Volunteer of the Year
Harry Chiovarou
For over 12 years, Harry has been the A/V
professional for PMINJ, working tirelessly to ensure high
quality technical support for every presentation at each
event. He has managed the Chapter’s capability to
present at each monthly meeting, Seminar, Symposium, and
IPM day. Initially the responsibilities ‘only’
included working with the vendors at each of the venues
for our events. He has been responsible for the
quality of the speaker audio and the presentation of the
speaker materials. Harry will test all of the
speaker presentations prior to each event to assure that
there are no technical issues that might occur during the
presentation. Just think, for the Symposium alone,
that is at least 13 presentations.
Then in 2007, the Chapter broadened the scope of our
events. We introduced satellite meeting locations
and increased the A/V requirements exponentially.
Now Harry was extending the A/V capabilities of the events
to locatiions via phone and internet so that members could
participate remotely in real time. A secondary
benefit for this arrangement was the capability to create
Webinars that could be viewed after the event.
Over the years, the A/V technology has changed, and
Harry has been the guiding force to ensure PMINJ has been
able to maintain our capabiilities to provide members the
ability to participate in our events. He has
identified new equipment to increase quality and has
investigated and implemented new processes to improve
efficiency. Harry has assisted with vendor changes
in webinar technology, and is constantly investigating new
technology that would make the events better for the
participants and the future viewers of the webinars.
He has mentored new A/V team volunteers and has even
collaborated with other Chapters to help them setup
similar satellite webcasts for their meetings.
In all of this, Harry has been the perfect example of a
PMINJ Volunteer. He is always available and willing
to help. A dedicated professional, Harry always
demonstrates the highest standards of quality and
leadership! PMINJ deeply appreciates Harry’s
commitment, and is pleased to present him the 2015 Barbara
Ann Fuller Volunteer of the Year award,
Fourth Quarter
Dennis Ryan

When you attend PMINJ’s monthly programs
or symposium, you will almost always find Dennis Ryan at
the audio/visual (A/V) table, testing A/V equipment
before the event, monitoring activities, or going around
the audience with a microphone so everybody can hear
questions attendees are asking the speaker. PMINJ
would like to recognize Dennis as Volunteer of the
Quarter for his years of dedicated service, strong
leadership, teamwork, and attention to details to ensure
that chapter events are successful.
Dennis joined the Chapter A/V team as a
volunteer in 2009. He has now successfully supported
more than 10 major symposiums and more than 50 monthly
meetings. Every facility has different challenges in
terms of ensuring that the speaker can be seen and heard
by everyone in the audience. As part of the A/V team,
Dennis is responsible for soliciting, selecting,
managing, and working with the A/V subcontractors for
the monthly meetings, annual symposium and IPM day
events. Dennis helps set up A/V equipment on the day of
the monthly meetings or a day before the big symposiums.
He works with speakers to make sure they are comfortable
with the microphone, video screen, moving presentation
on the chapter laptop and music for the event. Dennis
can always be relied on to keep his cool during
emergencies like equipment malfunctions or unforeseen
speaker requests. Over the years, Dennis has shown
leadership, patience, perseverance, adherence to the
highest standards of quality, and, yes Dennis brings
good music and cheer for the event!
Dennis began his project management career
while working for a contract manufacturing firm in the
mid-1980's. He was responsible for a number of
projects relating to new product launches and seasonal
promotions for the personal care industry. He was
eventually hired by one of his customers to become the
internal manager for similar activities. In 1998
he jumped to the pharmaceutical industry and has been
with Bristol-Myers Squibb for the last 10 years.
He works in R&D on different medicines going through
the development and clinical trial processes. If a
medicine doesn't get eliminated along the way (and most
do), it takes upwards of 10 years to bring a new product
to market and that is a long, complex and expensive
project.
Dennis earned his PMP in 2006 and joined PMINJ
immediately to enhance his expertise, get the most out
his certification and begin networking with other
project management professionals.
Dennis' AV experience goes back many decades to when he
was the student AV leader for his high school and
continues today through his volunteer work for several
organizations. His interest has been encouraged
over the years by having the opportunity to volunteer to
work side-by-side with one of the most successful rock
bands in history (and a member of the R&R Hall of
Fame Class of 2016).
After admiring Harry Chiovarou's sole handling of the
chapter's AV services from a distance for a few months,
Dennis offered his assistance - which was warmly and
gratefully received. Dennis is very pleased to
work with Harry and serve PMINJ at the monthly meetings,
Seminar / Symposiums and IPM Days for many years now and
looks forward to doing what he can to support and help
the organization grow. PMINJ's success is attributed to
volunteers like Dennis, who work tirelessly to provide
quality programs for the chapter members and we thank
him for that. Please stop-by at A/V table at monthly
meetings or at symposium and thank Dennis for his years
of contribution to successfully managing A/V for the
chapter events!
Third Quarter
Alvin Chingcuanco

Alvin joined the Marketing team in March
2015 focusing on improving our social media
presence. Over the last few months, Alvin has made
significant contributions to our social media sites
including postings on Facebook, LinkedIn and
Twitter. These postings have helped increase
attendance at various chapter meetings and
workshops. Over the summer, he led an initiative
with students at Montclair State University to create a
social media strategy and calendar of postings for our
new chapter year. With very limited supervision,
he managed three student teams to create a social media
strategy and identify content for these sites in six
weeks. He is now managing two volunteers to
coordinate regular content updates.
Alvin was also instrumental in updating our chapter
brochure. He took the lead in facilitiating the
necessary meetings to collect content from our board
members and redesigned the brochure with a new format
and graphics. Alvin is a Project Manager / Office
Manager for NBP Holdings Group and an academic tutor at
DeVry University Paramus Campus.
He is completing his MBA with concentration in Project
Management at DeVry’s Keller Graduate School of
Management.
Second Quarter
Jerry Meier

Jerry Meier has been volunteering as a
member of PMINJ Programs On-Site Registration activities
since November, 2011, when he joined the team led by
Dennis Komsa. As a dedicated team member with
detailed knowledge of the On-Site Registration process,
Jerry agreed to take the Team Leader role when Dennis
stepped down in June, 2013. Since then, Jerry has
worked tirelessly to recruit, train, organize and manage
a team of volunteers who welcome members and
guests at PMINJ Programs’ Monthly Chapter Meetings.
Each month, Jerry coordinates with his
team members to develop a schedule to ensure full
coverage of the registration table; obtains and copies
meeting handouts; manages attendance tracking and
reporting at the Main Meeting location; and verifies
accurate headcount numbers for the dinner meeting bill.
He also helps facilitate sponsor and outreach activity
logistics. Always ready and willing to tackle new
challenges to improve the registration process, Jerry
worked with John Bufe to pilot and deploy automated
walk-in registrations via smartphone and has helped
streamline attendance tracking using Google docs.
An efficient, organized Team Leader, Jerry
can be relied on to ensure On-Site Registration runs
smoothly, and should be recognized for his longstanding
support of PMINJ as a volunteer and Programs On-Site
Registration Team Leader.
First Quarter
Tod Burrus

Tod has been the “bedrock” volunteer for
the Corporate Outreach Team. He has been PMINJ's
ambassador and a project management evangelist at many
of our Outreach events- handing out brochures, giving
advice and (when available) candy to the people who stop
by our PMINJ information tables.
Tod’s smiling face and easy manner of speaking with
people have been key elements in spreading the word
about the importance of project management as a
profession and about the benefits and opportunities that
PMINJ provides to members. As we have continued to reach
out to project manager communities in
corporations, universities, state and local governments,
and other professional organizations, we’ve always been
able to count on Tod to volunteer and be present to
represent PMINJ.
When Tod is not volunteering for PMINJ events, he
is a Business Development Manager for Analysts
International Corporation (AIC) in Edison, NJ.