Here is a list of artifacts:

Throughout my time in a professional setting and through other classes I have taken I have a few things I can post here that would be examples of my work.

Gender equality in the workplace

This is a post I made in a group project about sexism in the workplace. This was an interesting project and actually taught me quite a bit.

Gender equality at work

Another post that I created in regard to our group project.

I created a separate twitter (x) account that I managed and posted in throughout the time I worked on this group project. The account name is @AtSexism.

Interview | Sexism in the workplace (stcloudstate.edu)

I had the pleasure of interviewing my mother-in-law who at the time was up for a big award at her workplace and had to do some interviews for it. She told me a personal story.

All of these things gave me good experience in different aspects of a communication role. My goal is to eventually get into either journalism or some sort of role like that within a professional sports organization and I feel like all of these things gave me some experience in heading toward that goal.

Jeffrey R Holt

2712 Copper Creek Lane

Buffalo, MN 55313

320-241-8386

Jeho1102@yahoo.com

OBJECTIVE: Pursue an opportunity to utilize my skills and experience to further my professional career and drive outstanding results. I build strong relationships and bring a positive attitude to lead and motivate teams to deliver excellent service and successful results. I am detail oriented, focused on high-quality and accuracy. I am dedicated to my work, team, customers, and company.

EXPERIENCE: ALLIANZ LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY – Golden Valley, MN 1/2023 – Current | Operations Specialist Manage customer service requests and inquiries by applying product knowledge, navigating multiple systems and establishing customer relationships. Influence strong results by ensuring a high degree of productivity and quality; including recommending process improvements and increasing digital adoption by educating callers on the self-service features of our website. Follow established guidelines and strive to exceed published benchmarks related to soft skills, accuracy, call handle time and attendance. Always prepared to put the caller’s needs first by prioritizing solving problems, de-escalating situations where warranted, and help guide a first call resolution.

OLD NATIONAL BANK – Buffalo, MN 1/2020 – 6/2022 | Assistant Branch Manager Manage, direct and oversee the daily operations and business development of the branch office. Participate in interviewing and hiring of personnel. Supervise tellers and ensure policies and procedures are followed; deliver high quality customer service. Prepare and participate in audits. Act as lending officer for personal loans. Ensure security and safety measures are in place.

ALLIANZ LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY – Golden Valley, MN 9/2016 – 1/2020 | Relationship Specialist Work with top level sales agents and internal sales representatives. Continue to handle situations where there may have been errors in processing. Build and maintain strong internal and external relationships to ensure a high-quality service experience that provides value-driven solutions and achieve business results.

8/2014- 9/2016 | Associate Relationship Specialist Work with escalated situations. Handle situations where there may have been errors in processing. Present exception/accommodation requests from clients and agents to committees. Build strong internal and external relationships to ensure a high-quality service experience, provide value-driven solutions and achieve business results.

8/2011 – 8/2014 | Operations Service Associate Work as a customer service representative in an in-bound call center. Speak with policy owners, agents, and various third parties. Review policy specifics, provide detailed answers and assistance with policy benefits and provisions. Manage each call in a successful, efficient manner. Provide accurate information; deliver a positive experience that ensures customers are overall satisfied with Allianz.

LIDS / HATWORLD – Mall of America, Bloomington, MN 9/2006 – 8/2011 | Store Manager (Promotion to 3rd ranked store in district) Leadership, oversight of daily operations of retail store. Began as an Associate, promoted to Management; relocated to various stores in North Dakota and Minnesota. Responsibilities include: manage, coach, train and motivate store employees, scheduling, inventory, sales goals, handling bank deposits and balancing daily receipts, participating in conference calls, reporting results to district manager. Highly customer and employee focused to meet and exceed sales targets.

EDUCATION: · Ridgewater College – 2019-2020; Associates of Arts degree · St. Cloud State University – current; Bachelor of Arts in Professional Communication

MILITARY: ·

01/2001 – 1/2010 Army National Guard: Rank E-3, MOS/Job: 88M · 11/2004 – 12/2005 Active Duty

COMMUNITY SERVICE: ·

Montrose Volunteer Fire Department · Buffalo Volunteer Fire Department · Wounded Warriors Hockey League

Throughout my time attending classes, whether it be at St. Cloud State or during the process of getting my Associates degree I have used many different platforms.

Technology:

I am proficient in many different Microsoft applications. I commonly use Outlook for my email platform both in a personal and professional setting. It is a primary source of communication through my job.

Powerpoint: most recently I completed a project for another class that was done completely through the PowerPoint platform. Not only did I have to use a slide deck, I had to do a verbal presentation that covered each slide with a pretty detailed description of each. I have a strong understanding on how to use it and complete tasks in that setting.

Excel: I would say I have a good understanding of how excel works and can navigate it well. I continue to use it in my everyday life through my job and continue to learn more and more about the platform.

Word: I have had the opportunity to use Microsoft Word quite regularly, whether it be writing papers for school or using it at my job to write-up presentations that I will be using in meetings. Additionally, we write a lot of settlement agreements and resolution offers and I am proficient in doing them.

Teams: Within the last year my company has switched our instant messaging platform to Teams. If someone decides they do not need to send a whole email but have a quick question they will reach out to me using Teams. In my current position we do not use it as much as we did in my previous one, but it is a tool I am familiar with and can use. In addition to using it in my professional setting, my hockey team uses it to stay in touch with each other, and schedules for team events.

Salesforce: My daily workload is achieved through the use of the Salesforce platform. Both my internal partners and colleagues use it to assign cases, reply to messages, and submit additional workload tasks to communicate with other departments. This is basically our source of truth when it comes to doing my daily job.

In addition to the above mentioned platforms I have become familiar with Sports Engine and Discord. This is used on more of a personal level than on a professional level as the hockey programs I am apart of have been using them more recently. I am familiar with how to use each of these platforms.

Webex: I use webex every day at my job. I attend anywhere from 3-5 meetings a day and all are done through Webex. I have my own Webex account that I can use to set up meetings with anyone on the platform. I am familiar in how to use Webex and am comfortable with it.

Lastly, I am familiar with using WordPress. I would not say I am 100% proficient in using it but am learning more and more about it as I use it for various assignments.

Hi, my name is Jeff Holt. I am currently enrolled in the Professional Communication major at Saint Cloud State University. I received my Associate of Arts degree from Ridgewater College in 2019. I am married with 3 kids 7, 4, and 2. In addition to working full-time and going to school I am also a volunteer fire fighter for the city of Buffalo in Minnesota. I am a veteran of the United States Army. In my “spare” time I enjoy pretty much anything sports related but have been spending a lot of time at the hockey rink, as I play on a veteran only hockey team. Additionally, I like spending time with family in some sort of capacity. I have been in the work force since I was about 15 years old in various roles but the majority of them have been in some sort of customer service capacity. The job I currently have is a company I have been with for coming up on 10 years. in my current role, basically, I research a request that comes from a customer, put together all of the information that I gather from my research, and take all of that and compile it into a presentation. I previously started this blog for one of my classes back in 2020 but have not had much of a chance to go in and use it again. In addition to setting up this blog I have created a marketing campaign which included budgeting, preparing mock-ups, brochures, schedules and multiple other facets of it. I had to build it from scratch by coming up with a name, a slogan, photos, and even a slide deck with a vocal presentation describing each slide. Ultimately, my goal is to work for a professional sports organization in some capacity. In my opinion, the social media platforms used by many organizations are only scratching the surface and have a lot of room for growth and expansion. That is where I hope to take my talents and experience after graduating with my degree.

Once again, my group members Francesca, Quentin and myself had a brief conversation about what we were up to regarding our pieces of the project. Quentin has gotten some good information and proceeded to post on our social media sites as well as on our group blog about it. Francesca has continued to monitor and update our Instagram site as she sees fit. I have recently posted another blog to our group site and a new addition to our Twitter feed.

Francesca is continuing to work on interviews to add to the podcast and Quentin is continuing to work with groups on campus to help provide some information they have discussed. I am still working to secure some interviews from friends, family or co-workers that discuss their history in dealing with sexism throughout their lives and careers. The plan is to eventually get those interviews uploaded to Youtube so that others are able view them as well. I feel that by getting those out there it may give other people the courage or ability to tell their own story.

While there is still plenty of work to be done, I feel like we are trending in the right direction to be able to finish strong with our final product.

#sexismatwork.

@AtSexism

sexismintheworkplace.

Francesca, Quentin and I met again for our Sunday 8PM Zoom meeting. It was a fairly quick one as we all had good leads on what we were doing and how we were going to move forward. Francesca interviewed a person to discuss their story on their experience with sexism at the workplace and has added it to a podcast. Quentin reached out to the Women’s center on campus to discuss any information or material they might have regarding sexism and is awaiting a response from them. I set up an interview with my friend Kyle to discuss his experiences with sexism in his work environment, but had to reschedule due to a scheduling conflict. Our group posted our first group blog and have a second one drafted as well. I have submitted our first tweet from our group Twitter account. Through our Zoom meeting on Sunday Francesca informed us that she was getting ready to make a post on our group Instagram account. All in all, the group seems to be moving along smoothly and has agreed to continue our Sunday night Zoom meetings through the completion of this project.

The project got off to a bit of a slow start but it definitely feels like we are heading in the right direction now and I enjoy working with my other group members.

For our group media project, Quentin, Francesca and I have discussed the different options regarding sexism in the workplace and social media. Francesca and I met via Zoom on Monday 11/09 and decided that we would use Twitter, Instagram and YouTube as our sources to put out information. Francesca agreed to create an Instagram account and has done so. The account title for Instagram is sexisminthe workplace and I agreed to set up the Twitter account. I created a Twitter account and the username is sexism_at_work. We haven’t posted anything on either account yet but did provide links to our group blog on each social media outlet. Francesca has offered to create a podcast and do some interviews on the podcast discussing sexism at work and personal experiences. Quentin is going to reach out to the SCSU women’s center and see if he can find any resources or strategies that may help us with combating any issues with our topic. My plan is to set up a couple interviews and video tape them discussing any experiences with sexism in the workplace, and once I have done the interviews I plan to upload them on to YouTube.

There are a lot of moving pieces right now and we have all been working together well to help divide up different aspects of the assignment. As a group we decided that we would meet every Sunday at 8PM so we can continue to discuss progress and any new ideas we might have to move forward with the project.

The topic that was decided by my group and I is sexism in the workplace. Myself and my two group members, Francesca and Quentin had similar topics during the proposal assignment. Francesca and I met via Zoom on Sunday 11/01 to hash out the details of what we were going to do and decided on this. It was decided that I was going to be the group “leader” which meant that I was the one sending the request to get us set up with the group blog. After our Zoom meeting I filled out the form that Dr. Kilborn posted on the class homepage and submitted it, only to be surprised on Tuesday afternoon by an email stating we did not submit it. I knew that I had done it and further investigation was done to confirm it was in fact completed. I received a confirmation email today confirming that our group blog had been set up and I now had access. Since I now have access I logged into it today to look around a bit and am in the process of adding my two group members so that they too can access and post in it. During our Sunday night Zoom meeting, Francesca and I agreed to set up at least a weekly meeting so we could discuss progress and tasks moving forward. Definitely a long way to go before we get done but feel like we are off to a good start as a group and I look forward to working with them.

Personally, I feel like in order to make a change that will shine a better light on males going in to careers that are held more commonly by women it has to start small. Mostly I feel like there is an opportunity to have role models for younger generations that can show them what these type of roles mean. I think the key would be finding some males that have success in some of the aforementioned roles and having them talk to high school kids or some younger college students and letting them know what it could get them. I know for me, to have something really hit home I need to see someone like me that has done it. It’s easy to sit and talk about something and say why someone should or shouldn’t do something, but it’s way more impactful if it comes from someone we can connect with. In this day and age social media can be our biggest asset as word of something can spread like wildfire. All it would take is someone that another person may look up to saying, hey I decided to become a nurse or a teacher, or a hair stylist to really drive that point home. As with most things if you want it to scale to a larger group it is important to start small and make yourself active and available within the community. The old saying practice what you preach really comes in to play as it is a lot easier to convince someone to follow in your footsteps if you are doing it as well. One way to really get it started would be to connect with others who might have similar questions or beliefs about it and start a small group. Once that is done it could spread from there, be it city, state, countrywide or even global.

The idea of gender equality in the workplace isn’t a new idea. I just think it makes sense to explore it from all angles. It is easy to just assume that I am referring to females in a male dominated work environment, when in fact I am referring to the opposite. Males working in what would be considered to be female dominated roles. My idea is to work with degree programs such as nursing or in some cases teaching and see what kind of ideas they might have. I feel like the collaboration with them could be a useful tool in getting to better understand this topic. As I’ve mentioned in my other posts it seems like there is a bit of a negative stigma about males being in roles that are heavily dominated by females. Even in tv shows and movies you see males as the butt of the jokes if they are in what’s considered a less masculine type of job. For instance the main character in the movie Meet the Parents is a male nurse and they lie to his fiance’s parents throughout the movie as if it should be something to be ashamed of. I was talking to someone recently who had a significant other that worked as a nurse and was let go because they found out that some of the females were making more than he, and he asked for a raise. They stated that they were downsizing and cutting positions but he doesn’t believe that was the reason.

Personally, I would like to see the negative thoughts or feelings expressed toward these types of roles to be changed to positive. Those types of jobs are always in need of additional staff and if they weren’t discarded by other “manly” guys I think it could definitely help.