Serge Ybanez
Hiking one of the world's deadliest trails at the height of the bad-weather season – solo? Doesn't seem like a great idea – and you might even question the judgment of the adventurer. But in actuality, the same qualities that served Serge Ybanez well on the Kalalau Trail on the Hawaiian island of Kauai are what make him the project leader you want to see assigned to your project: highly organized planning, methodical thinking, preparation for every possible situation, and a plan for the worst-case scenario. Oh, yeah, and a positive attitude and an expectation of success come in handy, too.
Serge's meticulous and determined approach to all challenges has led him down some interesting paths in his professional life, too. After earning a unique joint master's degree in management and systems engineering from MIT's Sloan School of Management and School of Engineering, he embarked on a career that has seen him work as an IT consultant, entrepreneur, project manager and, now, Project Leader at ACME. He's worked for Volkswagen of America, designing and deploying new efficiency systems, and his last stop was at Deloitte Consulting, where he took on projects for Cisco, HP Agilent and Disney.
A world traveler who is exploring his way through a checklist of countries (now there's a surprise: he has a checklist), Serge has lived and worked on three continents, taking on projects from Manila to Madrid, from St. Petersburg to San Francisco. There's not a lot he hasn't seen. And after enduring nonstop rain, crossing swollen rivers, picking his way across trail washouts and avoiding oceanside cliff drop-offs with no one to help and no way to contact anyone… well, no offense, but your project might not seem too daunting to him.
