Stephanie O'Connor

Stephanie O’Connor is 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. She says her most rewarding accomplishment has been connecting women at the utility, which has led to an increase of female employees. 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.