Dragan Z Milosevic

Dragan Milosevic, Ph.D., PMP, passed away peacefully on April 27, 2019, in the arms of his beloved wife, Dragana, after a heroic sixteen-year battle with Multiple System Atrophy (MSA). Dragan was a loving husband, adoring father, proud father-in-law, beloved brother and uncle, caring friend, honored colleague, inspirational professor, and award-winning author. He always put others above himself.

Dragan was born to Milja and Zivota Milosevic in 1950 in Krusevac, Serbia. He graduated from the University of Belgrade, Chemical Engineering School, completed his MBA at Belgrade School of Economics, and earned his Ph.D. in Project Management from the University of Belgrade. In high school and college Dragan was an all-star forward on his basketball teams and he later went on to coach men’s and women’s basketball teams.

Dragan married the love of his life, Dragana, in 1978 at Mt. Jastrebac and the two welcomed their daughter, Jovana, two years later in 1980. The family’s love for skiing took them to many remarkable mountain destinations, while their love for the Mediterranean Sea oftentimes led them to such places as Greece and the Adriatic coast.

During the 1980s, Dragan’s career took his family from Europe to the Middle East, and eventually to Corvallis, Oregon, where Dragan was awarded a prestigious Fulbright fellowship. In 1991, with the help of the Busch family, the Milosevics left Yugoslavia to pursue the American Dream. Once in Portland, Dragan joined the Pinnell Busch Consulting team and started conducting seminars for the Project Management Institute. Dragan became a pillar in the Project Management community, locally and internationally, both in academia and the corporate world.

In 1994, Dragan joined the Engineering and Technology Management faculty at Portland State University, where in addition to teaching courses, he helped to grow the Portland International Conference on the Management of Engineering and Technology. In 1996, he co-founded Rapidinnovation Consulting, where he worked with a wide range of companies, including Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Boeing, DaimlerChrysler, among many others.

Dragan authored the Project Management Toolbox, which was selected as the Book of the Year by the Project Management Institute, and later wrote three other books with colleagues from around the world. A thesis paper by his student and protégé, Peerasit Patanakul, received the prestigious Transactions Publications Award from the IEEE Engineering Management Society.

Even though Dragan’s teaching career was cut short by this terrible illness, he left a lasting impact on thousands of his students, on the field of project management, and on the industries in which it is practiced. His warmth and outgoing nature made him friends everywhere he went, and he will be sorely missed by all who had a chance to know him.

His legacy will live on through the students he taught, colleagues he touched, friends he cherished, and the family he loved. In lieu of flowers, his family asks that contributions be made to support Parkinson’s research by visiting: http://bit.ly/TeamDragan.

A Celebration of Life Memorial

will be held at

1:00 p.m. on Saturday, May 4, 2019

at Skyline Memorial Funeral Home

in Portland, Oregon