Helping people is her goal

Friday, September 8, is Jessica Garcia’s last day as the director of the Western Iowa Tech Community College (WITCC) Denison Campus.

Following a normal, two-day weekend, she will take over the position of Denison City Manager on Monday.

Garcia said she loves the job and will miss her duties and colleagues at WITCC, but wants to use her knowledge of Denison and its residents in a new way.

“I’ve built relationships with people here in Denison, and I think that we can be progressive and forward-thinking, more so than maybe we have been before,” she said.

Garcia is a Denison native and a 2004 graduate of Denison High School (DHS).

Her parents are Larry and Peg Kepford.

Garcia has a bachelor’s degree in business administration with a minor in financial services from AIB College of Business in Des Moines.

She has an MBA from the University of Phoenix and is currently working on her dissertation for a doctor of education degree in leadership from Iowa State University.

Garcia said her initial career interest was in banking.

Through the DHS business apprenticeship course, she worked at Crawford County Trust and Savings Bank during all of her senior year of high school and gained experience in a wide range of experience.

“I was able to really dig in and get my hands dirty in the world of banking and fell in love with it,” Garcia said.

She had stars in her eyes for banking at the local level, but that vision dimmed when she took her first job that exposed her to the corporate side of banking.

Garcia moved back to Denison to start a family after getting her BA and took a variety of jobs in non-banking areas, from HR at Smithfield Foods, finance at Adams Motors, insurance with Trevis Beeck, and back to HR with Eventide.

“In that time, I realized I really enjoy helping people,” Garcia said.

After she received her MBA, Doug Dorhout, who was then the WITCC Denison Campus director, asked if Garcia would be interested in teaching business classes at the college.

She started teaching while still working at Eventide; when Dorhout left the college for Denison Job Corps in 2017, Garcia decided to try her hand in the business side of education and landed the WITCC Denison campus director position.

“They gave me a wonderful opportunity to do that and I’ve been blessed to be able to be here for the last six years,” she said.

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Garcia’s interest in working in government was sparked in part by the needs of her job at WITCC.

“In my position at the college, I sat down with my supervisor a few times, as well as the president of the college, and asked, ‘What is the most important thing that I need to be doing in my job?’ and they both responded the same way and said, ‘Be in the community; do as much as you can. Be an active member so you can find ways we can support the community as a college.’ So, I did that, no holds barred.”

Garcia joined the Women in Business Impact Organization (WIBIO), Denison Rotary, attended ISU Extension meetings and joined the board of the Chamber & Development Council of Crawford County.

“If there was anything in the community that you could become a part of, I was there because I felt that was my main role and responsibility at the college,” she said.

Garcia credits Dana Ingerslev and Jean Heiden, at a Rotary meeting, with pushing her to try for a seat on the Denison City Council when former councilmember Brittany Okker announced her departure from Denison.

“They said, ‘You should be on city council – you’d be great for that role,’” Garcia said.

She ran for and was elected in 2019 to finish the remaining two years of Okker’s term, and was reelected for a four-year term in 2021.

Garcia said her interest in the Denison City Manager position comes from her interest in helping people.

“I hope that I bring to the table the ability for people to feel comfortable and reach out if they have concerns or issues,” she said. “When I hear people complain about something in Denison, or go to social media to complain, I’ve always been a big advocate for having them come to a council meeting to share their ideas. You can’t fix what you don’t know is broken.”

Garcia said people should feel comfortable about taking their issues to the city council or directly to her.

She pointed out that the city manager is part of a team that has to work effectively to accomplish the city’s goals.

“This community is built on ‘we,’” Garcia said. “I’ll be the person sitting in the seat, organizing projects, keeping things moving, trying to find the best possible solution for taxpayers, but it’s more than just me.”

Everyone in the community has a role in moving Denison forward.

“We all want it to be a wonderful life – to be a wonderful place to live,” Garcia said.

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