Happy Friday and welcome to the last day of January!!! Our Friday Faces posts are winding down and we only have a few more remaining in our series for this year. We are tremendously fortunate to have so many amazing people as part of Team SLOCA and today we are highlighting our phenomenal Leadership team. Here’s your chance to get to know this hardworking group just a little bit better.
Please note — Our Director of Human Resources and Care, Stacey Higgins was featured in our Friday Faces: New Staff post. Be sure to check it out.
What was your first job?
- Amy: Washing dishes at the Elks Lodge when I was 13.
- Betsi: FOH (Front of House) at Pat & Oscar’s, a family-style restaurant in San Diego––I could get free breadsticks on my breaks which I thought was the BEST perk as a high schooler!
- Kateri: My first job was teaching ballet. I was in high school and taught little dancers.
- Cozy: I bussed tables at Peterson’s Ice Cream in Oak Park, IL
- Susie: I worked at a do-it-yourself frame shop as a teenager. I got to help people decide how to frame their art and help them build it, and use all sorts of fun power tools to cut everything.
- Merideth: Hostess at a small diner.
Name a book you have always wanted to read but haven’t read yet.
- Amy: I have yet to read anything by Jane Austen. So any of her books. I don’t know that anything is keeping me from reading them other than life is busy and I keep finding other things to read.
- Betsi: Oh, just one?? This is a list that never seems to get shorter for me, for every book or author I read there seems to be at least 2 more I discover I want to read. I have recently been trying to read through Vonnegut––his books have been on my list for A WHILE & I just finished Cat’s Cradle & looking to start another. The other one that comes to mind is Kerouac’s On the Road––it’s one that just keeps sitting on my shelf patiently waiting for the day. I just recently found out my cousin’s wife is his niece, so currently feeling a special kinship to him.
- Kateri: I want to finish Moby Dick, Anna Karenina, and Les Miserables. I started all three when my high schoolers were reading them but didn’t finish any of them. I do much better with shorter books?!
- Cozy: While my “need to read” book list is very, very, long, there aren’t any books that I have put off (or that aren’t already on said list).
- Susie: Hmmm, that’s a hard one. I’ve watched my older kids read so many books I wish I got to read in the context of a classroom setting, where I get to discuss them while reading them. But maybe War & Peace is the one that comes to the forefront of my mind in terms of having it on my “bedside table,” yet unopened. I agreed to read it one summer with a friend and never did. It’s huge. And I guess I have a fear that I won’t really enjoy it in the sense I most love to enjoy books (especially over the summer months!) – when they so capture me that I forget I’m working hard and learning because I am totally drawn in by the story.
- Merideth: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Any book that is described as a masterpiece in the art of fiction should be read.
If you could have any superpower, what would it be?
- Amy: I wish I could fly! I always seem to want to be moving faster than I can. Or maybe a superpower where you don’t have to sleep so I could just keep doing!
- Betsi: I would like to be able to shoot tacos (Mexican taco stand-style) out of my right index finger. I’d always have a snack on hand. Either that or be fluent in whale languages.
- Kateri: Hmm…flying could be fun, being invisible could be interesting, super strength could be helpful.
- Cozy: Super-duper physical strength, I think. It’s something I’ve never had and I often wish I could take care of things on my own instead of relying on someone else’s muscles!
- Susie: Is magic a superpower? I just finished the Harry Potter series and if I could do some great magic, my “superpowers” would be flexible, which seems pretty fun and practically helpful (I could use a few charms to keep my house clean and food on the table!). But outside of that, I think flying sounds pretty amazing.
- Merideth: I would like to be able to bring my parents back to life so they could see how their grandchildren have grown up.
What’s your favorite season?
- Amy: Fall — love the change to cool weather and wearing jeans and boots.
- Betsi: Though I really like all the seasons and the new change in rhythms they naturally bring, if you pressed me, I’d have to say summer — I love being in and around water & out in the sun, I will always be a San Diego kid at heart.
- Kateri: Autumn was particularly beautiful growing up in Washington State and living in Virginia. Now, even though California does not have quite the dramatic color changes, I still think autumn is my favorite season as I also love the newness of the school year and the anticipation of the holidays.
- Cozy: I love the fall.
- Susie: As a child, I would have said summer because in the Midwest, that’s when the thunderstorms happen and I loved them then and still miss them today. But here? This might be because I’m looking out my window at the green, but I just love winter on the central coast. I am smitten anew by the green hills every single year.
- Merideth: Fall.
A huge “Thank You” to our spectacular Leadership team for all that you do!!!
Be sure to stop by next Friday for part one of Friday Faces: Support Staff. Have a SUPER weekend!
2 thoughts on “Friday Faces: Leadership”
I didn’t know that shooting tacos was a superpower – dang that sounds amazing. 🙂
I define “superpower” as anything that you can do that makes the world better. So by that standard, I would think, instant tacos applies.