Millie Panama
Menifee,CA
Summary
Seasoned, self-motivated and results oriented professional offering more than 20 years of experience in the telecom industry. Experienced as a Technical Project/Program within the Telecommunications industry, focused on wireline/wireless projects related to transport, construction, engineering and co-location builds. With 10+ years of proven success through a strong technical and financial background, has a substantial understanding of management, construction, quality and close out procedures for various telecommunication providers. Demonstrates strong leadership skills with a positive attitude and commitment to advance and complete projects as assigned on schedule and within budget. Excels in handling multiple assignments simultaneously and coordinating deliverables with deadline sensitivity in a fast-paced environment. I am passionate about continuous learning and professional growth. During a recent project, I independently taught myself how to design and develop a website using WordPress, including implementing secure payment processing through WooCommerce and Stripe. I also leveraged ChatGPT as a resource to troubleshoot issues and identify plugins that improved site performance and efficiency. I am highly self-motivated, resourceful, and proactive in learning new technologies to deliver effective solutions.
Overview
13
13
years of professional experience
Work History
Website Developer
Tote With Us, Menifee Ca
Menifee, CA
01.2026 - Current
- Responsible for designing and maintaining a full e-commerce and booking platform supporting a moving tote rental business. Built back-end and front-end website architecture using WordPress, WooCommerce and Elementor while implementing automated booking workflows, scheduling and order management systems. Developed, created and tested website function and navigation for usability.
- Designed scalable website architecture supporting staging and production environments.
- Implemented booking workflows, pricing automation and delivery scheduling through WooCommerce.
- Performed front-end customization using HTML, CSS, JavaScript and troubleshooting PHP-based components.
- Configured cloud backup and disaster recovery using AWS and Updraft.
- Manage website security, hosting configuration and system performance optimization.
Principle Engineer
Verizon, Remote
01.2023 - 12.2025
- Led enterprise-wide business transformation initiatives focused on retiring legacy network infrastructure converging wire centers onto advanced fiber and wireless product portfolios across Verizon’s ILEC footprint and accelerating residential and business customer voluntary migrations from legacy networks to advanced fiber and wireless solutions.
- Partnered with Residential and Business product owners, network engineering, optical transport, broadband planning, RAN, access engineering, voice planning, regulatory and sales teams to identify alternate technical solutions to enable forced migration off all legacy network infrastructure while avoiding regulatory hurdles in hard-to-reach areas within the Verizon ILEC footprint.
- Directed complex analytics efforts spanning Residential, Business, and Wholesale transport circuit inventories and wire center datasets to identify network geographies with low margins, escalating maintenance costs, and elevated customer churn, shaping market-level migration strategies.
- Utilized geospatial overlays and network heat maps identifying concentrations of copper-based customers and highlighting “low-hanging fruit” migration opportunities where wireless or fiber alternatives already existed.
- Created and managed a voluntary customer migration roadmap, tracking campaign performance metrics including total customers targeted, response rates, conversion/action rates, and revenue uplift from fiber and wireless adoption.
- Developed detailed capital funding business cases used to secure executive approvals, including:
- Problem statements and network constraints
- Product solution summaries from Fiber and Wireless teams
- Key assumptions (take rate, penetration, margin)
- Revenue and EBITDA impacts
- Three-year financial outlooks and ROI projections
- Partnered closely with Regulatory and Legal workstreams to supply quantitative evidence supporting filings with municipal authorities, showing that continued legacy network operations were financially unsustainable and did not meet customer reliability expectations.
- Provided data-driven use cases supporting next-generation wireline and wireless product launches, beyond fiber-only strategies, expanding solution paths for underserved markets.
- Coordinated cross-enterprise alignment across Network Planning, Engineering, Operations, Product, IT Systems, Regulatory, and Legal teams to validate data integrity prior to executive publication, ensuring a single version of truth across organizations.
- Translated complex financial and operational datasets into C-suite-level PowerPoint and Google Slides presentations supporting strategic decisions, capital allocation, and regulatory engagement.
- Owned end-to-end project delivery from data acquisition and modeling through executive approval, managing schedules, dependencies, and governance across multiple workstreams.
- Key Accomplishments:
- Led NDA-sensitive initiatives with accelerated timelines and frequent VP-level executive reviews, requiring advanced analytical rigor and stakeholder negotiation skills.
- Integrated multiple large-scale data sources via excel and third party vendor Accenture—including legacy network inventory, fiber availability, wireless overlays, maintenance expense profiles, and customer segmentation—to develop actionable insights for executive leadership.
- Partnered with Accenture to create executive-ready reports and dashboards for Vice Presidents across Consumer, Business, Wholesale, Regulatory, Labor, Network Planning, Network Operations, Engineering, Product, and IT/Systems organizations, outlining alternative network evolution scenarios and financial trade-offs.
- Demonstrated through cross-functional data modeling that legacy network operations incurred a negative cost profile in 2023, showing year-over-year margin erosion and supporting a strategic shift in enterprise infrastructure investment, resulting in $1B in annual cost savings.
Project Manager Sr. – OneFiber Market Evaluations
Verizon, Remote
08.2020 - 01.2023
- Successfully led Pacific Northwest Markets through a multi-year financial build strategy which drove multi-billion-dollar CAPEX savings across the OneFiber Program
- Partnered with key stakeholders including Network Engineering, Legal, Finance and Procurement to ensure alignment with strategic business objectives and financial targets.
- Collaborated directly with finance team to design the OneFiber Stage Gate financial model which enabled market teams to create standardized multi-year build plans.
- Conducted comprehensive reviews of existing market build plans to identify cost optimization opportunities, reducing fiber cost per mile and improving speed to market.
- Worked closely with market leads to develop optimized build plans that reduced costs and accelerated deployment timelines.
- Partnered with Procurement to define vendor requirements, evaluate competitive bids, support contract negotiations, and secure resources for remaining fiber deployment.
- Provided strategic leadership and technical strategic direction Network Engineering, Construction, Finance, Procurement and Legal to ensure cost-effective and timely delivery of fiber network.
- Trained market teams on budget development processes to support long-term financial planning and operational sustainability.
- Developed and presented revised three-year market budgets, including revenue impact and ROI projections, to executive leadership (VPs across Network, Engineering, Finance, and Sourcing) for approval.
- Key Accomplishments:
- Served as the lead PM for all Stage Gate Market Financial Evaluations across Verizon’s Pacific Northwest footprint.
- Successfully completed all financial evaluations and created revised build plans on schedule.
- Reduced fiber cost per mile by an average of 35%, resulting in ~$8B in CAPEX savings.
Sr. Engineering Manager (Associate Director)
Verizon, Irvine Ca
Irvine, CA
03.2018 - 08.2020
- Managed OneFiber build across Southern California from inception to completion which included partnering with Procurement to secure engineering and construction resources, permitting, working with supply chain for product/equipment ordering, working closely with vendors and internal network engineers for close out packages, reviewed vendor invoices for payment, met with local municipalities to secure permits, worked with internal right of way teams to secure railroad crossing permits, managing change orders preparing weekly readouts to directors and monthly readouts to VP of Network Engineering. Lead project manager teams and engineering teams throughout all phases of deployment of One Fiber Network in SoCal and ensured integration and commercial success. Ensured that all activities including contracting, product/equipment ordering, zoning, permitting, regulatory, backhaul, construction and close-out packages were coordinated and completed on time within budget and in accordance with the underlying contract.
- Managed all external vendors and coordinated with internal teams as necessary for timely completion and within budget.
- Lead daily internal and external deployment meetings with other managers and team members to review status of each site.
- Provided comprehensive job status reports and resolved any conflicts or issues that arose.
- Ensured that all sites were maintained in the project tracking system, invoiced and closed with complete accuracy.
- Coordinated with construction on Telco, power, fiber, construction scheduling and vendor equipment requirements.
- Managed engineering firms and ensured fiber network designs were developed and executed within the scope of the project and aligned with regulatory requirements.
- Managed scope changes throughout the implementation phase to ensure that changing customer requirements as well as engineering design changes were communicated throughout the entire project and impacts to cost, and schedules were communicated back to the customer as needed.
- Prepared and presented updates to both internal and external teams as well as executives.
- Tracked daily results in Cheetah dashboard, drove data integrity of reports and worked with IT as needed when reporting was incorrect.
- Key Accomplishments:
- Influenced wireless partners to align on program objectives and goals, this resulted in wireless group being able to increase their dependency on OneFiber solution for cell sites instead of outsourcing to more expense 3rd party alternative, resulting in an annual cost savings of $1B.
- Collaborated with internal Network Planning teams and multiple municipal authorities to successfully reroute approximately 175 miles of fiber around a non-compliant jurisdiction. This effort was critical to maintaining connectivity between network hubs serving three cities and preventing delays to the overall completion of the Southern California network ring. Ultimately, identified a more efficient routing solution that reduced total mileage and accelerated deployment timelines, resulting in approximately $3M in savings by avoiding construction and costly street restoration expenses.
Technical Project Manager
Next Gen, Murrieta Ca
Murrieta, CA
06.2017 - 02.2018
- Responsible for dark and outdoor node installation portfolio for Verizon and Sprint, which typically included 200 or more outdoor deployment sites. Core responsibilities included coordinating the various operational teams in a matrixed environment to deliver quality proposals in a timely fashion and as business opportunities are converted to contracted networks, leading an agile team of RF designers, network engineers and construction managers to from permitting to site acquisition through the implementation to close out completion packages.
- Identified key stakeholder’s necessary to develop overall project scope, design, expectations, objectives and exceptions to programs.
- Collaborated with sales and customers to ensure that contract terms match the final design, identify and finalize pre-contract changes to the design, ensured that changes were communicated throughout the entire project and impacts to cost and schedule were communicated back to the customer.
- Assisted construction implementation with material logistics, worked with suppliers to ensure materials were available at construction start.
- Ensured regular project team communications via periodic team meetings and/or status reports.
- Tracked and resolved roadblocks.
- Provided daily updates on site status and milestones in various systems.
- Ensured data integrity within all databases (both internal and customer database).
- Provided regular updates to the customer in accordance with contracted parameters and coordinated with sales and implementation teams.
- Coordinated customer close out packages upon construction completion.
Self-Improvement
Personal Time Off
10.2016 - 06.2017
- Used this time to spend with family
- Studied for PMI PMP and successfully attained PMP Certificate
Sr. Technical Project Manager
Rose International, Murrieta CA
Murrieta, CA
12.2015 - 10.2016
- AT&T(Contractor) National Senior Technical PM Managed projects who supported West Region ETTCs transport delivery to cells site projects for ASG while also serving as technical lead for a project which supported the development and implementation of the UTrack system which was used to help track the status of ASG ETTCs transport projects going from POD to POR. While supporting ETTCs transport delivery projects I coordinated and drove project activities to deliver required functionality on time and within scope and budget.
- Closely managed project resources, tasks, risks and milestones. Made course corrections when necessary, using defined change control procedures.
- Researched, recommended and implemented new tools and methods to improve data integrity to enable better management reporting and data analysis.
- Created process flow/job aids for ETTCs based on subject matter expert (SME) input.
- Executed updates to data files, identified and trouble shot as needed to facilitate quick resolution.
- Managed the implementation of ETTCs/LTE (Long Term Evolution) projects from contract approved to integration/migration.
- Identified and resolved data discrepancies across multiple business applications.
- Created weekly/monthly production curve and cycle time reports to all stakeholders.
- Participated in system requirements and design discussions.
- Performed user acceptance testing (UAT), reported all issues to IT and ensured appropriate resolution.
- Provided ongoing SME support/training for various company applications/databases such as CANOPI, Granite, IWOS, PACE, CSS, NOOF, Cell Site Database, PRIM, LSO, SharePoint, EPADD, ESNAP, UTrack, Mobius and iPlan.
- Key Accomplishments:
- Identified and resolved gaps in the transport milestone management process within the project tracking database (Mobius) which afforded leadership excellent reporting abilities and decreased data integrity issues from 90% to 9% within 3 months of project acquisition.
- Resolved 1 year old work order process issue which impacted more than 800 Transport orders that were stuck in provisioning queue which created delays within project close out and data integrity issues related to work in progress reporting. Issue resolved within 90 days of project acquisition by interfacing with SMEs from various organizations.
Sr. Technical Project Manager
Matrix Resources, Murrieta CA
Murrieta, CA
09.2013 - 11.2015
- AT&T(Contractor) National Senior Technical PM - Managed a project which supported the end-to-end process development for the Transparent Transport Services process of which provides the option to deliver circuits to a local exchange carrier within the same market as the Project Manager. I worked with several internal cross functional teams such as Sales, RF, Construction, Network Planning, Current Planning and Finance.
- Identified key stakeholder's necessary to develop overall project scope, design, executing process, monitoring and controls and closing process.
- Managed work to ensure that the business process outcomes were in sync with the strategic goals of the organization.
- Responsible for the E2E process development of Transparent Transport Services for Distributed Antenna systems (DAS).
- Tracked project deliverables using various tools Provided definition of project scope, goals and deliverables.
- Ensured projects were delivered on time.
- Facilitated and lead cross organizational discussions and meeting.
- Provided project updates to management that include progress, risks, issues and mitigation.
- Key Accomplishments:
- Point of contact for escalations and resolutions for transport delivery issues and out of franchise carrier assignments.
- Delivered small cell transport to two ATT Connected Communities trial sites within first 60 days of project acquisition.
Education
PMI PMP - Current
Project Management Institute
01-2017
MBA - Project Management
Keller Graduate School of Management
01-2010
BS - Telecommunication
DeVry
Pomona, California01-1999
Skills
- Telecommunications Infrastructure Deployment (ISP/OSP)
- Fiber Network & Transport Deployment (IF/OOF)
- Engineering, Furnish & Install (EF&I) Projects
- Co-Location Builds in Central Offices
- Project Lifecycle Management
- Risk & Issue Management
- Project Financial Tracking & Budget Management
- Process Improvement
- Proficient in Office 365 / Smartsheet / Google Docs
- Familiar with 3GIS / WordPress / Elementor / WooCommerce / HTML / JavaScript / CSS
Timeline
Website Developer
Tote With Us, Menifee Ca
01.2026 - Current
Principle Engineer
Verizon, Remote
01.2023 - 12.2025
Project Manager Sr. – OneFiber Market Evaluations
Verizon, Remote
08.2020 - 01.2023
Sr. Engineering Manager (Associate Director)
Verizon, Irvine Ca
03.2018 - 08.2020
Technical Project Manager
Next Gen, Murrieta Ca
06.2017 - 02.2018
Self-Improvement
Personal Time Off
10.2016 - 06.2017
Sr. Technical Project Manager
Rose International, Murrieta CA
12.2015 - 10.2016
Sr. Technical Project Manager
Matrix Resources, Murrieta CA
09.2013 - 11.2015
MBA - Project Management
Keller Graduate School of Management
BS - Telecommunication
DeVry
PMI PMP - Current
Project Management Institute