COM employee of the month

Traci Despines

Name: Traci Despines

Title: Accountant in the dean’s business office

Hometown: Omaha

Talk about your job and what you like best about it:

Well, I’m fairly new to UNMC. I started a little over a year ago. I came from the Omaha World-Herald, where I was the advertising billing manager for 20 years, so switching from the media world to the medical world took some getting used to. I think I’m getting the hang of all the who, what, where, when and whys of the College of Medicine. The hardest part was learning what all of the acronyms everyone used meant. In the beginning, I would ask my boss to explain it to me as if I didn’t know — because I didn’t. He’d just laugh. I love my job because it’s so different from what I did before. I have varying tasks, so it’s never boring. I’m always learning how to do something new, and I’m lucky that I get to work with a great bunch of people.

List three things people may not know about you:

• I love to ride my motorcycle, and I’m a member of the Southern Cruisers riding club.
• I like to bake, decorate cookies, etc., so I’m always trying new recipes and bringing them into the office.
• I don’t have kids, but I do have fur babies, three cats and two dogs, who all have huge personalities and are spoiled rotten.