Diana Martinez used to be a “face” of Carroll White REMC as the member services representative working closely with consumers who had billing issues and questions. Now, she’s made a 180-degree shift.

As operations coordinator, she literally and figuratively has gone from front to back: from the front offices to the back operations; from helping individual consumers on their side of the meter to helping bring that electricity to all the meters.

In the operations position she’s finding more responsibility working closely with the line superintendent, dispatching a service crew or crews when there are outages, processing work orders, working with mapping and staking engineers. She still gets to talk to consumers, she noted, mostly by phone. “There are a lot more calls to answer — especially after a storm. But the job duties definitely changed.”

When the previous operations coordinator announced her retirement in 2018, Diana applied. “I wanted to learn more about the other side of the REMC. Being a member services representative in the front, I helped members. But I wanted to see what happens out in the field with a line crew and get that background as well.”

She quickly familiarized herself with the technical ins and outs of electric operations. “There are a lot of things that now make sense when I answer the calls about blinking lights or why this or that happened. When someone calls in about a line down, now I know not just what to ask but why I’m asking it. Before, I didn’t really have a whole lot of knowledge with that. But you could ask me anything about payments, and I could tell you,” she noted with a wink at the defensiveness. “I definitely do like knowing both sides now.”

Diana said one of the great things about working at her hometown REMC is the opportunity to find new professional challenges without leaving town or even changing employers. “There’s always room for growth. You can reach other goals you would like to achieve,” she said. “I absolutely love that because then you already have a relationship with all the employees, you know the different departments and what they do and how they all interact with each other. REMCs are great places to work, very family oriented, and there are always opportunities to grow.”