Inside DELTA: 5 Questions with Christine Belledin

Lead Project Manager Christine Belledin joined the Project Management team in 2016 as a professional temp in the project coordinator role. Six years later, she’s now in charge of scheduling meetings, preparing agendas and providing structure around any kind of project effort in her unit.

Belledin has worn a variety of hats throughout her professional journey — from working as an AutoCAD instructor to developing online educational content, there’s little she hasn’t done in the project-management field. After moving to Raleigh in 1997, Belledin completed her MS in Technical Communication at NC State in 2002.

How would you describe your position to someone who’s unfamiliar with DELTA?

“At the very base level, it’s my job to provide structure around any project effort,” Belledin said. “Basic stuff like scheduling meetings, preparing agendas.”

By providing a holistic view of the project to her team, Belledin equips her coworkers with knowledge regarding the constraints, context and conflicts within the project. Even if she doesn’t quite understand the content herself, she keeps tabs on everything that’s happening around the designated project and works hard to stay on schedule and keep the project team informed.

“I look at it as, ‘what can I do to make it easier for the folks that have specific content expertise to do their job?’” Belledin said.

What are your day-to-day responsibilities?

At the end of the day, Belledin’s goal is efficiency. Countless project meetings can mean certain details get lost by the time 5 p.m. rolls around, so she aims to prioritize productivity to maintain order as the lead project manager.

Every day, Belledin is planning ahead — whether for the next meeting, an upcoming project or a new perspective she wants to offer. She consolidates discussion points well ahead of time to maximize efficiency in the workplace.

“We’re planning for the next time that we’re going to meet and saying, ‘okay, you know where we are today, where do we need to be and how can we get there?’” Belledin said.

What has been your favorite experience at DELTA so far?

Although Belledin has enjoyed her time at DELTA since she started as a full-time employee in 2019, there’s one project experience she appreciated in particular.

“One of the … informative, exciting experiences was working on the Panopto,” Belledin said. “Not only did I get to work with pretty much everyone at DELTA, because we had so many team members on that huge project, but I was able to be a part of the team that did the evaluation of the content capture space” to consider the best vendor fit for NC State’s needs.

Many students have been saved by Panopto, NC State’s massive video-management system. According to Belledin, it’s satisfying to see behind the scenes of campus-wide projects such as Panopto and what DELTA can offer to NC State’s community of faculty, staff and students.

What do you enjoy most about your job?

The fact that DELTA employs more than 100 people coming from different disciplines may be intimidating to some, but Belledin enjoys the people she’s interacted with over the last two and a half years.

“There’s no one person that is making it happen — it’s all of these people working together,” Belledin said. “You see the team effort and see yourself be successful, and I don’t know that I’ve had the opportunity to see that in any other jobs I’ve had.”

What’s one thing most people may not know about you?

Not only has Belledin worked a variety of jobs in the project management field, but she’s also traveled far beyond the United States during her professional career.

“Early in my career, I provided onsite software instruction at US Naval bases in Italy, Spain and England,” Belledin said.