind “she’s just nice” and start using your softness as your edge.

🤍 Save this if you’re done shrinking your softness

#createmomentum
LinkedIn Guide to Creating

Corporate Softie Narrative

Choosing a “soft” approach at work doesn’t mean doing less.
It means being intentional about where your energy goes.

From a corporate lens, this looks like 👇

1️⃣ Curating peace at work, not chaos
Clear priorities > constant firefighting.
Strong boundaries > being available 24/7.
Sustainable performance beats short-term hustle.

2️⃣ Romanticizing routines = building systems
Daily check-ins, structured workflows, focused deep work blocks.
Not everything has to be rushed to be effective.

3️⃣ Rest as a performance strategy
Well-rested people make better decisions.
They communicate better.
They lead better.
This isn’t softness, it’s operational maturity.

4️⃣ Speaking to yourself like a leader, not a critic
Growth conversations don’t start with self-shame.
They start with awareness, reflection, and course correction.

5️⃣ Investing in what actually nourishes your career
Skills over titles.
Learning over constant proving.
People and environments that support long-term growth.

Ambition doesn’t always NEEED to look aggressive. 😉 

#createmomentum

Week back as a corporate softie in 2026 working as an operations coordinator at Weir Minerals 🫶💻

This Wednesday was my first day back at work after 2 weeks off, and honestly, 3 working days felt like a tiny soft launch back into reality.

✨ What I worked on :
→ Picked up one main pending task: the office extension work
→ Reviewed the 2026 goals to get clarity on what this year is really building toward
→ Started shaping the training coordination work plan, which looks like the biggest chunk of work ahead
→ Initiated planning for the first training of the year [feels good to get the ball rolling early]
→ Began working on the internal communications plan for the year [completely new territory for me 🫣]

✍ Things I learned from my manager this week
1. Templatise articles instead of starting from scratch every time
2. Go to teams with a clear plan instead of asking “what would you like to do?”
3. Be intentional about audiences - refer back to one main repository instead of creating new ones again and again

📖 Resource that helped me this week : How to Create a World Class Internal Comms Strategy with Jenni Field (by Workvivo by Zoom YouTube video)

📞 Helpline to all office admins/workplace folks - When you’re managing an office extension or moving to a new building, how do you handle things going off-plan due to factors outside your control?

PS: Inspired by the weekly wrap-up posts by Morgan, trying my own version here 🙂

#createmomentum

The fastest way to build a real office culture
is to let people be a little weird at lunch.

Why is there this obsession with:
“Lunch is personal time. No work talk. Just eat.”

Every lunch could be a mini offsite.
Instead, most of them become a silent scrolling competition.

And then there are days like the “pump” day.

Let me take you to one of our lunch discussion - we started talking about how pump really works which went to centrifugal pump, Archimedes' screw and what not. 
At end Mauricio just concluded: “A pump is a pump.”

Here’s what these lunchtime conversations really create:
1. They melt the formal mask.
2. They turn colleagues into actual people.
3. They become inside jokes you remember more than most meetings.

I love a focused, productive workday.
But I also love a slightly chaotic, very human lunch table.

Because culture is built when someone says something so random
that everyone forgets to check their phones for 20 minutes.

A big part of being a team at Weir Minerals is you actually enjoy working with & is feeling safe enough to be your weird, curious, honest self.

If we can’t handle that for 30 minutes over food,
I’m not sure how we’re handling real collaboration.

P.S: Do you have a “a pump is a pump”-level quote from your office?

#createmomentum
LinkedIn Guide to Creating

Here’s something people who move countries don’t talk about enough…
(and it has nothing to do with museums, snow photos, or “living the dream”)

A lot of us leave behind careers, identities, and support systems to start again from the beginning.

While many people plan the move on paper (flights, documents, housing), very few prepare for what it does to their confidence, their career, and their sense of self.

It’s no surprise that many of us hit bumps in those first few years. SO : 

It’s okay if your career path looks “messy” for a while.
It’s okay if you feel behind when you compare yourself to people back home.
It’s okay if some days you’re excited to be here and other days you just miss home.

Over time, I realised this:

- You can support someone else’s dream without giving up on your own.
- You’re allowed to grieve the life you left, even if you chose this one.
- Starting again in your 20s or 30s (or later) doesn’t mean you failed; it means you’re brave.
- The “small” wins: a new friend, a local coffee spot, your first job interview in a new country, are not small at all.
- You’re not “just a dependent” or “just a student.” You’re rebuilding a whole identity.

Here’s what I’d tell my past self who just moved:

Be grateful you got this chance. Don’t overthink the next 5 years.
Don’t compare every day to “how it was back home.”
Just focus on building today 🫶 

What’s one thing you’d tell yourself on the day you moved countries?

#CreateMomentum

If your 9-to-5 makes you feel like a replaceable part in a giant machine, this is for you.

Here are my TOP 3 learnings as a corporate softie from Dan Koe’s video on thriving with multiple interests :

1️⃣ Being hyper-specialised in one repetitive task makes you easy to replace and slowly kills your curiosity and joy at work.
- you can stop blaming yourself for being bored and start designing a path where your different skills and curiosities actually work together instead of being squeezed into one box.

2️⃣ Your mix of interests (career, psychology, content, productivity, etc.) is not a distraction; it’s the intersection that makes yourperspective hard to copy, even by AI.
- you jumping between interests isn’t a character problem; it’s your brain trying to collect more dots so you can connect them in a unique way later.

3️⃣ Instead of just binge‑watching or reading, you can treat it as “research” and share simple notes online, turning learning into an asset, not just an escape. (just like this one 😉 )
- you don’t wait to become an expert. You just study, take notes in public, and let that habit quietly build an audience, reputation, and optionality outside your 9‑to‑5.

BONUS - Your personal brand is the space where people come to change, using the same ideas and systems you're using to help the past version of YOU.
- you stop forcing yourself into random “niches” and instead build a space that reflects your mind, helping the past version of you.

Which one of these ideas are you going to act on first ?

#CreateMomentum

Here are a 3️⃣ signs you might be a corporate softie:

Number 1️⃣ : You feel genuinely guilty when you don’t give 120%, even if no one asked you to. Over-preparing, over-delivering, triple‑checking emails, this is your way of coping with the fear of disappointing people. It looks like “ownership” on the outside, but inside it’s your brain trying to keep you safe.

Number 2️⃣ : You need time to emotionally recover after “small” work moments. A sharp Teams message, a skipped thank you, a tense meeting, your body holds onto it for hours. Other people brush it off. You replay it in your head on the commute home, wondering if you did something wrong.

Number 3️⃣ : You think a lot about whether you belong at work. Self‑determination theory says we need autonomy, competence, and relatedness to truly thrive and corporate softies are hyper‑tuned into that relatedness part. If the room feels cold, you shut down. If your manager is kind, you blossom.

You are not “too sensitive for corporate.” You are a sensitive professional in a system that was not designed with you in mind. 

And that’s why I’m building a community for professionals who don’t just want to survive performance reviews and team calls, but want to feel safe, seen, and allowed to be soft at work.

Do you secretly think you might be a “corporate softie”? 

Catalyzt360 Consulting Services Private Limited

- Design and execution of Leadership development training programs
- Delivery of SAFe Agile Certification and Agile Scrum training programs
- Design and execution of Project Management training programs
- Training on Lean concepts
- Leadership Coaching

Leadership Coach and Chief Inspiration Officer

NWORX

Performance Coach

Cognizant

-End to end responsibility of IT services delivery for customers in Insurance domain generating $90+M revenue annually. 
-Is responsible for managing the entire P&L of the portfolio of accounts. 
-works closely with commercials teams on designing solutions for new opportunities, bid presentations, pricing strategies
-works closely with customer CXOs and IT leaders on strategic initiatives, technology roadmap, solutions and implementations. 
- Coached Agile project teams in the portfolio
- Up skilled 80% of team on digital skills.

Delivery Director

- Responsible for Quality engineering delivery for Communication and Media customers in APAC, UK and Continental Europe
- Managed a 1000 member quality engineering team
- Responsible for performance management, skilling and attrition management
- works closely with commercial teams on creating solutions for new opportunities, estimations, pricing, bid presentations
- Enabled 100% of team in Agile

Delivery Manager - Quality Assurance

- Responsible for the growth of Quality engineering and Assurance function at Kochi location
- Look at the skill demand and proactively trains associate to bridge demand supply gap
- Trained 400+ associates in Agile Scrum methodology
- Grew the location headcount by  more than 100% in this period
- work closely with location centre head and other functional leaders in defining strategy for location growth
- Built a robust local leadership team for Quality engineering function 
- Spearheaded various initiatives (technical and fun) with in the location for associates

Location Head Kochi - Quality Engineering and Assurance

- Built a 100 member new team at Kochi location as part of a Build, Operation and Transfer (BOT) deal for a large media customer in US
- Played role as head of a functional unit based in India and worked closely with US based function head on defining product strategies and roadmaps
- worked closely with customer country head and other local leaders in operating BOT, building strategies on resourcing, employee engagement, innovations
- Was part of the customer team in entire BOT planning.- space acquisition, office buildout, policy decisions and other location strategies
- Successfully completed the BOT setup and handed operations to customer in 2.5 years 
- Experience in setting up a Project Management Office as part of the BOT operations
- Transitioned a 80 member project team from Chennai to Kochi for a large information services provider in UK and managed end to end delivery responsibility
- works closely with customers on Project requirements, project status tracking , delivery management, delivery escalations, estimations, pricing
- Identifies new opportunities and design solutions and value adds
- Received Delivery Excellence award in Annual General Planning Event of the company
- Received Operational Excellence award

Delivery Manager

- Project lead for Java and .NET projects for different customer in Information services domain
- works closely with teams in preparing project plans, tracking, help solving technical and non technical issues
- visited customer locations in UK and Switzerland as part of projects
- Responsible for status reporting, escalation management, performance evaluation of team members

Project Lead

- Head of customized development unit at customer location interacting directly with business leaders
- Delivered all requirements within agreed SLA
- Received Best Employee award from customer in customer's annual day event
- Received Best Employee award from Cognizant

Customised Development Unit - Head

- Module lead for Java and Cold fusion projects
- Understanding business requirements and implementing them on time and quality

Module Lead

- Developer of Mainframe applications
- Travelled to Customer location in Switzerland and developed utility in Rexx

Software Engineer

A Certfied Leadership Coach who specializes in empowering individuals and teams to realize their full potential through personalized coaching, effective communication strategies, and fostering a growth mindset.

An accomplished IT leader with 26 years experience in the industry specifically in driving Large Scale Program Management, Portfolio Management ($(90M+), Account Management, Digital Transformation, Thought leadership, Financial and Operations Management, IT Budgeting.

Specialised in Agile strategy, Agile project management, Agile Training and Coaching. 9+ years experience in Agile delivery managing projects in Scrum , FDD, Kanban methodologies. Top Rate Agile Trainer with experience of training 1000+ people on Agile Scrum methodology. Agile Coach with experience in setting up and mentoring many agile project teams 

A certified SAFe Practice Consultant having experience working with customers on SAFE implementation, managing SAFe projects and also have experience in conducting SAFe certification trainings (Leading SAFe, SSM,SASM, SAFe PO/PM, SAFe for Team, SAFe DevOps).

Experienced trainer on Project Management,Leadership development and soft skills and have delivered various sessions on these topics for different levels of audiences. A regular speaker on TEDx,  conferences and campus programs

Experience of working with customer CXOs and other senior executives in devising IT solutions aligning with business objectives. Transitioned and managed large engagements effecting large change management

Successful in driving overall strategy, organisation change management, setting up large offshore teams including offshore captive centres, driving process and operational efficiency, establishing strong processes, benchmarks and best practices for offshore services

Experience in heading Quality Engineering and Assurance practice for Kochi location driving people transformation, enabling agile project delivery and overall growth of the location

Have keen interest in Psychology and is a Certified Life Coach,  Certified NLP Master Practitioner, Certified Enneagram Expert and Certified Transactional Analysis Expert

A Certified CMMI Associate and have experience in being part of CMMI V2.0 Appraisal Team

Experience in volunteering for PMI Kerala Chapter activities and is currently serving the role of VP-Branches and Member of board of directors for the Kerala Chapter

A health enthusiast and marathon runner having completed 4 Full Marathons and 50+ Half Marathons

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Mary Tresa Gabriel

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