How does one sum up their varied experiences and memories following 30 years of career service?
This question is something that outgoing interim CAO Lori Craig reflects on as the longest running employee for the Town of Cochrane. She will be hanging up her public service hat this week and starting a new chapter in retirement.
“What really stands out for me is the fact that I have been blessed to have worked with the most remarkable people ever – a more dedicated, caring and giving group of people you will not find,” remarked Craig.
“Probably my biggest challenge – although I like to think of it as more of an opportunity – was establishing myself in management in a predominantly male environment,” she said. She added the municipal government has changed considerably since she first started out, as the only woman on the senior management team in Cochrane.
Her people-first approach to executive leadership has won her many friends in coworkers over the years and she was honoured at council this week for her commitment to public service.
Mayor Jeff Genung worked with Craig midway through her career, during his early 2000s service on town council.
“I’m glad I’m able to say goodbye. She’s leaving a huge gap and we will miss her.”
Successfully battling colorectal cancer following a 2004 diagnosis and rigorous schedule of surgeries and chemotherapy treatments, and raising two active teenagers while working and attending post-secondary are among challenges Craig says she has overcome.
Craig worked her way up the ranks, starting out answering phones and working in utilities in the late 1980s, then as a municipal clerk and finance assistant in the early 1990s and promoted to director of corporate services in 1995.
Her decision to “up her game” in the late 1990s encouraged her to go back to school while under the town’s employ to achieve her Certified Management Accountant (CMA) designation. Her completion of this in 2003 segued to taking on a new portfolio as Director of Community and Protective Services for the town in 2008.
By 2010, the town underwent a redesign to their current structure of six senior managers, a deputy CAO and a CAO. Craig was appointed to deputy CAO in 2010 and is retiring from her current position as interim CAO, to which she was appointed earlier this year following the retirement of 22-year veteran and former CAO Julian de Cocq.
Career highlights include fostering a passion for strategic planning in the early 2000s and bringing forward and helping to implement that process into the town.
In her time, she has worked with 11 councils – of which she said she “admires each and every one of the councillors and mayors I worked with for their heart and dedication to public service.”
She highlights her father, Jim Harris, as one of her mentors for instilling hard work and strong values in her. She also credits retired CAO de Cocq for more than two decades of friendship, guidance and mentorship.
Craig is confident that her successor, 24 yearlong town employee Suzanne Gaida, will fill her shoes well.
“I believe she will be very successful along with the talents of our new CAO Dave Devana in moving the organization forward as I believe Cochrane is on the cusp of many exciting times and changes.”
Craig will spend the next six weeks on a beach in Mexico with her husband, Nick, and will embrace her next chapter – highlighted by her two kids and two grandkids.
