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'm the Director of Communications here at Wells Insurance. I help our agency with strategies to get our messaging out to different audiences. I try to take insurance concepts and make them understandable to different audiences, internal and external. I keep them on brand making them interesting and measurable.
What's your background, and how long have you been here?
I've been here for 10 years. My background is a little bit all over the place. I grew up in Miramar, Florida. I went to college in Virginia and I took a snowboarding elective there and I fell in love with it. Right out of college I decided I wanted to get into the snowboarding industry so I got an internship at Snowshoe Mountain Resort in the marketing department.I met my husband there and stayed 16 years doing various roles. I ran the snowboard park. I ran a snowboard shop. I was a snowboard buyer there for many years. I ended up becoming a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt. I got my real estate license. I had several photography businesses and eventually moved to North Carolina, held several roles there, and then found my way into the insurance industry, which was the last thing I ever expected to be perfectly honest.
Why Wells? What brought you here?
I actually never thought I would be in insurance, but I needed a career change and I found a creative position and it happened to be in insurance. It allowed me to use my professional skills and I was surprised that I really liked it here.
What do you like most about it?
I really enjoy the people I work with. What kept me here is that I was valued and trusted. I enjoy the variety, the things that I do every day, and surprisingly 10 years have gone by and I'm still here.
What's the best lesson you've learned throughout your career?
The best lesson I've learned throughout my career is that you can't control the situations around you but that you have the responsibility and the opportunity to control your reaction to it.
The first job I ever had was working for my dad in Miami Beach. I was washing boats, fueling them up, docking them. He had a powerboat rental business. My brother and I just spent all of our summers and weekends docking boats and scrubbing and handling rentals and all that stuff for years. I loved it actually. I learned so much about boats and how to tie off a boat with just a flip of my wrist and yeah I loved it. It was great.
What's the weirdest job you ever had?
It wasn't a weird job but I'd say an unusual job. My friend Chuck and I at Snowshoe decided to start our own business just taking photos of skiers and snowboarders on the slopes. We gathered our camera gear and every morning we would head out across the mountain to take photos of everyone at various points. Then midday we'd trek back to the lodge and upload them all, get them up on monitors inside and sell them to folks online. It was a really fun gig.
If you could do anything for a living, what would it be?
If I could do anything for a living it would be adventure travel. My husband and I talk about this a lot because I could find a way to do that now. He couldn't with his job so you know I can work out of a laptop.
I like roller skating in skate parks. I really love roller skating in skate parks. It's my most favorite thing to do. I do it very frequently a couple times a week usually.(...) I do road trips to do it with my friends. I also like climbing, art, travel, scuba diving.
What’s volunteer activity/non-profit do you like to work with/support and why?
My skate crew and I organized park skating instructional stuff. We teach people to learn to roller skate and skate park stuff. We get folks together that have never done it. People that have never done it are usually curious about it. Maybe they have done roller derby in the past or maybe they just do rink skating and they've seen it. It's usually the kind of thing that you need an introduction to. It can be scary. We teach the basics of gear and how to get started. Then either we never see them again or they're hooked. It's a lot of fun and we've met some really fantastic close friends through it. We go on road trips and hit all the local parks. Then through my passion with skate parks, I also work with the Surf City skate park that's getting built there this spring. I'm super excited about that.
What's on your bucket list?
I have many bucket list items. I want to go to Kyoto. I want to go to Antarctica. I want to take a dog sled trip out to stay at an igloo, look at the northern lights. I want to dive the blue hole. Like there's just I have pretty much an endless list.
I'm actually really good at building things. I'm quite handy. When we lived in the mountains, my husband and I actually built our house together.( I'm a really good carpenter. I built my own mini pipe in the backyard. My husband and I also just built a greenhouse together. Yeah, I have building skills, power tools are my jam.
What's your greatest weakness?
My greatest weakness is probably not staying true to myself. I let people/things get in my head thinking that, "Oh, maybe I can't do something when I know I can." Sometimes when I'm skating, standing at the edge of the half pipe, I get that little fearful voice causing that little bit of confidence start to wane...That's the beginning of the end.
What accomplishment are you most proud of?
Something that I really value and that I'm really proud of is: a few years ago, on a whim, I signed up to be crew on a sailing journey where we had to deliver a vessel from St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands to Abaco in the Bahamas. There were a few of us and it was constant sailing for five days and nights. We had to sail in shifts all day, all night. I had not done that before. I'd sailed before, but not at a level like that. It was scary and exhilarating and amazing and all of these things that I was so proud at the end when we made it. It was so cool to have accomplished that. It's the same thing when I'm standing at the top of a bowl or a half pipe and I can overcome that fear and drop in. I know I can accomplish anything when I put my mind to it and follow through. That's really cool.
I have many. It depends on the genre, but my favorite book is East of Eden, by John Steinbeck. I also really love Hemingway. Islands in the Stream is a really good one. Then I also like a good old Stephen King. Duma Key is one I've read multiple times because it takes place in a fictional part of The Keys and it's got an art flavor to it with some supernatural. So it's a good road trip one that I enjoy.
Seinfeld all the way. I do love The Righteous Gemstones and 1923 is amazing if you haven't checked that one out.
I love the Kill Bill series. I love the Harry Potter series. I'm a huge sci-fi fan. I love all the Star Wars series. I'm really looking forward to Dune.
Favorite Band?
So I'm going to give you genres. I'm going 80s New Wave, Reggae, Riot Girl, Punk Rock, Old School Hip Hop.
How do you define success?
I feel successful if I feel secure, if I'm continuously improving and becoming a better version of myself over time, if I'm affecting meaningful change with the things that I can control and if I'm generally happy.
What's the best advice you've been given?
If you can't change it, let it go.
Kirsten keeps our digital footprint alive and well as well as our branding on point. She can reached for any digital marketing or communications questions regarding the Wells Insurance brand at 910-251-5463