No Ceiling Season 3 Guest: Stephanie O’Connor

Local women share their journey to the top of their professions and the challenges and triumphs they faced along the way. They’re rewriting the script on success and there’s no ceiling.

Stephanie O’Connor is my guest on the final episode of No Ceiling, Season 3. She’s the vice president and chief information and people officer for City Utilities of Springfield, where she’s worked her entire career. She spent most of those years in IT, but in 2017, she joined the executive leadership team and also took on human resources for the utility. Stephanie says her work and life are guided by this mantra: Be true, be you, be kind. That’s helped her navigate working to support her family as a teenager after her parents’ divorce. It has also helped her take on a demanding leadership role when some doubted her. In this episode, we talk about growing up in poverty, how she reconciled with her father, working in a male-dominated field and how her outlook on life has shaped her journey.

Below is an excerpt from our conversation.

Christine Temple: I want to start with your life growing up because you’ve experienced some real struggles. What was that like to experience poverty and divorce within your family?
Stephanie O’Connor: When I was 13, my parents divorced, and my dad was out of my life for about seven years. That was a pretty traumatic time, just starting high school, trying to be a normal teenager like everybody else, wanting to be a part of cheerleading and softball and clubs. When my dad left, my mom was a stay-at-home mom; it was very devastating for her. And I have a younger sister, and it took a toll on her as well. She attempted suicide. That was a lot for our family to navigate and go through some counseling as a family. As a result of that, my sister ended up living with my dad. We ended up living apart our entire lives. You feel very lonely. My dad didn’t follow through with some of his responsibilities to provide some financial support for me and my mom, and so I started working. I had to start working full time at age 16 just to help provide for some of our necessities.

Temple: When you’re in that position, did you think forward to the future? What did that look like to you to have a different life?
O’Connor: Yes, very much so. I didn’t like how I felt. I didn’t like the struggles. I didn’t like seeing and feeling the sadness. You almost take on: I’m going to show the world I can be better. I’m not going to let this define me. I’m not going to let this make who I am be less than what I know I can be. So, I kept trying to maintain a very positive outlook. I went to Oklahoma State [University], paid my way through college by working full time. I was the first one in my family to actually graduate from college. I really wanted to create a path for myself.

Temple: Where did that internal optimism and this knowledge of your own worth come from?
O’Connor: A lot of it was faith. A lot of it was just my own personality. I enjoy seeing others light up. I enjoy a positive environment. So, I thought, if those are the things I see value in, I have to make that environment, that space, that feeling for myself. A word that I still use today is perseverance, and that really became the word I kind of anchored to. When you achieve a goal, it feels so good. I really longed to just have that good feeling to show I could do it. I could come out on the other side better than where I started.

Related: No Ceiling from SBJ Podcasts