"I’ve been here in Columbia, well moved here in 1999. I was going through some hardships at the time when I decided to move here. I had family here I would come and visit. I decided something moved me, I came here Thanksgiving to visit my father. He retired here from the Post Office. I used to come visit him before moving here, and I had a stepbrother here as well. And something moved me and said, “You know, I need to make the move to Columbia, it will work for me. I didn’t have any fear or anything like that. No hesitancy as far as moving here, it just happened as a flow. And at the time, I was going through a divorce, and I moved here with my 8 year old son. I just needed a change in pace in life. I just, you know had had it with the big city stuff that was going on, and decided to move to Columbia and I have done very well since I’ve moved here. It was something that I had to get adjusted to because I was a big city girl, but Columbia really calmed me down. And it helped me figure out some things with the smallness. I liked the fact that it’s a family oriented city, it had good schools, and a quality of life that I was looking forward to for my son and I."
"I’ve always been into social work, and worked with children most of my life in education. I’ve done several jobs since I’ve been here in Columbia, which were good fitting jobs but you know when you want to elevate yourself you move on to something different, something better. Things moved so quickly for me that I was able to stabilize my life here in Columbia. So I consider myself well blessed since I’ve been here. As far as Job Point, I didn’t know about it. I just happened to be somewhere and I heard a gentleman talking about it, and I asked him about it because I was looking for another job. So I started at Job Point as a coach, which I love because I love working with people, encouraging people, and building people up. And to be a coach, put me in a space that I love being in because I enjoy working with and helping people. So I started here as a coach, and applied for a position as a recruiter and miraculously got the job. I’ve been in this position for 6 years now, and basically what I do is I recruit throughout mid-Missouri for all trades in the program that we have here at Job Point. This job is all tricks of the trade, it is not just recruiting people. It’s working with people of all walks of life, the homeless, people with disabilities, people who are coming to reinvent themselves, and many more. It fits me as a person with my personality, because I enjoy building people and encouraging them. I also do a lot of job fairs, presentations, and enrollment. I have a lot of hats with this job and it suits me because I’m a people person builder."
"You know, I always want to get involved with my community. And this job has helped me really get involved in the community, because I deal with a lot of resources and a lot of people on committees. A while back, I was at a transportation meeting, when I first started this job, and I was thrown by the issues that Columbia had when it comes to transportation, because I'm comparing myself living in Milwaukee. And that kind of threw my antennas up. So then, I mean, I think I only went to one or two of those meetings, and I didn't go anymore until like two or three years later. And then somehow, somebody got in contact with me from PedNet. And I'm like, “Oh, this is transportation”, and of course, my interest was there. I wanted to see what this was about and what can I do to help our community make transportation better. In Columbia, I want to be a part of a stamp that puts something back into the community. So, I’ve always had an interest in seeing Columbia have better transportation especially when it comes to the transit system. I was very excited to be asked to be a part of the Neighborhood Leaders because I wanted to learn more. What were your interests? What policies about transportation were you all strategizing about to make things better? How can I share this with other members here in Columbia and at Job Point? I wanted to be a part of that. Being involved and wanting to make something better is a part of being a people builder."
