Diana Jinkens:
CLASS OF 1988
Walla Walla High SchoolClass of 1988
Walla walla, WA
Diana's Story
Life
I decided that going to the community college as planned after high school maybe wasn't my bag after all and I attended this informational seminar in Tri-Cities advertising a travel school in Vancouver, WA called "International Air Academy" - our classmate and my then friend and now husband of 16 years, Mike, just happened to have the day off from work that day and tagged along with me. Needless to say, after the seminar he informed me that he too wanted to attend this school and blow off his plans of going to Seattle Art Institute so we ended up going to the 3-month school.
When we were done with the program multiple airlines sent reps to the school to interview for employees and it was just a strike of fate that we both happened to be hired by Continental Airlines in Houston. So, still being just friends we moved down there and got an apartment together and lived down there for two years and that's when at some point love struck and it turned into more than friendship. Continental filed for bankruptcy protection in 1990 and our folks talked us into moving back to Walla Walla and we both had our fill of traveling around for free (it was good while it lasted) and living in such an awful (in our opinion) climate. So, we moved back home to Walla Walla where Mike went to Walla Walla College and got his B.S.B.A. degree while working at the phone company and I went to the Community College and did my first two years while working for the Corps of Engineers, we got married in 1991 and then we moved to Portland where I f...Expand for more
inished my Bachelors in Business/Management and got on at Safeco Insurance while Mike pursued careers in Accounting at various firms - he was a general ledger accountant, cost accountant, then an assistant controller ... then he'd decided he'd had his fill of accounting and became an Senior Accout Manager with the company he was with in Portland and he went back to school at night and gained his M.B.A. degree.
I started with Safeco initially in the claims department, then became an underwriter and then worked on a project that helped me to get a big promotion two years ago in our Seattle headquarters so they moved us and hired Mike as part of the deal. I spent two years in IT as a Business Analyst before being promoted into my current position as a Senior Business Analyst in the Claims department. Mike is a Senior Product Analyst (they sound similar but are in totally different areas and doing totally different things in the company, our headquarters has about 2k people working there). We work in downtown Seattle but live up north about 20 miles in the Mill Creek (Bothell) area where we had a home built last year. You may have heard of Safeco; we write business in most of the US states and we sponsor the field where the Mariners play here in Seattle. We don't have any human children but we do have two "babies": our 3-year old Toy Schnauzer Moby and our 7-year old Lhasa Apso Marley. We also have a six-year old neice we adore and spoil!
That's pretty much me in a nutshell! Life has been good and I feel very fortunate!
Register for Free to view all details!
Yearbooks
Register for Free to view all yearbooks!
Reunions
Photos
