In the Crisis Talks season of podcasts, Project journal editor Emma De Vita asks project professionals to share their stories of managing, adapting and pivoting their projects through lockdown and now as restrictions are eased.

In this episode we meet Joanna Rowland, director of HMRC’s COVID-19 Response Unit, responsible for the department’s strategic approach to the pandemic. Joanna is the senior responsible officer in charge of delivering the chancellor’s flagship economic interventions, the Job Retention and Self Employment Income Support schemes, as well as the new Eat Out to Help Out and Job Retention Bonus schemes. Joanna is also the head of the project delivery profession for HMRC and a Fellow of APM.

She has been at the heart of the government’s response to the pandemic, so it was a privilege to get some time with her and ask her what it’s been like to be in the thick of it. Read more from Joanna in the upcoming autumn 2020 edition of the Project journal.