Leadership In The Making

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About six months ago, DDD was looking for a Senior Project Manager, someone who could take responsibility for all of the data-entry and digitization projects running in DDD’s largest office in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

About six months ago, DDD was looking for a Senior Project Manager, someone who could take responsibility for all of the data-entry and digitization projects running in DDD’s largest office in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Four project managers were already working in that office, three of whom had started at DDD as data-entry operators years earlier. Since it is part of DDD’s mission to develop and empower our staff by continuously providing training and new challenges on the job, the senior management decided to give all of the four existing project managers a chance to sit behind the wheel for a few months, before deciding to either hire internally for the open position or look elsewhere. First up in the rotation was Socheat Keo.

Socheat joined DDD in October 2001, when he was 20 years old, as part of the second batch of operators ever hired by DDD. He grew up in Phnom Penh as the youngest of three sisters and two brothers. His mother was his father’s second wife, a practice that’s not so uncommon in Cambodia, so his father never lived with the family and Socheat’s mother struggled to provide for all of them. When Socheat was in high school, he worked as a waiter at night to help pay for the household expenses.

After coming to DDD, Socheat quickly graduated from data entry operator to take on larger professional roles. As a Team Leader, and later, when he helped open DDD’s second office in Battambang, he worked fulltime while studying at the university in the evening. Eventually, working as a project manager back in Phnom Penh, he came to manage some of DDD’s biggest projects, including quality assurance for the digitization of the Royal Dutch Library’s content. When the Royal Dutch Library finally launched the first section of their digital archive, Socheat was the one who organized a celebration with cake and cheers for the operators in Cambodia, who had worked on the project.

I asked Socheat what he learned from working at DDD. “I learned a lot from DDD…. I didn’t have anything before I joined DDD. Computer, English, all kinds of skills — confidence, and management — all that I learned from DDD.” Even though Socheat says he regards DDD as his family, he can imagine a time and a career after DDD: “I would like to work for an NGO, or a company with a social mission, so I can share my experience and gain new experience.”

About a month after Socheat took on the senior project manager position on a trial basis, senior management got in touch with him again. “They said they’d decided not to rotate the position after all, and that I had their full support,” says Socheat. “I’m happy with my new position, and I’m very happy I also have the support of my colleagues. We all come from the same background, and we’re all good.”

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