Jennifer Young Baker

Jennifer Young Baker is a Professor at USC Bovard College with over 30 years of experience managing projects, programs, portfolios, and PMOs for Fortune 500 companies including Amtrak, Duke Energy, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Marriott. In addition to her academic role, she serves as a Principal Consultant with Mavendog Consulting.

Her academic credentials include an MS in project management from Northeastern University and a master's certificate in leadership from the Project Management Institute (PMI). She maintains an extensive portfolio of professional certifications: PfMP, PgMP, PMP, ITIL, MBB, BRMP, PMO-CP, CB-PMO, and SAFe-SA.

Professor Baker's research spans traditional project management methodologies, Agile approaches, portfolio governance, and female leadership in business. Her work examines how project management drives corporate strategy execution and how organizations can optimize their project delivery frameworks in both regulatory and non-regulatory environments. She explores the balance between scope flexibility and mandatory requirements in modern project execution.

Her scholarly contributions include publications in Portfolio Management: A Strategic Approach and Portfolio Management: Delivering on Strategy. Professor Baker has been recognized with awards at both chapter and individual levels from PMI and was featured in The Perspective of Women Project Management Professionals, which highlights 29 distinguished women project management professionals from 17 countries.

She previously served as Chapter President and Region Mentor for the Mid-Atlantic States with PMI. Professor Baker is passionate about mentoring students, particularly women entering the field, and believes it's her responsibility to 'give back and make sure the ones coming up have the right mentor options as well as educational options that, in some cases, I didn't have.'