Telicia Chambliss Brooks

I attribute my success to patience, listening, and understanding. I listen a lot and understand the perspective that individuals are coming from. You have to be a problem solver when you're dealing with these types of jobs in technology, and you have to understand the full process - that's why you have to listen. I also set myself up for success by being proactive. I set up automatic notifications so I'll get an email if somebody's files are failing, so I'm usually notified ahead of time. It's very intuitive because I have to understand each product and each application from both ends, but I also have to understand the perspective that the individual is coming from. They're trying to get their work done and need to get that work done, and I was on the other end before I even went into the technology arena, so I know how frustrating it can be when you can't get your work done. My end goal is to stay patient and understanding, listen, and then ask them what they're not seeing. I ask them the full process, and once they tell me, I can calm them down. Most of the time I'll walk them through the process, and most likely I'm already on what they need.

The best advice I received came after I lost my mom a couple months ago. My life changed forever, and someone inspired me and said, you know, you need to do something that you always wanted to do. Don't put off for tomorrow what you can do today. That really resonated with me and changed my perspective on my career and future goals.

I would say be patient. Listen and understand both ends. You have to be patient because you're gonna be a people's person. You have to be a problem solver when you're dealing with these types of jobs in technology, and you have to understand the full process - that's why you have to listen. You have to listen and have empathy for others sometimes. Empathy is very important because you never know - everybody's fighting a battle. You never know what a person is going through, actually. It's always good to be kind. It's always good to be kind.

The biggest challenges in my field right now are dealing with frustrated individuals, especially during critical times like month-end when everybody wants to get their work done at a certain time. People who work in accounting need to settle their books on a daily basis, and month-end is very, very challenging - you have the last week of the month and 3 days of the next month to settle the books for that month. A lot of times you can get upset customers who want to know what's going on, why their files are not here, why the books aren't balancing, or why files didn't deliver what they needed to deliver. It's very challenging because regardless of what system breaks down, it could be some other external application, but as long as it's hitting the main system platform, the Dynamics, they're gonna come to me. They're not gonna look at the other end - everybody's gonna say, hey T, this is not feeding through. In terms of opportunities, we're consistently working on projects to better ourselves as a company. I'm engaged and involved in about 10 different projects right now, and everybody's moving forward to the cloud, so we're getting into that.

The values most important to me are kindness, empathy, patience, and true stewardship. I believe it's always good to be kind, and empathy is very important because you never know what a person is going through - everybody's fighting a battle. I'm a spiritual person, and I believe in true stewardship. I'm a back-end help person, so I help individuals and solve problems every day on my job. My journey has changed recently after losing my mom, and now I want to continue that effort of helping others. One day I would love to own my own small business where I help women and help individuals enter into society again. If I could continue that effort and that true stewardship, I think that will help others as well, and it helps me as well at heart.