What I Wish I Knew: Before Working Across Silos

What I Wish I Knew Before Working Across Silos
Monday, November 24, 2025
8-9 PM ET / 5-6 PM PT

We’ll be talking with John O’Duinn, who just returned to the private sector after his latest foray in federal service as Senior Advisor to the Human Capital Officer at the Internal Revenue Service and Senior Advisor at the General Services Administration. John's first federal role was in the U.S. Digital Service as part of the Obama White House. While in Silicon Valley, John worked at nonprofits like CodeForAmerica and Mozilla, as well as a range of tech multinationals and startups. John is a strategist, advisor, author, mentor, and technologist who enjoys combining strategic, technical, and operational expertise to solve complex systems problems that matter.

In addition to his technical work, John has worked in distributed organizations of one form or another for 33 years, led distributed teams for 18 years, run workshops, and mentored distributed teams for 12 years. John's book, Distributed Teams: The Art and Practice of Working Together While Physically Apart, covers the essential practical mechanics of how to work in and run distributed organizations, as well as the broader benefits of distributed organizations, including diversity, environmental, urban planning, and community renewal. As part of this work, John helped the State of Vermont write its 2018 Remote Worker law, the State of California write its 2021 Telework Policy, and other jurisdictions with a range of economic development and digital modernization projects.

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What I Wish I Knew is PMAA’s webinar series, where we invite experts to share significant changes in their careers and reflect on what would have been helpful to know before the change started. Do you know anyone you think would be a good interviewee? Please send your suggestions to PMF.alums@gmail.com.