This week, Baseline celebrates National Administrative Week, recognizing the professionals who keep our offices running smoothly every day. Celebrate these professionals on the last full week in April of each year. While Baseline doesn’t have secretaries, this week recognizes the work of our admin team, which includes a variety of talents: office managers, HR, marketing, business development, accounting, and leadership.
Famous Administrative Professionals
What do Joan Rivers, JK Rowling, and Alexander Hamilton have in common? They were all secretaries at some point in their careers!
Joan Rivers: Joan Rivers had several jobs before successfully making it as a comedian including working as a secretary for Arthur Irvin, a successful talent agent and club booker, who discouraged her from pursuing comedy. She would perform her monologue when she answered Arthur’s phone.
Bette Nesmith Graham: Bette began her career as an executive secretary for a Texas bank and went on to work on an IBM electric typewriter in the 1950s. The design made it difficult to neatly erase typos so she thought of a solution. She tried brushing white water-based paint on the paper to cover her mistake and it worked. She later sold her company, Liquid Paper, for $50M to Gillette.
J.K. Rowling: Before she wrote the Harry Potter series, JK Rowling worked as a secretary for Amnesty International.
Alexander Hamilton: In 1777, Alexander Hamilton caught the eye of George Washington who made him aide-de-camp for five years. At this position, Hamilton wrote much of Washington’s correspondence. After leading the charge at Yorktown, he was tapped to be the first US treasury secretary.
Survey the Admin Team
National Administrative Professionals Week, celebrated annually during the last week of April, to acknowledge the services performed by this group. This year’s event takes place April 20-24, 2020. In honor of National Administrative Professionals Week and the important role our admins have played in our firm’s success, we recently sat down with members of our admin staff to learn more about their profession/role at Baseline.
Baseline’s admin team were asked to reflect upon their professional experiences, and answer questions in our “Survey the Admins.” Check out what our admins had to say each day this week for their survey responses. Today, we feature Mary Lovett, our Colorado Springs office manager!
Please tell us about yourself and your background and how you came to Baseline: Current Inc. started Checks in the Mail in 1983; it was the first company to do mail order checks. The check division took off faster than anyone expected and I was hired at the start-up, working 60-hours a week. I did training, (you know your training was going bad when they ask “what is a deposit slip”? Interviewing 15 or more people a day, writing a training manual, developing a quality program and a cost savings program for the check division. I was at Current for 10 years and decided to take a few years off to spend with my son, who was in his last years of high school and racing mountain bikes. My husband and I managed a 33-person mountain bike racing team that traveled all over Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona with 6-8 teenage boys with us at each race. During this time, I also completed the master gardening program through the CSU extension and then volunteered in their office answering questions.
My husband and I also volunteered for the Community Health Center and helped create and implement the volunteer program which is still in effect today. Community Health and four private sector doctors were in the process of opening up a Birthing Hospital “Springs Center for Women.” I was asked to move from Community Health to the Springs Center for Women, at which time they hired me for the administration office. I worked at the Springs Center until they closed their doors.
I was planning to take some time off, but a week after the Springs Center closed, I received a phone call from Obering, Wurth & Associates. Their office manager had a stroke and they asked me if I could help fill in. Twenty years later, I’m still at OWA, now Baseline Engineering Corporation.- What is the most rewarding aspect of your position? The most rewarding aspects would be the clients and building relationships.
- Please share a funny or interesting story about your role (doesn’t have to be at Baseline). OWA had a client, Bob Patterson, an older gentleman who had a meeting with Toni Wurth and Roland. I was asked to keep him busy while they finished up a phone call. While we were talking, I found out he was from a small town, Lincoln, Illinois which turned out to be the same town that my parents were both born and raised. I told Bob that I also have a Patterson in my family history. So needless to say, we may be related. I gave Bob the information I had on my family and I’m waiting to hear.
