Employee Spotlight
Centre currently employs 176 individuals across facilities in Fargo, Grand Forks, Mandan, and Williston. Each employee plays a valuable role in Centre’s mission to help individuals achieve social reintegration. Centre’s Wellness Committee has developed a new employee recognition program in which employees can be nominated for demonstrating a featured core value each month.
Centre’s core values are Integrity, Compassion, Empowerment, and Safety & Security. Below is a spotlight on February’s winner for Compassion, Liz Nesdahl, along with a list of the winners from January through June!
February’s winner for Compassion was Care Coordinator Liz Nesdahl who joined Centre in 2017 and works in the Grand Forks location.
What does Compassion mean to you?
Compassion, to me, means stepping out of your own skin so that you can experience a situation from another person’s point of view. It’s setting your own interests and beliefs aside and replacing them with someone else’s, in order to get a better understanding of what they are experiencing. I believe that compassion combines empathy, kindness, and a genuine desire to make a positive difference in the lives of others. Compassion is about recognizing the humanity in people and responding to that humanity with care and support.
What advice would you give to embody Compassion?
Start by being compassionate towards yourself. Allow yourself to make mistakes, and then allow yourself to forgive yourself for those mistakes. Learn to be patient with yourself as you grow from your experiences. When someone has compassion, they wish for others to be free from suffering. If you can’t be compassionate towards yourself, then it will be really difficult to embody compassion in your work.
What is your favorite part of your job?
My favorite part of my job at Centre is getting the opportunity to see the growth in everyone I work with (both my clients and my coworkers). Whether it’s a client passing their UA for the first time, a coworker getting promoted, or someone finally getting their own apartment after being homeless for the past three years, all of these growths (no matter how small) are reminders of why I love working in this field. It also doesn’t hurt that this job has led me to gain some coworkers who have become my lifelong friends.
Also recognized this year for demonstrating Centre’s core values:
January - Integrity: Bailey Pifer - Mandan
March - Empowerment: Courtney Kniert, RN - Grand Forks
April - Safety & Security: Robin Neal - Fargo
May - Integrity: Melissa Arocho - Mandan
June - Compassion: Adetomi Adewole - Williston