The SureID team knows that our people are our greatest asset. Today, we continue our series on the people who make SureID great.
What a smile!
Meet Sandra, our Content and Education Manager. Sandra’s enthusiasm and willingness to take on any challenge creates a contagiously positive environment. She’s cheerful, generous with her time and writing talents, and puts her can-do attitude to work in our Portland office every day.
A Convoluted Career Path
Sandra followed a winding path to her present content management career at SureID, starting with an undergraduate degree in creative writing. “Getting that degree was enough to tell me that I didn’t want to pursue creative writing for a living,” she said, although she still adds creative touches to our blog posts and public social media posts.
She taught English at the college level for her entire grad school career. After her teaching fellowship concluded, she continued teaching college writing and communication classes for another seven years. During her teaching, she realized that she had a talent for writing about data. That prompted Sandra to change her career course, and she came to work as a content training developer for a Portland company. In 2016, she joined our team to manage all e-learning products and provide hands-on classroom training development.
Today, as SureID’s Content and Education Manager, Sandra’s a multi-talented dynamo! She created all the training content for SureID’s fingerprint kiosks, including every one of the short videos you see when you’re learning the system (in fact, it’s Sandra’s dulcet tones you hear on the video voice-over). Over the past few years, she has published blog posts for SureID with topics ranging from serious to hilarious. And, since SureID is still growing a new marketing team, Sandra has even taken on all public messaging, marketing and social media work – including all press release creation and all social media publishing. If it involves communication and education, there’s nothing she can’t tackle.
Content and Training Go Hand in Hand
Sandra had always been interested in technology. In fact, she was hanging out in online newsgroups in 1991, well before the Internet was mainstream. “I was there at the beginning when content was king. You do a whole lot of educating adults in the culture just by putting content out on the Internet,” she said.
Education is near and dear to Sandra’s heart. “I think we’re at a time where education has to radically transform to be worthwhile,” she said. “I get a kick out of putting stuff together that’s going to help people in their jobs. That’s who I am. I love education. I love it when people stumble on our stuff and say, ‘Hey, I learned something here!’”
Sandra describes what she does as critical thinking on paper, or on a screen. “I bring that to bear on everything,” she said. “Over the past two-and-a-half years, I think I’ve shown this company that there’s no longer any line between content and education. Anything that you put out should have an educational purpose to it. It should be something that people interact with. Even fun pieces give them something to read and think about … that little break from reality.”
It’s clear that Sandra’s spirit, ideas, and enormous capacity to keep learning and growing make her someone we’re fortunate to have on the SureID team.
Geek culture = delivering donuts in full butler finery
Sandra is more than her job, too! She loves the Portland area for its thriving geek culture. “It’s a very nerdy culture, and that makes me exceedingly happy,” she said. “As someone growing up in a small town in Texas, I was one geek in … none.” In Portland, she’s found her people. She enjoys going to local geek conventions like Dragon Con and immerses herself in comic book culture. She even engages in a little cosplay now and then.
Want to know more about how training and content work or how to get into a similar career? Reach out to us at support@sureid.com or call 844.787.3431.
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