Jessica Stroud, Head of Information Technology, is HCPL’s January winner for Who’s Awesome! There were 20 nominations for the honor this month.
Kelly Powell, business manager, nominated Jessica stating, “Jessica always has a smile on her face and is always willing to help. She takes work phone calls on her time off and comes in whenever needed. She has helped me with so many little silly things, I should have been able to fix myself and never complained. She is a person you can count on 24-7. I love working with her and think she is a great asset to the library.”
Jessica first joined HCPL’s staff on July 23, 2001, as a library assistant. She quickly advanced to serve as IT support, administrative assistant to the director and assistant circulation manager. She was network and systems administrator before being named head of information technology.
Jessica has received multiple nominations over the months—too many to fit on this page. In December, Debi Strubler had this to say about Jessica, “Jessica always answers every IT question I have, so that I understand the answer. She always has compassion for me, since I did not touch a computer until I was 40. It does not matter what I ask her, she stops what she is doing and gives all of her attention to my question. I walk away not feeling stupid, and a bit more savvy about computers.”
In November, Alisa Burch, library director, wrote, “As head of IT Jessica is integral in keeping the library’s tech up and running. She leads the way in investigating new technologies and stays on top of purchases, outages, patron and staff issues, database renewals, hotspots and more. She also handles social media posts and issues, creates library marketing materials, sends out eBlasts to library users and lends help to anyone who needs it. Jessica is Awesome!“
Each month a winner is selected by random drawing. Other staff members nominated in January include Amanda Applegate, Corinne Burton, Liz Dennis, Lisa Griffith, Diana Lasky, JoBeth Mathes, Pam Nemeth, Bob Ohlrich, Eden Ransdell, Debi Strubler, Trevor Smith, Tiffany Thieneman, Ellie Tucker-Brown, and Savannah Wallace.
Article by Alisa Burch, Director
