The Indiana Chamber announced their Ogletree Deakins Human Resources Professional of the Year nominees last week with the list including our vice president of human resources, Lori Gooding. Other finalists included Cari Kline from Grundfos Americas Corporation and Kendra Vanzo from Old National Bank. Of all the nominations, Lori was the only finalist to be chosen to receive the award of excellence.
This award recognizes individuals who have made significant contributions to their organization through implementation of best practices, organization design and effectiveness, and alignment and accomplishment of the strategic direction of their company. Additionally, nominees have a proven track record of giving back to their communities.
Lori has worked in human resources for 18 years, six of those years with Buckingham Companies. Throughout that time, Lori has made a tremendous impact on our company’s CEO focus to ‘Raise the Bar’ along with embodying our company’s mission, vision, and values.
In Lori’s leadership, she has written and implemented 1,800 employee key performance indicators, assisted in the creation of the company’s Angel Fund, and the development of Buckingham EDU, which allowed us to dedicate an entire floor in our corporate office to focusing on training our 300+ employees with the resources they need such as a 20-workstation computer lab, training room for 100 employees to meet, a conference room, and fitness facility.
What sets Lori’s accomplishments apart is her dedication to one of our core values – community involvement. With a bachelor’s degree in teaching and a passion for education, she is a board member and volunteer for Indy School on Wheels, where she strives to break the cycle of homelessness through tutoring and educating children in the homeless demographic of Indianapolis. This carries over to her volunteer work with Horizon House, where she is also a board member. Horizon House is a resource center in Indianapolis that provides across-the-board services to help people who are homeless build more stable and secure lives. Lori helps provide Horizon House with educational classes on resume building and interview practices for people enrolled in this program, so that they are better prepared to apply for a job and successfully be hired. By helping combat Indianapolis’ homelessness, Lori is embodying the value of Buckingham Companies to be involved in the community and Buckingham Foundation’s mission to help provide people with quality and affordable housing.
Lori has also helped to attract, develop, and retain talent by recruiting eight summer interns to Buckingham, hiring 144 new employees, implementing new benefits for the company, completing 65 stay interviews, creating the incentive programs for the maintenance and sales team members, graduating our first class of assistant property managers to property manager candidates, including four promotions, and developed a presence on GlassDoor all within the last year.
We are proud to have Lori on our team and for this amazing accomplishment as a human resource professional in the state of Indiana. Congrats to her and her team on this amazing achievement!