About Us

Brittany and Lizzie, co-owners and co-founders of Research and Project Management (RPM), LLC have been building this dream since the Fall of 2009 when they first met in a University of Delaware (UD) Developmental Psychology research lab. At the time both were just turning 21 years old and looking to gain hands-on experience for their Psychology degrees. In that same lab they both grew to become independent thinkers, leaders, and organizers where they worked in leadership positions for several years.

Their separate and shared experiences have included implementing federally-funded projects from design phase through the ethics approvals, data collection, and closeout. They have led project progress and milestone schedules, overseen multi-million dollar budgets, and improved employee retention and workplace climate within their respective work units. They have hired, trained and supervised diverse teams of personnel, designed data collection systems, and monitored stakeholder engagement. They have overseen accreditation processes and designed remote courses. Finally, and most importantly, they have created and maintained relationships at many levels: with principal investigators, administrative support staff, team members, and community leaders, and leveraged those relationships for project success.

Throughout their educational and career experiences, Brittany and Lizzie remained focused on prioritizing social impact in their work. Over the course of the last 13 years, they have stayed dedicated to doing their best to learn any function or role to support their project missions and leadership, while simultaneously documenting and sharing that knowledge. Their biggest lesson learned while working at the University of Delaware and Delaware State University (DSU) is that Universities, especially academic research labs, have a true lack of affordable business support services as well as a lack of in-house support for business needs.

Traditional business consultants and consulting firms could theoretically support academic research. In the past these solutions were too expensive for research labs to hire because of a high direct cost of services as well as providing travel accommodations (e.g., mileage, airfare, hotel, and meals). However, since the COVID pandemic, the proliferation of remote work in academia and elsewhere makes consulting a more affordable option. RPM has leveraged remote work opportunities by providing consulting services in a virtual format and at an affordable rate for academic research, saving cost-conscious research clients on direct costs and overhead.

Brittany and Lizzie officially launched their own academia-focused business consulting solution in February 2022: Research and Project Management, LLC. RPM has since received recognition and support from the Gadfly Project, providing website, branding, and software support (August 2022) and the University of Delaware's Horn Entrepreneurship 17&43 Awards, recognizing Blue Hen-founded businesses for their revenue, growth, innovation and social impact (September 2022, https://horn.udel.edu/2022-blue-hen-1743-award-winners).