Faces of CNM: LaMonica Whittaker

If you’re trying to find LaMonica Whittaker this summer, you might have to track her down in Vietnam or Japan. She’ll be there on vacation with her family to tour those countries and attend the Summer Olympics.

While international travel might scare some of us, LaMonica and her family are total pros. Her six-year-old daughter has already been to 12 countries and will tick off two more when she travels to Asia this summer.

“It’s really important for me to expose my family to the world,” LaMonica says. “It’s important they understand the world is full of different cultures.”

That commitment to a broad worldview is also something LaMonica cares about here at CNM. She’s one of the campus’s African American leaders and sits on the Equity Council, where she and others have been working to educate students, staff, and faculty about race and equity.

“It’s important to ensure we all take a diverse view,” she says.

For her day job, LaMonica is the Director of the Project Management Office, which provides transparency to projects, structured governance, and resource allocation. Before CNM, LaMonica worked across the country and the world in places including Canada, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland.

Sifting through regulations and being patient in her job have helped LaMonica plan her overseas trips and navigate the Olympics. For most events, you have to enter a lottery and see what happens. After attending multiple Olympics, starting with Atlanta in 1996, she devised a system where she and her family, and friends who she also convinced to attend, would all put in. This summer the group of twelve people she’s traveling with will have tickets to traditional basketball, and LaMonica and her family also plant to attend, 3-on-3 basketball, BMX racing, and beach volleyball.

“Planning is my life, so we’ve figured out how to make it work,” she says.