About Bonnie

Short Bio
This bio is suitable for those with a short attention span, who don't care that much, or who are looking for a way to introduce Bonnie.

I'm a zealous organizer of everything from software demos to gourmet meals with the occasional vacation to test the waters of spontaneity. Ironically, fate, not planning, turned this obsession into a career as a project manager. I earned a Project Management Professional certification (affectionately pronounced "pimp") from the Project Management Institute. As a consultant, I manage projects for clients and win accolades for my ability to herd cats. I have fun, make new friends (and the occasional enemy) on every project, but mainly gets things done.

I also write a ton about project management, personal finance, investing, and technology. I'm an engineer at heart, so I'm fascinated by how things work and how to make things work better. I try to redeem myself by using my sick sense of humor to transform these drool-inducing subjects into entertaining reading. Of course, that's just my opinion--I could be wrong.

I have written almost 20 books including QuickBooks 2011: The Missing Manual, Project 2010: The Missing Manual, Personal Investing: The Missing Manual, and the Visio 2007 Bible. I write a monthly column called "WebWatch" for Better Investing magazine and I'm a regular contributor to www.interest.com. I write a monthly column for the Microsoft Project Users Group, Project Certification Insider, which explains the ins and outs of topics on Microsoft's Project desktop certification exam.

I have a mostly unused Bachelor of Science in Architecture from MIT and an occasionally useful Master's of Science in Structural Engineering from Columbia University. Don't hold this against me. I'm quite nice, actually.

Long Bio

• The Early Years
• The College Years
• The Corporate Years
• On Her Own
  

The Early Years

Bonnie Biafore started life in Bethlehem, PA. Her writing career began in grade school, when she belonged to the Creative Writing Club at Moravian Preparatory School (now Moravian Academy.) She can still recall the club's major project, when environmental awareness was just starting - SAVE: Scott and Amy Value the Earth. Why doesn't she recycle these brain cells? She was also pretty astute in the math department.
Absolutely addicted to horses from early on, she showed jumpers until she learned to drive. Hobbies were numerous: ballet, macramé, batik, art in general. Everything seemed to point to an artistic career and clearly a Type-A lifestyle.

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The College Years

Then she decided to go to MIT. After a bit more than four years, attributable to a complete inability to decide on a major, she graduated from MIT with a Bachelor of Science in Art and Design (one of MIT's Architecture degrees.) She amazed her Architecture professors and fellow students with a seemingly endless list of math and engineering classes. But, computers were another matter. Of course, there were no PCs then. MIT was proud to say that they had an IBM 360 serial number 1. She wasn't much good at programming, or at least wasn't that interested. (More on this later.)

Always prone to generating a lively schedule, she progressed from Social Committee chairman to president of her dorm. At the tender age of, what 18, her campaign slogan was "Hysterectomy now!" Politics were not, nor are, her forte, although she regrets her less than extraordinary performance in dormitory politics.
Graduation past, she discovered the horrible truth. Jobs in architecture were hard to find. This was fortunate, as her 18-month tenure as a waitperson at Ken's Pub Cambridge taught her a lot of very important things about life. Furthermore, the complete lack of benefits at this job certainly prepared her for life as an independent consultant.

Eventually, she sorted out that the problem with Architecture was that there wasn't enough math. (Not entirely true, but she has since figured out that she is occasionally wrong.) So, off to Columbia University for a Master's degree in Structural Engineering. She can still recall her father, a concrete contractor, complaining about those ?/#%$ architects who design those crazy buildings, and the ?/#%$ engineers who design the reinforcing steel so close that you can't pour the concrete. She worked as a structural engineer for several years, and helped design several pre-stressed concrete cable-stay bridges. (A short sidebar: in 2000, she actually saw her first real-life cable-stay bridge, being built in Cambridge, MA.)

I've had enough

The Corporate Years

Her engineering job led her to Computer-Aided Design (CAD), which entertained her for a number of years. Following the Graphic Data System (GDS) software through a number of owners, she worked for McDonnell Douglas, EDS, Graphic Data System, Inc., and finally Convergent Group. Always a renaissance person, she ended up performing many aspects of her projects: technical sales, gathering requirements, designing interfaces and systems, programming(!), writing documentation and training, managing systems, and managing projects. Working with the clients was great. Learning how they did business, and making software do what the client needed was fun. But, corporate politics were not, nor are, her forte. Usually at odds with management, her corporate life was a never-ending struggle to find a good match to her personal work philosophy.

Really, enough already

On Her Own

When Convergent Group killed the GDS software, she took her chance to leave the corporate rat race, and get on the independent consultant track. The work isn't as steady, but it's a lot more fun. As a good friend opined, "Your boss is an asshole, but now you know what to do about it."

Meanwhile, a good friend passed on a tip about a book about online personal finance. Have we mentioned her longstanding obsession with tidbits on finance or her volunteer work teaching investment classes for the National Association of Investors Corporation (NAIC)? Well, she started to learn about the NAIC investing approach back in 1990, but didn't get too far. When she moved to Denver in 1994, she volunteered for the Denver Chapter of NAIC, thinking she would learn a lot more by teaching. She did. She not only teaches several of the Denver Chapter's courses, but has rewritten several.

OK, so back to the book. Her portfolio of presentations and classes on investing were enough to win her the opportunity to write The Complete Idiot's Guide to Online Personal Finance (MacMillan 2000). Although out of print today, it gets rave reviews from everyone who has read it. (At least that's what they tell her.) The book caught the attention of folks at NAIC, who asked her to write a monthly column in Better Investing, called Web Watch, where she discusses how to use the Web and software to invest. From the column and the popularity of her NAIC teaching materials, NAIC asked her to write the NAIC Stock Study Handbook. It's funny, easy to understand, thorough, and has won a couple of major awards.

With almost 10 years of professional writing on her resume, the books keep rolling out, and she's expanding into articles, columns, training, and creating templates. For information on Bonnie's ever-increasing catalog of published tomes, click here.

She still struggles with her current boss (that's Bonnie,) who continues to schedule project management gigs in the midst of this out-of-control writing career.

In her free time she enjoys the good life in Colorado: watching the weather and wildfires out her office window, hiking around the mountains, wondering whether the bad driving habits are due to Californian imports or simple oxygen deprivation.

If you are still in dire need of more information about Bonnie (you poor desperate fool,) try More, You Say?