Jill Szymanowski:
CLASS OF 1988
Waterford Union High SchoolClass of 1988
Waterford, WI
Marquette UniversityClass of 1994
Milwaukee, WI
Jill's Story
The transition:
After HS, I started working FT. After a short while, I was hired at Marquette University. I worked there FT while I went to school at night.
An abstract of the important stuff:
I started dating my husband, Ty, in 93. He lived in NC. A few months later I moved to NC, and we were married shortly after. As of Aug 08, I've been married almost 14 years, and we have been blessed with 1 child, Amy Grace, who is now 10 months old.
Some details:
My husband and I have actually known each other all my life. I just had no idea or desire to date him or have him as my life partner until we met again after we "grew up". He stood up in my brother's wedding as best man the end of 93. Although I was barely supporting myself in Milwaukee and couldn't even afford to speak to him on the phone, he was persistent and wouldn't give up on the pursuit. It didn't take me long via a long distance phone relationship to realize what an amazing person he was/is. Too bad we didn't have unlimited cell minutes back then! We certainly helped grow AT&T's stock! Marrying him has absolutely been a pivot point in my life toward happiness, and although just like anyone else, we have our fair share of crappy things happen to us, our life and marriage only keeps getting better with time. Moving to NC has also been a blessing for me. I was not keen on working in downtown Milwaukee and living near-by. I couldn't afford much for rent, so I wasn't in a very safe area, and to me the city seemed like such a dirty place. I quickly tired of watching the news because it was only about 1 crime after another. NC is beautiful, but the population in my area is growing very quickly, so it's starting to lose it's rural aura.
My super-beautiful daughter is a typical 10 month old. Thank God she is completely healthy, and I pray she stays that way. She is crawling and learning to walk. Any day now she is going to take off on her own walking. She is a sponge in learning. She is very happy and affectionate. She's been learning to eat different table foods, but we're still struggling with the sippy cup. She is adorable and so precious to us. I'm now planning her 1st birthday party, and I'm loving it! My favorite time with her is when she wakes up in the middle of the ...Expand for more
night/morning. It is such a beautiful, intimate snuggly time. I love being a Mom!
One week before we married, I landed an Admin job at Cisco, and have been fortunate to quickly grow a career there. I've learned a variety of roles, and I'm about to undergo yet another position change. I worked up the Admin ranks my first 5+ years, then moved into a non-technical customer support role as an operations manager directly supporting Cisco customers. After a year of that, I wanted to move on again and moved into my dream role. It was/is called Critical Accounts Territory Manager. Essecntially, in this role you are the end all/ be all. "The buck stops here" in support at Cisco. You represent Cisco Executives in crisis customer situations (can be things such as 9.11 or such as network outages taking down an entire trading floor, hospital networks, banking, university networks, or mom - n - pop type shops) and you have executive level authority (although not the pay for it of course! :) ) But it was an adrenaline rush, and there was a lot of recognition for the successes. Cisco is a company that has often been compared to working in "dog years". 1 year of work at Cisco equals 7 years in most companies. It truly is very fast paced. I like that. But it comes with a high price. After basically giving up my personal life for 2.5 yrs to perform that role, I realized that although I loved it, I needed a life balance. So I moved into people management and continued to have very little personal life. I'm so naive! :) After going through the throes of 1st and 2nd line mgmt for 3 years, I decided to learn more about the behind the scenes portion of the business and join Business Operations Mgmt. It has been a good move, and we were able to persue pregnancy. We were a bit challenged in that area, but in-vitro helped us conceive our miracle. I've been in Business Operations for about 3 yrs now and I'm going to move back into Critical Accounts, but in a newly formed role where I will be non customer facing, but advocating customer needs by looking for trends in critical issues and any systemic issues that contribute to the. I will drive the systemic issues to resolution throughout Cisco. Yes - another adrenaline rush, :) , but this one with hopefully a better life balance.
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