Q: What is your role at Afinety?
Kathy: I am a Tier II Support Engineer with Afinety. My role is to support all our clients, internal and external, and serve as a point of contact for my peers who need assistance.
Q: What does your day-to-day typically look like?
Kathy: I typically start my day anywhere from 30-60 minutes before our phone queues open. This allows me to focus on emails from the night before, test fixes from vendors and our engineers, copy over new macro templates, and attempt to recreate issues that have been reported, etc. Once the phones open, my day becomes anything but typical! I spend my day answering calls and emails from our clients assisting them with any technology related issues. When you answer calls, you never know who you’ll be speaking with or what issue needs to be faced. In between calls, I’ll often spend my time doing backend items like contacting vendors for assistance, installing software on servers, training, or continuing my education.
Q: Tell us a little bit about why you chose Afinety.
Kathy: I have worked in the IT field for 24 years, spending 19 of them in the legal industry. When you’ve been in this field that long, you tend to drift towards companies and people that you personally align with. Afinety prioritizes service and has employees who are not only talented and intelligent, but who are dedicated to putting the client first every time. It’s an amazing place to work and I look forward to going to work each day.
Q: What values of Afinety do you most align with and why?
Kathy: Reliability and trust are two values that I associate with Afinety, and it’s something I try to practice in my daily life. Actions speak louder than words, and I believe that Afinety consistently shows our clients that we will be here time and time again to solve their technology problems.
Q: What’s unique about the legal tech industry that someone in mainstream tech may not experience?
Kathy: Having worked in both the education and corporate IT industries, I think something that mainstream technology does not get to see often is the document management systems. I had never heard about them until I started at my first law firm. Document management systems are such an integral part of file management, with the tools to manage user access, track and edit information, and organize all your data electronically, all in one application.
Q: What has been your experience working at Afinety?
Kathy: While I may have only been at Afinety for a little over a year, it’s clear that they value their employees, promote teamwork, and strive for delivering an amazing client experience. The Afinety team celebrates, pushes, helps, teaches, and ultimately works together towards the goal of making our clients happy.
Q: When you aren’t working, what might we find you doing?
Kathy: When I’m not at work, I like to spend my time with my husband and two adult sons, travel with my sister, cooking, and trying new recipes. I also volunteer with my HOA and donate blood. I’m a die-hard Philadelphia Eagles fan and can be heard screaming passionately at my TV on Sundays during football season.
Q: Where have you volunteered recently and would recommend to others?
Kathy: Giving blood is very important to me. On January 29, 1997, I received a phone call from my mom that changed my life forever. My sister, a student, was hit by a car, and thrown over 20 ft. in the air. Had her head not landed on her book bag, she wouldn’t be here today. My sister broke her femur and had to have a rod and pins put into the upper part of her left leg. She was in a hospital bed in our living room for months while she healed, and then learned how to be mobile again. She lost a massive amount of blood from her injuries. But thankfully, donations were there to help save her life. I decided then and there that I would donate as much as I could, as often as I could, so families like ours would possibly keep their family members in events like these. Since then, apart from tattoos, pregnancies, surviving thyroid cancer and a few other things that kept me from donating, I have donated every 56 days.
Q: With Thanksgiving coming up next week, what are you most thankful for?
Kathy: This is a difficult question to answer. Of course, I am always thankful for my friends and family, my health, career, a roof over my head, and food to eat. But I am most thankful for my husband and our two sons. Our daily life might seem hectic some days, but seeing the three of them each night, getting a laugh or a hug, and knowing that we are all healthy, safe, and loved means I have everything I’ll ever need.
Q: What is a fun fact that people might not know about you?
Kathy: In college, I was on an MSN game show called “Remember When” hosted by Al Roker, and I initially went to college to become a newscaster!
Q: What excites you the most when you think of the future and achievements of Afinety that are to come?
Kathy: The best is always yet to come. And while technology changes daily, I believe Afinety will never lose sight of our high touch, customer-centric approach to service.
Q: Any final thoughts that you want to share around Afinety, the team, or your current projects?
Kathy: They say that if you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life, and it’s true. I love working here, I love getting to talk to clients and peers who have become friends, and I enjoy putting smiles on people’s faces when I help them. I hope to continue with Afinety and watch it grow and flourish.
Thank you, Kathy, for all that you do to support our clients!