How I ended up in IT and management
My name is Lynn Coleman and I have over 25 years experience managing IT teams, especially Tech Support which requires a unique combination of Technical expertise as well as excellent customer service/people skills. My management skills also helped me to raise my boys without a father. My ability to multitask was really more of a survival skill than a learned ability. The management skills I learned over the years can be applied to any “management” situation.
I went to school to learn about computers during the mid nineties for one reason; to make money. During the mid-nineties, all the jobs were in IT. My prior college experience was a semester in nursing school. That was it. I put myself through school on my own while raising 3 children under the age of 7. I had a newborn, a two year old and a 7 year old and no way to support them. I was given food stamps and public assistance during my pregnancy because the nurses that were caring for me during my pregnancy reported that there was no food in the housel. I was given toiletries by a local charity (soap, deodorant, paper goods etc. (all the things food stamps didn’t pay for.)
My husband took off when I was pregnant and confined to bed. By the time I gave birth, my house was in foreclosure and I had no marketable skills. I kept looking at the newspapers every Sunday for job openings and all the openings were in the computer industry so that is what I decided to pursue as a career.