Intern Success Story: Stephanie Holden

By Michael Avery and Cynthia Case, Process Improvement Interns

September 20, 2017

Stephanie Holden began her career at the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) as an intern in July 2015. Focusing on change management, she worked under Gary Vansuch and Michelle Malloy within the Office of Process Improvement (OPI). Today, Stephanie is a contract employee working under Valerie Metaiguer as a Business Systems Analyst for CDOT’s Division of Project Support.

Driven to Succeed

Stephanie received her Masters of Public Administration (MPA) from Kansas State University.  Stephanie needed to complete an internship as a requirement for her degree and she was a successful candidate for an internship in the Office of Process Improvement (OPI) at CDOT.  Her interest in the “organizational tools of systems perspective” lead to her current job position. During her internship with OPI, she was given the opportunity to sit with Laura Zamora, an SAP administrator, which led to the opportunity to work outside her department on special projects.  It is through the “driven culture” of CDOT and the encouragement from Gary Vansuch to constantly learn and build skills, that provided the needed foundation for her career.

Stephanie Holden

Photo of Stephanie Holden

Highlight

During her tenure, Stephanie worked on multiple Change Management (CM) projects which looked at the process of change both externally to CDOT employees, and internally with OPI interns.  She managed the Change Agent Network (CAN) statewide meetings for several months and worked to document the internal process flow of the daily tasks needed to make these meetings successful.

Another project that Stephanie worked extensively on was developing an improved process for CDOT workers to submit ideas through the Lean Everyday Ideas (LEI) program.  In addition to this, she was also instrumental in helping facilitate the biannual meetings for LEI.

Through these projects and other experiences with the Office of Process Improvement, Stephanie was able to build her skills, which opened doors of opportunity.  Stephanie stressed the importance of the “skill’s based” knowledge gained through the internship with OPI as the number one objective of this program. Internship opportunities can advance the professional careers as seen here with Stephanie Holden.