The Apprenticely Insider Interview – Dawn Smith, Project Manager

Dawn Smith

THIS MONTH WE kick off a new feature, conversations with the people who make Apprenticely work. The idea is to put a human face on the inner workings of the apprenticeship process and the people who run it. We’re extremely proud of this team—for them, this isn’t just a job, it’s a mission. We’re starting with Dawn Smith, one of two project managers, which are like the shortstop on a baseball team—they keep the ball in play and make sure there are no unforced errors. But then Dawn has her own metaphor for what she does.

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When we last talked in late fall, you had just taken off work to go help people whose lives had been upended by the season’s ferocious hurricanes. Tell me about that.

Yes, I went to Sarasota, Florida, as part of a Salvation Army canteen team, which means we go out to different neighborhoods and meet with people, talk to them, listen to them, and give them a warm meal. That’s our main mission. There was quite a bit of damage. It’s helpful just being there to give them somebody to tell their stories to. But it’s always difficult to hear the stories, the sadness. You have people who’ve lived there 40 years, and their homes are gone. There’s only so much you can do and you know you can’t do everything, but you sure wish you could. So that is difficult. But we’re trained for the trauma response and then we also get our own debriefing afterwards. So we get the care that we need to make sure we’re okay.

I’ve looked at your LinkedIn page and this isn’t something that’s unusual for you to do, is it? Tell me what makes you want to do this kind of work.

I actually grew up in a broken home, so I think going through some of the things that I went through has changed the way that I see things and maybe has given me a heart to want to help others. I have been a part of the Salvation Army’s Emergency Disaster team since 2022. But I’ve been with the Salvation Army organization since 2010.

My background is in social services and in HR, and my degree is in social sciences. Originally, I wanted to be a police officer. That was my first goal. But as I had children, I changed my direction into social work—but I always knew that I wanted to help people. It’s just really important to me to be able to be with people, have that one-on-one with them, and just serve them, I guess.

When you were growing up, did you wish someone would pay attention to you in that way?

I did, yeah. I do. A lot of times I wish somebody would’ve been there or paid attention to me. And, honestly, I had a very good church when I was in middle school that gave me a reprieve. Then as I got older, I found my first place that I felt like I was at home—it was with the Salvation Army, and that’s when I went to work there and they were the most welcoming place I’d ever been. This was in Fayetteville.

They have a drug and alcohol program, and I grew up with a stepfather who was an addict. So I got to see the people who came in and out of that program, got to be a part of the program, got to help out with it. They have a shelter there. And just getting to see the people in the shelter and the rehousing that they do, that really grows a section in your heart to be able to be a part of that. As a child, I wished that somebody would’ve been there for me, and now I, in turn, get to be there for others. That’s really important for me.

Why did you think you wanted to be a policeman?

I guess I’ve always been interested in forensics and the law. I am very much a rules person. I believe that rules exist for a reason. But it’s not just rules and the law—being a police officer means also being able to help people when they need it. All those areas that have always been important to me went into police work. But I became a mother when I was 18, so I had to make that choice of what was I going to do as a single mom and went into social services instead.

What do you want to do with your life now?

I’m pretty happy with what I do now with the project management, because I like that aspect of it intellectually. Then I get to feed the spiritual side with what I do through church and through volunteer work.

Do you have heroes?

I would say I have some heroes. I’ve read about tons of amazing people, but for me, a hero would be somebody I’ve actually met who has influenced and shaped the way I am today. My first one would’ve been a doctor I worked with. His name is Dr. Travis Embry, he’s a local physician here in Huntsville, AR, and he’s incredibly intelligent, incredibly giving back to the community, and a wonderful husband, father, and friend to basically everybody who knows him.

Later on, in the Salvation Army, I worked under a gentleman named Major N. J. Pope. I had never done HR and he took a chance on me and put me into an HR position, like how we do apprenticeships. He put me into an HR position knowing that I could learn how to do it if somebody took time to teach me. So that’s what they did. They did the hands-on training with me. They got me into courses and taught me how to be how I am today as far as the work goes.

I would also say that my husband is a hero, because I had problems learning how to love, just because of the way I was raised. Knowing how to love somebody when you come from a broken home is difficult. And believing in love is difficult. When I met my husband, I told him, “I don’t believe in love.” So he was patient with me and took his time, and he showed me that love does exist.

That is really a great story. So what do you do for fun?

I love to read. I’ve always been an avid reader. Stephen King is one of my favorite authors. When I was younger, I liked to read R. L. Stine’s Goosebumps series. I also loved LeVar Burton’s “Reading Rainbow” show—that probably helped spark my love of reading when I was a child. I’m originally from Iowa and we used to watch “Reading Rainbow” in school, and I still watch it with my kids. LeVar Burton has always been extremely interesting to me. I love that he stood up for himself and didn’t change his hair or take out his earring.

I also like to go to Comic Con. I used to dress up, do the cosplay stuff, but we haven’t done as much of that since COVID. Now I do a lot of hanging out with family. We have an extended family of about 30 people, and we get together quite often. Our family is very close.

I’m also a notary public, and I’m ordained. I love to do marriages. I’m bilingual, so I do them in Spanish and English, and I’ve been blessed to be able to do them for quite a few family members.

And now let’s talk about what you do at Apprenticely. First, how did you get involved?

My mother and stepfather used to live next door to me and they helped a lot with getting my children out to the bus in the mornings. But my stepfather passed away in 2020 and my mother in 2021, and I needed a way that I could be there for my children more, take them to school, pick them up from school. Working for the Salvation Army, I had to drive 35 to 40 minutes to get to work, which meant that I had no time to get them to school in the opposite direction. So I had to find a different place to work, which meant leaving where I had been for 12 years.

Nichole Parsons, who is Apprenticely’s program manager for work-based-learning, is actually my niece-in-law, and she told me there was a position open in recruiting. So I interviewed for that, and when I told them everything I had done at the Salvation Army, they said I would actually be a great fit for project management. “I’ve never actually done project management,” I said.

By all accounts, you’re terrific at it. Tell me about being a project manager for Apprenticely.

I think of project management like the inner workings of a clock. If Apprenticely is the clock, I get to help keep up with those inner workings and make sure that they all move and work in a functioning order. And I like that. I like to make sure that things work in order and if something gets out of order, I like to problem solve and see how we can get it back into order.

I definitely enjoy what I do—and what we do—at Apprenticely because we give people an opportunity to learn those new skills that they otherwise wouldn’t have learned. And I’ve done that twice now. I did it in HR at the Salvation Army and I’ve done it in project management at Apprenticely. So I’ve continually had people believe in me and be willing to teach me new skills. And that’s what we do every day with people all over the state. And I get to be a part of that, while making sure things run in order.

Who do you work with every day? Employers, the apprentices themselves, the mentors?

All of the above. On the inside, I work with our project management team every day. That’s Director Logan Hunt and fellow project manager Gwen Pirkle. I also work with our client development team on whatever they need. And then I work with the apprentices, the mentors, and the employers, because we’re constantly adding new occupations, constantly registering apprentices, graduating them, keeping track of their training, and working with the client development team to answer questions and make sure they have everything they need when they meet with the employers. So I get to work with a lot of people every day.

We have apprentices who have been out of work for years, or they’ve been a stay-at-home parent and are just coming back into the workforce, and they need all kinds of help. Our Talent Acquisition team helps get them hired into the apprenticeship program, and when they graduate, we have a graduation ceremony where we celebrate them. Their family is there with them, and they’re so proud of them and what they’ve achieved. And we get to see that. That’s a wonderful part of my job, just seeing that pride that they have about what they’ve achieved.

What else should I be asking you that I’m not? What would you like the wider world to know about Apprenticely?

I don’t know that enough employers—or apprentices—know about us or all that we do. Even now, when most people think of “apprenticeships,” they still think of plumbers or electricians. But there are more than 4,000 apprenticeable occupations. It’s a whole wide world of apprenticeships today. And if you’re an employer and you have somebody that you want to move into a position, it’s probably apprenticeable. Take a chance, just reach out and ask us.

We call our apprenticeship pathway our “end-to-end” process. Through our website, a person can create an account as a career seeker, enabling our talent acquisition team to reach out to them and assist with resumes, skill building, interview prep, and other areas. Then we help arrange interviews if a position opens up that the person would be great for. But what if he or she is missing that one required skill (like me with HR) but they meet everything else and would fit the team perfectly? As a nonprofit intermediary sponsor, we at Apprenticely work with the employer to help get that person—now a fully employed apprentice—the training for the skills they need. Then once the apprenticeship period is over, they receive a Department of Labor credential of completion. We can do the same for existing employees that an employer wants to move into a different position as well. Our services are free to both the apprentice and employer. Once an employer who has been hesitant to sign up finally does, the most common response is that they don’t know why they waited so long—“it just sounded too good to be true.” 

With the overturn rate that companies have today, you want to retain employees. So invest in who you have, create a greater environment for your workplace, and let people know that you’re willing to grow that talent from within. You can also expand by bringing in people who may not have a degree, but who can be trained to do the work. Be willing to invest in them as well. Just believe in people.

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