Allison Pollard
Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Middlegame Partners
Management Consulting
Education: Southern Methodist University
Dallas, TX, USA
Biography
Allison Pollard helps software and IT managers build stronger relationships—both across teams and with their bosses. With over a decade of consulting experience at Fortune 500 companies in energy, retail, finance, real estate, and transportation, she takes a down-to-earth, practical approach to leadership development grounded in real-world challenges.
Allison is known as a sought-after speaker who offers straightforward tools and fresh perspectives that help IT and software people navigate tough conversations, organizational dynamics, and change. She’s also a co-founder of Middlegame Partners, where she provides executive coaching, training, and workshops for engineering leaders ready to make a bigger impact.
Passion
I'm a firm believer in the power of a good afternoon latte, and I love exploring new coffee shops when I'm traveling for speaking engagements—especially ones that bake their own pastries!
I'm drawn to Broadway musicals for the storytelling, human connections, and touch of whimsy they bring.
I've been proudly wearing glasses since seventh grade—they're as much a part of who I am as my straightforward approach to helping engineering managers navigate workplace challenges. These are the things that keep me grounded and energized for the work I love doing with IT and software leaders.
Best Story
In my talks, I share real situations from software and IT people who were stuck—not because they lacked technical skill, but because they couldn’t get the conversations right with their peers, their teams, or their bosses. Maybe they had a great solution, but struggled to get buy-in. Or they knew something important wasn’t working, but weren’t sure how to bring it up without causing conflict.
These moments are relatable because they’re happening everywhere: managers juggling competing priorities, navigating unclear expectations, and trying to build partnerships that actually move work forward.
The impact? Better alignment, fewer misunderstandings, and decisions that actually get made.
Hiring me means giving your audience practical, no-fluff tools they can use to strengthen the work relationships that drive delivery and business results.
Origin Story
I got to where I am now by noticing something that many software and IT managers face but rarely talk about: the challenge of working across teams and with leadership in ways that actually get results. Early in my consulting work with big companies, I saw managers who were excellent at the technical side but stuck in conversations that didn’t move their projects or careers forward. It wasn’t a lack of skill or effort—it was about how they connected with others, spoke up, and influenced decisions.
That was my “a-ha” moment. I realized there wasn’t enough practical help for these leaders to build the relationships they needed—without jargon or fluff. I wanted to change that.
That’s why I co-founded Middlegame Partners: to give engineering leaders tools and coaching rooted in real-world challenges, so they can navigate tough conversations, build stronger partnerships, and drive impact.
Example talks
It’s Not Enough to Be Right: How Technical Voices Earn Influence
Your brilliant solutions aren’t gaining traction despite your clear explanations and solid reasoning. If you’ve been frustrated when others don’t get on board, you’re not alone. Many technically minded people assume that influence comes from being correct—or from explaining things in just the right way. But in real-world conversations, logic isn’t enough. If your proposal doesn’t connect with what others care about, it often gets ignored or dismissed—and you’re left doing more work for a worse outcome.
In this interactive talk, Allison shares why technically correct proposals often go nowhere and what you can do to change that. You’ll learn how to identify what others actually prioritize, avoid the trap of overexplaining, and use straightforward, practical language that helps your ideas land. Through relatable examples and ready-to-use techniques, Allison shows how to shift your approach so you’re not just right—you’re effective.
Leave with tools you can use right away to make your ideas more compelling—and more likely to move forward.
Getting Real without Getting Fired - Saying Things in a Way People Can Hear
Do you hold back from saying what you really think at work—worried it’ll come across the wrong way or cause trouble? Or do you speak up and find that people get defensive, dismissive, or don’t really listen?
Whether you avoid hard conversations or dive in and get labeled as too blunt, the result is the same: the real issue doesn’t get addressed.
In this session, you'll get a practical way to say what needs saying—so it actually lands. Allison shares tools and examples to help you:
- Get clear on what you’re trying to say
- Stay connected to the person you’re saying it to
- Be curious enough to adjust without backing down
You’ll practice naming something that feels hard to say, in a way someone else can hear it—and do something with it.
Oops, We Inflicted DevOps on our Business—Now What?
It seems that everyone is aflutter with DevOps, the shiny new panacea for all of our software ailments. What technical goodness can DevOps bestow upon us? What riddles does it unlock for us as technologists? How do business goals align in order to wring the true value from DevOps?
Delivering value faster is a desire of many business and IT leaders, and it often looks like a win-lose proposition to achieve it. Metrics and edicts seem to have competing interests, like the car racer being told to "go faster" and "save fuel." Allison shares her experiences with organizations and teams embracing DevOps and how it impacted both IT and business. We'll explore the dynamics of goals and the conflict they can incite through an interactive game to dive into what happens when DevOps initiatives succeed—and when they don't.
Join this workshop to discover what it means to align business and IT goals for creating a successful DevOps culture and learn specific practices that team leads and managers can encourage to navigate the organizational dynamics that make or break these transformations.
Speaking Engagements
Theta Tau Engineering Fraternity National Convention
Fireside Chat with a SMU Theta Tau
Theta Tau Educational Foundation Webinar Series
Agile 2024
Play4Agile North America
Agile 2023
Atlanta Scrum
Path to Agility Conference
Agile Arizona
Agile + DevOps East
CodeMash
I am willing to travel
More than 100 miles
When it comes to payments
I generally get paid for speaking but make exceptions
Topics
Best Story
In my talks, I share real situations from software and IT people who were stuck—not because they lacked technical skill, but because they couldn’t get the conversations right with their peers, their teams, or their bosses. Maybe they had a great solution, but struggled to get buy-in. Or they knew something important wasn’t working, but weren’t sure how to bring it up without causing conflict.
These moments are relatable because they’re happening everywhere: managers juggling competing priorities, navigating unclear expectations, and trying to build partnerships that actually move work forward.
The impact? Better alignment, fewer misunderstandings, and decisions that actually get made.
Hiring me means giving your audience practical, no-fluff tools they can use to strengthen the work relationships that drive delivery and business results.
Origin Story
I got to where I am now by noticing something that many software and IT managers face but rarely talk about: the challenge of working across teams and with leadership in ways that actually get results. Early in my consulting work with big companies, I saw managers who were excellent at the technical side but stuck in conversations that didn’t move their projects or careers forward. It wasn’t a lack of skill or effort—it was about how they connected with others, spoke up, and influenced decisions.
That was my “a-ha” moment. I realized there wasn’t enough practical help for these leaders to build the relationships they needed—without jargon or fluff. I wanted to change that.
That’s why I co-founded Middlegame Partners: to give engineering leaders tools and coaching rooted in real-world challenges, so they can navigate tough conversations, build stronger partnerships, and drive impact.
Example talks
It’s Not Enough to Be Right: How Technical Voices Earn Influence
Your brilliant solutions aren’t gaining traction despite your clear explanations and solid reasoning. If you’ve been frustrated when others don’t get on board, you’re not alone. Many technically minded people assume that influence comes from being correct—or from explaining things in just the right way. But in real-world conversations, logic isn’t enough. If your proposal doesn’t connect with what others care about, it often gets ignored or dismissed—and you’re left doing more work for a worse outcome.
In this interactive talk, Allison shares why technically correct proposals often go nowhere and what you can do to change that. You’ll learn how to identify what others actually prioritize, avoid the trap of overexplaining, and use straightforward, practical language that helps your ideas land. Through relatable examples and ready-to-use techniques, Allison shows how to shift your approach so you’re not just right—you’re effective.
Leave with tools you can use right away to make your ideas more compelling—and more likely to move forward.
Getting Real without Getting Fired - Saying Things in a Way People Can Hear
Do you hold back from saying what you really think at work—worried it’ll come across the wrong way or cause trouble? Or do you speak up and find that people get defensive, dismissive, or don’t really listen?
Whether you avoid hard conversations or dive in and get labeled as too blunt, the result is the same: the real issue doesn’t get addressed.
In this session, you'll get a practical way to say what needs saying—so it actually lands. Allison shares tools and examples to help you:
- Get clear on what you’re trying to say
- Stay connected to the person you’re saying it to
- Be curious enough to adjust without backing down
You’ll practice naming something that feels hard to say, in a way someone else can hear it—and do something with it.
Oops, We Inflicted DevOps on our Business—Now What?
It seems that everyone is aflutter with DevOps, the shiny new panacea for all of our software ailments. What technical goodness can DevOps bestow upon us? What riddles does it unlock for us as technologists? How do business goals align in order to wring the true value from DevOps?
Delivering value faster is a desire of many business and IT leaders, and it often looks like a win-lose proposition to achieve it. Metrics and edicts seem to have competing interests, like the car racer being told to "go faster" and "save fuel." Allison shares her experiences with organizations and teams embracing DevOps and how it impacted both IT and business. We'll explore the dynamics of goals and the conflict they can incite through an interactive game to dive into what happens when DevOps initiatives succeed—and when they don't.
Join this workshop to discover what it means to align business and IT goals for creating a successful DevOps culture and learn specific practices that team leads and managers can encourage to navigate the organizational dynamics that make or break these transformations.