TH:Tell me about your growing-up years. You're a local product?
LT:Yes. I went to school in Bellevue, the Catholic school, grade school and high school. Then off to Loras College. A little bit of that didn't want to move too far away from home. The youngest in the family. I wanted to be out of the house, but not away from the house too far. It worked out to my advantage. My mother still picked up my laundry and brought me cookies throughout my college days, so that worked out well. I really actually enjoy the small community. I think that the communities the size of Dubuque and smaller have an advantage from a personal family perspective and there really is the camaraderie. I actually live in St. Catherine's now, halfway between Dubuque and Bellevue, but there's a tug between the two communities because Bellevue's got its uniqueness and some things that really are going for it as well.

TH:So you're the youngest child in your family. How many brothers and sisters?
LT:Youngest of four girls.

TH:Four girls? That must have been a house full, then.
LT:Yeah, it was.

TH:What line of work were your parents in?
LT:My father owned his own business for as long as I can remember. He retired just after I was out of college. He ran an oil company down in Bellevue, Welsch Oil and LP. My mother was the domestic engineer. She stayed home and made sure we got off to school and did our homework, all of those necessary tasks.

TH:Any part-time jobs?
LT:My favorite: Working at the Bellevue swimming pool. I was a lifeguard and water safety instructor. So it was literally a half-block from my house. I walked out the front door, walked across the street and walked into work every day. I spent all day in the sunshine. It was like babysitting 300 children every day.

TH:Any others?
LT:When your father owns the oil company, you get all the fun jobs like painting those big silver tanks in everyone's backyards. That was a summer or two. The tan was good, but the silver paint all over was not becoming, let me tell you. But it was one of those jobs were it's a character builder. You were out there in the heat of the day and you needed to decide it was purposeful. You're going to go on to school or you're not going to go on to school. What are you going to be? What do you want to do? I think that the tank painting was one where I recognized that I wanted a job where I interacted with individuals. It's something I really enjoy. So when you're out there, eight, 10, 12 hours a day all by yourself, painting silver tanks, you knew there was something missing. Then babysitting the 300 children in a lifeguard capacity, I knew I wasn't daycare material. So those are the two things I knew for sure.

TH:You referred to things that keep you awake at night. That prompts a question about your time away from the office. Tell me about your family.
LT:Oh, I have a wonderful husband, Ron, and two children. Alexandria, who is 11, and Zack, who is 8. Spring is a very busy time. As school wraps up, there's the events at school. Volunteer days and the field trips and the talent shows at night, along with the sporting events that are just starting their practices a couple of days a week. We're wrapping up. She dances two days a week. She has dance class two days a week and a recital coming up. So the calendar is hectic at this point in time.

TH:What line of work is Ron in?
LT:He is a project estimator for Westphal Electric.

TH:Where did you two meet?
LT:High school, believe it or not.

TH:Bellevue Marquette.
LT:Yes. Sat next to him in Algebra. Sister Mary Ann Carrier's class.

TH:So, who was better at Algebra, you or him?
LT:Oh, he's much better at Algebra. But I didn't cheat.

TH:With a very high level job, a couple of kids, do you have time for yourself? Do you have hobbies that you like to pursue?
LT:Yes, I do. Actually, right now, this summer, I'm going to enjoy getting out and getting a little exercise. It's been a while. I was in school at the University of Iowa all school-year long and that will go again next year and then I'll finish my MBA. Now I'm anxious to get outside in the nice weather. I enjoy golfing. We do a lot of boating on the Mississippi. Nice quiet days out on the river, away from the phone. Take a good book. The kids swim or ski. Spend a lot of time with friends. Looking to do some of those events this summer.

TH:You have customers or clients who would be the companies or the corporations, then you'd also interact with the individual employees?
LT:Yes. Their individual employees. So there are really two main touch points that we make sure that we stay connected with. The company overall. What are they doing? Where are they going? Especially now. What economical challenges do they have? So we're helping strategize around, "OK, you have a 401(k) benefit. What can we do to make sure that you can sustain that?" Because that's really what attracts and retains your talent. If you start to think about cutting back on this benefit, you run the risk of losing the talent that you have to run the company into the future. Then we also say, "You're in the business of running a business. We'll talk to your participants for you, so that we're interacting with the participants and helping them make choices as well."

TH:Out of the 600 jobs here, are all of them full-time?
LT:There is a large percent full-time. What we're trying to do is give the work life balance to those individuals who need it. So we have positions that are part- time. We try to match up those who want part-time or job-sharing or flexibility to start at 6 in the morning versus core business hours from 7:30 to 4. We'll play both ends of that. We have four nine-hour days and one half-day. So it gives that flexibility in the play with the people and the talent.

TH:Some of the skills, or attitudes, of employees they bring with them. But there's got to be more. I'm thinking of training. Tell me about what you do in terms of training employees who join your organization.
LT:As you indicated, this is a very complex industry to be in. The pension industry doesn't slow down. Where we're at today from legislative, governmental regulized environment is incredibly different than where we were 13 years ago. It's more complex. It's more sophisticated. Investments are more sophisticated. The technology we're using. The expectations. The legislative changes. And what we do to make sure that we're meeting the needs of our associates then, therefore, meeting the needs of the participants in the company in each function. Sometimes it's a three-week training program on the system. Some of it, a balance between on-the-job and then learning sessions where you're going into a conference room with other new hires. Once we get that baseline out there, probably our next opportunity is to make sure that we're keeping them up to speed. Our systems are enhanced quarterly, if not more frequently. There are changes there. There are major changes in legislation. It's critical to keep the people on the phone with the participants up to speed on those changes. So we have a compliance unit here. The compliance unit monitors Internet sites that are talking about bills that are in place but have not been signed. Legislation that is just in discussion. So the compliance advisory group here helps support us in understanding what's transpiring and then when it's getting close to signature, we start to formulate our training and learning process. Then when it's signed - boom - "This is what we need to do."

Copyright: Copyright 2003 Telegraph Herald