Marina Prasek, Director of Project Management
Marina Prasek is a project and portfolio management leader with demonstrated success in new product development and commercialization that joined MaxCyte in January of 2024. Ms. Prasek is experienced in product lifecycle management and operations management as well as leading international collaborations and establishing a project management office (PMO). She is a certified project management professional (PMP).
What inspired you to become a project management professional?
I'm a physical organic chemist by training, so my passion has always been around scientific disciplines. I find project management to be one of them. In my early career, I spent a few years conducting research, teaching and writing grant proposals in academia, and I had my first role as a project manager supporting a grant funded by the National Institutes of Health. Eventually, I moved into product management in industry, and I was sold on the structure and technical framework of product lifecycle management.
As I started managing more and more projects of various nature and magnitude, a director of program management at the company where I worked at the time informed me that they were offering a PMP certification training and encouraged me to participate. As I went through the PMP training, I enjoyed the analytical tools and techniques that it provided and, overall, the technical framework.
To this day, I am very grateful for the director’s guidance. I’ve been fortunate to have several mentors throughout my professional journey–their true value lies in their ability to move you forward and not hold you back.
How would you describe your leadership style?
At this point in my career, I love being a mentor. I see my leadership style as focused on coaching while having the situational awareness to adapt and provide my team with clear direction, a goal and a timeline to complete a project. Projects can take months to years, and they require resilience through change and sharp focus. We could not successfully complete a project without listening to and supporting one another, trusting and recognizing the strengths that each person brings to the project as well as keeping clarity on what will get us to the finish line.
Part of being a leader is giving back, which is why I enjoy volunteering. I had a fantastic experience serving in various positions on the board of directors of the Project Management Institute's (PMI) Southern Maryland Chapter, a professional organization for project managers. I had the opportunity to lead and initiate several initiatives, including establishing a nonfiction book club whose participants received continuing education credits for reading books. I have enjoyed sharing my passion for continuous learning as a speaker or keynote speaker at local PMI Chapters, the American Society for Quality (ASQ) Baltimore Chapter, and, most recently, the 2024 Project Management Symposium organized by the Project Management Center for Excellence at the University of Maryland.
What do you enjoy most about working with your coworkers?
Throughout my career, I've been fortunate to work at organizations whose purpose is to improve people’s lives, and MaxCyte is all about just that, particularly bringing hope to patients affected by various diseases. My colleagues are passionate about what they do and driven to make a difference. They are extremely talented and willing to express their ideas and concerns, which helps us to grow as an organization. Additionally, they are genuinely nice and have an enthusiastic sense of humor, making our work environment engaging and fun. The executive team is also very accessible and connected with the teams. I value strong sponsorship and executive support as key ingredients to the success of our organization.
How do you use effective decision making to maximize value in your day-to-day work and stay on track?
There are a few critical elements to effective decision making with people and processes at the core. First, we must ensure access to the right information. Published statistics show that over 80% of decision makers at organizations don’t have access to the right information. Second, we need to promote diverse opinions as this ensures we spot biases and blind spots and leverage different skillsets. Thirdly, project managers must communicate—they must be master communicators. Finally, once the best decision is selected, we need to ensure clarity within teams on the decision.
Additionally, it is important to standardize the decision-making process to approach decisions with consistency. A standard process gives guardrails to support us in the steps needed, and eventually, repetition turns into habits. One of my favorite quotes is, “Success is the product of daily habits—not once-in-a-lifetime transformations," by James Clear form the book Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones.
How does project management align with MaxCyte’s strategic growth plans and benefit its partners?
After decades of hard work and technical innovation, MaxCyte became a publicly traded company in 2021. As it continued to evolve, leadership recognized the need for project management to implement the company’s strategic growth plans. I was brought onboard to oversee a new project management team to help the company through this change management process as well as the management of projects.
Project managers are change champions, and our task is to help MaxCyte put the structure and processes in place for growth and scalability. Through our day-to-day efforts, my team and I oversee projects that foster innovation, improve quality and advance technology that enables MaxCyte to support and bring solutions to its customers.
