Summer Series: Special Projects Coordinator, Addy Newsom (TN, STS)

This summer we are diving into some of the lesser-known roles in state government technology. This week Amy and Alex talk with Special Projects Coordinator, Addy Newsom with Tennessee Strategic Technology Solutions. Addy also provides executive support to the Tennessee state CIO. Addy tells us how an early career pivot away from nursing led her down the path to a job she loves today and why she thought she was being punked when she was asked to interview for the job.

Transcript

Episode 122 Addy Newsom

Addy Newsom: [00:00:00] They're really looking for more of a people person. They, they've stressed that they can teach the technology side of things. And so I, I really thought I was being punked.

Amy Glasscock: Hi, and welcome to the NASCIO Voices Summer Series. I'm Amy Glasscock in Lexington, Kentucky. 

Alex Whitaker: And I'm Alex Whitaker in Washington, DC. This summer, we are diving into some of the lesser known or unique roles in state government IT. This week we're joined by Addy Newsom, who serves as the Special Projects Coordinator for the Office of the State CIO in Tennessee.

Amy Glasscock: Not only does Addy provide executive support to Tennessee's State CIO, but she also provides project coordination for the office. Can't wait to hear all about it! Addy, welcome to NASCIO Voices and thanks so much for joining us for our summer series. 

Addy Newsom: Thanks so much for having me. This is a neat idea and I'm excited to participate.

Alex Whitaker: Yeah, we're so glad to have you, Addy. So first off, tell us what your title is and what it is that you do on a daily basis. 

Addy Newsom: All right, so, officially, per [00:01:00] DOHR, I am an Information Systems Technology Consultant. That's what my job classification is, but my working title is that I'm an Executive Assistant and Special Projects Coordinator to Tennessee's State CIO.

And then unofficially, I call myself a Chaos Coordinator or a Cat Herder. 

Alex Whitaker: Got it. Got it. All right. So those of us who work with CEOs and CISOs on a daily basis know that that makes sense to us, but let's say it's a summer evening in Nashville and maybe you're picking up some hot chicken for dinner and you run into an old friend from high school and they ask you, what do you do for work these days?

How would you describe your job to them? 

Addy Newsom: All right. So the administrative side of my job consists of being an assistant to the state CIO, Stephanie Dedman. I manage her calendar, her travel, her communications the numerous vendor requests, weekly status reportings, ITSM approvals. Our customer and peer [00:02:00] kudos and complaints that come into the CIO's office.

And I kind of just act as a liaison between other state employees and our employees to kind of ensure that our state employees and our customers get the information or the time they need with her. So that's the administrative side of my role, the flip side of it, the special projects coordination.

Is just managing special projects that are assigned to me by Stephanie. And this change, this is the part of my job that changes day to day, which I absolutely love. It, it ranges from industry tasks, like completing the NASCIO awards, which we recently submitted the. Digital State Survey, National Technology Council events, peer research, things like that, and then from anything to managing some smaller internal projects that are important to her, like our Information Systems Council, our Tennessee Cybersecurity Advisory Council running our customer peer feedback programs.

Conducting town [00:03:00] halls, communication, improvement programs a little bit of everything, which I absolutely love. And that's what makes my job exciting is that every day does look different for me and that's something I thrive on. 

Alex Whitaker: Got it. Well, there is certainly no title that could sum all of that up. So thanks for thanks for walking us through it.

Addy Newsom: That's where the chaos coordinator comes from. 

Alex Whitaker: I'm going to start using that. 

Amy Glasscock: Just for your home life, though, right, Alex? 

Alex Whitaker: Oh, yeah, it's a mess here. 

Amy Glasscock: All right. So Addy, if you're like me, sometimes it feels like the, you know, your closest friends and your family members, like, don't really understand what it is that you do at work.

So how do you think your family members describe what you do? 

Addy Newsom: So I have a six year old daughter and she generally understands what I do. She calls Stephanie the big boss. And so she always says, I helped the big boss and And she says, and government Addy works for my mom works for government and she helps the people.

She helps the state run to help the [00:04:00] people that work there. And then those people that work there help the people that live there. My husband is vice president of a local company here and it actually falls kind of under his realm. So he's got a pretty good handle on all the intricacies of what our organization does and kind of, he understands the stress and pressure of our enterprise and our scope.

We joke that no one seems to recognize the value of IT until it's not working. And yes, that's one of his least favorite things about owning IT is that when it doesn't work, it's kind of a big deal. And then all, you know, everything falls on him. So, yeah, absolutely. There's some people that just, in general, that don't get, I would say what people don't understand the most is just a general understanding of how big state government is and how large our technology organizations are that have to support them.

Yeah, they don't, they don't quite understand what we do and how vast the scale is. It kind of shocks me that there's a lot of people that truly [00:05:00] think that. IT in the state is just laptops and desk phones and that we run out to Walmart and buy a laptop and they don't, you know, when they see the costs of things and the scopes of projects and between two data centers and our cloud environment and our portfolio and our budget, it really just blows their mind.

So kind of trying to explain that to people is, is really the challenging part of explaining what we do and who I support and why. 

Amy Glasscock: Absolutely. Yeah, I will say, you know, since Stephanie Deadman was our NASCIO board president last year, we Also have called her the big boss. 

Alex Whitaker: So some of us have started using Stephanitly in our lexicon.

Cause we were told that's a word you guys use. 

Addy Newsom: It is. Yes. Our deputy CIO JP, I believe coined that term. Nice. Yeah. 

Amy Glasscock: Well and because, you know, we've worked so closely with Stephanie over the last few years, you know, you've been around the NASCIO world for a [00:06:00] while, so we're definitely familiar with you.

Tell us a bit about your professional background and what led you into this current role. 

Addy Newsom: All right. So, education wise, I actually, this is kind of a strange story, but I started out in nursing a long time ago. 

Amy Glasscock: Oh, wow. 

Addy Newsom: And thought it was exactly what I wanted to do. I made it all the way to the second to last semester when I was in critical grand rounds and I had three of my patients that I was doing my grand round on pass away.

And I just took it really hard and decided that, That was something I didn't think I could handle day to day in a professional life as hard as I took it. So I ended up just kind of hurrying up and getting my bachelor's degree from MTSU, just finished out that next year and quickly applied for the Masters of Professional Science program.

And and I graduated with a focus of an MPS in strategic leadership and that kind of led to just general, it's more of a [00:07:00] business focus. In the executive world. And so for professional wise, I actually nannied all through college and was a personal assistant, like a family assistant to a couple of different, very high profile clientele families in Nashville.

And there, I would like to say I learned patience working with the kiddos all the time and kind of managing multiple things going at once. And then after that, I worked at the Four Seasons Resort in the hospitality industry. And there, I really learned kind of the value of excellence and strict adherence to standards and excellent customer service.

They're a big stickler for that. And they have some wonderful kind of core values and guiding principles. And then following that, I moved back home to Tennessee, even though I said I never would. And I got to work as a project manager for another high profile entrepreneur who kind of had his hands in a bunch of different [00:08:00] businesses.

And there I learned the value of relationship building and networking and all of that kind of culminated and, and turned me into the professional that I am and, and the core values I have as a professional. And the funniest thing. Is actually how I got my job because I don't have a background in I. T.

So when a recruiter called me and said, We saw your LinkedIn in profile. I had not turned it off after being hired by the entrepreneur. And he said, "We saw your LinkedIn profile on your resume. We think you would be a great fit for the state CIO" at the time being his executive assistant and project coordinator.

And I was like, this has got to be a joke because I have no background in technology whatsoever. And I said that, and he said, no, this is real. And I was like, they're, they're really looking for more of a people person. They, you know, they stress that they can teach the technology [00:09:00] side of things. And so I, I really thought I was being punked and I showed up for the, I showed up for the interview and had a little bit of trouble finding it.

I kept going to different floors in the building because they were going, undergoing renovations. And. I couldn't find the place I was supposed to check in. I thought, see, this was all a joke. But as I was about to leave one of my good friends now, Leanne, ran up to me and said, are you here for the interview?

I'm sorry. And, and so I proceeded with the interview and then they just said, It sounds like everything that you've done in your past really would lend well to kind of managing the the crazy life of a state CIO and all the different baskets they have going at once and helping keeping them kind of on the straight and narrow.

So that's how I ended up here. And what led me to it. And I love it. That's so cool. 

Alex Whitaker: Yeah, that's really cool. And I'm I'm gonna not make the obvious joke about how taking care of Children is like taking care of CIOs. So 

Addy Newsom: I did not. I did not put that out there. 

Amy Glasscock: We would never say that! 

Alex Whitaker: You didn't [00:10:00] do it. You didn't say it. I didn't say it either. Great. Okay. So what would you say is the most rewarding thing about what you do? 

Addy Newsom: I've got a couple things that are most rewarding at, you know, a lot of people love who they work for and love their boss. But I'm truly blessed to work for Stephanie. She's a wonderful leader.

She's a great role model. And most of all, she's just very understanding of me being a professional and a mom. And that has meant so much to me. Just the flexibility that she can provide me. You know, she says, I know you're a hard worker and I know that if you need to take an hour here to do that with your daughter, or to go pick her up from camp or this or that, I know you'll make it up later.

I know you get all your projects done. And so that trust between her and I has, has really been extremely rewarding for me as far as work life balance in my family then I would just say working for the state in general, the benefits have been wonderful for me just kind of thinking about the future [00:11:00] and planning for that.

I would say I'm a sucker for the golden handcuffs for sure. I got it before some of those things changed. And the health insurance. And also I'm participating in the public student loan forgiveness program. So working for the state qualifies you for that. So I'm coming up, this is my 10th year of service.

So hopefully in a couple of months I'll have all my student loans forgiven. Yeah. 

Congrats. 

Yeah. So I would say those are kind of the two sides of that coin of the rewarding things. 

Alex Whitaker: Sure. Well, as some of my parents and my sister all live in Tennessee, so I will thank you for your service to the state.

Yeah, of course. Appreciate that. So what is the craziest thing that's ever happened at work that you could talk about on a podcast? 

Addy Newsom: Um, well, honestly, getting hired. The story about getting hired is probably the craziest thing that ever happened to me at work in the past. This was before Stephanie was our state CIO. We [00:12:00] We did. We did have a disgruntled employee that quit in a very crazy way and it was very scary and I will admit that I hid under my desk for a moment instead of going to be a defender of anyone.

I was like, ah, I'm going under here. So that's probably the craziest thing, but honestly, getting hired and thinking it was all a joke and truly not believing it was probably the craziest thing. Yeah. 

Amy Glasscock: I also have no technology background. So when I was going to work for the National Association of State Chief Information Officers, I was like, well, you know, like a lot of policy people.

I just kind of had that general, like, government-y research-y, background to fit, like, learn the rest on the job. 

Alex Whitaker: Same here. 

Addy Newsom: It's really true. I mean, as long as you have kind of the interpersonal skills that you need to be a professional. The technology comes pretty easy. Now, I mean, I couldn't code or I couldn't go work on, on certain programs, [00:13:00] but it's easier to grasp the whole, the general idea of, of large scale it and kind of the intricacies of state government, but they can't really teach the people skills. And sometimes in tech workers that, that is sometimes lacking. So I really do think that that's something that government technology could use more of is, is more people, people, people yeah, that have the capacity to learn and expand into a different area.

Amy Glasscock: Well, and especially these days, you know, we, we talk a lot about how the CIO's office is not just technologists and boxes and wires and computer stuff and providing those services to Agencies, but like you're more of a broker of services and relying on, you know, corporate partners to be the tech experts and you're leading an organization and, you know working on customer relationship management and like all of those things these days.

Addy Newsom: So, yeah, the scope is huge. I mean, from. Procurement to budgeting [00:14:00] to, you know, like you said, the direct customer support, the project management, the, I mean, it's just, it's vast. What all they do and all the different roles in there. And there are a lot of people that have no technology background that end up with us because there's such a need for it.

Amy Glasscock: Absolutely. So Addy, what's one thing that you wish people knew about working in state government technology? Maybe it's correcting a misconception or just something you want to share. 

Addy Newsom: Yeah. So I, I think a lot of times for state employees in general, there's kind of this stereotype that they're either lazy or they only, you know, they clock in late and clock out early and you know, and, and I'm sure there are those types of employees in state government.

I know everyone can't stand going the DMV and dealing with dealing with the long lines and sort of stuff. But I do not see that in the technology world, especially in Tennessee. And I just really wish people wouldn't assume that [00:15:00] and that people would start considering government I. T. As kind of a first career option because of all the opportunities that can provide for you.

I mean, just the benefits alone, the long term kind of career development plans. The things that we offer are huge. And, and I think just that stereotype of what state government is and what state employees are makes it unattractive, possibly to kind of the newer generations graduating. It sounds like a, I don't know, an old person's job maybe in their mind.

But if you get in early and get in with those benefits and I mean, The thought of the fact that I'll be able to retire at 56 is amazing to me. 

Amy Glasscock: Mm hmm. 

Addy Newsom: You know, whether I want to quit working then or if I want to start a second career, as opposed to, I think a lot of people think of it the other way around.

Like, oh, I'll work for this private sector and then You know, make all this money, but you don't have the time or the work life balance is what I learned. 

Amy Glasscock: So true. [00:16:00] And another thing I think is kind of cool is that you can work on some bigger projects or do some things that are really impactful or maybe have a kind of a bigger job in government than maybe you would in a similar role in the private sector sometimes.

Addy Newsom: Yes, very true. I think there's a lot of it's not. Our projects aren't based on profit. You know, the end results of our projects are to help people, whether it be helping the state employees that work in all the departments and agencies, who then in turn directly help the citizens. I mean, we don't do a lot of interaction directly with citizens, but, but the The programs that we develop the systems applications.

The citizens do touch those. And so it's neat to see kind of the direct results. Let's say you've got like a large I. T. modernization project and you turn old clunky system that took convoluted applications and pages and it took forever to get through and then you waited forever for a certain benefit to [00:17:00] be given to you.

And then it's amazing what a new technology project or system can do to make it faster, better to kind of change, even change the business side process almost to fit the system a little bit and the value that comes out of that is really, is really nice. 

Amy Glasscock: Yeah, absolutely. All right. So, and finally, let's dive into the big question.

We're asking everyone this summer.

What's something fun that you're doing this summer or have done this summer outside of work? 

All right. Well, I am. Let's see how many days in five days. I am going to Cancun with my family. So we, we've, my husband and I used to do kind of all inclusive resort travel before we had our daughter and then last year, we, we finally decided we're going to take her with us and see how it goes. And she had a blast and he and I both did. We didn't have to worry about who was [00:18:00] going to drive or cause it's just he and I and her. So we don't have other kids. We don't have the other support system there. You know, my mom lives here but she works a lot.

So we loved it cause it was like, everything was taken care of. We didn't have to lug all the beach gear down. And And we could just walk back to the room after having a couple cocktails on the beach and we loved it. So we're doing it again this year and and we leave in five days and I cannot wait.

Amy Glasscock: I bet you're so excited. That's awesome. 

Alex Whitaker: Awesome. 

Addy Newsom: Yes. 

Alex Whitaker: So Addy, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us today and for all that you do to support state technology in Tennessee. It's been a lot of fun. 

Addy Newsom: Yeah, of course. Thank you guys. And likewise, thank you for all that you do to support the state CIOs across the country.

NASCIO is a huge value, I know, to, to our our organization. And I'm sure it is to all the other states as well. 

Amy Glasscock: Thanks for saying that. And so nice to talk to you today. 

Addy Newsom: You as well. Have a good summer, y'all. 

Amy Glasscock: You too. 

Alex Whitaker: Thanks again for listening to NASCIO Voices. NASCIO Voices is a production of the [00:19:00] National Association of State Chief Information Officers.

Amy Glasscock: We'll be back in two weeks with another great summer series