Breaking down boundaries: Meet FocalPoint’s new Project Manager

We sat down recently with our newly appointed Project Manager Dominique Campbell who joins us to support our commercial team as we prepare for expansion.

Dominique is a keen martial artist, an advocate for breaking down boundaries and has a background in sustainability and teaching. She spoke to us about her passions and the very reason she's been brought into the business.

It’s lovely to meet you and welcome to the FocalPoint team. Can you tell us 3 facts about you?

Sure. The first one is I'm a keen martial artist and started judo at age 5. I actually wish now that I'd taken it more seriously. Now, I do Muay Thai and Kickboxing.

Secondly I'm severely dyslexic and highly passionate about showing how a label should never hold you back. I failed my GCSE English many many times and was still doing it up to university. So I had to find my stronger areas within academia and that's where I naturally gravitated towards mathematics. Certain teachers inspired me and the direction I gravitated towards.

Having dyslexia has in no way made my academic and professional experiences easy; however, I have refused to let it hold me back. I have reached a point where I am comfortable with my differences and would like to be an advocate for others who don't have the confidence to speak openly about having dyslexia in the workplace.

I've always found that having a good support network of people around me really helps. To a certain extent my dyslexia helps me as well. I see things in a different way; being able to think laterally, I can hold and retain information well.

And finally, one of my previous roles was a Maths teacher. My maths degree gave me a strong foundation to teach. It was actually very natural for me and where I felt very comfortable.

I could see myself teaching for a very long time, so decided instead to push myself out of my comfort zone and try something a bit more challenging. Fast forward a few years and I ended up in project management, which I love.

So how has your experience at FocalPoint been so far?

I've loved it to be completely honest. The teams and my line manager are just so supportive and friendly. What's really struck me was that I’m surrounded by people that are passionate to make a difference. Our Supercorrelation™ technology just blows my mind. I'm loving collaborating on all of our projects and learning so much about positioning accuracy and how we use advanced physics and machine learning to solve the inherent weaknesses of radio positioning.

What attracted you to the company?

I was interested in the industry - who doesn't have an interest in space? I was keen to step out of my comfort zone and test myself. Being involved in deep tech presents a great opportunity for me personally. It lends to my strengths. I’m used to working with software developers and engineers and that's what I will do here. The opportunity to grow, develop my skill set is huge as we continue to expand commercially.

As we make the transition from an R&D company into a stage of growth, it’s a great opportunity to be part of this evolving journey. I'm truly excited.

Tell us a bit about your role and sort of what you'll be sort of focusing on?

I'm involved in the day-to-day running and managing of projects. It involves planning, monitoring and reporting of progress, whilst ensuring risks and resources are managed effectively to ensure projects are delivered to plan. We operate within an agile framework, ensuring we are slightly more dynamic in our approach. I'm also a PRINCE2 practitioner. I'm keen to work on making incremental improvements to our approaches, making an impact on client engagements and of course focus on my learning path.

It's not crucial that I'm not a subject matter expert as we have a combined 100 plus years of experience in the world of positioning, navigation and timing and they are critical to my role - there’s actually lots of people management involved.

And finally what do you most value at work?

Work life balance is critical to me, combined with a fun, dynamic and energetic environment. Collaboration is so important to me and at FocalPoint we are great at that.

I love a diverse community and it's great that in such a relatively small company, we are well over average with a 23% female to male ratio in our technology team and have more than 11 nationalities. It's truly fabulous and makes for positive contributions and great client outcomes.

I like to live my life by stepping out of my comfort zone and breaking down boundaries. I'm excited to be part of the FocalPoint journey.

Thank you Dominique, welcome to the team - it's been truly inspiring talking to you.