WGU Alumni Podcast
WGU’s alumni network now has more than 350,000 graduates living in all 50 states. The WGU alumni podcast highlights the incredible work that our alumni are doing in their local communities. We also share benefits, perks, resources and partner information to help our graduates stay engaged and get the most out of the alumni community.
WGU Alumni Podcast
Making a difference and standing firm: Distinguished Graduate and IT Leader Linzie Starr III's Journey
What if you could redefine success on your terms, no matter where you start from? Join us on the latest episode of the WGU Alumni Podcast as Linzie Starr III, an IT professional and recent WGU distinguished graduate honoree, who climbed the ranks without formal education, shares his inspiring journey and professional advice.
From an accidental foray into the tech world to becoming the Director of Program Management at the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services, Linzie's story is a testament to resilience and the power of forging your own path. His experience in IT at Kaiser Permanente and Southern California Edison ignited a passion that would eventually lead him back to school during the COVID-19 pandemic, culminating in both a bachelor's degree and an MBA in IT management from WGU.
In this episode, we also embrace themes of balance and gratitude, discussing how intense work should coexist with periods of rest and the joy of life's simpler pleasures. Linzie speaks candidly about standing firm in professional environments, advocating for innovation and efficiency through open dialogue and constructive conflict.
Have you ever thought it's too late for me? Well, it turns out you have more time than you think. We're living longer, doing more and collecting more moments. On this new season of the WGU Alumni Podcast, we're sharing the inspiring stories of our distinguished graduates who went back to school to pursue a degree and better their lives. We hope their stories will inspire you to realize it's never too late to go after your dreams. Hey, everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the WGU Alumni Podcast. It's Jeff and Robert.
Speaker 2:Hello Robert, hey, jeff, always good to be here, because when we get together we're talking about our amazing alumni, and today we're talking about Lindsey Starr III. Now, jeff, always good to be here, because when we get together we're talking about our amazing alumni, and today we're talking about Lindsey Starr III. Now, if I just said that name, you'd be like they must be famous, they must be famous. Lindsey Starr III, that sounds famous. So tell us a little bit about Lindsey.
Speaker 1:Lindsey is a passionate IT professional in the Southern California area who is really driven by making a difference in people's lives. He really committed to making sure that good happens for his constituents and people he's working for.
Speaker 2:And that's one thing I love about Lindsey right, high energy, really fun to talk to and his job is making a difference. Right, and all of us go into work wanting to make a difference. But working for LA County, one of the largest and most populous counties in the United States, specifically with child and family resources like he's going there making sure the people that need help and need the resources that they're getting them. I think that's awesome, that he's able to put all his passions together His degree from WGU, working in an IT field and being a public servant all together every day, really making an impact.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and I think he's a perfect example of this season's theme, and that is it's never too late. About 20 years after graduating from high school, he wanted a degree that matched his experience, and so it was post COVID and or in the middle, in the midst of COVID and in the state of California. That was one of those that really shut down, and so he took advantage of that time. He not only got one degree, but two degrees, as you'll hear in this interview, and is again a great example of somebody who said why not go for it? And he did, and he stands as a great example.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if we had a movie poster for this season of it's Never Too Late, it would have Lindsey Starr III on it. Right, because it's like movie star name. Perfect example of of what we're talking about when we say it's never too late, of really making those changes in the middle of the career and WGU being the facilitator for that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, robert. What do you say? We go to this interview now. Let's listen. Lindsey Starr III is a senior leader in information technology with more than 15 years of transformative experience in scaling IT project portfolios, championing global change and delivering innovative enterprise solutions. Lindsay's work directly improves and impacts the lives of children and families at the nation's largest child welfare system. Currently as the Director of Program Management at the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services, lindsay combines his deep compassion with his skills and insights to implement national leading programmatic standards that have impacted more than 2 million constituents. Lindsey earned a bachelor's in IT management and an MBA in IT management at WGU and was named a 2024 Distinguished Graduate Awardee back in September of this year. Lindsey, it's a pleasure to have you on the podcast. Hello, sir.
Speaker 3:Hey, jeff, you know I'm going to tell you you make me sound way cooler than I probably am. So thanks for the awesome bio.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, I just read the bio. You lived the bio, so kudos to you. We're excited to catch up with you here today and to learn a little bit more about your journey and your experience.
Speaker 3:Yeah, for sure. Thanks for having me and thanks for giving me the honor. It's really cool.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so. I highlighted in your bio that you work at the LA County Department of Children and Family Services, so obviously you're in the Southern California area. Tell us where you're based and what's your favorite thing about living there.
Speaker 3:Well, I recently just moved to Riverside, california actually, which is about 50 miles east of downtown Los Angeles, which is where I work. We're considered the Inland Empire out here, so I've grown up and been in the Inland Empire my whole life. I'm literally now about 15 minutes from where I went to high school. My best friend is 10 minutes away and, yeah, literally moved in a month ago, so settling into a new home here.
Speaker 3:And what I really love about where I live, specifically up on top of this hill, is I have a great view, as I look out the window, of all of the great mountains. So, like the San Antonio Mountains, mount Baldy, I can see Big Bear from here. I'm 45 minutes from Southern California wine country. I'm an hour and a half from San Diego. Really cool thing about living here is you're probably about an hour from everything. That's really cool. I'm an hour from a beach or I'm an hour from Palm Springs or the mountains at any given time. So it's really a neat place to live. It's a little warmer than most parts of Southern California, but it is a great place to live. Oh, that's fantastic.
Speaker 1:You don't really need to sell Southern California. It kind of sells itself, like you say.
Speaker 3:but it sells itself and we pay for it.
Speaker 1:So you know it is what it is, and born and raised there correct Born and raised that's awesome, that's a great place to be from, and obviously the work that you do is very impactful to the community and to those, obviously, who have a lot of needs. And so tell us what's the most exciting thing you're working on right now.
Speaker 3:Oh, that's an interesting loaded question because my team, at any given time, you know, can be working on so many things that impact our children and families, as you mentioned. Like I have to sit with it. But I'm going to start by saying you know, I don't get to do anything cool without my team, who has probably listened to this. So thank you to everybody that's worked for me and continues to work for me and shows up for me every single day. But a couple of things that we're working on right now are some really awesome operational efficiency programs and projects that support our internal services within our department. One of the things my team is leading is an overpayments initiative. Again, we work for the Department of Children and Family Services, so that means we deal with kinship, relative placements, we deal with foster care, we deal with all of those things keeping children and families safe, and when those families are coming to the attention of the department, we usually help monetarily to help make sure that those children get what they need, so that they have financial resources to be safe and continue with their lives, so on and so forth.
Speaker 3:Well, it turns out we have some ineffective processes.
Speaker 3:It's government, it's bureaucracy, red tape lots of things that are happening, and my team has identified some really great opportunities for us to streamline some processes and recoup a lot of sunk costs or money that is going out that probably shouldn't be.
Speaker 3:So we actually just recently implemented something that should be taking flight by the beginning of the year. We just got the policy rewritten that's going to reduce our overpayments to our out-of-home care and our foster parents, to make sure we're writing the right checks at the right time to the right people, so that taxpayer dollars are not being wasted and folks are actually indeed getting the funds and the resources that they need to be safe. So that's just one example of many of the many, many things that we're working on. We've had our hands in a bunch of different projects and programs over the past five years, really transforming what this organization looks like, working really closely with our IT partners, both at the CEO's office as well as our internal IT teams, to really make sure that, especially during COVID, we can continue to work, see our children, see our families the way we need to, and make sure we keep people safe and whole.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's great. Great work to you and your team. How many people are on your team?
Speaker 3:I have a team of seven, a mighty, mighty team of seven, and I need to double the size of my team, and one day maybe that will happen. But they are all incredible. They are I tell them all the time like y'all are way smarter than me. They all have varying levels of county experience. Some folks have come from what we say the line of. They've been social workers. They know what this is. Some people have deep administrative backgrounds and they all came together with no project management program management experience at all. Um, allowed me to train them and lead them, with some help of our consultants, and now they are lean, mean, programmatic machines and I just get out of their way. Um, it's my job to remove the obstacles and make sure that they can be great, and that's really what gets me out of bed in the morning is being their leader and giving them what they need so they can be great.
Speaker 1:That's great and and what an important work that you do to help so many who are in need. And I love what you highlight the efficiencies because, yeah, government can be known for not being effective and not being good stewards of the resources and for you to identify opportunities to make that better and to make sure that you're helping the people that really need the help right. When you're able to clean that up and become more efficient, you're able to help more people, and that's got to be meaningful to you, I would imagine.
Speaker 3:It absolutely is. I don't know if you can tell Jeff through our conversations over the past few months, but I am very much a black and white, get to the point kind of guy and I know when we have lots of conversations with you, know our children and families or even our peer organizations throughout the county I look around and I say why do we do it this way? Why is this so inefficient? Why? Why and I ask this question all the time and people are tired of me asking the question and oftentimes in any government agency agency anybody that's ever worked in government I know this is resonating with you um, red tape, red tape, red tape. We've always done it this way. Why change it? And I go because it's taking us three months to do something that could take us maybe a week.
Speaker 3:Um, and taking a look at process improvement opportunities and acknowledging where we have opportunities to shift change and, honestly, in places where we're deficient, is hard and it's not a, it's not a slight, it's not a jab at any one particular person, one particular agency, one particular like sect of leadership. It's just how the system is set up. But that doesn't mean we have to exist that way. We exist to serve the public. That's what we need to do. So we need to make that way. We exist to serve the public. That's what we need to do. So we need to make their experience, when they come to our attention, as palatable as possible, because, I'll be honest, nobody wants to talk to us, but when they do, we can use our great social work staff that can show empathy and kindness and meet families where they are and get them the resources that they need without having to hand them off and hand them off and hand them off.
Speaker 3:We want a single-touch opportunity when they call our hotline, which is now an AWS Connect, so it's no longer like an analog system. We did that. Now it's far more streamlined. We can get responses out to the field faster than we did before and if we increase our internal processes, like you said, we can help more people. We can help them faster and they don't get frustrated and then go to the board of supervisors and yell at us. I don't like getting yelled at. So at the end of the day, we're here to serve and we have to do that in the best possible way, and this will just take time, and there's nothing wrong with it taking time, but I think the outcome of it will be beautiful once we continue to tool up a lot of these other things that we want to do. We have a really great passionate staff all around in our department, so we all do really great work and we all really care.
Speaker 1:Yeah, One of the words you just mentioned there is passionate, and I think, honestly, if I were to select a word that describes you, Lindsay, it's passionate. You can feel it just in the few minutes that we've been talking already here this morning. You can just feel the passion and the excitement and knowing that the work that you do is critically important. And I had the privilege of sitting on the selection committee for our distinguished graduates and making those selections. We have more than 300,000, 350,000 graduates throughout the country and there were only 14 selected this year as distinguished graduates and you, my friend, are one of the 14. First off, I just want to say congratulations to you being named a distinguished graduate at WGU and I want to ask you what does this recognition mean to you?
Speaker 3:It's really. I think my reaction when you told me when we were on video, like two months ago now, three months ago now, I was like wow, that's really cool. Like I just kind of like sat with that like for a bit and I had to like process what that meant in my head. Um, I think it's really cool to be recognized, um one by your alma mater for just being great and just doing what you would normally do anyway, but two, to say no, like outside, looking in, like the things that I am doing and, like you said, how I show up and when I show up. And some days it's very hard to show up and some days it's, you know, not easy, but we show up anyway and we get it done.
Speaker 3:It's validating that I'm doing the right things for the right reasons. I've been in public service at some level for like a decade of my career in one form or another, working for the state of California, working for sovereign Indian tribes I can see the reservation for my house up here. Like I've worked in public service for about a decade and even before that, working in public utilities. There's always a public facing component to the work that I do because I want to be a part of something that's bigger than myself. So it feels really good to be validated by WGU. It feels very good to be seen by WGU in that way and it helps me understand and know that the things I'm doing are in fact, the right things to be doing and I'm on the right path, even though some days you know when you're in the thick of it and it's really tough it might not feel that way.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, I want to dive in next to kind of your journey to get to where you are, to being celebrated, to being a leader of a team, to having the position that you have and making the impact that you are. What attracted you to IT? Have you always been an IT guy? Have you had a passion for that? When did that begin?
Speaker 3:I fell into IT by accident, literally by accident. I came out of high school. I'm going to date myself, not that it's that old now. I graduated high school in 2003. And when I graduated high school, I had literally zero clue what I wanted to do. Zero, zero clue. I'm going to say it again Zero clue. I walked out and was like, okay, like what am I supposed to do with this information? I have a diploma. I don't know what I want to do.
Speaker 3:I'm the firstborn, first grandchild on both sides Black family. You have to go to college, you have to do the thing and you have to figure it out and go get a good job with a pension and retire. And I'm, and years go by, I try different things. And my mom was like, okay, no, sir, you need a job, you need to have something that you can sink your teeth into. And a friend of hers was actually working at Kaiser Permanente at the time and they were implementing KP Health Connect, which was an electronic medical record system.
Speaker 3:I have never done a system implementation in my life. I got hired as an analyst on that project and was on that project for two years and I was like, oh, perhaps IT deployments is really what I like, because this work is not boring, it is consistent, it is consistently different and I'm challenged Like I like this. This is fun. And then my now good friend, jesse, hired me at Southern California Edison and I jumped onto an ERP implementation there and was on that project for a while and I just kind of stayed in the IT realm and I stayed in the IT enterprise application space and the IT operation space and really just got my hands dirty in that area, specifically because it's consistently different and it's always growing.
Speaker 3:I didn't want to be a guy that was just doing widgets all day. I like to be creative in my work and I like to be able to see a big problem and pull the pieces apart. I tell people in interviews and I tell people when they ask me that question, my brain kind of works like Jarvis from the Avengers. So if you walk into the Avengers headquarters and you just see the holograms like exploded, like all over the walls, that's what my brain looks like at any given moment. So to be able to be creative in that way and be able to pull pieces and put things back and draw on past experiences or just learn something new, it's how I ended up in IT, purely by accident. I've always been techie and technically savvy, but never thought that it would be my career, because I didn't know what all of those different layers of complexity within IT actually meant.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Now you went back to school about 20 years after you graduated and again, sorry, to date you. You're a young man, you look great, no, but like so. You worked for quite a while without having either a bachelor's or, again adding a master's degree. What was the catalyst for you to go back to school? Why was that important for you?
Speaker 3:It was important for me because I knew that I was accelerating in my career very quickly, based on experience, but I knew that that wasn't going to keep me at the pace that I needed to be at if I wanted to continue to grow and move up the ladder. I knew that I was going to hit a ceiling and I knew that, even though I had 20 years of experience doing what I'm doing, it wasn't going to matter, because there was no way I was going to clear a screen for anybody's executive position without a degree, at least a bachelor's. And anything at the VP level or senior VP level, which are things I'm looking at now all require master's degrees just to even be seen. So, regardless of being just really talented tactically at what I do which awesome, I also knew one I'm going to need those pieces of paper to even be considered because nobody's going to talk to me. Regardless. One and two, I knew it was important for members of my family to see me do that, and that made me feel good too.
Speaker 3:Ultimately, I'll tell you, I did it for myself because I knew it had to be done, but the validation seeing my grandma seeing me get my bachelor's before she passed was really important to me. My aunt and I got our master's together in honor of my grandmother, so that was really great. And she did it through WGU. We did the same program. I finished faster than her but we got it done and we walked together in October of 23 in Las Vegas so that was a really fun thing. So the catalyst was if I don't do it I'm going to get stuck. And I don't like being stuck, I like options.
Speaker 1:Yeah, options are good. I loved you know I were connected on LinkedIn and you've posted a lot of pictures and I know that WGU has been meaningful to you this journey and this degree. I love the pictures. I think you're a Disney guy, right? You live there in the area. I know you had a lot degree. I love the pictures. I think you're a Disney guy, right, you live there in the area. I know you had a lot. I don't know if you did a photo shoot out at Disneyland but your photos were awesome.
Speaker 3:I did do a photo shoot at Disneyland, Thanks to my friend Ray Landon Chance for helping me.
Speaker 1:No, I love that. And who did you say graduated with you from WG? This was your-.
Speaker 3:My Aunt Paula.
Speaker 1:Okay, your Aunt Paula. Well, shout out to her as well, thrilled that she's part of the community. That's awesome.
Speaker 3:How was this decision of going back to school? How would you say it was connected to a bigger dream you had for your life? I don't know that it was necessarily. Let me not say that. I think what I would say was I didn't realize it was connected to something bigger until I was done. Okay, tell me more. And then I put like the pieces together.
Speaker 3:So I went back to school in October of 2020, during COVID, literally because I couldn't go outside and I couldn't do anything, and I said this is now the time to do this, because what else am I going to do? I mean, I found other hobbies. I know we were all baking bread and like learning, like to crochet, like we were all doing weird things at home. Um, but I'm like I can make some good use of this time. So I went back to school and I literally typed in I kid you, not cheap, affordable, accredited college those are the four words. I hit and wgu popped up and I said that's all it costs, sign me up. And I I literally did that in what? July? And I started in october.
Speaker 3:Um and then I oh, I'm thrilled I did it. Um, and when I had my bachelor's I was like, oh, wow, that was wild, like that was really tough. And I tell people all the time and I've sent people like to WGU and I've referred them obviously I'm like, don't let the self-paced six-month block of time fool you. Like this is intense and it's as that. It's as intense and as hard as you make it. So if you just want to take one class every six months and pay whatever the tuition is, you go for it. But I'm trying to be done as fast as possible. And when I was done as fast as possible, I felt really validated and, okay, now my experience matches my education. So, oh, there's a deer behind you, that's fine. So, yeah, squirrel, leave that in. That's hilarious.
Speaker 3:So I saw how all these pieces were like stacking up and how they all like were interconnected. And then I was able to say, okay, now you can start having real serious conversations about what's next for you, because you've gotten your bachelor's, you have certifications that came with your bachelor's, which was really cool, and now you have your master's and now you're set up and now you're teed up. And to your point, I'm a young guy, so that's already intimidating and weird, but what I know is what I know, and what I know is I have the experience in these spaces and what I know is I have my education, which is solid. I know what I know, so having it being connected to something bigger is really a um, a thing that I don't know. That I processed really until I was really done with my programs and I was able to piece it together and put a plan together for how I wanted to accelerate and go to the next place.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you had been out of high school for again just just under 20 years, a couple of decades, Um, did you have you have some fears of going back? Was there anything holding you back from pulling the trigger and moving forward?
Speaker 3:I had a lot of false starts going back to college. I went to community college. I went to like three other like distance learning schools, maybe four Like. I've had lots of false starts in those 20 years and a lot of them came down to money because I couldn't understand why they cost so much, because I'm like I don't want to go into education and walk out with a mortgage. I don't want that. I already have a mortgage, I don't want another one. So no, thank you One and two and again night elves join me here.
Speaker 3:I could not understand for the life of me why I needed to sit in a class for 18 weeks when I can sit in a class for two minutes if I know what I'm doing and my general eds. I got them all done in my first term because I was in classes literally for hours, because I was like I know this, I know this, I know this, I know this, I can follow the study material. Applied algebra got me a little bit. It took me a little longer to get through that, but I got through it and I was like this is great, these things are off my back. I can now focus my time on my major and my course work, which is really important to me, and I can spend as much time here as I need to so I can get the richness out of the material. And I'll tell you, some of those classes, especially in my undergrad, were really really hard. But they're supposed to be. They're supposed to be challenging and that's how you learn and grow.
Speaker 3:So when I'm sitting through those things, the like the, the things that gave me pause were really I don't want to pay for it. It sounds really expensive and that's dumb and you're going to make me do it for way too long and I want to get in and get out and move on with my life. And WGU allows me the flexibility. You can do class and take your exams whenever you want to, which I loved. If you are up at three in the morning and you want to take your objective, take it, it's done. And I really enjoyed that flexibility. I was literally taking my objective assessments and writing papers between meetings, sometimes just because I had downtime. So it just became the right fit for my life and what I wanted and what I needed and I literally did not think that a place like this existed. It sounded too good to be true. I asked my poor recruiter so many questions.
Speaker 1:We hear that a lot. I used to work on the commencement team and so I'd work with our commencement speakers, our graduate speakers. We don't have a valedictorian setup or up or anything like that. We just we love compelling stories and some people I mean everybody has a story right, everybody has a journey and one of the common themes there's really been two common themes that I've heard over the last several years and one is like what was the catch? Like it's too good to be true.
Speaker 3:Yep exactly.
Speaker 1:You know, and I've heard from other people like this is the way college should be done, and I agree.
Speaker 1:One of the things that I love that you're an efficient guy and we've talked about efficiencies and I love that you know. I think back to the 19 US governors that created WGU back in the dawn of the internet, right that this new technology was coming on. And the governors you know, two in particular Mike Leavitt, republican from Utah. He was fascinated by the technology and says there's got to be a way to leverage the technology here, and obviously way ahead of his time, you know, in the 90s, because people, I think, had a lot of skepticism that this could work. And another governor, roy Romer, a Democrat from Colorado.
Speaker 1:He was fascinated by learning models and he was the one really that pushed one of them, that pushed competency-based education, which is exactly what you're talking about, which is a very efficient way for students to go back to school, because it's like Lindsay, you had worked for 20 years, you knew a lot of this, you probably could teach some of the classes on some of the material that you were in, and so you're exactly right. To sit in a class for four months is kind of asinine if you think about it, where it's like, if you know the material and you can pass it with flying colors. Why shouldn't you be able to do that? And I love that you are a model of this and that you were able to do it and to be successful. And something tells me, these governors knowing your story, and, again, the hundreds of thousands of others of WGU graduates knowing that this model has worked and worked so well, they've got to be smiling and just thinking like this is exactly what we, what we wanted to create.
Speaker 3:Well, I mean, the model absolutely works, right. I think the fun part for me, right, is changing minds, because nobody that's experienced this understands how it can be. Yeah, and because, again, we're all conditioned to believe that terms and semesters are 18 weeks and quarters are like 12 weeks, and you have to have your butt in that seat and you have to be reading this book and taking tests that don't generally change, and listen to these lectures to get your degree. And I don't I, lindsay, I don't agree, I don't know that. That's the only way that that can happen.
Speaker 3:I think, like you said, if I'm sitting in my humanities class and I am, again an art lover, I understand culture and how the world works I can sit there and I can actually learn some things, but also I write really fast. So why do I have to sit in this class for 18 weeks? I remember I was in humanities for two days two days. I think the longest general ed class I sat in, like time-wise, was maybe in its applied algebra. I'm going to keep picking on applied algebra, but my course instructor was fantastic. Raquel, you were great. Thank you so much. She was so patient, she was awesome.
Speaker 3:I think it was like two months, like that's it. Everything else was just boom, just move it, move it out of the way, get it done and one cost savings. That's great love that for me. But also I can move on with my life and I don't have these things looming over my head. I can focus on the things that matter and explaining it to people and actually showing them like this is what I have to do to get out of this class, because WGU is not letting you out. How many objective assessments everybody have you gotten to? And you see that little black line and you're just dancing on it, but you didn't skip over it. Yeah, you're just dancing on it, but you didn't skip over it. Yeah, you taking that whole test over again. Yeah, yeah, they're not letting you out. You're, you're stuck.
Speaker 1:Yeah, totally. Well, I'm so glad that the model worked so well for you, and I'm a WG graduate myself and totally agree Like it, just it, it. It was a different way of doing school, and I love. There's many things I love about WGU, but one of them is you kind of touched on this.
Speaker 1:Wgu recognizes that students learn in different ways. And if you are a textbook guy and you read, and that's how you retain the information Fantastic. If you're a video guy and you'd rather watch videos or you like lectures, right, there's lectures available, modules, there's all of these. All the curriculum is available to you and you, the student, are in control of what you need to do to be successful. And you might be a video guy, I might be a reader, it doesn't really matter, as long as, at the end of the day, I can pass the assessment. You can pass the assessment, right, like, why do we care that it's done in a classroom setting? And for some students that's important, right, and that should be honored. But for other students, right, there might be learning disabilities, there might be just things that click and connect more with a particular student, and so having the ability to learn in various means, I think is really important.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, and to that point, even when you're looking through your course material in that library, sometimes there are separate pages just full of additional resources as well, and if there's something that's not clicking or you need some additional guidance or some support, your course instructor's right there and you can say I don't get this. And they're like hey, make an appointment, I can explain that concept to you in like 15 minutes. Or watch this video. Actually, this is actually going to tell you exactly what you need to know. And if you don't get it, then you go set up an appointment and let's chat about it. And you go oh yeah, light bulbs, right.
Speaker 3:And my favorite expression when I talk to people is explain it to me. Like I'm five, like what is this particular thing about? Because I don't understand how we got from here to here. And every person I've ever spoken to that is running a course is like oh yeah, people get hung up there all the time. This is actually why you get hung up there and this is what that means, and you know we work together to move you through to success. I honestly can tell you I feel like every single one of my course instructors cared.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. Lindsey, what would you say was the biggest unexpected surprise or bonus from going back to school?
Speaker 3:The time saved. The bonus is the time saved. I like to learn, so the learning was really fun Experiencing new things and pushing myself to do something I didn't think was ever going to happen, especially getting a master's degree. Maybe I'll get another one We'll see, We'll talk about that later but it was really the time saved and I was like, wow, I blew that away. I took literally six to eight years of school and crammed it into two and a half years, Like that's insane. It was my personality for two years and I told everybody what that was. Now what's my personality going to be? I've been a full-time employee and I'm a full-time student and I'm not stopping. And I know my mentors are like this guy is out of his mind, but I was just trying to get it done and move through it. So I think the unexpected surprise was just the time saved.
Speaker 1:That's great. Now, as we kind of dialed up this episode in this new season, as we celebrate our distinguished graduates, one of the things that we're looking at we're kind of talking about from a theme perspective of it's never too late, right, you can jump in right after high school. You can jump in 20 years after the fact. Or for some of our graduates, right, it's 40, 50 years. But everybody has a dream, right, Everybody has a purpose for going back and for saying like it's never too late. Can you think of the moment that you knew that it wasn't too late for you?
Speaker 3:I think I always knew it was never too late. Like I look around right, and my aunt, who got her master's with me, got her degree, you know, later in life, like in her 40s I believe, and she was also working full time and also being a caregiver, so she had a lot going on. So I had some really like good experience to like draw from from that, from like just a visibility perspective. But also I might be, you know, unpopular or a different way of thinking. I don't believe in constraining people to these really weird time boxes that we as a culture have made up for ourselves. I don't think it matters If, again, I my story is I've worked for almost 20 years and decided to go back to school.
Speaker 3:Some people go right out of high school right into college. There's nothing wrong with that either. Some people take a gap year and then they go back. Some people wait five, 10. Some people don't never go.
Speaker 3:I don't know that there's any wrong way to approach your education or how you want to approach self-improvement or development. I think people have to develop and discover their path for themselves and stay true to themselves. And if you have that mindset and you have that capacity and you're moving through that and you're doing it in good faith. I don't think that there's anything wrong with that. I think folks just need to be honest about what their journey is for them, surround themselves with community and family that are going to support that and elevate that and get it done.
Speaker 3:And again, I am. I'm a. I'm a leader of people. I hire leaders. I hire people and I'll tell you, for somebody that did not have a degree for so long, that's the last thing I'm looking for. What I'm looking for is what do you know? How can you translate that and communicate that to me and convince me that you're the right person for the role?
Speaker 3:The education helps, I won't lie. It's a good thing to have. That's why I went back to school, but it's not the thing that's going to hang me up from selecting you as my candidate. It might be a tiebreaker kind of thing, like if I have two evenly set people and I have two people with master's degrees, I mean let's have that conversation right. But typically speaking, I want to extend the kind of grace to candidates that I wanted extended to me. I know what. I know I can do the job, I can articulate it correctly and I can step into these spaces and hold my own, and my degree doesn't hold that back for me. So that was a very long way of saying I think that everybody needs to follow their own path and their own journey and not be scared or ashamed of what they think it is, and stop living up to expectations of other people that they don't know, because those people are not setting the bar for you. You're setting your bar for you.
Speaker 1:Lindsay, that's really really good. Can you think of another time in your life where you decided it wasn't too late? I know you're a runner. I know you're again into the arts, as you've referenced. Is there any other time that you've kind of said you know what I'm going for this dream, or it's time for me to jump in?
Speaker 3:Oh, I'm a kind of crazy ambitious person to begin with. So, generally speaking, if I get an idea in my head I'm probably going to attack and I'm going to go for it. And I think that's just because I like the excitement of life. It's for living. And again, I literally got into running because I had a bad day at work and went for a run outside and I I thought it was make me feel better and it did. And then I started running marathons because I'm insane, so like that's how, like my brain works. Oh, that felt good. I should keep doing that.
Speaker 1:How many marathons have you run?
Speaker 3:More more than 50 marathons and more than 100 half marathons over the course of 12 years.
Speaker 1:You mentioned this to me as well, but you've, you've run the Boston marathon three, three times.
Speaker 3:Three times as a charity runner, three consecutive years 15, 2015, 16 and 17. Or is it? Yep, that's right 14, 15, 16, I think. Whatever One of those three Um.
Speaker 1:I'm not. I'm not a marathon runner, but I come from a family of marathon runners and I have a brother and a nephew who are, who have run and are going to run the Boston Marathon, so I know what a significant accomplishment. That is right. That is only for the serious, the crazies of the crazies, I guess you could say right.
Speaker 3:The crazies of the crazies. I've done it again three times. I've done it for charity all three years. So I was behind the crazies but you got to be crazy to kind of raise that kind of money that is required of you, and doing that with some really great friends of mine who I still am really close to to this day, it's been really awesome and really fulfilling. And great Because, again, it's it's the oldest marathon in the world, it's probably the most prestigious, and I never thought I was going to run the Boston Marathon.
Speaker 3:Literally I had only been running two and a half years at that point and I was like, oh, I guess I'm running the Boston Marathon, like that's weird, and it's the runner's Super Bowl, like we all show up, we all know each other, you run into people you know from just all over the country and sometimes the world, and you're just there to vibe and just be in community. So when we talk about it never being too late, it's never too late to get up and just do it, just tackle it. If you get a wild idea, just try it. Just try it. What's the worst that can happen? It doesn't work out? Okay. Then what happens? It picks up the nose. Crazy to try.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that, and that's a perfect segue into the next question. I was host of this podcast is. I get to ask a lot of questions and learn from people that are having success, whether that be in the classroom, in a hospital, in an organization such as yourself, in IT or business or what have you and so I'm curious if you were to share a career or life hack with me in our audience, something that you've personally learned and that works for you and has worked for you what would you share with me?
Speaker 3:What's helped you be successful? So I'm a different kind of beast, I think, as folks can kind of get in terms of like my energy and kind of how I think. But I use three words stand on business, stand on business and stay true to yourself. Oftentimes and again, caveat asterisk, asterisk, asterisk. Don't do what I do. You might get fired.
Speaker 3:But oftentimes I tell people all the time my role as a portfolio leader and a leader of a portfolio and a strategic planning person is to be disruptive. My job is to disrupt the norm. If the norm was working, you wouldn't need to hire people like me. Literally, we're here to be the we're Apple was working, you wouldn't need to hire people like me. Literally, we're here to be the we're Apple. We think different. That is our job.
Speaker 3:I am a disruptor. I tell people that up front this is what you're going to get when you have me in the room. I am not ever going to go with the flow and just go with the status quo and just go along to get along, to just make peace and just to get stuff done, because that's not what my role is. My role is to evaluate scenarios and situations and make the best recommendations and implement the best solutions possible so that the organization can be as efficient and as good as it can be, while making sure that our customers whoever that customer is, whether that's internal or external are receiving the best service possible. That's my job. I can't do that by saying yes, of course, yes, we can do that. I might say yes and or yes, but or no. I like to say the word they offer is no. But what I would say to people is stand on business, it's okay to push back, it's okay to on business, it's okay to push back, it's okay to have friction, it's okay to have conflict and it's okay to sit up here and say I don't agree.
Speaker 3:Now, some results may vary. You might have leaders that are very averse to that kind of dialogue and don't do well with that because they don't do well with challenge. You might encourage some dialogue you might not be ready for. So it requires you to have a very thick skin. It requires you to not take anything personal because this is work. I leave this stuff at home, I log off and I go to my lovely house and I chill Like this is work, it's fine, it is what it is. None of this is personal. We are all here collecting a check and when you honestly just frame it that way that people are also, whether it's your boss, whether it's your boss's boss, whoever it is, we are all humans on the same floating rock, having the same shared human experience, and we are all doing the best we can with what we got. When you see people and you humanize them that way, all that level crap goes out the window.
Speaker 3:I will have the same conversation with my boss than I will have with a CEO, with a COO, with a finance person. I stand on business. I said what I said. I can say it respectfully, I can say it professionally, but I'm going to say it with the energy that is required so that you understand the implications of your decision making, because if you make a bad decision based on data and feedback that I've provided, it's going to create more problems for you.
Speaker 3:At the end of the day, I will do whatever y'all ask me to do, because I don't want to lose my job for being insubordinate. However, it's my job to raise the alarm and to be clear and to be again passionate about what's important, and there's a way to do that respectfully, and there's a way to do that without pissing people off. So all that to say stand on business, say what you say and don't be afraid of what that's going to mean. At the end of the day, it's only going to make you be a stronger leader and a stronger professional. And oftentimes leaders that sit at higher positions of power don't have all of the information to make decisions, and we rely on our employees and our staff and our peers to help inform us so we can have broad conversations and decisions. So it's important for you to speak up. So that has worked for me. I have experienced some people that don't necessarily understand it at first, but they appreciate it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, think of the value that you're adding. Right, and I'm sure you've done that throughout your career. I mean, and you're exactly right, you can do it in a respectful way and not to challenge authority. But if I'm a leader at an organization, I want people that are challenging my thinking, because that's going to help me make the right decisions and the end result will be sound right, that's right. Being surprised is never a good thing.
Speaker 3:It's one of my five tenets that I tell my team Don't blindside me. I don't like being blindsided at all. If you have information, you might want to share it. I don't have to like it, but if I know about it I can help and I can do something about it. Um, and that's how I operate with my bosses too. I don't want anybody to be blindsided, caught off guard, be in a meeting where something comes up and they're like well, did you know about this? Yeah, I knew about that three weeks ago and you didn't say anything. Yeah, like that's insane, like it makes me look cuckoo, like let's not.
Speaker 1:Yeah, really good advice, really good life hack and I love that you've kind of built your career, if you think about it, on kind of that principle stand on business and just standing up adding value, challenging. And you said that you know, I think in your first or your second answer as well. Right, you're asking questions, you're not challenging, just to challenge, but you're challenging to say is there a better way? Why do we do it this way? Have we considered X, Y and Z?
Speaker 3:And I think the value that you bring is why you're having great success in your career yeah, and being able to do it in various like industries, like I had to learn and adapt that same style for social workers because when I walked in my very first day to this job, I stepped in it so bad. I stepped in it so bad because I was very much like why do we do it something this way? This is so bad. This, this is so inefficient. And social workers are very feeling people, they're very caring people, they care and they have a lot of deep feelings and that is not shade, that's just factual and they're very important people that do a very important job and I didn't understand the internal culture of where I was or why that was important to them. So when I came in although what I said was true, what I said was hurtful and I didn't intend to have a hurtful outcome, but I did so luckily somebody pulled me to the side, one of my peers.
Speaker 3:Her name is Angela. She was a dream, she still is a dream and she was like let me tell you what you just did and let me tell you how you're going to have to fix it, because it's going to take you now months to fix that, and it did, but now I know how to communicate with folks and now they also understand me at the same time. So they know when I speak up and I just didn't know business and I say what I got to say. They know it's not a personal attack. They know it's not a personal affront, but I didn't have these relationships with these people. I'm a new guy from the outside at this high level position. That does not happen in the county, so that was already weird. So it's a thing. But you can always. Everything is always fixable is what I tell my team. Everything is fixable.
Speaker 1:Everything is fixable. I love that. That's really important. You've kind of touched on some of the things that you're working on making the work that you're doing more efficient so that you can help the right people. Can you share with me what you hope to accomplish over the next one to two years, and I would love for you to share one on the personal front and also on the professional side.
Speaker 3:I think I'm going to give you the same answer for both. Okay, the thing I want to accomplish in the next one to two years is literally to continue to find peace and being exactly where I'm supposed to be in any given time. I think, especially for me, for like the past five years, I've been chasing so many things for so long. Again, I've moved. I've been in school for three years, I have had a lot of life changes going on, like around me, and I'm really just looking forward to just being able to be grateful and being in that space and just appreciate, whatever it is, the job I have, whatever job that is right, the folks around me, the community I have, and just being at peace with that. Nobody should be at that level of intensity for too long. It's not good for anybody. And I think it's important to also recognize that with hard work comes reward, which is also rest, because rest is also hard work, and it's important to also recognize that with hard work comes reward, which is also rest, because rest is also hard work, and it's okay to rest. And it's okay to just say I've done a lot in these past few years and I don't want to do anything right now, except just be grateful and just sit in a place of existence and just be happy and find joy in that space. So, whereas some folks might say, oh, I want to be this, this, this, I don't know where my life is going to lead, I never do.
Speaker 3:Normally, opportunities pop up and if it's the right one for me, it'll come to me and we will make that work and that'll be what it is. The people in my life will be here and we will work through those things and at the end of the day, the category is ease. We want to be easeful and purposeful and all of those things. So, um, the next one to two years really look like ease, they look like peace, they look like gratitude. Um, on all fronts, regardless of where that sits, professionally or personal. Um, I've already started like easing into that again, I just moved, so things are settling in. The landscapers are here in the backyard. I see I'm, you know, getting to work back there, but once, like all that like starts to settle, I can just enjoy space and I can enjoy, you know, picking up maybe another hobby, or like reading more on my new kindle. I've read two books on in like six months, like it's been a lot of change and a lot of things happening so, so I'm really looking forward to ease.
Speaker 1:I love that. Well, keep us updated. It sounds like things are headed in the right direction and, Lindsay, this has been a great interview. We were talking before we hit record.
Speaker 1:One of the nice things about this podcast is I really believe that your personality has an ability to come out and people get to know you on a more personal level, and I love that right.
Speaker 1:I love your bio, I love all the material and all the things, but I really feel like I've gotten to know you and we've talked half a dozen times over the last couple of months, but it's been really fun for me to get to know you and I go back to the word that I used to describe you in the beginning and that's passionate, like you are truly passionate, and it's contagious. I think it's put me in a really good mood and making me want to go out and do things, and I'm willing to submit that for those listening to this interview they will do the same, like I think you've really you've done a good job. So, as we conclude the interview, I would love to send it back your way and give you a final word so you can share anything that you'd like any advice, wisdom, takeaways, stock tips jokes. The floor is yours. My friend, take us home.
Speaker 3:I think I kind of dropped some really good nuggets today. You know, stand on business for sure and find ease and joy in all things, which I think is also important. But the last thing I think I'll say to folks is don't be afraid to push the envelope. Don't be afraid of any challenge that you might be thinking about. Just try. It is okay to try. Nobody gets anything right the first time Again, I had four or five false starts before I even found WGU. And it's okay.
Speaker 3:Failure is part of success. Rest is also part of success. All of these things are okay, and you don't have to do it at light speed. You don't have to go get your bachelor's degree in two terms. If it takes you 20 terms. It takes you 20 terms, but guess what? You did it? Yeah, take your time.
Speaker 3:Do what works for you, stay in places of just gratitude and I cannot stress this enough. Lean on your community, whether that's your family, your chosen family, your friends, people that you trust. Lean on them. You're going to need them, you're going to require them. They are also going to be going through this process with you and they're also going to be going through a journey of change with you because as you go through your education journey, you're going to change. You're going to learn more about yourself, you're going to experience more things about yourself. You are going to just inherently be different because you have grown. So don't be afraid of the growth, don't be afraid of the change.
Speaker 3:Let it happen, let it happen organically, and check in with yourself throughout the process and check in with your program mentor as well, and use your weekly check-ins, like I did sometimes it's therapy sessions, because you're just hi, melissa and use your weekly check-ins, like I did sometimes, as therapy sessions Because you're just hi, melissa, like you're just going to have to like sit and just vent some of that stuff out. Because, again, wgu although it is a different modality of distance learning, it's different and it comes with its own host of challenges. But we're night owls. We can do anything. So stand on business, take time for ease, take time for rest and just be proud of yourself and know that you're not on anybody's timeline except your own, and throw away any of these preconceived timelines or ideas you have in your head, because you made them up and they don't matter. You are allowed to be the writer of your own story. So write your story and if it takes you longer, it takes you longer.
Speaker 1:There's no right or wrong way to do this. Wow, good, good stuff, lindsay. Thank you, congratulations again on all the success on being named a distinguished graduate, and we cannot wait to watch you continue to flourish and do the good at work that you are doing. So thank you for joining us again.
Speaker 3:Thanks, jeff, and thank you to the selection team and thank you to everybody this. Thanks, jeff, and thank you to the selection team and thank you to everybody. This was great.
Speaker 4:Thank you. Thank you for listening to the WGU Alumni Podcast. To learn more about the WGU alumni community, visit wguedu backslash alumni. Thank you to our alumni. Now 300,000 strong and growing WGU a new kind of you.