nora lee

We would like to welcome Nora Lee, the new Administrative and Operations Professional for the Minnesota Child Welfare Training Academy.

Nora has over 30 years experience as an administrative assistant with the last 10 years at the Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare (CASCW). Although Nora's work impacted many daily functions of CASCW, there are three areas where she has been integral to the operations of CASCW. Nora managed all facilities related aspects of CASCW from room reservations, maintenance requests, office and phone transfers, to the development, build out, and set up of the new MinnLInK lab within the School of Social Work.

She also facilitated the search, build out, and move of the company office with a past employer. In supporting these moves, she worked with University facilities management, carpenters, technical staff, furniture vendors, realtors, landlords, and moving companies to assure the organizations' requests were fulfilled. Nora also supported the Outreach team by managing event planning for CASCW's Annual Spring Conference, Esther Wattenberg Policy Forum, be@School conference, and more. Nora also was responsible for overseeing the printing and distribution of CASCW and MinnLInK publications such as CW360 and many MinnLInK Briefs. Finally, Nora has been instrumental in supporting CASCW’s Professional Education programming. It is a primary goal of the Professional Education team to provide an enriched support experience for the Title IV-E students. Nora supported students as they navigated the Title IV-E Program by maintaining accurate student records, stipend payments, planning of experiential learning events, and job search coaching.

  1. What will you be doing for the Training Academy? I will be supporting the Evaluation & Credentialing team as well as be responsible for the facilities operations for our MNCWTA locations.
  2. Tell us about your education and/or work experience prior to joining the MNCWTA. I graduated from Century College, which when I graduated was known as Northeast Metro Technical College (or to us old folks better known as 916). I have worked in various Administrative Professional positions for companies such as Deluxe Corporation, EFunds, Brookfield Development, Cray Research, Honeywell, and Team Informatics. In 2011 I came to the University of Minnesota and the Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare - it felt like home immediately. I have worked with CASCW ever since as the Executive Administrative and Office Specialist supporting the CASCW team; however, my main responsibilities were supporting the Title IV-E Fellows throughout the program, supporting the Outreach team with CASCW event planning, and I was responsible for all facilities issues and projects such as the development of the MinnLInK Lab.
  3. What do you enjoy most about your work? I have really enjoyed being involved with the education and training of child welfare social work professionals - seeing them grow in their profession.
  4. What are you most passionate about professionally? I am passionate about providing the best level of support to enable my team and organization to be successful in their goals.
  5. What are you most passionate about personally? My family - my husband, Tim and I have three children, Toni, Adam and Shane. Toni and her husband, Josh, have given us two handsome grandsons Gavin (10) and Everett (8) and this year I have gained two daughters as our son Shane married Sharaya in May and our son Adam will marry Kristen in October.
  6. What do you like to do outside of work? I love to knit and sew - two of my sisters and I sew quilts for every baby born into our family. I love to play and have fun with my grandsons - we like to bike, hike, swim, camp.