Photo: Tammy Vallario smiling, pointing up to her signature on the highest structure within Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge park at Disney World on opening day.
As is common in any career, Tammy Vallario’s jobs have called for her to wear many different hats over the years. However, not everyone has worked at a place where the appropriate hat for the day might just be Mickey Mouse ears. Vallario could have proudly worn the iconic ears during more than two decades of service with the Walt Disney Company, including leadership roles where she created or supervised major park ventures for Walt Disney World Resort, some of which are well known now but were top secret at the time.
The veteran project manager is currently a new University of Virginia student in the School of Continuing and Professional Studies’ (SCPS) project management certificate program, an online graduate curriculum designed for professionals who want to become more effective and efficient team leaders and who may be interested in preparing for the Project Management Institute (PMI®) certification – the gold standard for project managers across industries. Courses cover critical topics such as project risk management, team leadership, scheduling, cost and budget control. Each course aligns with PMI® knowledge areas, including both the Traditional and Agile Project Management approaches.
Born and raised in Roanoke, Vallario’s road to the Magic Kingdom and, ultimately, UVA’s project management certificate began in the fashion industry of all places. “I attended Radford University,” she said. “I had worked in Belk and Leggett when I was growing up, so I ended up majoring in fashion merchandising. I’ll date myself a little bit, but I interned with Liz Claiborne out of New York City when I was in school. I coordinated their runway shows way back when.”
While at Radford, Vallario met her future husband, a financial analyst for Charles Schwab, who hailed from northern Virginia. The couple decided to move to his home area after getting married and graduating. “I stayed in fashion as a buyer for a while,” she recalled. “I did the whole travel, purchasing and fashion show thing for a little bit for Hecht-May Company and Lord & Taylor, if you remember those names.”
However, Vallario was drawn to the “House of Mouse,” showing a remarkable and unwavering perseverance to someday work for Disney by sending her resume to the world-famous company almost every week for a year and a half. As luck or fate would have it, Orlando was the home of a huge base for her husband’s employer, and he suggested that they move there, where she could walk in the door and apply at Disney in person.
“That’s kind of how it happened. I walked in the door, and they were like, ‘Oh, wait. You have lots of leadership experience.’ But they really, really promote within, so I told them to just hire me. I’ll do whatever I need to do.”
Vallario began as an hourly employee, or cast member for those familiar with Disney lingo, but was soon promoted to leadership roles for Disney World Resort’s numerous and varied retail stores. What followed was a fulfilling 24-year career with the company, working at every theme park within Disney World, as well as the outlets. Her opportunities and experiences ranged from meeting and working with celebrities like Michael Jackson, Kobe Bryant and Justin Timberlake to planning and executing intricate, expansive and, sometimes, secretive undertakings where she honed her project management skills. She fondly remembered projects for which she was tasked to lead, some that were the first of their kind at Disney such as creating a cast grocery store. “The cast still use it. We built a store and sold groceries at an affordable price for the cast.”
Another day that Vallario recalled easily was when she was pulled into a room and told, “We’re going to put you, secretly, on the ‘Star Wars’ project.” The “Star Wars” project is now known as “Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge,” a section of Disney World’s Hollywood Studios theme park described as “an out-of-this-world land featuring ‘Star Wars’ attractions, entertainment and shopping.” It is one of the most popular areas within Disney World, drawing millions of visitors each year.
At the time of the project’s inception, Vallario said she had no clue about the famed movie franchise. “I didn’t watch ‘Star Wars’ in high school. I watched, you know, girly stuff like ‘Sixteen Candles.’ And I couldn’t tell my husband or children I was working on ‘Star Wars’ because it was such a secret. We had pretty intense confidentiality.”
Vallario caught on quickly, though, leading her teams to create specifically themed stores within Galaxy’s Edge and in adherence to the vision of legendary “Star Wars” creator George Lucas. “So many different processes were involved because each store had a different special theme. I couldn’t just take Chewbacca and put him in any store. There was actually a book of storylines for each store, so you had to stay within those stories.”
There were even moments during the process when Vallario learned that a certain piece would not arrive in time, so she would have to find someone in the country who could make what she needed, quickly, and send it to her team. All of the problem-solving and detailed processes were worth it when Galaxy’s Edge opened to the public in 2019. Vallario was finally able to share the big secret with her proud and excited family who were in attendance as she and her team were recognized for all their hard work. “We worked on it (the project) for so long. My husband, this serious financial guy, looked like a little kid that had gone backwards 30 years that day."
In 2022, Vallario and her family moved back to Virginia so she could be close to her Roanoke-based parents. She took a regional sales leader position with another well-known and world-renowned company, Hershey, but extensive travel for work made her decide to take some “down time” last year to spend with her sons, ages nine and 12. “Down time” for Vallario means serving as vice-president of events for the Parent Teacher Student Association at her sons’ school, where her project management experience and proclivity for planning and staging big Disney productions manifested in the school dances.
“I did my Disney thing for all the dances with fairies and Queen of Hearts and ‘Alice in Wonderland’ themes. They loved my backdrops, and I really decorated it, you know. I was going to take a little time off this year, but the parents sent me notes that they wanted me to do the dances again, so here I am again doing PTSA. I have to think of some new themes and keep them excited.”
During the past year, Vallario also became interested in supporting the National Recreation and Park Association to potentially expand their retail division. Even with all her professional and personal project management experience, she felt that a credential in the field might help. “I don’t know if I’d been searching ‘project management,’ but I saw an ad on Facebook. It just kind of popped up, and I thought, ‘Why not get a certificate from a great school like UVA?’”
She met with SCPS recruitment coordinator Jeff Martin in early 2024 and decided to apply. By May, Vallario was able to begin her first courses, Introduction to Project Management and Stakeholder Engagement and Change Management. “It’s awesome because in class discussions, we have government, medical and then I pop my ‘Star Wars’ in there. They love my Disney stories. Our discussions are just very diverse. In sharing our experiences, we all have similar issues, concerns or something that’s important to us.”
Vallario expressed that she wishes she would have known some of the skills she is now learning in her classes during earlier points of her career, pointing to the planning piece of project management and how leaders are sometimes given a short amount of time to successfully execute a project. When asked what she would tell current or future project managers considering UVA’s certificate program, Vallario responded, “It’s like a Disney thing, but if you dream it, you can do it. You control your life. You really do, and you own every aspect of it. Believe in yourself, and don’t let doubts overcome you.”