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Illuminate 2023 is in the books, and we cannot thank those of you enough for joining us and making it such a memorable event. After years of virtual conventions, seeing smiling faces fill a room and share knowledge was a breath of fresh air. Having you all in Raleigh made it all-the-more special as we celebrate all you have accomplished over the past year.

For one person in particular, the celebration came as quite the surprise, as Cassandra Herrera-Ayala, our Excellence Award winner, felt she was “just doing her job.” We are proud and honored to recognize someone who went above and beyond in her first year on the job, mastering Asset Essentials and setting her team up for success.

In her role as admin support specialist at Fayetteville State University, she coordinates and facilitates requests from students and faculty while supporting the technicians who maintain the campus. Despite being new to the maintenance and operations world, she found it easy thanks to the ease of use of Asset Essentials. “It’s very simple to use,” she says. “Without Asset Essentials, it would be very difficult to maintain our campus and dorms.”

Working on their “Facilities 411 Team,” Cassandra created a form that students and faculty access from their Microsoft accounts, linking it to Asset Essentials to ensure tasks are completed. Her team credits her hard work in helping to implement a solution that is both easy to use and improving the quality of the university’s campus. While she handles all the requests that come through the program, she credits her team—and �㽶��Ƶ—for helping.

“I would like to thank �㽶��Ƶ. Being this is my first year, coming into a workforce dealing with facility management, Asset Essentials has made it simple. Everybody else that I’ve been able to talk to at this conference—there’s a lot of overwhelming situations they face. Seeing that our campus overall has maintained a good foundation and reputation because of using Asset Essentials, it couldn’t have made my job any easier.”

So, how does it feel to be recognized for doing such an excellent job over the past year? “I am a little overwhelmed,” Cassandra said. “You go to work, do your job, come back home and expect for another day to run. To see that I’m valued as an employee, that everything that I’m doing is being recognized to a higher extent is truly a good feeling.”

Did we mention she’s doing it all as a 19-year-old female working in a male-dominated space? If this is just the beginning, we cannot wait to see where the future takes her. Congratulations once again to Cassandra for winning the Excellence Award and all that you’ve achieved this year!