Meet Ken Kerns
My company tries to do a newsletter 2-3 times a year, and they usually include one or two profiles of random employees. I drew the lucky straw for the upcoming newsletter, so they asked me to write it. Here’s what I submitted:
Meet Ken Kerns
Ken Kerns is the Manager for Quality Assurance and Eligibility Processing in the Eligibility Services Department. His job is really two functions rolled into one—he’s Eligibility Processing’s champion of quality and best practices as well as the day-to-day manager of the disability pension team. He works for Emerson Work on the 4th floor of the Central Office.
Ken enjoys his work at the Funds, particularly when answering staff questions about Plan rules, conducting training sessions, and verifying health eligibility and payment authorizations on a post-payment basis.
Originally hired as a Benefits Specialist in December 2002, he was promoted to Special Payments Analyst, and then to Benefits Processing Team Coordinator. He was also the Union’s Grievance Committee Chairman while a classified employee. In 2011, he was promoted to the exempt position of Program Manager in Eligibility Services; he assumed his current duties earlier this year.
Ken spent most of his non-working life in Gainesville, Florida, where he received his Bachelor’s Degree from the University of Florida. Go Gators! He then moved to northern Virginia in order to attend George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He received a Master’s degree in Political Management in 2004, while working at the Funds.
Ken has self-published four fiction books and a short story, with a fifth book coming out later in the year. All of his works are available on Amazon.com. His sitcom pilot, “Roommate Wanted,” was on the short-list of finalists in the Creative World Awards screenwriting contest in 2013.
Ken enjoys reading, writing, and watching television shows such as The Big Bang Theory and House of Cards. Having spent parts of his childhood in California, Arizona, and Washington State, and having family living in New Mexico, Indiana, and Florida, he has a goal of visiting every state in the country, assuming his long list of creative writing projects and dreams of making it big in Hollywood don’t get in the way. So far he has set foot in 24 states.
