Onshore Outsourcing is a company that takes great pride in identifying and developing its talented workforce. With this in mind, company creator, Shane Mayes, came up with the Founders Award, an honor that is given annually to the Onshore employee who has made the most of their newfound career opportunity.
This year’s winner out of the Macon, Missouri Service Center is Moriah Magers. Below, the 2015-16 Founders Award winner details her life-altering journey with Onshore Outsourcing:
Five years ago I was a single mother who could barely keep things together financially. I wore that stress daily, like a mask on my face. My youngest child at the time was a student at the local Head Start Preschool. One day, when I went to pick her up, the director of the school asked me if everything was okay. I told her I was dealing with a lot of stress and wasn’t getting enough hours at my job. She said she could tell and asked what I thought about filling out an application for the local IT business, Onshore Outsourcing.
I didn’t know it at the time, but I was about to make the biggest career change of my life.
It’s been more than five years since that day and I am still with Onshore, working toward a better way of life for my family. I have taken advantage of every opportunity that Onshore has offered, growing my skillset along the way.
My journey with Onshore began when I was accepted into the boot camp program. After that, I was asked to come back for a second, faster-paced boot camp, where I’d learn a second computer language. Over the next few years, I was also able to take several additional courses at UMSL in an effort to learn specific skills that would help me fully support the client for which I was working at the time. Later, I enrolled in the HLG classes offered onsite, where I got college credit and even further diversified my skills. There have been many other valuable learning opportunities made available to me over the years and, I can honestly say, I would not be able to support my client in such a comprehensive fashion if not for Onshore Outsourcing’s significant commitment to continued education.
One of my Onshore moments I am most proud of is when I worked on a huge upgrade, migration and consolidation project for two sister applications, which my client still uses at a global level. When support was being discontinued on my client’s existing servers, we had to help them migrate to new ones while maintaining all functionality within the system. We also had to upgrade both of these sites to the newest version when they both started out on different ones. We then consolidated everything into one environment, again without losing any functionality, and kept the permissions locked down so the two sides remained separate.
We had people in five different locations and three different time zones working on this project, and I began to see some disconnects and areas that lacked oversight. I immediately decided to pick up the ball and act as the liaison between the different parties involved in the project and ultimately managed to keep things running smoothly. Shortly thereafter, my client’s management team gave me another opportunity to lead, making me the scrum master in our latest enhancement project. As a result of this success, Onshore has continued to give me additional opportunities to lead and help others.
If someone had told me five years ago that I would someday be working in the IT field, managing projects, or doing anything even close to do what I do on a daily basis now, I would have laughed and called them crazy. I have been a small town quiet girl my whole life. Until my time with Onshore, taking care of people was my career, in the medical field and as a preschool teacher. My present fortune regularly reminds of that day when I walked into preschool to pick up my daughter and left with the dream of building a career in IT with Onshore. Taking that chance has changed my life forever and, in a heartbeat, would do everything all over again.
Onshore Outsourcing is a domestic IT Outsourcing firm that seeks to revitalize rural America. Welcome to its monthly blog—a space where you can learn more about the company, get to know the special people who make it run, and stay on top of industry news. We appreciate your time and interest. For more information about Onshore and its mission, please visit our website.
