Jane Farago
This month the spotlight shines on Jane Farago, Senior Manager of Customer Experience on the Desktop Support team! Jane and her tight-knit team of techs face new and interesting challenges every day as they provide device support to Ohio State's Columbus campus, including the Office of the President! Jane is a jack of all trades, balancing her full-time job at Ohio State with her other full-time job as a mom and professional chauffeur to two busy teens. When she’s off the clock, she is either traveling with her family or working on projects around the house, so you can add “DIYer” to her list of accolades.
Q: What is your role at the university? Senior Manager of Customer Experience. I manage a desktop team of 10 techs that support the north area of campus along with executive tech support for the Office of the President.
Q: How long have you worked at Ohio State? 5 years.
Q: Have you worked on any large projects since you’ve been here? I came into the university as the manager of the ITSD Onboarding Team which was responsible for onboarding OAA into MITS. We also travelled to several counties to finish onboarding the county extension offices. We had to get quite creative when Covid hit, as our role had to be done in person. We are also still working through migrating DPS camera monitoring machines into our domain for support. This includes machines on the Medical Center campus.
Q: What are you currently working on? What does a typical day look like for you? A typical day is working with several of our IT partner teams. My team works to research and remedy issues that are flagged by other teams. I also work closely with the Relationship Managers to escalate customer requests. When we aren’t doing that, we have a queue of tickets that always have new and interesting issues!
Q: What do you like best about your job? My job is never boring. I come across a new issue at least every other week where I can say “well, I have never heard that one before!” One of the best parts of my job is working with my team! I have an amazing team to lean on to contact the customer and resolve issues.
Q: How do you create and innovate? I’m constantly looking for ways to help my team be successful. Their job is chaotic enough with so many moving parts, tickets and issues. I want to be a good resource for them to help prioritize work and make day-to-day activities more efficient.
Q: Did you always know this is what you wanted to do as a career? I do love working in IT and all of the career possibilities, but my dream job would have been weather related. I probably would have enjoyed being a meteorologist!
Q: How did your career path bring you to work for us? I have wanted to work for Ohio State for a long time. I worked in IT at Cardinal Health for 13 years and as the IT team slowly got outsourced overseas, I waited for the right role to present itself. I still feel very blessed I was given the opportunity to work here.
Q: Why did you choose to work at Ohio State? Working in higher education has been something that I considered a lot since I was a child. My dad was a professor at Illinois State University and I used to visit him at work a lot. I loved the atmosphere and I have always enjoyed continuing education.
Q: Where did you go to college? I went to BGSU and originally wanted to be an architect but switched majors after 3 years and finished with a degree in Visual Communications. I then went on to Devry to get my IT degree and my MBA.
Q: Where are you from originally? Born in Texas but raised in Illinois until I came to Ohio for college.
Q: If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go and why? I have never been overseas but that will hopefully change in the next year!
Q: Can you tell us about your family? My parents and brother live in the Cleveland area and I have a sister in the Chicago area. I have lived in Columbus for a little over 20 years now and I have a son and daughter in high school, my husband, and dog (Toby) and cat (Timmy).
Q: What do you do for fun outside of work? Do you have any hobbies? We do like to travel and get away but I feel like most of the time we are working on a house project. As someone that does not have a great background in this, each project is a challenge and involves lots of YouTube tutorials :)
Q: What kinds of things are you passionate about outside of work? I feel like currently, outside of work, I am driving my kids to and from activities and social events. I’m always happy to do it but it can almost be a full-time job.
Q: What is something most people might be surprised to know about you? I was adopted and always thought I was 100% Spanish. I did one of those 23 and Me tests and found out I was actually 47% Native American. That was even a surprise to me.
Q: Give three adjectives that best describe yourself. Loyal, Empathetic, Family-oriented