Danielle Boyer

I've spent my entire career in administrative and executive assistant roles, and I've been fortunate to work across so many different industries that have each taught me something valuable. Right after I graduated college, I worked for almost 9 years in the research industry, where we did research on upcoming vaccines and different medications. We were kind of like the middleman when a drug was getting FDA approved, so I worked in an admin role there but also helped with the clinical research part. After that, I moved into a school district as an admin for a couple years, then went to Sandridge Foods Corporation as an administrative assistant where I also did a lot of bookkeeping and payroll in a food production facility. That was actually a turning point for me because I had never done anything like accounting before and didn't think I could, but I had a really good manager who trained me through it. I remember the accounting manager would giggle when I'd stand up and do a little dance every time I got everything to match and balance correctly. Being able to stretch myself and learn something completely new like that, something I didn't think was possible for me, was definitely a highlight in my career. From there, I worked at Caterpillar for four and a half years as an administrative assistant to a VP. That's really where employee engagement became my specialty. In a big manufacturing company like that, employee engagement is a huge struggle, so I created a lot of events and activities and did a lot of work connecting with employees to understand what they needed. My previous boss there was an amazing woman leader who believed in me, encouraged me, and stretched me in ways that built my confidence. About a month ago, I started a completely new chapter as executive assistant to a growing daycare business. The president has been open for about 5 years and is getting ready to open 2 other sites, and I was just very excited to learn from the ground up how this business works. I've worked for some bigger companies before, and this is a much smaller company, so I get to be his shadow and learn how to build a successful business from the ground up. Right now I'm working on payroll, accounts payable and receivable, new hire paperwork, helping with tax information, and setting up utilities for the new sites. We're creating this role together since he's never had an executive assistant before. As we move forward, I'm hoping to build the role to lean more toward employee engagement, because that's really where I shine. In daycare, there's a lot of turnover, so I've started looking at his turnover and attrition rates to see where we stand compared to other daycares. My goal is to start doing some pinpoints of what we can do to make this the daycare place to come work, because losing employees and having to train new ones is your biggest money drain.

• Bachelor's Degree in Business Administration from a private college

• Race for the Cure