2023 Top Consultants: James Taylor

James was born into a multicultural family and raised in small town West Virginia and was affected by Treacher-Collins syndrome, requiring a hearing aid since an early age.

Despite having his own growing family of five, he made the daunting decision to restart his life's work, take difficult courses and become a newbie in IT. He went back to school and double interned as both a Project Manager and Software Developer and earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Information Systems.

His professors recognized his ability to formulate code efficiently, like "artwork," and he was eager to learn more in every class, every year. His coursework led to successful part-time internships. Upon graduating with honors, he accepted a software developer role at Centric Consulting. His learning journey continued at Centric where he self-initiated RPA training and began to develop RPA bots. In four years at Centric, I had developed the RPA expertise to lead complex client engagements and was honored to coach and mentor new developers. James believes it's never too late to aspire to do something new and extraordinary in your life.

What has motivated you to excel over the course of your career?

My greatest motivation is client satisfaction. Growing up in a hardworking blue-collar family, I was the first person to graduate from college. My family instilled a strong work ethic and I bring those values and beliefs into every aspect of my life, including creating unmatched client experiences. When I am in between clients, I am learning new RPA techniques to provide new capabilities to my next client. If a project is slow to ramp up, I seek other ways to add value to that client. If a client has selected Centric to solve their pain points, then it is my personal challenge to deliver on that promise. My biggest motivator is being recognized by my clients for being self-motivated and consciously diligent in providing effective and economical solutions to solve their challenges.

What has been the biggest factor in your success so far?

My success is largely attributed to my interpersonal communication skills. I take pride in cultivating a team mindset to achieve project goals and I greatly value everyone's input. When onboarding with a new client, I get to know all of the team members and specifically take an interest in learning their strengths and opportunities. This is so I can proactively support, educate and mentor individuals as needed. While each person brings different skills and levels of experience, I value each of their contributions. This partnership has improved collaboration and productivity to complete projects smoothly and efficiently. Gaining the client's trust and respect enriches the overall engagement experience and has led me to form strong and positive relationships with my teammates.

What do you enjoy most about your career in the consulting industry?

The endless opportunities to grow and meet diverse people bring me the most joy. IT consulting is an intellectually challenging and cutting-edge career. I am never bored with my work. As a lifelong learner and inquisitive consultant, I've been fortunate to learn and help improve processes across many industries and functions: supply-chain logistics, medical records, hospital billing, facilities billing, insurance claims, Covid test processing, chemical curation and even windshield replacement. Beyond the joy of just doing my work, I've been equally fortunate to work with many brilliant and creative people throughout my career. My client relationships have developed into friendships that I cherish every day. While it's bittersweet to move to a new client, I enjoy building new and strong relationships by combining my technical expertise with my love for problem-solving to create the best solution for my client's specific needs. I also find great pleasure in collaborating with and building teams from all over the globe. I have never felt more fulfilled with my career than I do now.

What is your proudest achievement to date?

I started at Centric immediately after graduation and have been making a difference as a consultant ever since. It was early in my career with Centric that I was introduced to UiPath RPA. At the time, RPA was fairly new to the consulting business. I was one of the first to really embrace its potential for our clients.

In my first client engagement, I worked on utilizing RPA to increase tracking, organization and facilities billing for a large health care organization. When Covid hit the client became quickly overwhelmed, as did health care organizations worldwide. Due to Covid testing demands, thousands of people's health and personal information had to be entered to generate lab specimen container labels and patient health codes. Then doctors and nurses would have to manually look up a patient's specimen number to see if a result had been delivered back to the hospital. That meant patients and doctors were waiting from 12 to 15 days for backlogged results. The client reached out to me to help. I developed two bots that basically "talked" between non-integrated and antiquated systems. These bots shortened the communication of test results dramatically, potentially saving lives. It was during this crisis that I realized how important my consulting career is to me, my clients, their patients and even the nation.

What's the best advice you've ever been given?

The best advice I've been given is to "be present." This can mean many different things: live life to the fullest, don't get caught up in the riptide of life, appreciate today for what it is, live in the now. I've often found it difficult to heed this advice as I tend to work around the clock or respond to emails after hours because I don't like to keep my colleagues or clients waiting. It finally resonated with me after a Centric leadership speech on the importance of work-life balance. I can still "be present" even if my email responses are sent first thing the next day. My wife was in attendance during this speech and the message brought her to tears. Before joining Centric, she felt my work took me away from my family. Now it provides opportunities to be present in all aspects of my life. While I have always given 100% to my clients, Centric also allows me to give 100% to my family. I can be completely present in each activity, a perfect balance.

What does this recognition mean to you?

I am humbled to be nominated for this award. Anyone who knows me knows how significant it is for me to say, "I have no words to express how flattering this nomination is." My happiness comes from knowing I can ease or eliminate someone's burden. Making others smile or laugh is my "superpower." My career and use of experience and knowledge to help clients are part of how I identify myself. To have this validation of my consulting work means that my clients and colleagues see and appreciate me. I feel incredibly honored to know I have made an impression on my colleagues and that they wanted to nominate me for this recognition.