Erin Williams has worked in several different fields, after getting her start working in food service, she bounced around until finding the job she wanted to retire from — which just happens to be working on other people’s retirement plans.
Williams graduated from Dublin High School in 2005, and went on to Tarleton State University, where she studied biochemistry. To make some extra money, Williams took a job at Hard 8 BBQ. After only a year, Williams was offered a management position at the restaurant.
“[As a manager] I had to work quite a bit,” she said. “I sometimes worked 70 hours a week. And my first semester in school I was taking 16 hours, so I didn’t have the time to do both.”
Williams loved the friendly atmosphere of her job and could see herself staying for a while, so she decided to leave school and work full time. “Restaurant workers usually become like family because that’s where we basically live all the time,” she said. “I had a lot of friends at work and there was a lot of camaraderie, so it was a fun place to be. And being a manager, I was young and I was a woman and I had some responsibility, and I really liked that.”
Williams stayed at the Stephenville Hard 8 for four years, before in 2009 she decided to move to the Metroplex. “I had always wanted to try out city life,” she said. “Growing up in a small town, I wanted to see what that other part of life could look like.”
She was able to transfer to another Hard 8 in Coppell, so she could live closer in the big city. “I really enjoyed it and it was nice to be able to transfer my job skills,” she said.
After a year in Fort Worth, Williams moved to Amarillo to be with her boyfriend at the time. “He had family up here and was offered a job here, so this is where we landed,” Williams said.
Amarillo reminds Williams of home. “I compare it to Dublin a lot,” she said. “People grow up here and go to school here and then stay here, so it feels like a much bigger version of Dublin. There’s 160,000 people but it seems like everywhere you go, you see people that you know.”
When she first arrived in Amarillo, Williams found a job working for the dispatch department of a telecommunications company. “We would dispatch technicians to fix issues with phones or internet, things like that,” she said. “We had customers all the way from the very top of the panhandle down into kind of central and western Texas, so we had a pretty large area to cover with technicians throughout.”
Williams worked as a manager of two dispatchers and around 20 technicians. “We’d have to prioritize who went where and what made the most business sense,” she said. “I really liked that job. It’s a pretty good hustle and bustle when it comes to such a large area, trying to get everybody taken care of.”
Williams worked as the dispatch manager for seven years, and then in 2020 she decided she wanted to try something different. She’d always been good with numbers — she’d tutored algebra students at Tarleton while in college — so Williams decided to try working with the American International Group, or AIG, helping people save and plan for retirement.
“It was daunting at first because I felt like I didn’t have any idea about any retirement planning, but once I really got into it, it just started to click together,” she said. “I’m more of a hands-on person, so once I started to do the job, it made a lot of sense.”
Williams works from home, and spends her days allocating group retirement funds. “If you put into your 401k directly from your paycheck, that goes to your employer, and then your employer sends it to me, and then I make sure that everything goes where it’s supposed to go,” she said.
“I process millions of dollars a day, which sounds like a lot of money, but it’s all just numbers on a screen to me.”
Williams hopes to remain at the company until she retires herself. “AIG does have a lot of opportunities for growth,” she said. “Hopefully I can get moved around and get back into management because that’s really where I seem to feel comfortable and thrive.”
When she has free time, Williams enjoys crafting, playing pool and going to concerts. She also spends a lot of time with her family.
Williams lives in Amarillo with her boyfriend of two years, Chris Allen. She has four step-children and two adopted children: Jade, 23, Jordan, 21, Rhylee, 16, Bailee, 14, Kalvin, 6, and KJ, 4.
“I never pictured myself as a single mom, and there’ve been plenty of challenges and obstacles to overcome,” she said. “But to be able to to raise these boys — I wouldn’t change anything.”
Throughout her life, Williams has drawn inspiration from her grandparents. “My grandparents were a huge integral part of my raising, and they taught me so much about what kind of person I want to be — hard-working, and loving to every person no matter their walk of life,” she said.
Williams’ mother, Lori Wade, lives in Georgia, and her father, Garland Williams, lives in Dublin.
Williams advice to Dublin students is to remember to slow down and enjoy the phase of life they’re in. “I did a ton of things in high school because it would look better on college applications, and really, once you get past that phase, it doesn’t matter,” Williams said. “I was always doing so much to prepare for the next phase that I didn’t enjoy every part of [the phase I was in]. So definitely work hard, but also, don’t take things too seriously.”
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.