From Proposal Manager to Power Player: Scaling Careers with Tech & Strategy

**VisibleThread Webinar: Career Paths, Leadership, and AI in Proposal Management** — **Micheál McGrath:** Hello and welcome to today’s VisibleThread webinar. My name is Micheál McGrath — I’m VP of Marketing here at VisibleThread. We have a huge audience today with people joining from all over the world, so good morning or good afternoon, wherever you are. We’re truly appreciative of your time. We have two incredible professionals with us: Marika Bland and Hung A Do, both long-tenured proposal leaders who will share their career journeys, insights on AI and technology, and some hard-won life lessons along the way. Before we dive in: this is a casual session. We have prepared questions, but we especially want to hear from you. There’s a Q&A box and an attendee chat on screen — feel free to use them at any point. We’ll also have some interactive polls throughout, and we’ll save time at the end for questions. Marika, would you like to introduce yourself? — **Marika Bland:** Thank you. I’m Marika Bland, Director of Proposals at KMS Solutions. I’ve been in proposal development for over ten years. I’m an APMP 40 Under 40 awardee, practitioner certified, and a graduate of the Leadership Academy. I hold a few micro-certifications, I’m the current NCA conference co-chair for our local chapter, and I’m Shipley certified. I’ve worn a lot of different hats over the years, and I’m looking forward to sharing what I can today. — **Micheál:** Hung, how are you? — **Hung A Do:** I’m great — excited to be here. I’m Hung A Do, Proposal Operations Director at IBM. I’ve been in federal proposals for about eleven years now, which is a slightly scary number. I’m also an APMP 40 Under 40 awardee, practitioner certified, and a Leadership Academy graduate. I’m on the board with Marika this year as Marketing and Social Media Co-Chair for the APMP NCA chapter. I actually started out as a graphic designer. Over the years I’ve been the writer, the editor, the analyst — you name it. I’ve worn every hat, and it’s exciting to be here today to talk about what that trajectory has looked like. — ## Career Paths in Proposal Management **Micheál:** Marika, tell us about your first role and how you got into proposals. **Marika:** After I graduated from law school, I was part of a program focused on international development. My first role wasn’t proposal-specific — I was a jack of all trades for a small, woman-owned business that contracted with USAID. I handled back-office management, financials, program management, writing, and even some graphic design (which, honestly, no one should have let me do — SmartArt was about the extent of it). One day, an RFP landed on my desk and I was told to respond. That was my first real exposure to proposals. I managed that bid and wrote the response, and from there I shifted into proposal writing. Eventually I came back to proposal management based on some of the leadership attributes I had and my attention to detail and compliance. It was a wonderful introduction — not just to proposals, but to the full business development lifecycle. — **Micheál:** Hung, you mentioned you started as a graphic designer. Tell us about your early career. **Hung:** After I graduated, I had no idea what proposals were. I accepted a job at a small business as their graphic designer — honestly, I probably didn’t know much about the company other than that they offered me a job and I said yes. When I joined, my boss noticed I had a journalism degree. He said, “So you can read and write?” I said yes. He said, “Great” — and handed me my first proposal. Probably two or three of them, actually. It wasn’t until my second or third job that I really thought about what I wanted from my career. By that point I’d been the entire proposal team at multiple companies — designer, editor, DTP, graphics department. My manager sat me down and said, “You have two great paths ahead of you, and real potential in both. It’s time to think about where you want to go.” That was the first time I took it seriously. Something about the chaos of proposals just worked for me — maybe because of my journalism background and being no stranger to brutal deadlines. I genuinely enjoyed it. Every proposal was a crash course in a new agency, a new technology. I learned so much about an industry I’d never really thought about before. And here I am, still in it. — ## Leadership in Proposal Management **Micheál:** Marika, was there a moment that pulled you toward leadership? **Marika:** Yes. I worked at an organization where I first truly understood that proposals are strategic responses — not just administrative tasks. The misconception in this field is that we’re just formatting documents and making things look nice. But at this organization, proposals were valued from the top down — by capture, business development, and executive leadership alike. That was the first place where I felt proposals had a real seat at the table. That shift also sparked my desire to mentor. When I started, I had an RFP thrown at me and was told to respond — and I know Hung can relate to that. But I didn’t want that to be everyone’s introduction to this field. I wanted people to see proposals as a genuine career option, not just something that happened to them. I was fortunate that a position opened up to mentor proposal developers and coordinators. Leading that team and helping people navigate their career options — whether toward writing or management — was the first time I took a real leadership step, not just managing bids, but managing people and their growth. — **Micheál:** Hung, do you have a similar story? **Hung:** Everything Marika said resonates deeply — especially about proposals not always being seen as strategic partners. What I’ll add is this: the proposals I still remember aren’t the ones that went smoothly. They’re the ones that were really hard. I remember being in an office with a small team, in the trenches together — sometimes just me and my capture manager, sometimes me and my boss and a few saintly SMEs who stayed because we had to get it done. Watching the best teams I’d worked with stay resilient when things felt like they were falling apart, and then walking out the door exhausted but proud of what we’d built together — that’s when I started thinking about process. How do I make this easier? How do I turn a stressful profession into something my team can feel good about? How do I build an environment where people can do their best work? That was the moment I said, I want to do more. — ## Challenges in Leadership Transition **Micheál:** Was there anything you had to change about yourself when moving into leadership? Did you have to let go of the tactical work? **Marika:** That’s one of the real challenges. As you shift into leadership, you may still need to manage bids — but that often becomes a lower priority. The bigger shift is from managing proposals to managing people. Their careers, their emotions, their development. Those are very different hats. Proposals are so detail-oriented and compliance-focused that switching between the tactical and the strategic requires real mental agility. There were days I had to focus entirely on the team, and other days entirely on the bid. Interestingly, in my current role, I’ve found my way back to some of the things I thought I’d left behind — building a compliance matrix, getting into the details. It’s rekindled a genuine joy for proposals. But the shift is real: you have to put your team first. — **Micheál:** Looking at our audience poll, about seventy percent of attendees are mid-career. Hung, what advice do you have for people in that stage? **Hung:** The piece of advice that comes to mind is something my manager told me when I was in that exact place — still building skills, knowing I wanted more, but not sure what. She told me: when you see a problem, don’t just raise it. Come with a solution. That simple shift changed how I thought. It moved me from reacting to thinking strategically. And I noticed that people started asking for my opinion more — “What do you think we should do?” That opened a door for me. More broadly: you don’t have to have it all figured out right now. You can change your mind. Take time to explore, build skills, and give back through your work. But the growth you invest in yourself travels with you, regardless of where your career goes. — **Micheál:** Marika, you recently made a move to a new organization. That can be daunting. How was that process? **Marika:** It was scary. Leaving an organization — especially after you’ve been there a while — is hard. There’s comfort in the familiar, and leaving means giving that up. I had real doubts. I wasn’t sure I was ready. But I had a mentor I could talk it through with, and she encouraged me to go for it. Throughout my career, the moves that scared me most have tended to be the ones that grew me most. I also think about a mentee I’ve been working with who was unhappy but comfortable — she felt stuck but thought staying was safer. That’s never a healthy place to be. I’ve always wanted to grow, and I try to model that for others. This move has been a wonderful decision so far, and it’s been a genuine growth opportunity. — ## Dealing with Change in Large Organizations **Micheál:** Hung, at IBM the scale of change must be constant. Any tips for navigating that internally? **Hung:** I wish I had a magical answer for making change painless. I don’t. But what I do know is that the instinct to jump in and “fix things” — even with the best intentions — can backfire if you skip a crucial step: understanding the people who are already doing the work, and *why* they’re doing it that way. In larger organizations especially, people have been doing things a certain way for a long time. Before you introduce change, you have to earn their trust. That means going to them and saying, “I understand you’re nervous. I get that you don’t trust this yet.” You start with empathy, not solutions. Even the best idea will face resistance if people feel steamrolled. But when you can show people that you’re figuring it out *together*, change becomes manageable instead of daunting. — ## AI in Proposal Management **Micheál:** Let’s talk about AI. Not just efficiency gains, but how you actually manage the pushback — getting a team to adopt new tools and new ways of working. Marika? **Marika:** AI adoption is a real journey for every organization right now, large and small. When I move into a new organization, my first instinct is to pause and assess where they actually are — what already exists, what the real needs are. Because having AI for the sake of AI helps no one. I’ve been on teams where people were genuinely worried AI would cost them their jobs. And I’ve had that conversation directly: this isn’t about working yourself out of a role. It’s about working *with* AI to work smarter. The teams that have figured this out — they haven’t done it overnight. It takes time. And if you’re not starting now, you’re already behind. AI adoption starts with you demonstrating the behaviors you want your team to exhibit, and having honest conversations about what the fears really are. Then showing — not just telling — what the efficiencies look like. — **Hung:** I’ll be upfront: I’m a huge AI skeptic. I use it — and I genuinely appreciate what it does well — but I approach it with healthy skepticism. And honestly, that skepticism makes it easier for me to meet hesitant team members where they are. When someone says “I don’t like it” or “I’m not going to use it,” I don’t push back on the stance. I ask: what specifically makes you uncomfortable? What are you worried about? Because the real fear is usually “AI is going to steal my job.” And the response I give — and I really believe this — is that AI tools won’t steal your job. But people who know how to use them efficiently might. That’s not a threat; it’s the reality. So even if you prefer not to use AI, you should still understand how it works. Know thy enemy. At the end of the day, AI is not smart. It lacks human judgment. AI should own what’s high-volume, pattern-based, and cognitively draining without adding strategic value. Humans own the judgment layer — understanding customer pain points, knowing when to walk away from a deal, reading context, building relationships. Those things are contextual and relational and strategic. AI can’t do that. At least not yet. — **Micheál:** Where do you draw the line on what you’ll let AI do? Marika? **Marika:** I’ll let AI do summarization — if I have a three-hundred-page RFP, I’ll ask it to highlight the key concerns I need to address quickly. I use it for restructuring content, generating a first-pass outline, building a template. High-level, high-volume work. But for compliance matrices, I still do those manually. That’s not just about accuracy — going through that process *is* how I learn the RFP. I don’t want to skip that. The other piece is this: when someone else hands me something that was AI-generated, I have to apply the same skepticism. I know what I put into my own prompts. I don’t know what they put into theirs. That’s where verification matters most. — **Hung:** The dangerous middle ground is when people treat AI output as a finished product. And Marika touched on this — it’s not. An AI output is a draft. Someone who understands the work still needs to review it critically, not looking for confirmation that it’s fine, but actively looking for what’s wrong. I recently had someone walk me through something they’d generated with an AI tool — they were going to present it — and within the first ten seconds I could see it was fundamentally misaligned with what they needed. That’s what happens when you get too comfortable. You stop looking. — *[Poll results shown: most attendees are in a middle stage of AI adoption — using it selectively in parts of their workflow, but not centrally integrated.]* — ## The Harder Side of Leadership **Micheál:** Let’s talk about what nobody warns you about in leadership. Marika? **Marika:** So much of what I wasn’t prepared for was the people side. The time I now spend managing emotions — calming fears, having difficult conversations, navigating interpersonal dynamics — that wasn’t on my radar when I stepped into leadership. I went from managing documents and contracts to managing real people with real feelings, and that’s a very different skill set. Nobody really prepares you for the fact that you might spend half your day comforting someone about a proposal rather than actually working on it. And the higher up you go, the lonelier it gets — there are conversations you simply can’t have with the people on your team. Having someone like Hung, in the same field and in a similar role, who I can call and say “How do you deal with this?” — that’s invaluable. — **Hung:** The loneliness of leadership is real, and we don’t talk about it enough. When you’re in the role, you finally see everything that was invisible to you before — all the decisions being made, all the context your manager was holding that they couldn’t share with you. And now you’re the one holding that context. You have to be the rock for your team. Sometimes that involves a kind of performed calmness — holding yourself together even when things are hard — because your team depends on your stability. That’s exhausting in a way that’s hard to explain until you’ve experienced it. I’m glad I have Marika. Having someone I trust, who understands exactly what I do and why it keeps me up at night, and who I can call when I’ve had a terrible day — that’s not just useful, it’s humanizing. And one more thing: leadership isn’t something you can approach with the compliance mindset. We want one hundred percent accuracy. We want everything correct. Leadership doesn’t work that way. You’re going to make mistakes. What matters is that you own them honestly and keep going. — **Micheál:** What makes a good colleague? Hung, I’ll start with you — and I know you two have a bit of a founding story. **Hung:** *[laughs]* So Marika and I actually started out not liking each other. There’s this outdated belief — and I think it hits women in particular, though it’s not exclusive to us — that there isn’t enough room at the top, that you have to push others down to move up. That dynamic was at play early on in our relationship, though it wasn’t coming from either of us deliberately. There were miscommunications, decisions made above us that we didn’t have visibility into, and from the outside it looked like we were stepping on each other’s turf. Eventually I called her and said, “Look. I don’t know what happened, but something is clearly wrong between us and I don’t like it. What’s going on?” We had a very adult conversation — not a fight, just honest. “Here’s what I was told. What were you told?” And that’s when we figured out where the wires had crossed. From that point, we built real trust. I don’t look at Marika and feel threatened when she achieves something I wanted. We’ve been genuinely happy for each other even when it stings — and it does sometimes sting. But you sit with the feeling, deal with it, and then you show up as a cheerleader. We’ve done that for each other enough times that the trust is deep now. Our career paths and backgrounds are eerily similar — we joke that we can’t both be in the same room because we’re secretly the same person. One of us on this call is a hologram. But that similarity could have made us rivals. Instead it’s made us allies. And having someone who truly understands your work, your pressures, and what keeps you up at night — that’s rare. — **Marika:** Everything Hung said. And I’ll add the specific story she’s referring to. We had both submitted ideas to speak at BPC without telling each other, because why would you tell someone that? Hung got her acceptance email. I checked mine — nothing. Was it a gut punch? Yes, a little. But I immediately thought: I’m going to help her prep. I’ll make sure she has snacks for run-throughs. I want her to be great. And then I checked my spam folder and I’d been accepted too. So we both got to be each other’s cheerleaders. The point is: there is room for multiple high-performing proposal professionals. Building trust with the right colleague — one who wants the same things and who you can be truly honest with — is one of the most valuable things you can do in this career. Be honest. Reflect the behavior you want. And believe that their success doesn’t cost you yours. — ## Leveraging Tools for Proposal Management **Micheál:** Hung, you’ve been using VisibleThread for a while now. What’s been most valuable? **Hung:** I’ve been working with the VisibleThread team since around 2021 or 2022, back when I was at Okta. It’s been great watching the tool grow over time. Two things stand out for me. The first is Doc Compare — and I will always champion it. I haven’t found another tool that lays out changes between documents — amendments, revised solicitations — as clearly and quickly. Before, I was doing all of that manually, going back and forth trying to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. Doc Compare eliminated several steps in that process. I still verify, but I’m no longer the only safeguard, and I freed up significant mental bandwidth for the work that actually needs my full attention. The second, more recent thing I’m excited about is the compliance matrix tooling. The VisibleThread team actually built us a custom macro so that not only were we extracting requirements more efficiently, but the output would auto-populate our template. That’s another step removed from the process, which means people can get to the actual work faster. — **Marika:** I’m very excited about the merging of the Writer and Docs platforms into one. I also love what I saw at the VT7 rollout — having a built-in prompt library right in the tool, rather than a running Word doc of “prompts that do and don’t work” sitting on my desktop, is genuinely useful for a team. And the integration with SAM.gov and the ability to pull RFP documents directly into the platform — that removes what can be a real bottleneck at some organizations. Having those files available within a few hours changes the early stages of a bid cycle. And yes — Doc Compare is not going anywhere and I’m relieved. I didn’t know VisibleThread existed until a few years ago, and the moment I first used Doc Compare I thought: where has this been my whole career? — **Micheál:** One question came in from the audience: what transferable skills does a proposal manager have for moving into other fields, like project management? **Marika:** Communication, clarity, organization. We are herders of cats — everyone has heard that about proposal managers. We manage to a schedule, manage to a deadline, and we do it with precision. Our emails are detailed, specific, deadline-driven. Those skills translate directly into project management. **Hung:** I’d add: working with all different kinds of people. In proposals you almost never have the same team twice. You walk into every bid with new personalities, new dynamics, new people who don’t know you. Over time, you learn how to read people fast, how to adjust your communication style under pressure, how to take someone who’s coming at you sideways and redirect that energy to move the work forward. That’s genuinely hard to teach, and it’s absolutely transferable. — ## Creating Career Paths in Organizations with Limited Opportunities **Micheál:** About forty percent of our audience said their biggest barrier to leadership progression is that their organization doesn’t have a clear path. What advice do you have for them? **Marika:** I’ve been that person. Sometimes there simply isn’t a path — the org is too small, the structure is flat, there’s no opening for another senior proposal manager. If you can find a way to create a path within your organization, try. But don’t let the absence of one stop you. I was at an organization I loved and never planned to leave — but I knew the title and level I wanted wasn’t going to materialize there without something external changing. That’s a hard thing to reckon with. But I made the decision to go somewhere where that growth was possible, and it was the right call. Don’t stay stuck because it’s comfortable. **Hung:** Everything Marika said. Advocate for yourself. Ask for the path, ask for the responsibilities. The worst that can happen is no. And if the answer is consistently no, on a timeline that doesn’t work for you — then you have your answer, and you know what to do next. You have to take care of yourself first. — **Micheál:** “Take care of yourself first” — that’s a perfect note to end on. Marika and Hung, thank you so much. You’ve shared a tremendous amount of wisdom today. If you’re watching or attending, there’s a survey on the right side of your screen. We’d love your feedback, and we’d love to know what topics you’d like us to tackle next. Thank you both, and thank you to everyone who joined us today. — *[End of webinar]*