Inside the Cohort: Lead Forward Manager Program

Authored by Rebecca Twitchell, half full, llc President/Founder

When it comes to building thriving, happy, and engaged workplaces, we need not look much past our manager population to gain a true gauge on our culture and health. That’s because this all important segment is the lifeblood of our organizations. The bridge to our future. And the ones who truly understand the interconnection between individual contributors and executives.

It’s among the many reasons at half full, llc, that we conceived our Lead Forward Manager Program years ago — designed to ensure an organization’s rising stars feel supported, poured into, empowered, and developed. The 10-week program brings together emerging leaders from around the world in a dynamic, immersive cohort experience. Since enrollment is officially open for our next cohort (kicking off in August) we thought it was the perfect time to peek inside the cohort experience and sit down with one of our recent Lead Forward grads so you can really get a sense of what this journey is like!

Application Window is Open Until July 7 -> Nominate Yourself (or a Rising Star!) Here

Allie Wojtanowski is the Product Operations Manager at AVTECH Software, a leading manufacturer and provider of innovative environmental monitoring solutions. The way that Allie showed up during her cohort — with intention, preparedness, care, and vulnerability —  really inspired all of us. Below, Allie and I dive deeper into her Lead Forward experience... 

The AVTECH Team at Their 2025 Forward®

Allie! I’m so excited to sit down and talk to you about your Lead Forward experience. You showed up throughout with such curiosity and vulnerability, and it was so awesome to see how close you got to your fellow cohort peers. To begin this Q&A, do you mind telling our readers a bit about your role and charter... help us see your world a bit more clearly!

Wojtanowski: So excited to be here as well, Rebecca! I work as Product Operations Manager at AVTECH which is a technology company that develops IoT hardware, software, and cloud-based monitoring solutions. I’ve been at the company 11 years and have been able to touch all departments and get my hands into different facets of the business. 

In October of 2025, I was promoted into this role — my first manager position — and one of my primary responsibilities has been building up product operations as a department from the ground up, from defining product operations to creating processes around critical functions to ensuring different teams can work together effectively. I sit at the intersection of multiple departments. I manage a QA team and a tech support team, but I also collaborate very closely with all of our other departments including engineering, manufacturing, fulfillment, marketing and sales. I essentially sit at the intersection of people, process and product. 

When I think about my specific charter, it is really about creating clarity and alignment. I help translate customer needs, business goals and technical realities into actionable plans. What’s more, I am responsible for building out processes to help us all execute consistently. 

The transition to Product Operations Manager and having the opportunity to build up this new department was very exciting but also very overwhelming! It's involved defining responsibilities, structure, and figuring out what everything should look like as I go. Which is why leadership development became really important for me because I wasn't just managing projects anymore. I am now shaping a whole department and that’s one of the many reasons that led me to half full, llc. 

AVTECH Brainstorming

It’s been such an honor to work with AVTECH and your people operations team over the last several months! We had an absolute blast preparing your company Forward® (retreat), and were so excited when you and your colleague joined our January 2026 Lead Forward Program. Before joining the cohort, what specific facets of your leadership path were you most excited to explore or dive deeper into?

Wojtanowski:The people side of leadership. When I think about leading people, the phrase that comes to mind is that “with great power comes great responsibility.” So corny! But leading people is something I take very seriously. 

I wanted to make sure I was using any and all resources that were available to help me do the best job possible. Much of my career growth up to this point has come from being a really good problem solver, getting projects done, driving cross-functional collaboration, and so forth. But my new role will greatly require the people side of leadership to successfully create an environment in which everybody can do their best work. 

Music to our ears! You know that at half full, llc, we believe we are all people before professionals. So being able to key in on the human side of leadership is essential. When you reflect on the program, can you share about a particular activity or exercise that you found most meaningful. 

Wojtanowski: Taking the Gallup CliftonStrengths and Maxwell DISC assessments were incredibly valuable in helping me figure out how to lead with self-awareness. While we did those assessments early on, I kept coming back to them throughout all our discussions and exercises. It was especially interesting to not just learn my own results but to also learn the results of others in my cohort. It was a good reminder that the way I prefer to communicate, process information, and make decisions isn't the same as other people. So I'm trying to be more intentional these days about adapting my communication based on who I'm talking to and what I'm trying to get out of the conversation. 

For example, in my DISC assessment I learned I am a “peacemaker,” or an SC. I now know that when talking to someone who is a D, I need to be more straightforward and to the point. Whereas when I’m talking to someone who is an I, it’s important to listen to their ideas and show appreciation for what they are sharing.

Previously I might have thought that tailoring your communication like that could feel inauthentic. However, I've learned that it's more about being an effective communicator and collaborator. I can still be me and my true authentic self, but I am choosing to be intentional and tailor to be more effective in my conversations.

Love that example! We’re such fans of being able to learn more about our teammates so that we can meet them where they are, while still honoring what we need. Building upon what you shared, when you think of the program overall, how would you say it specifically impacted your manager journey? Is there a specific story that comes to mind of something you enacted as a result of Lead Forward? 

Wojtanowski: One of my biggest takeaways was helping me think beyond managing the day-to-day and instead think more strategically about building up my team. Around the same time I was going through the cohort, I had been promoted and realized we had reached a point where our quality assurance function needed to grow and evolve. We had one QA tester who was doing phenomenal work, but QA was largely being treated as an individual role rather than a dedicated function. It needed its own leadership, processes, and growth path. So I met with our executive leadership team (ELT) and made a really strong case for expanding QA into its own function.  I was really nervous about it! 

But I worked really hard on this presentation, practiced a lot and, in the end, it went really well because our ELT agreed, and I was able to add to our QA team. When we posted for the new QA position, I had someone from my technical support team apply for it. I was able to take my QA tester, who had been in the role for a few years, and promote him to our QA lead, while transitioning someone from tech support over to QA. Now we'll be hiring for a new tech support person. What I am most proud of is that I didn't just build up QA as a function, but I was also able to create growth opportunities for people on the team where they might not have felt like they had those opportunities or anywhere to grow to previously.

Teamwork Makes the Dream Work!

Wow, what an amazing story, Allie, of seeing people’s talents, passions, and skills and finding ways to advance them, while advancing the mission of your new function. These are exactly the types of stories we want participants to be able to share when they come to the end of Lead Forward! As we gear up for open enrollment to our next cohort, how would you describe what the journey is like to someone who is considering applying?

Wojtanowski: Lead Forward helps you become more intentional as a leader. You don’t just learn a collection of management tactics. Instead, you develop the self-awareness to understand how your actions impact others and cultivate the practical tools you can apply immediately. 

For anyone who is about to go through Lead Forward, one piece of advice that I would offer is to not wait until the cohort is over to try to implement your learnings. After every session there are things you can carry with you right back into your business and with your team. Try to implement what you learn in between sessions; that way you can come to the next session with actual feedback about how the implementation went, where you ran into trouble, and things like that.

Finally, I would say the biggest aha moment for me was realizing that leadership doesn't mean having all of the answers. Instead, it means creating the conditions where everyone can work well together and growth can happen. That takeaway was big for me because at the beginning of the program, when I was first promoted, I would stress that I must have the answers to any question that anyone came to me with. And when I didn't have the answer right away, I would get panicky. But Lead Forward, and my fellow cohort participants, helped me realize I'm not supposed to have every single answer for everything. Rather, I'm supposed to be able to talk to my team, get their opinions, ask the right questions, and meet them with curiosity to find solutions together.

Love that! OK, before we let you go, what advice do you have for someone who is about to start Lead Forward so that they truly maximize their experience?  

Wojtanowski: Show up with vulnerability and curiosity. You're going to get really close with the other members in the cohort and, right away, you're going to realize that it's a safe place to share your actual fears, challenges, and struggles. And then you will quickly start to realize that while your fellow cohort participants are incredibly professional, accomplished, and polished, they too have the same struggles as you. As a brand new leader, that was big for me. To realize that other emerging leaders had the same challenges as me.