PM Insight - Foster City Virtual Meeting: The Autonomous Project Manager: A New Era of Leadership
PM Insight-Foster City Virtual Meeting:
The Autonomous Project Manager: A New Era of Leadership
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Project management is accelerating toward a new frontier. By 2030, Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs), AI, and smart cities will create ecosystems where everything talks to everything—fully automated, interconnected, and fast-moving. What kind of project leadership will thrive in this space? Certainly not the methods of yesterday. Enter the Autonomous Project Manager: not a robot, but a visionary leader who blends human judgment, influence, and AI-enabled workflows to deliver with speed and confidence. This keynote equips participants with practical tools to lead in today’s complexity while preparing for tomorrow’s autonomous future. Attendees gain a five-lever playbook—clarity, cadence, constraints, co-creative innovation, and coaching—plus strategies for risk sensing, stakeholder mapping, and meeting compression. Don’t just witness the future; grab the wheel and steer it.
Learning Objectives:
- Apply a five‑lever autonomy model to reduce decision latency and improve execution speed in complex, AI‑enabled project environments.
- Leverage AI ethically to enhance planning, risk sensing, and stakeholder communication while mitigating bias and unintended consequences.
- Lead effectively in autonomous ecosystems by de‑escalating difficult stakeholder scenarios and anticipating how CAVs, smart cities, and AI systems are redefining project leadership.
Takeaways:
- Adopt the "Autonomous Project Manager" mindset: Become a triple-threat leader—teacher, fixer, orchestrator—capable of steering complex AI-driven ecosystems (CAVs, smart cities).
- Integrate AI as a strategic co-pilot: Leverage AI for risk sensing, schedule forecasting, and stakeholder engagement, while navigating ethical considerations.
- Command influence in high-complexity environments: Use decision autonomy models and influence scripts to reduce latency and de-escalate conflict in hybrid human-AI teams.
About the Instructor:
Benjamin C. Anyacho MBA, PMP, DMin - DSL Candidate (2027)
Benjamin C. Anyacho is an award-winning, consummate project portfolio strategist, innovator, knowledge management (KM) evangelist, and curiosity-activator whose career spans over two decades of results-driven leadership, with a mission to mentor one million leaders. Currently serving as a Senior Strategic Management Analyst with the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT), he has architected enterprise programs that reshape how organizations learn, innovate, and lead. At TxDOT, Benjamin pioneered the enterprise Project Management Development Program, mentoring hundreds of professionals and certifying over 200 Project Management Professionals (PMPs). His curriculum design and leadership of the Innovation Academy have equipped more than 170 innovators, as well as an Elite Innovation Academy of 30 innovators that drives ideas from concept through prototyping to scalable enterprise solutions. His enterprise Knowledge Management Program—lauded nationally and adopted by AASHTO and TRB—transformed collaborative learning into a recognized institutional strength. In 2018, Benjamin served as the charismatic President of the PMI Austin Chapter, guiding a board of 60+ leaders to elevate membership by 400, double offerings, and drive the chapter’s Net Promoter Score from 6.5 to 8.7, with 97% customer satisfaction. His dynamic leadership positioned the chapter as a model of excellence, earning global recognition. As a member of the Board of Trustees at Juliana King University (Houston), Benjamin helped engineer a 300% increase in doctoral program enrollment and was later honored with an Honorary Doctorate in Organizational Leadership. His influence extends globally through his teaching, mentoring, and thought leadership, as well as his acclaimed books, The Knowledge Café and Knowledge Ethics. A PMP®-certified professional with an MBA in Global Business and a Doctor of Strategic Leadership (DSL, 2027 in progress), Benjamin combines academic depth with pragmatic execution. His intellectual energy, servant-leadership ethos, and gift for mobilizing people and ideas make him a trusted architect of transformation in government, nonprofits, academia, and industry. He lives in Austin with his wife, Dr. Precious, and their two teenage children, Ben and Amara
Meeting Leader: Larry Staley
Online Registration
PMI Silicon Valley Members: $5.00
Non-Members: $5.00
Students & Veterans: Free (Please contact Meeting Leader for the discount code)
Cancellation Policy
This event is a professional society meeting, held for the benefit of its members. The Plan Ahead registration fee paid is based on the registrant's ability to commit to attendance, ahead of time. The Plan Ahead registration fee will not be refunded for any reason, other than event cancellation, after normal business hours (5:00 PM, Pacific) on the registration deadline day. The PMI - Silicon Valley Chapter reserves the right to make last-minute changes to program content and speakers, as circumstances dictate.
Event Properties
| Event Date | 02-25-2026 6:00 pm |
| Event End Date | 02-25-2026 8:00 pm |
| Cut off date | 02-24-2026 10:00 pm |
| Individual Price | 5.00 |
| No. of Ways of Working PDUs | 2.0 |
| Location | Virtual Event |