Who are the people that our clients talk to, trust, and work with year after year? Get to know more about our agency by getting to know the people through our Employee Spotlight Series.
What do you do here at Wells?
I do all things IT around here ranging from helping out with user tickets to getting random bits and bobs of hardware installed and everything in between.
What's your background?
Originally I'm from Winston-Salem and I moved down here around the time that I started going to UNCW. I studied and have a BA in psychology. It was a kind of funny story how I got into IT. I actually ended up in IT through working at Best Buy originally. I worked over at Geek Squad. I got hired originally as a seasonal helper, then they put me on permanently and then probably a little bit less than a year after that I was able to land my first job in IT which was definitely a game changer. Before I came over to Wells I worked also as an IT technician but I worked as one up in upstate New York at Lockheed Martin. A very interesting crowd there and very massive facility. Definitely by far the biggest place I've ever worked. You could walk by different labs and see someone and never see them again.
What do you like most about working at Wells?
The kind of self-governance that I have in my position where we have a very small IT team. There's a whole ton of responsibilities that falls on just the two of us. In most companies they'd have different divisions like networking, they'd have an actual help desk, and then other sections. For us it's everything in between and so it forces us to strengthen our skill sets in every sense of technological means.
What's the best lesson you've learned throughout your career?
I think one of the best lessons I've learned is that our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions. What that means is we're predisposed a whole bunch of things, whether they're environmental, genetic, and how we react to them is what makes the difference at the end of the day. It's played out in multiple ways. For example: Growing up, my family was pretty poor so I'm predisposed to that kind of environment. Trying to break the mold and actually be a successful person, despite some of the hardships growing up, is where I applied that to my life.
What's the biggest challenge you've had in your career?
I think in my career the biggest challenge that I've faced was actually B-Lining from working at Best Buy to going into IT, since Geek Squad is considered baby's first IT. It's like a junior help desk basically. Getting that leap forward into an actual job and landing an IT position was a huge thing for me and a very big milestone career-wise.
What accomplishment are you most proud of?
One of my proudest accomplishments is probably graduating college. It definitely got hard since my last year and a half of college was during COVID lockdown. Unfortunately I never did get to actually physically walk, but that being said it was still one of my proudest accomplishments since it did take me a good five years or so to to get my degree.
What's the first job you ever had?
The very first job that I ever had was as a cashier at Food Lion, but that wasn't for very long because it was just like a summer job. So beyond that it was at UNCW when I worked for Campus Life. I was a fitness attendant there. I was one of those idiots who were always at the gym. I would mold my class schedule around going to the gym because I figured there's no place better to work than the place that I always going anyways.
What's the weirdest job you've ever had?
The weirdest job that I've ever had was definitely back when I was at Lockheed. There were a lot of parts at our facility that they were redoing because most staff were still remote in 2022. The upstairs of the building adjacent to mine had hundreds of cubicles, and all but maybe ten were empty The lights were pretty much always off up there and you could kind of just get lost and it was terrifying. There was a running joke in our IT lab that when you went up there, you didn't come back the same person. There was a lab that was called the situational awareness lab up there, which I still want to know what that means, but that was above my pay grade.
If you could do anything for a living, what would you do?
I think it would probably be doing something with animals, more specifically probably reptiles. I own several reptiles myself and it's kind of a hobby of mine. I love them! Doing something like that would definitely be fun.
What do you like to do when you're not working?
I'm an outside person. When I'm at work, I'm always staring at a screen on the computer. When I'm not at work I like to be doing the opposite. I like to go camping. It's one of my favorite things to do, except during the summer when it's 10 trillion degrees. I also enjoy caring for my reptiles and my aquatics. I have some shrimp and have a little "shrimp shack" as I call it. Caring for my animals is definitely something that I'm very very passionate about you know when it's too hot to camp but I still want to get outside then like going to trails and stuff like that is something that I love doing.
What’s volunteer activity/non-profit do you like to work with/support and why?
I like to do community activism in the area and that can come in many different forms. I would call myself a little bit of an activist.
What's on your bucket list?
I think the top of my bucket list would probably be going on an extended trip to either Japan or around Asia, because it's such a different area both culturally and geologically. There's just completely different geological and geographic features.
What's your biggest strength?
My hard-headedness when it comes to persistence and maybe physically as well. When I want something done, I'm going to get it done.
What's your biggest weakness?
Also my hard-headedness. I feel like sometimes I can get a little bit too focused on the details and so I have to take a step back and say, "Okay Ali, you're you're too in the weeds here. We need to take a step back and get a bird's eye view of this."
What's your secret superpower nobody knows about?
I can ride a unicycle. My elementary school had a unicycle team and I started practicing unicycling when I was in second grade, but they didn't allow second graders onto the unicycling team. So I could only go to practice in the mornings before school and taught myself. I fractured my arm once in the process and then in third or fourth grade I was able to hop on the unicycling team.
Favorite book?
I'm pretty into reading, but I would say currently my favorite book is a book called Being Mortal. This is my psychology nerd coming out, but it's a book that goes through different cultures, opinions, and worldviews on end of life care and what like a good life is in the end. it was a very jarring book to read emotionally in a lot of ways, but also very interesting well. A lot of parts have really stuck with me since I finished reading it a couple months ago.
Favorite podcast?
My favorite podcast is one called Abroad in Japan. One of the host's name is actually Chris Broad and so it's kind of a play on words. He talks about the culture and the things he does. He's some British man who's lived in Japan for upwards of 10 years. He started there as an English teacher and now he's written a book, does a podcast, and makes YouTube videos as well about his travels. He finds all these weird places around the country that are very interesting.
Favorite TV show?
I wouldn't say I have a favorite show at the moment, but one from my childhood that comes to mind is Courage the Cowardly Dog. I feel like it's on brand for me as a person since it's a spooky kids cartoon.
Favorite movie?
My favorite movie is The Thing...the John Carpenter version, not the 2011 version. Although that version is okay as well, I think the fact that the ending of the 2011 is the beginning of the 1980s version is really cool. It was based off of a novella called Who Goes There.
Favorite band?
My favorite band is a metal hardcore band called Avenged Sevenfold. They've been my favorite band since I was about 10, so for most of my life they've been my favorite band. I actually got to see them for the first time live in concert this past March, and that was definitely one of the highlights of my year so far. That would have been a bucket list item for me, because it was real fun!
How do you define success?
I would define success as having my own sense of happiness, as well as those that I love also being able to achieve that. I don't mean in the sense of having a million dollars or anything like that, but more just being able to have a life well-lived where I'm able to do the things that makes me happy and the people that I love are able to do the things that make them happy.
What's the best advice you've ever been given?
The best advice that I've ever been given I would say is to not give up on the person that you're becoming.
Ali works hard to keep all the gears turning and keep things secure here at Wells Insurance. Check out the YouTube version of her Employee Spotlight!