Joy Gumz is the Director of Project Auditors, LLC, a project management, training, and quality assurance auditing firm. Her current projects include a quality assurance review of a Peoplesoft implementation at a United Nations organization, co-teaching software project management at the University of California, Irvine, and a data validation review for a major wireless telecommunications corporation.

Gumz has over 20 years of experience in technology development and management. Since 2001, she has specialized in advice on quality assurance issues and implementations of enterprise resource planning(ERP) applications. This expertise is grounded by her previous positions of increasing responsibility at major software firms and consulting companies. As a consultant for Peoplesoft, she provided advice to Fortune 1000 and Global 2000 corporations in the US and Switzerland. As an account manager for Plumtree Software, a portal software vendor, she provided real-world implementation advice to Fortune 500 and entrepreneurial firms. She has also served as a director of technology at Squaw Valley Ski Corp., a western US ski resort. Prior to moving west, Gumz worked at Ernst & Young in Chicago.

Gumz holds B.A. in Economics and Mathematics from Ripon College, Wisconsin, and is a Certified Public Accountant. With the increasing complexity of technology projects and the need for project management skills increasing, she is currently studying for her Project Management Institute (PMI) Project Management Professional (PMP) certification.

Gumz has written a number of project management and technical articles published in local and international print and online media.

Gumz is on the Council of Advisors to Institutional Fund Managers and Venture Capitalists, representing $300 billion in managed funds. She is a guest lecturer at the University of California, and a member of the Orange County Project Management Institute. She is fluent in French and German, and is currently studying Italian while on assignment with a United Nations organization in Rome, Italy. She is interested in nontechnical issues such as languages and translations, and has assisted with translations for Web sites and nonprofit organizations. When not doing technical work, she devotes time to educating others about the propagation and culture of edible tropical plants. She is a member of the Orange County Rare Fruit Grower organization and the Orange County Wine Society.