I’m very proud to say I’ve been able to grow my career at Avanade over the last 12 years by embracing new opportunities that have come my way. It’s been a wild ride and one that keeps going. Back in 2003, during my senior year at the University of Washington, I came across a posting for a recruiting/HR internship at a newly formed company called Avanade. Being from Seattle, joining a joint venture created by Microsoft and Accenture sounded extremely exciting, as well as a great opportunity to learn more about a career in Human Resources. As an intern, I was given the opportunity to recruit and hire other interns and welcome new hires into the company. Many of those interns are still with Avanade today.

After six months, I was given the choice to move into a full-time analyst-level position on the Recruiting Team or on the HR Team. I chose recruiting because I love the challenge of finding people who will thrive within the organization. I further developed the Avanade Intern Program as well as the North America Campus Recruiting Program, hiring the first Ignition Class in 2005, and growing the program to 175 campus hires per year.  I then moved to recruit for and manage the West Region Recruiting Team and later pivoted to managing the North America Solutions Workforce Recruiting Team (ATS). Both teams focused on hiring technical Solution Developers, Systems Engineers, Project Managers, Business Analysts, and Sales professionals.

Fast forward to today and I am a Group Manager leading recruiting for the Western North America, including the Northwest, Microsoft, Southwest, and Midwest Regions, as well as our specialty areas including Campus, Dynamics CRM, Dynamics AX, Microsoft Lync, Sitecore, and XD Teams.

At home, I am a wife and a mom of a three year-old daughter named Clara and a one-year old son named Maxwell. I balance work and life by loving what I do every day.  I get to bring people into an organization that I respect and admire while also spending as much time as I can cooking, eating, drinking wine, snow skiing, attending sporting events (Go Seahawks!) and musicals, and spending time with family and friends. Managing work and life can be exhausting, but I believe what someone once told me, that “if it doesn’t keep you up at night, it isn’t worth doing.”

Since the day I joined Avanade, I have been given opportunities to grow personally and professionally.  I continue to learn everyday what it means to be a customer champion, a collaborative team member, and a results focused business partner. For all those reasons, I am proud to be Orange.

If you are interested in joining Avanade, I urge you to check out the new Avanade website devoted to careers that contains a ton of great information on our company and culture. We are always looking for people who love to solve business problems with cutting edge technology, we’d love for you to join us.