Alright, we’ll start with some introductions this morning and I’ll just start at this end of the table and go down. Ron Baze, who is our General Counsel, Ron, why don’t you introduce yourself and tell us how you got here and a little bit about your background.

RON BAZE: I knew I sat at the wrong end of the table. I get to go first. (Laughter).

My name is Ron Baze. I am basically your attorney, one of your attorneys. I work with a group of about thirty -five folks here at DHS and the agencies own law firm.

I, from a background perspective, I kind of consider myself a especially when compared with the folks at this table I’m a bit of a professional gypsy, I guess. I started out my life and career in television in journalism. I got my degree from OU in broadcast journalism, I was one of those talking heads on television. I was a reporter, I was a producer, I was an assistant news director but after a while I came to the realization that if you’re successful on the TV news you work the evening newscast and I had a one year old son that when he started going to school I wouldn’t see him anymore. So, I knew that it was the time for a career change.

Circumstances brought me to law. I graduated law school and again I just sort of hopped here and there. I started out my career as a briefing attorney with Texas Board of Criminal Appeals, which meant that I dealt with a lot of capital cases, a lot of death penalty cases so that wears on you a little bit, it’s pretty gritty. So when my two and a half year term was up I was glad to move on.

By that time my wife and I realized that she had family up here in Oklahoma City so we moved up here and I started working for a home health agency as their general counsel and that was really, I had some minor leadership experience in the newsroom being a producer and then assistant news director but home health agencies is where I really got my first taste of “being in charge”. Leading about 95 folks with the home health agency I became their administrator and I started doing more administrative work than general counsel work so after about six or seven years I moved on to private practice, for private practice I focused on employment law and I was picked up by the Attorney General’s office to work in their employment law litigation section and I worked there for really only a year and a half. I was surprised and this goes into some of the questions that we’ll be talking about but I was sitting there minding my own business handling my cases as I wanted to and I was in my own world, happy with things, plotting along as they were but I remember distinctly I was sitting in the middle of a deposition up at the J & Davis Gun Museum in Claremore and the first Assistant Attorney General called me up and said I’d like you to apply to be general counsel over at the Department of Human Services and I tell everyone that’s similar to getting a request from the Godfather. You really can’t refuse, (laughter) a request like that, so, I did and I interviewed with the director and several of the folks and for some reason, maybe it’s because I lived in Tennessee and Director Lake opted to give me the job so I’ve been here at the DHS for close to five years. But, I was first contracted with the AG’s office, then last year the AG decided to go in a different direction. He gave me a choice, he said that you can stay with the AG’s office or you can stay with DHS and it’s pretty apparent the choice that I made, because I truly appreciate the work that’s done here and it really gives me a feeling that a difference is being made and if I can contribute to that difference, all the better.

That’s pretty much my story,

DIRECTOR LAKE: and you're sticking to it (laughter). I’m Ed Lake your Director, I’ve been in one DHS or another for a long, long time and one thing has always been true about that experience, you give food away and you draw a crowd at DHS (laughter).

I used to think in Tennessee that we could, if we went on county visit trips that we could eat our way across the state because everybody had to have a covered dish meal when you showed up. I started out in Tennessee DHS in decades ago, (laughter) as a child welfare worker at the time. Went on to supervise the Food Stamp Office and became a county director after unfortunately, a nationally publicized child abuse death. That has a familiar ring to it.

I went on to be a regional director. I was the program director in our central office. I was an executive assistant to the Commissioner who is the head of the department. I was an Assistant Commissioner, I was a Deputy Commissioner and now I’m Director of this agency. So, I pretty much have served in all level of the agencies with varying experience and I think as we talk more about leadership and opportunities that that’s helped me in good stead what when you have different experiences and you moved around and taken advantage of opportunities that it gives you breadth of knowledge and experience about the organization that you don’t get otherwise and that really helps you as you go on up the ranks.

I want to say something about Ron’s experience. Sheree and I have a running joke around what I call the Tennessee connections. Since I’ve been here I’ve had the strangest experiences of not just running into people from Tennessee, that’s possible, I’m talking about running into people that lived up the street from my parents that lived in the same town that I did outside Nashville, who lived down the road from where my daughter lives in Hendersonville, Tennessee. So, the other Tennessee connection is Ron. He worked in a dinky TV station, a third rated TV station in Kingsport, Tennessee. Kingsport, Tennessee is about forty or fifty thousand people up in the Northeast corner of Tennessee. So, you know, again, what are the likelihood of running into people that have been in the same small world experiences? Anyway that’s my background.

I came here, I had retired at Tennessee DHS but in my mind I hadn’t retired, It was time to move on from there. But I didn’t feel like I was done for, that I was really in retirement. I knew I wanted to do something else so I had a former colleague and really good friend who has actually done some work here in Oklahoma, a trauma informed Child Welfare Issues who kept bugging me about different things he had come up with, none of which I was interested in and he called me about this position and I said, come on Charles, they’re not going to hire some bumpkin from Tennessee that was Deputy Commission for something like this, you know how that goes, it’s a political appointment, you’re hired from within, blah, blah, blah. He kept bugging me and one day I was coming home, I was working on my wife’s house we were trying to sell it after we got married and I got a call on the interstate and it was him asking me if I had applied for this job, and I said, no, you know, I don’t think that makes any sense to go through that and I said plus I think the deadline has passed for applying for it. He said, well let me check, he calls me back about ten minutes later and I’m still on the interstate and he said, no the deadline is today and if you’ll get it in by the morning when the commission meets they’ll accept it. I said, okay, so whatever, I’m just doing it to appease him (laughter) my wife and I are up until 2 :00 in the morning with me ginning up a resume that I hadn’t had to do for 50 years you know ,and filing out the application and I submitted it and just, I’ll be honest with you, in doing that resume for not having to do one was a real eye opening experience for me because I didn’t want to just list what I had done. That’s lame if you’ve been in the same organization a long time. Nobody cares about every position you’ve been in and so I was trying to think about how to do a more functional approach and in doing that I had to think back about my career and what marked my career. What would I hang my hat on, and it just jumped out at me all of a sudden that what my career was marked by was getting into jobs that I enjoyed that were suffering from problems, areas that were either in crisis or had severe issues facing those areas and so I would challenge myself to move towards that light and then after you get to where it’s sort of a maintenance thing I found myself looking around for another light and so I would move and seek out other challenges other crisis, so that was what marked most of my career was stepping up and saying I would like to tackle that challenge, I would like to see if I can make a difference and I think everybody up here, if you were honest, the reason we’re doing this is not necessarily to help people, that’s an indirect benefit, it’s to make a difference and so that’s why I chose to pursue this. I thought this is the ultimate challenge and it’s sort of the pinnacle of my career or could be the end of my career, but the unique challenge I think in this agency and Oklahoma and in this position, you’re never going to get to the point where it’s maintenance or boredom and sometimes in my career I’ve been in positions, okay, we’ve got it fixed, now what do I do? This is getting to be boring, the maintenance part is boring, it’s the challenge that I’m seeking. It’s like an adrenaline junky, I guess is what it is. Which doesn’t do much for my blood pressure but (laughter) but it keeps me motivated.

Long story, that’s how I got here.

LEEANNE BRUCE-BOONE: Good morning, I’m LeeAnne Bruce-Boone. I’m the Chief of Staff and I have the longest name of anyone on the panel (laughter) because I have four names. But probably most of you know I got here because I have a connection with the Director from working in Tennessee, working with the Department of Human Services and I’m going to be careful about how many years I attribute to working with DHS because people start figuring out how old I am, but it’s getting close to twenty altogether, more like around seventeen.

But I’ll tell you my background is legal, I’m an attorney and so he is surrounded by attorneys, I like that (laughter), but going to law school I really thought that I wanted to do criminal work and I felt really just impressed upon the excitement of that work, the need for people in that area and it just drew my attention. I did clerk for a judge right out of law school for a couple of years and really enjoyed it. I liked to write and I love to read. I love to do research but I quickly figured out that if I was ever going to be able to pay off my student loans that was not going to be a good job for me. So I looked for a job, you usually only clerk for a couple of years, some people do that for a lifetime but most people just do that a couple of years and then move on into their career. I went to a law firm and I just didn’t enjoy it, I didn’t feel like I was getting to be with people, solve problems, and do things that I felt like I was more, my skillset was made for. I needed to look for a job, my husband needed, he was moving and so I was looking for a job and my name got passed along through my job search to the Department of Human Services. They were looking for a Deputy General Counsel. I didn’t know anything about working with the Department of Human Services but I was definitely interested in finding out more about it and I went in I believe on a Saturday for an interview that lasted about three hours and if you knew this person you would understand why it lasted that about three hours, and he was wonderful so I got hired basically and just fell in love immediately. I loved the work that we did, I loved the people that we served, the people worked with it was just a fascinating job and fortunately one of our questions later on talks about mentors but the boss that I worked with, his name was Bill Russell, and he was a great mentor. He took me everywhere. He introduced me to everyone and he would give me a little line to try new things but he was also there for questions whenever I needed help. So I got to know all areas of the department and do a lot of different things.

I eventually was asked to move on and work in an administrative leadership role over our appeals area and that was interesting work as well and that is where I first got my chance to try leadership and being a supervisor and I worked with the legislature quite a bit so really a lot of my roles there prepared me for what I do here. I did a lot of employment law work, I did a lot of legislative work and I worked with a lot of areas as the department and here I get to do a lot of those similar things. I work with HR, I work with our legislative team, I work with strategic planning and performance outcomes and all of those things were in my background and really when the director talked to me about this position those were kind of the perfect accoutrement of things that I had done in my past putting them together of things that I enjoy and I just want to tell you coming from a Southern state to Oklahoma that one of the things I really just wondered about in coming here, was, you know, what are the people like and how will I feel bringing my family here and people here are so warm and compassionate and really care. It’s very genuine and I feel like I am surrounded by a team of people here at DHS that genuinely care about what they do, they pride themselves in the work that they are involved in and the people they serve and making sure that we’re serving them well and that’s why I enjoy being here every day.

MARK JONES: Good morning my name is Mark Jones. I’m the last lawyer on the panel, I promise (laughter). We try to keep directors out of jail, that’s our main responsibility (laughter).

I started off as an attorney in 1980, started with legal aid and then went into private practice and became a trial lawyer and did a little bit of work as a law clerk also with the Court of Civil Appeals and was recruited in 1993, by the then Attorney General to handle the litigation involving the closure of the Hissom Memorial Center in Federal Court in Tulsa. At that time the Attorney General told me that it was a case that had already been lost it will be over in two years (laughter). I had it for thirteen of the nineteen years of the case, the last thirteen years of the case and when it was concluded I was offered the Chief of Litigation at the Attorney General’s office but I said no, I wanted to go work for the Department of Human Services because I was just blown away by the quality of the people, the dedication of the people, the services that were provided to people with disabilities and other people in need and so I twelve years ago took the Advocate General job, which I held for six years before I became the Director of Community Living and Support Services, which is aging, developmental disabilities, child support services and adult protective services.

I tell my wife that I worked with DHS for in total in private practice and in the Attorney General’s office for twenty -five years before coming to work with DHS so I guess I had commitment issues (laughter).

So, but I talked with Drew Edmondson the Attorney General and he said, you know, you can go much further, you can make more money staying at the AG’s office but I said, nope, my real calling is with DHS and I never looked back, never doubted it and it has always been appreciative of the support that I’ve had and the top quality people that I’ve worked with in the department.

So, that’s kind of where I came from and that’s how I got here.

JAMI LEDOUX: Good morning, my name is Jami Ledoux. I’m the first non -attorney on the panel (laughter) and I also didn’t get the grey suit memo either, so I stand out. I’m the Director of Child Welfare Services and a short story about how I got here as Director Lake told me I was going to be the Director of Child Welfare Services. His power of persuasion are pretty great so don’t underestimate him. I have to back up a little bit further to actually connect my story as to how I got here because really my background and my upbringing is really what brought me to the field of social work.

So, I was actually raised in Southeastern Oklahoma and my family, my parents were pastors and so in Southeastern Oklahoma the community that I grew up in was basically a school, a few churches, a gas station and a bar, and in those types of communities in Oklahoma and all across the country the churches really are kind of the hub of the community and churches become really informal social workers I think for families in need and so I grew up in an environment where my family, it was just a family of social workers. They didn’t have a career where they went to school and got a social work degree but they were the social workers in the community so I was raised that way.

So, fast forward when I was in college I originally thought I was going to get an English degree and I was going to be a writer and I realized I probably couldn’t really make money at that so to earn a living I actually remember the day where I was sitting in my advisors office, because I was at the point in my college career where she is going to make me pick a major and I don’t know what my major is going to be. I knew I wanted to help people and I knew I wanted to make a difference but I didn’t know how to do that.

I remember sitting in my advisors office and there was a brochure, and this was at the University of Oklahoma, there was a brochure about the school of social work. I picked up the brochure and I started reading it and started reading their values, what the field of social work actually was and it honestly was that moment where I realized my career was going to be in social work. I didn’t realize then that I was going to graduate college and still not make any money but (laughter), but I at least found something I was passionate about.

So I entered the school of social work and when I graduated I still wasn’t sure where I was going to go in the field because, as you know, social work is a pretty broad profession. There are many things that you can do with a social work degree. I however had a practicum instructor who advised me to go work for the Department of Human Services. They’re always hiring, she said, you can get a job today. So go there, work there for a couple of years, get some experience and then you can go get a real job, that’s what she told me (laughter). So she said you’ll make all kinds of connections there because you’ll have an opportunity to touch many different fields through that work at the Department and then you can really figure out what you want to do just by going and doing that for a couple of years.

So, I did that and I was hired on as a child welfare specialist before I even graduated. I think it was a few days before I graduated that’s how desperate we were at that time to just get anybody in the door we could. So, I didn’t even have my degree yet, I came on as a temp. and then once I obtained my degree officially became a caseload carrying permancey planning worker in Oklahoma County and from there I still never intended to stay with the Department. I was just going to work here for a couple of years and then go do something else but what ended up happening is I was deciding I was going to get my Masters’ degree and went back to the school of social work and at that time I had an opportunity to do a practicum and the practicum that I did in the agency was an administrative practicum. So I had an opportunity to work in a leadership role alongside what was a called a country director at the time, they are now district directors and I worked alongside her and I had a view into her world and the way that she was actually able to make an impact, not just on the families that were on one caseload but really on an entire county and so it was at that point in time that I really began to understand what the values of the Department were and what our mission was as an agency and I realized that it was so closely aligned with my own personal value system that I was connected and I was hooked and I knew that this was where I would stay.

So I have had several different jobs in the Department. I’ve been here seventeen years and about three and a half years ago became the Child Welfare Director and the reason I decided to take this specific position is because I’m passionate about making a difference in the lives of families but I am equally as passionate about our workforce because I believe that our workforce is the key. You guys are our greatest resource and I wanted to be in a position where I could invest not just in the families that I could impact on a case load where as a supervisor I wanted to invest in the workforce and I wanted to invest my time and energy in improving the entire system.

So, that’s how I got here.

PATRICK KLEIN: I’m Patrick Klein and in December I will become the new Director of Adult and Family Services. It was interesting hearing Jami talk about going back that far and I guess I will go back that far too.

I was born and raised in North Central Oklahoma in the town of Perry famous for ditch witches and wrestling championships (laughter) is their claims to fame. My mom, my dad was involved in local politics and had a small business there and my mom, she was involved in everything. So she was kind of lick that defacto social worker. She wasn’t trained in that but she kind of raised us in that mind set and as a matter of fact, whenever we would become too self-absorbed she would volunteer us to do different things (laughter), so my kind of first exposure to those that we serve I was probably about thirteen or fourteen years old and the person that normally delivered commodities to different persons in town was sick or something and so she volunteered me. She drove and I would go up and deliver these in the home and it was kind of my first exposure to those we serve. Now, I never told her that that was a positive experience for me. I complained the whole time but in reality, you know, I could point back to that and that was a worthwhile experience. You know, it kept me focused in on thinking about people other than myself and really I think it kind of planted that seed of wanting to make a difference and wanting to help people and so I always have that sense. Although oddly enough I had always planned to go to college and become an attorney (laughter) and I never did make that, I graduated with a broadcast journalism degree and I could have ended up working for Ron at some point. But, my sister was working for DHS at the time and she was APS/Food Stamp Worker, different combination we had back then and over the summer after I had graduated and I was interviewing around for different jobs she kept saying, you know you ought to go down and take the test, you ought to go down and apply for this, you’d be good at this line of work, and my mom was going, you know Janice, said you ought to go take the test and then finally after about the seventh or eighth week of hearing this I finally gave up and went down and took the test and started to work in Garfield Country and started there and became curious and did food stamps and kind of had the gene already of just being curious about learning new things, as someone else had said, so I worked for food stamps for a year or two and thought, oh, I want to go try this AFBC thing, I want to find out about it.

So I transferred to Noble County and worked there with AFBC and while I was really more comprehensive everything because it is such a small office at the time and then at one point I said let’s go to Tulsa and I’ll go work in a big office and see what’s that like and some points I wanted to go work in Child Welfare, so I went and worked in Child Welfare in Pawnee County and at some point along the career during a job interview to learn something else new and try something else different I started saying well, I’ve worked in every county between Enid and Tulsa and I had somebody on the interview team that told me, you know, I’m looking at your resume here, you worked at every office twice, and you said you really should emphasize that because if you just worked there once I’m not so sure I want you and if they’ve taken you back, you must have been pretty good (laughter).

So, that was kind of where it came to and I’ve been fortunate along my career to have people that pushed me to develop and to grow and try new things starting with my first supervisor I ever had, Marie Olston in Garfield. I really, like the others said, I never planned to stay here that long you know when I first came onboard, it was like okay, I’ll do this for a couple of years and this will be interesting and then I’ll go try something else and that first supervisor she was like, no, no, you’ll be good here. You need to think about becoming a supervisor. I’m going to put you in some of the trainings that were there. I am going to have you do back to basics training on topics and so like any other thing that she could assign to me as something different that would build a quality or skill that would come in handy later as a supervisor she did and of course, moving around that much I had probably, geez, I think at one point I was in double digits for different supervisors I had and I learned something from each one of them, every one of them made a difference and so you know it was just kind of go from there.

It was like, okay, I became a supervisor, now it’s like what’s this over here, what’s a field liaison do, so I went and did field liaison duties and then when reorganization happened, it was like, well I am going to try for this Regional Director thing, that sounds interesting to me and so I did and then when Jim Stroopy, now Steve is leaving and I said yeah, that would be interesting. That would be fascinating. I would enjoy learning that and try to make a difference in that role and so it was just kind of a progression. The only downside, I am the youngest of five, so I grew up in a small town but big family and my sister is the oldest and any of you who have siblings can relate to this I’m sure, but when the Director offered me the job I went home and of course I had to call my sister and tell her finally that she was right, (laughter), I’m going to hearing about that for the rest of my life. I told you, you’d be good at this.

But, you know, I just love working here, I love the work that we get to do, the people that we get to serve. You know, I think it’s so important, especially today to reiterate the value of the people that we serve. They have made a difference in our communities. They continue to make a difference in our communities. Our staff who serve them are making a difference in those persons life and that difference that you make just exponentially grows from an agency like that and that’s one of the reasons I’ve stayed here twenty -seven years now and I don’t have any plans to leave any time soon.

Thank you.

DAVID LIGON: Hi, my name is Dave Ligon. I’m the director of Finance and Administration and it’s kind of interesting to be the last one in the line here because I’ve gotten to hear all of their stories and in some ways they’re very similar to mine. I will say this, I think I was probably, if there was anybody who was born to be a public servant, probably me because my family is from Southeast Oklahoma and before we were even a state, my great, great, uncle was doing the census for Statehood. He eventually became a house member in the House of Representatives and served a couple of years doing that and if you go look at the rest of my family, even my great grandfather who was a country doctor was also the Wildlife Commissioner from Southeast Oklahoma so there was this long history and I have, my grandfather, my uncles, all were either in education, higher education, law enforcement, the Department of Defense, so there is just this kind of long history and I guess some of that must have seeped through to me because I thought that was kind of important to help other people and I didn’t really plan necessarily that way but I think it was almost by osmosis that I became, you know, a public servant and I always say to people that if you like what I do, I’m a public servant, if you don’t like what I do, then I’m a damn beaurocrat (laughter), and sometimes I think we get you know, a bad name with regard to that but, you know, that’s the way it works.

My individual story is that I started out in education. I did that for about three years and then I went back and got my Masters’ in public administration and worked in municipal government as the Assistant to the City Manager in Moore, was offered a job to be on the house research staff. Joined that not thinking I’ll probably do this for about four or five years and I originally started in the education field and was the analyst there but I kind of shared it and at one point then I got the opportunity to be involved in the Natural Resource Environmental area and we ended up rewriting all of the statutes with regards to natural resources in environment because water quality was spread out all over the place and we ended up creating the Department of Environmental Quality, you know, during that time.

So, at the end of that after about nine years I had kind of done that, that was a big deal and I was sitting there thinking, you know, I didn’t have anywhere to go. There was, you know, the people that were my age were already there in management positions, there weren’t very many in the first place and you know, I was going to have to wait twenty years until somebody died or left or retired to get a position, so I said I’ve got to do something else.

So, I went and became the first Director of Teacher Preparation, which was a really small agency that had to do with education but I had to deal with literally the Chancellor of Higher Education and the State Superintendent and it was like I was in a little tugboat trapped between two ocean liners and it was like, you know, so we wrote this plan, we got it together and we actually changed how teachers were prepared and developed entirely in two years.

But at that point I was kind of like Patrick and kind of like the Director, I was a little bored, you know, once I’ve done that, it was like, what’s the next challenge. So I went to the Department of Agriculture and I became their Director of Administration which included finance, included what they called support services, it included all the mail rooms, it included IT, it included, you know, everything that nobody else wanted to do, that’s what it included.

So, and I used to say that my job was to do essentially whatever the Director didn’t like to do and so that’s what the Director of Administration did, and I did that for about eight years and then the political winds changed and I ended up back at the house and on the physical staff and I knew when I had been on the house staff before and I had been there as a policy analyst and really and truly what I really liked to do is work on policy but you come to the conclusion, if you’re around very long that everything that you do related to policy has something to do with budget. It has something to do with fiscal. So if you really want to be involved in policy you better learn something about budgets. You better learn something about management funding. That’s how I initially kind of broached it, got into it and it kind of expanded from there.

I ended up after about eight years and one of the things that I had was the Department of Human Services. It probably took 80% of my time when I was an analyst over at the house with regard to that and I have to say I wasn’t exactly the most loved person over there as far as DHS because I asked a lot of hard questions and that was a tough time, you know, of what was going on in the agency and so you know, but it was helpful for me to see that side of it and then I got the opportunity to meet one of the other agencies that I worked for was the Department of Rehabilitative Services, which was dealing with deaf and blind clients and dealing with people that had disabilities and it was really eye opening because everybody in that agency was really committed to serving the client and you’ve got to see that and I went over there as their Chief of Staff. They were kind of in crisis at that particular time and I was there for about a couple of years and then the Director left. You know, actually I had been kind of approached about whether I was interested in coming to the Department of Human Services before but I was really happy but when the director left I remember Samantha Galloway saying, would you be interested in doing this, and I had already told her five months before, that no, I wasn’t, and then it was like, yeah, I might be willing to do that and so, you know, I interviewed with the Director and I think we actually had a very similar view about what needed to happen with regard to the Department of Human Services. He had been there for about a year, I think, with regard to it and I think we matched up well and he asked me to come over and so I came over literally the same day I think that Ron did and we started right after Labor Day that Monday and you know, I’ve never really looked back.

I’ve always thought that this would probably be the last job that I had in state government after thirty -two years but I’ve got to tell you, while it hasn’t been fun to do some of the things that we’ve had to do in budget, working with the people in finance and support services has just been fantastic. I’ve had probably the best group of people and I give credit to, you know, my predecessors because they hired really good managers and while we’ve had a lot of turn -over and I think we’ve hired good folks too. I inherited a lot of good folks and so we were doing a lot of things right in the Department of Human Services and I’m just happy to be here.

SHEREE POWELL: Alright, last but not least is me. I’ll tell you a little bit about my background. I started with DHS, well I'll back up, like Jami and LeeAnne I’m a preacher’s kid. So, I grew up in a very similar environment, grew up in Eastern Oklahoma County, very rural, very church oriented. So, I grew up in family that also understood the value of helping one another and helping their community members. So, that whole philosophy was engrained in me at a very young age as well, but right out of high school I had the opportunity to come here to DHS to work as summer hire.

Now back in those days, we could actually hire temps in the summer and it was usually high school kids and so I came to work here and it just so happens that I had taken a class at the Vo-tech that year, my senior year on how to use these new things called word processors (laughter), you remember those, and so it was of course being a high school kid it was pretty cool and exciting for me. Well, I came to DHS that summer and that was the summer they were trying to pry all the typewriters out of the white knuckles of every secretary in this agency and replace them with word processors and these poor administrative support people were terrified of word processors and so I ended up unwittingly training most of them and I wound up in the office of Inspector General.

That was my very first experience at DHS working there and by the end of the summer the Inspector General at the time said, hey would you be interested in a full time job and I said, well, I’m going to college, I’m going to be a hot shot investigative journalist, (laughing) okay, well would you work here while you’re going to school, we’ll work around your hours. So, I thought well that sounds pretty good, so that was how I ended up getting hired permanently and I would go back and forth between part time and full time while I was getting my degree for the next four years and once I got my degree in Journalism I was not intending to stay at DHS, I was going to go be a hot shot investigative reporter and all of my friends were graduating from college and they were going to either newspapers or broadcast stations and I actually had an offer to go and work at Channel 9 when I graduated and I’m looking at all my cohorts and friends out there they're standing out in the snow with a yardstick telling everybody how deep the snow is and how cold it is and their making nothing and their working like Ron said, terrible hours and I started looking around at DHS thinking, you know, it’s pretty good here, (laughter), it’s pretty good here and then I also started thinking, you know, this agency needs good communicators and this is an agency full of social workers or lawyers or investigators, whatever the position might be but there wasn’t a lot of communications people.

The communications office back in those days was one person and then there were a couple of people that were hired as writers that could write about, you know, do all the publications and news releases so I was offered a job in the publications office and that was my first foray into communications for DHS.

I worked there for a couple of years and then I was recruited by Developmental Disabilities Services. That was in the days of the Hissom lawsuit that Mark mentioned. They were launching into a settlement and a whole new era for that division for community services and they needed someone who could come and help educate the community about people with disabilities because people with disabilities are going to be moving out of institutions into communities and we needed to help pave that way, so I was fortunate enough to work in developmental disabilities for about nineteen years as their communications director and then when the Director of Communications position opened up here at DHS I felt like that was my logical next step and I applied and was selected and I haven’t looked back.

I’ve got a great team of people that work with me in communications. I’m also over the office of Information and Referral, the Director’s Helpline folks and I’m also over all the office of community and faith engagement. So, I have a little bit of a Hodge podge of different offices but we’re a great team and I really love it and here I am thirty- four years later and I haven’t looked back and I’ve loved every minute of it because I too love this agency and I love what we do and why we do it and I love being able to tell the stories of what all of you do every day. So, that’s why I’m here as well.