Kayla Lauren Reed grew up working for her father, Dublin veterinarian Dennis Reed. “I preferred being in the office managing and organizing over performing the dirty work required of a veterinarian, working as an assistant to the Office Manager played into me studying business administration,” she said. Now the director of customer operations for a GPS company, she credits her early work experience with leading her down her current path.
While in Dublin schools, Reed played sports until her sophomore year. She also showed livestock. “It was hard to play sports and be involved with livestock because of the time out of school,” she said.
With her parents’ support, she made a decision to show steers and heifers full time in an attempt to start earning money for college. “It was probably one of the best decisions I made,” she said. “It gave me the opportunity to travel around the United States and go to numerous states. I met so many different people.”
It also helped her pay for school, as she had hoped. In 1996 she won the San Angelo Stock Show with her steer, Scooter, earning $15,000. “That really set me up from a young age,” she said.
Reed graduated from Dublin High School in 2003, and moved to Dallas for college. She started at a community college, then transferred to the University of Texas at Dallas to earn her Bachelor of Science in business administration.
After graduating in 2010, Reed found work at different retail companies, including Guess Jeans, where she helped open a new store, and Sprint, where she learned about technology as a retail sales consultant.
“At Sprint, [my eyes were opened] to the technology industry, not just through the cell phones, but through back end systems and how the cellular network works and how data travels across the network to give the information that we’re seeing on our screen,” she said.
The experience she gained at Sprint helped her land a job at On-Board Communications, a GPS company that provides hardwa re and software that helps businesses track their assets and team members in the field. As the company’s director of customer operations, Reed works 9-5 and is on call for any issues customers experience with their systems.
“I really love it,” she said. “It’s very interesting. Every day is different. Even though all the devices are the same, they don’t all act the same, so it’s fun to get in there and try to figure out the problem. My favorite part is working with engineering. I work with the hardware and software engineers. To see how hardware [engineers] use coding compared to how the software team uses coding is really interesting to me.” Reed hopes to continue working at the small company for the foreseeable future. It might one day become an employee-run company, which is appealing to Reed. She also intends to get further into project management.
When she has free time, Reed enjoys working out, meeting new people, and visiting her family in Dublin. She loves anything that lets her spend time with animals, such as helping her parents out with work on their ranch.
Reed has two goddaughters, and she enjoys spending time with them as well. “They’re at the age of learning how to drive, so that’s been a very fun experience,” she said. “They grew up in the city, so I like taking them back to the country and exposing them to how I grew up, and seeing them freak out on all the big bugs that we don’t have in the city.”
Reed’s father and stepmother, Dennis and Connie Reed, still live in Dublin. Reed’s mother, Alicia Reed, passed away when Reed was 17. “Losing my mom at 17, two months before I graduated, that was definitely a blow to the stomach,” Reed said. “And although I didn’t understand the ramifications of it then, it really hit later in life, seeing other moms and daughters together… I just try to keep her in my heart and everything she taught me, and make the best of it.”
Throughout her life, Reed’s father has been a great source of inspiration to her. “He’s probably the hardest worker that I’ve known, and he really taught me the value of a hard work ethic,” she said. “Whatever you’re doing, whether it’s cleaning toilets or running a company, do your best. Show up every single day and do your best. He’s taught me that ‘can’t’ is not in the vocabulary, and I live by that.”
Reed offers the following advice to Dublin graduates: “Put your best foot forward every single day,” she said. “There’s going to be days that you don’t want to do it, you don’t even want to get out of the bed. But I’ve learned that just showing up, even if you’re not in the best of moods, just showing up and putting your best foot forward is going to take you a long way.”
Editor’s Note: This column chronicles what Dublin graduates have done since high school. If you have any suggestions for other grads, email publisher@dublincitizen. com.