Joann Swanberg, Service Desk Manager, Sue Thao and Carolyn Parnell, State of Minnesota CIO
Sue Thao is not your typical high school student. Not only does he go to school at Johnson High School and work for the State of Minnesota’s Office of Enterprise Technology as a Genesys Works Young Professional, but he also built an award winning computer for his senior project, will graduate in the top 10% of his graduating class, was accepted at the University of Minnesota and became a father in April. How does he balance all of that? I credit it to his ability to see the big picture.
This ability to see the big picture has been a huge asset in Sue’s internship at OET. In fact, when OET took on a new set of reporting tools last December, they knew these tools and the reports they could create would help improve the efficiency and service they could provide as an IT organization. They also knew they needed someone to embrace this new project, someone who could take the data, create clear visual reports and make the big picture clear.
In the four months since he began working at OET, Sue Thao had already shown his supervisors that he had phenomenal communication skills, a strong ability to relate to customers, and the technical aptitude to quickly learn new skills. He knew how to ask customers the right questions and assure them that they had come to the right place, and he was capable of troubleshooting and problem solving when new issues arose. Although only a high school student, Sue was a great fit for this new project.
Without any formalized training, Sue has learned to navigate the new system, write scripts and create visuals that clearly illustrate performance for different enterprise groups within OET and the other state agencies they work with. Sue is now the “go to” person for reports at OET, as his supervisor Joann Swanberg shared, “putting numbers in perspective and illustrating trends for the whole office.”
Thank you , Sue, for bringing your big picture knowledge to Genesys Works and to the State of Minnesota!
I had the opportunity to meet Sue when he accepted his Career Investment Scholarship from the Saint Paul Area Chamber Foundation last week. What an impressive young man! Life balance is something that people twice his age are still struggling with, so Sue is an inspiring individual on so many levels.
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