Angela Lechtenberg, APR
I am so happy to be a part of this team. After about 15 years in media and advertising, I was ready for a change. I was ready to get back to my roots as a communications professional. Since my most recent experience was in digital media, I felt myself getting further and further away from aspects of my career that I had loved in the past:
Service to others and working with people out in the field
The creative process and the bigger picture
Writing, designing and conceptualizing solutions
While I am grateful for the experiences I had in the rapidly changing worlds of social and digital media, I wanted to be able to once again use my skills as a trainer, public speaker and integrated communications expert. I also wanted to bring my digital, social and content marketing skills to an industry that posed challenging potential for growth in these areas. Getting back to work in all forms of media, including traditional, disruptive and emerging media was also important to me. Being a communications specialist at LAGERS allows me to meet these goals.
As many may know, a career in media and advertising can be pretty “dog-eat-dog.” There can be high burnout and turnover. At the beginning of my career I spent some time as a local government worker in public information, and as a state of Missouri communications professional. It felt right for my family and my career to transition back into that type of role. Enter LAGERS.
Other than what I have mentioned above, here are some other reasons why I feel fortunate to be a part of this organization:
- I get to provide valuable service in the form of education to people who serve the communities they live in. It’s no secret that public sector workers typically do not get paid as well as some in the private sector, and the people who work in public service to their communities deserve to be recognized for keeping things together. I am happy to assist these valuable unsung heroes in understanding the services that LAGERS provides by giving them a secure retirement income.
- We provide local government employees with a very well deserved benefit. Pensions are seen in the private sector as a dying breed of financial security, a benefit from the Mad Men era that private companies no longer provide to even the most dedicated employees. In my very short time at LAGERS, I’ve met many people who have worked at their organizations for 30, sometimes even 40+ years. How often to you see that type of dedication in the private sector these days? It deserves to be rewarded with a dignified exit from the workforce for the hard work and dedication these people give to their communities. (For more stories on the dedication of these workers, visit our YouTube channel.)
- Internally speaking, something that intrigued me from the interview process was that the people I met continually said the same thing, which was “this is a GREAT place to work,” usually followed by “people don’t normally leave, they just stay till retirement.” I take this as a sign of a good organizational culture, where people are valued, cultivated to grow their careers and given good benefits that make them want to stay. This is a very dedicated group of people.
- LAGERS product is sound and secure – despite what you may hear. In this age where more people are entering retirement than ever before, and less are financially prepared to spend the next 30 years of life in retirement, having an opportunity for secure income in retirement – for life – is appealing to say the least. After learning more about the LAGERS system, I realized that a lot of the adversity in the media to traditional pensions just doesn’t hold water. At least not ours.
- The team I’ve joined is not your traditional stuffy old-school communications department (no offense to my other communications colleagues, but y’all know what I’m talking about). They work collaboratively to try and keep us on the forefront of new ideas and ways to communicate to our members and the general public. Just check out our social media presence if you don’t believe me.
Another personal thing that working for LAGERS is doing for me – my husband and I have mostly worked in the private sector for the majority of our careers, and planning for retirement was always his responsibility, or as I like to call it, “his department.” Let me tell you as a professional in this industry, that is not the way to go. Working for LAGERS has introduced me to a new industry that is exciting, interesting and ever-changing in its own right, and being a part of this organization is forcing me to pay attention to things that I have notoriously neglected over the years. As I am educating others on the importance of planning for the future, I’m learning quite a bit about it myself.
