Valerie McMillian—Team Leader, Retail Manager, Team Mom. You get the picture. Valerie’s leadership ability emerges in whatever setting she is in. Valerie joined our company three years ago as Team Leader in Transaction Processing. Usually these positions are filled from within, but Valerie was no stranger to our staff here. Although she had not worked in student loans, Valerie had worked side-by-side with many of our employees when our company was a division of the Wachovia Corporation. When Kathy Riddle, Manager of Customer Support, had an opening for a Team Leader, she knew she could count on Valerie.
Valerie and her team now are part of Payment Processing, but her responsibilities remain the same. She oversees AutoDraft, our automatic direct draft service, and suspense, where unpostable payments reside until they are resolved. Her area also responds to borrower correspondence. She also maintains a spreadsheet of the number of QuikLetters and billing statements that are sent out each month and of all payments processed by our internal and external lockbox. Valerie also performs special balancing and reporting activities for some of our customers. These reports not only must be accurate, but also must be submitted according to a strict deadline.
Valerie keys customer transmittals and collection payments if the data entry unit needs assistance. In fact, Valerie recently was named Employee of the Month for these efforts and for testing and training her staff on E-Oscar, our new on-line credit bureau updating system. Valerie has also had perfect attendance since she started working here.
Valerie credits her fellow employees in helping her learn the fine points of her job. “My managers and supervisors freely share their knowledge with me,” says Valerie. “I want to know as much as possible because I want to be valuable to the company.”
Valerie’s belief in the Golden Rule guides her in leading her team and in providing exceptional customer service. “We all are customers at one time or another,” she believes. This philosophy guides her in helping borrowers who may feel very frustrated by the time their correspondence gets to Valerie. “I try to satisfy these borrowers. I never let a letter or an e-mail go unanswered.”
Valerie’s past experience and education help her excel on the job. In a former career, she managed a large discount store in Washington, DC. She also has an A.A.S. degree in Secretarial Science from Forsyth Technical Community College.
Valerie is accommodating, but she is no pushover. Growing up with seven brothers and one sister saw to that. “People in DC started out calling me “Country Girl,” Valerie relates with a laugh, but they quickly found out she had big city attitude.
Valerie is a single parent raising a daughter, Chautney, who is in 8th grade, a 10-year-old son, Terrence, and Raquel, her 8-year old niece. Chautney wants to be a anesthesiologist, and Terrence is determined to be a professional basketball player. Both are on the way to these goals. Chautney is an “A” student in gifted classes, and Terrence’s AAU basketball team came in 10th place in the National Championships. Valerie is Team Mom for the group and accompanied them to New Orleans for the tournament this summer. Raquel has not decided what she wants to be when she grows up, but for now she keeps Valerie on her toes.
Valerie’s role model is her mother who was a nursing professor until she left teaching to become a pastor. Like her mother, she has a national evangelist license. She also plays bass guitar at her church, writes poetry, and finds time to read two books a week. One series of books that she likes has “a black woman in corporate America” as a protagonist. It is a character that Valerie says she can identify with. In this case, art does seem to imitate life.
