Name: Anjuan Simmons
Title: Managing Director | Agile Project Manager | SCRUM Master
Contact: Twitter
Company: Jannua LLC
What They Do: Managing Director means that he has an LLC that he founded a couple of years ago and it is meant to be an umbrella organization for all the work he has done. He is not an official representative of his company, so he has his LLC and that’s where he does all the speaking engagements, such as talking about a book he wrote a couple of years ago. All that he does as Anjuan Simmons, the person who is all passionate about tech and its diversity, defines Jannua LLC.
For his 9-to-5 he is an Agile Project Manager and SCRUM Master.
Originally From: Whichita Fall, TX known also as “Red River County”
College: The University of Texas at Austin, Texas | Texas A & M (MBA)
Field of Study: Electrical Engineering
Recommended Books: Corporate Tribalism by Thomas Kochman
A Few Notes From the Show:
- Wrote a book in 2013 named: “Minority Tech“. The book is an essay anthology of his online and print works organized around the themes of Blackness, technology, diversity, and our collective humanity.
- His official title is an Agile project manager also called SCRUM master.
- SCRUM is a way of developing software, it helps to quickly work in a software into the hands of customers.
- Scrum came into play back in the 90’s.
- The main part of his job is to help his team to practice Scrum and to remove any impediments that will keep his team from being productive.
- The best advice that he can give to those who are interested in following in his footsteps is to be familiar with all the different areas of technologies, but also have a very deep expertise in something. Most companies will not hire you for what you like but for what you can do for them. Identify the companies that you want to work for when you are still in college.
- When he started his career, he wished he could have gotten into networking earlier.
- According to Anjuan, there are two pieces of wisdom that are unspoken in every workplace. The first one is that there are people that will try to get ahead based not on the quality of their work but on their ability to just hustle, and the second one is that you have to know your worth and ask for what you want, meaning know what you bring to the table.
- If no one knows you are doing great work, you are not doing great work.
- There is a game.
- We spoke about imposture syndrome.
- Great discussion on diversity.
- Wrote his book so folks didn’t feel alone.
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