Karla Pitzen

When I was in college, I was interested in human behavior, which is why I selected psychology as my major. However, there's not really a lot you can do with a bachelor's degree in psychology, so I knew I would probably have to go on for at least a Master's degree. I took a business psychology class, and I remember I had a professor, who said that people who hate their jobs die younger. Whether that was really based in fact or not, it had an impact on me. I thought, well, what's more important than helping people to be happy at work? I've been in human resources for roughly 25 years and in security for 4 years. Currently, I work for a security company with about 3,000 employees that has both an electronic services side and a security officer division. In my current role, I mainly handle employee relations. In between human resources jobs, I was a customer assistance manager for several years, and that has helped me to de-escalate situations and learn not to take things personally. I think anything that I do, I care about doing a good job, and that's probably the single thread that's gone through my whole career. In anything you do, you have to always put the people first because relationships are everything.