Congratulations to our consultant Spotlight Award winner, Jaci! She has worked as a Backhaul Engineer with NextGen|GTA: A Kelly Telecom Company since April 2021. Jaci embodies our core values and constantly displays a deep comprehension of processes and shares her experience with everyone on the team.

Rachana, Jaci’s manager, said “Jaci has been a great team player and has been instrumental in providing assistance and feedback during the candidate selection and onboarding process. She has taken on the responsibility in training new team members and has done a fantastic job the past few months.:

We got in touch with Jaci to ask her about her experience working with us and to learn a little bit more about her. Here is what she had to say:

Q: What do you like most about your career as an Engineer?

A: I like that I am challenged on a nightly basis. I’m able to troubleshoot and utilize my logical skills while keeping my mind sharp. I’ve worked in other jobs where the work was kind of mindless and I didn’t care for that. I need to be able to find problems and fix them.

Q: What/who inspires you?

A: Lyrics in my favorite songs. Music has been the one constant in my life that hasn’t let me down. In addition to that, my family and close friends, if I didn’t have their support and positivity in life, I wouldn’t be where I am now.

Q: What do you like best about your current project?

A: Solving issues with other team members. There are folks that I have worked with for years now on different projects and we all mesh well. We can dig down to the root of issues and solve problems collectively. It’s a great sense of accomplishment when we fix something.

Q: Tell us a fun fact about you!

A: I don’t trust stairs – they’re always up to something!

Q: What advice would you give to someone who wants to enter the telecom field?

A: Be prepared to adjust your skill sets regularly. Technology in this industry moves quickly and you must be readily adaptable to change. I’ve been in this industry for over 20 years and watched technology that I shed blood, sweat and tears over to implement, be ripped out only months later.

Q: What is one thing industry related or not that you have learned in the last month?

A: Squirrels cause approximately 10-20% of US power outages. I’m pretty sure they have been responsible for some of the issues we’ve seen with fiber to routers too. A coworker once suggested that a small critter of some sort was using the fiber line as a swing, causing the router we were working on to bounce. I still use that as an excuse for when something goes wrong.

Congratulations, Jaci, on your hard work paying off! We truly value our working relationship and look forward to continuing to watch your career progress.