{"id":1023,"date":"2022-07-28T10:45:56","date_gmt":"2022-07-28T15:45:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/usac\/?p=1023"},"modified":"2022-07-28T10:45:56","modified_gmt":"2022-07-28T15:45:56","slug":"meet-a-usac-member-heather-mitchell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/usac\/meet-a-usac-member-heather-mitchell\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet a USAC Member: Heather Mitchell"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"HeatherWhat department do you work in and what is your job title?
\n<\/strong>I am the Associate Director of Cloud Services in VU Information Technology.<\/p>\n

How long have you been a Vanderbilt employee?
\n<\/strong>17 years<\/p>\n

What has been your career journey to lead you to where you are today?
\n<\/strong>I was planning to get a PhD and teach English!\u00a0 But I realized the tenure grind was not for me.\u00a0 I had always been interested in computers, and it just so happened that someone I knew at a college in South Carolina had been trouble hiring a PBX administrator and cabling tech \u2013 not quite pure computing, but certainly adjacent.\u00a0 They were willing to train the right person, I was not afraid to crawl under buildings to fix structured cabling, so it worked for both of us.\u00a0 I\u2019ve always enjoyed learning, and I\u2019ve been fortunate to be able to broaden my portfolio ever since then; I\u2019ve administered servers, databases, applications, email, been an authentication engineer, a virtualization engineer, and managed teams.\u00a0 That breadth prepared me well for my current role, as cloud services like AWS and Azure cover all those things and more!<\/p>\n

What do you enjoy most about Vanderbilt? (i.e. missions, benefits, views of sustainability, community, etc.)?
\n<\/strong>My colleagues are by far the best part of working at Vanderbilt.\u00a0 They are caring, engaged, intelligent people who believe in and enact community in the best sense of the word.<\/p>\n

What is the greatest bit of advice a parent or mentor has given you?
\n<\/strong>Be careful about competing for prizes you don\u2019t really want.<\/p>\n

What is one important skill every person should have?
\n<\/strong>Curiosity. It\u2019s often seen as an attribute, but I think it\u2019s a skill we can cultivate and hone.\u00a0 Get curious about what\u2019s around you and what\u2019s within you.<\/p>\n

What is the best perk you have ever had at a job?
\n<\/strong>Work from home, absolutely.\u00a0 It\u2019s hard to imagine going back.<\/p>\n

Do you feel like you have a good work\/life balance?
\n<\/strong>Right now, yes.\u00a0 That has not always been the case.<\/p>\n

What do you enjoy doing to relieve stress?
\n<\/strong>Playing guitar, reading, hiking, woodworking<\/p>\n

Are you more productive at night or in the morning?\u00a0 Do you think it is possible to change and get used to a new schedule?
\n<\/strong>I tend to be most productive around mid-morning through mid-afternoon.\u00a0 I think we can change our schedule, but our peak productive times won\u2019t really move much \u2013 we\u2019ll just be more or less able to benefit from them.<\/p>\n

What did you want to be when you grew up?
\n<\/strong>An astronaut.\u00a0 Then I learned you had to be 5\u20192.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you could visit any country with no budget, where would you visit?
\n<\/strong>India. Fascinating history and culture.<\/p>\n

What has been your favorite vacation you have ever been on?
\n<\/strong>My wife and I spent 10 days driving the ring road around Iceland in 2018.\u00a0 It was incredible.<\/p>\n

What is something on your bucket list?
\n<\/strong>Skydiving.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What department do you work in and what is your job title? I am the Associate Director of Cloud Services in VU Information Technology. How long have you been a Vanderbilt employee? 17 years What has been your career journey to lead you to where you are today? I was planning to get a PhD…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9295,"featured_media":1024,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meet-a-usac-member"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/usac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/usac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/usac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/usac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9295"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/usac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1023"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/usac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1023\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1025,"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/usac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1023\/revisions\/1025"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/usac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/usac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/usac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/usac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}