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Jamie Holden: Leading a mission to serve

It’s not surprising to find Jamie Holden leading the charge for “amazing” customer service at the top talent management software company for education. As Chief Operations Officer at PeopleAdmin, Inc. for almost two years, she finds herself right at home.
What is surprising, however, is the untraditional path she took to get there.
“After graduating from the United States Military Academy at West Point and serving five years of active duty in the Army, I made the extremely difficult decision to leave the military,” she said. “But I found so many similarities between what I loved about the military and the business world.”
The one overarching similarity? The mission to serve.
“PeopleAdmin may be viewed as a technology company, but at heart we are a people company,” Jamie said. “And it’s my job is to demonstrate that to our customers, day in and day out.”
Service to others — whether it’s to her customers, her team, or her family — is the recurring theme in Jamie’s life.
“No matter my role, I have been motivated by ‘serving those who serve,’” she said. “I certainly got to do that in the military as an Adjutant General Officer. And in my current role, responsible for customer support and service, I’m able to serve educators and, ultimately, help make a difference in the lives of students. Those students then go out to serve the world. That’s what motivates me.”
“It’s amazing to witness the example Jamie sets,” said PeopleAdmin CEO Kermit Randa. “One of our company values is customer and team over self, and we have to look no further than Jamie and her team to see that in action. The care they take with our customers — that’s the core, the backbone of our business. And Jamie helps us strive to do that better and better, every day.”
The PeopleAdmin Mission
A leading provider of easy-to-use, cloud-based K-20 talent management solutions, PeopleAdmin is the only talent management company to serve the entire K-20 community. It serves almost 50 percent of all educators in the U.S. and Canada, who in turn serve more than 30 million students.
The company’s solutions — TalentEd, SchoolSpring, SearchSoft and TeacherMatch for K-12, and SelectSuite for higher education — enable customers to streamline the hiring process, onboard new employees, efficiently manage positions, evaluate employee performance, develop compliant and defensible audit trails, access industry-leading reporting, predict educator effectiveness, and more.
Those same solutions also help educational institutions use data, analytics and technology to acquire, develop and manage the nation’s very best educators and staff … which, ultimately, improves student achievement.
That’s an important mission, Jamie said, because a top teacher, or professor, or principal, or supporting staff member, cannot only change a student’s life for the better, but can also change the world.
“We all can name a favorite teacher,” Jamie said. “We never forget them, and the life lessons they taught us. As we pass those lessons on to others — our children, our coworkers, our customers, even — we make the world a bit better.
“You can see that in the heartwarming, inspirational stories we receive from our Inspired2Educate program,” she added.
Inspired2Educate, a PeopleAdmin program begun in February, encourages current K-20 professionals to nominate via video or in writing a teacher, administrator, or staff member who inspired them to start their careers in education.
Serving at Work … and at Home
At PeopleAdmin, the company’s focus is on delivering an amazing customer experience. To do that, it is continually enhancing its support and service offerings, refining implementation processes, and delivering innovative solutions to meet the unique needs of K-12 and higher education institutions.
Jamie is always finding the best ways to help her teams accomplish these ongoing goals.
“For me, it is really important to stay close to what is happening at all levels in my organization,” she said. “I have moved out of my office and I sit on the floor with the teams. You learn so much about what’s working or not working in the business by being physically present where the work is happening.”
You can almost picture Jamie taking that very same approach at home with her growing family — especially the sitting on the floor part…
“Life is very full these days with a 5-year-old daughter and a 6-month-old baby girl!” she said. “I have to say that I could not do the work that I do without having an amazing husband who treats our marriage and parenthood as a true partnership. Despite his also having a very demanding job and career, he contributes in so many ways — from sharing in household chores to taking the girls out for fun while I do some weekend catch-up. My mom is also someone who keeps us both sane.”
Jamie said, as a business woman, her situation is becoming more common, which is great to see. “The role that women play in business has really evolved. When you look at PeopleAdmin alone, our CTO, CMO and COO are all women!”