Teresa B.

Val Ward brings her natural curiosity and creativity to her role as Agile Consultant and Coach.  Her deep background as a Marketing designer enables her to bring a unique empathy and understanding to marketing teams that are seeking greater agility and effectiveness in the ways they work. Val offers a supportive, approachable coaching style that quickly establishes connections with her clients, facilitating deeper understanding of new concepts and more  effective adoption of new ways working. 

Also because of her innate curiosity, Val is a quick study of multiple Agile tools. She has effectively supported several clients in their adoption and optimization of their tools like Asana and Workfront. This skill  is invaluable in any client engagement - ensuring the tools teams use  are working for them not the other way around. 

I worked alongside Val for over a year and I would highly recommend her to any organization that is seeking an extremely competent, creative and personable Agile consultant and coach.

My team recently worked with Val and she made the made the Agile journey an adventure. Val brings the kind of energy and enthusiasm that makes you forget you’re actually working. She has a Creative background, knows the language and values how important time and information are to the creative process. I know my designer and I really appreciate her ability to dive into the  details while keeping the big picture in focus.

Val made each Sprint and Stand-up meeting an opportunity for each team member to stand out -- not an easy thing to do. There was definitely no “this could have been an email” feeling coming out of any of the meetings, either in the training or our Pilot. 

Val is someone who can elevate your team's performance and keep everyone smiling through the process - our team still misses her presence! If your company decides to hire [her], you’ll be lucky if you work with Val - she’s a pro in every sense of the word.

Val is the epidemy of willingness to adjust. When asked to take on a new role in the department, she embraced the challenge to become a Scrum Master and lead a team of Scrum Masters. Not  only she was able to apply her innate organization skills but also took all the needed classes to be certified in record time. The cool thing about Val is that Scrum Master is but one of her skill set. She is also an amazing art director and can manage a team to get the best out of people. Val is a triple threat and whoever brings her on, will reap the benefits immediately.

Valerie was the "go to" person for me with many projects. She was always timely and efficient with her work. She always seemed to know what my vision was for a project before I could explain it to her. She was a pleasure to collaborate with and any company would love to have her.

Val is one of the most versatile people I’ve had the pleasure of working with. She’s very knowledgeable in her field and I could always rely on her to pick up the slack when I had too much work. She always amazed me how fast she completed a task, while still producing quality work. Val has an upbeat personality that was always evident even when she was under pressure to get a job done. She’s an exceptional person, one that would contribute greatly to any  organization. I wholeheartedly recommend her.

Her talent, work ethic, insight, and demeanor are phenomenal! She provided ideas that moved a concept from good to great, found technical solutions to cost or logistic challenges, always hit impossible deadlines, and interacted with an optimism and good humor that made the work that much easier. Val is both professionally and personally a joy to be around. I would welcome the opportunity to work with her again and encourage anyone who values extraordinary talent to  give her serious consideration.

Valerie is a detailed manager who has great time management, attention to detail, software expertise and a collaborative team player. She managed and developed an in-house Creative Studio team. This was a huge task of cross training all graphic designers to come up to speed and learn to support all areas of the company (retail, catalog, internet, PR, branding) and figuring out how the studio was best utilized and making it an integrated team. Valerie also developed a user-friendly studio Manual which encompassed training guidelines for all channels of the business for the studio as well.

Valerie is a hard worker with a good work ethic. She is the person who gets the job done and doesn't get overwhelmed with obstacles.

Valerie is the only person I've ever known that comes close to being perfect. She has a dedication to detail like no one else I've ever known. On top of that she's motivated to continuously  learn and figure out new ways to do things. We worked at Brookstone together for five years. She was always there to help me out or show me a  new trick. These terms may be cliche, but they are all true: She's a hard worker, a team player, and most valuable of all is that she GETS it. There's no explaining it twice. Simply put, she is awesome.