Leadership Coshocton participant Jessie Carr builds career and community connections

Jessie Carr was born and raised in Coshocton, attending the River View Local School District. She was a member of the Active Achievers 4-H Club, where she took livestock projects, and a junior leader. With FFA, Carr participated in meat judging, market livestock judging and agriculture sales. She also was a member of JO Volleyball and played for the Heath New Wave team.

Following graduation in 2012, Carr attended Zane State College, starting out in the physical therapy assistant program. After the first year of bookwork, she started her clinicals and realized it really wasn’t the career she thought she wanted.

She started working as a bank teller and took accounting coursework. At that time she moved outside of Seattle and completed her associate degree, receiving a general education degree, and she began working at the local county assessor’s office, performing duties like the county auditor’s office.

Carr moved back home to Coshocton in 2018. Not long after returning home, she met her husband, a native of Michigan, through mutual friends. They married and started a family. She returned to work at a bank and worked in the compliance department at its headquarters in Newark.

Not long after, a position opened in accounting at McWane Ductile, and she began her career with McWane in 2019. In 2021 another opportunity in the poles division opened, and Carr thought the position as shipping coordinator was a better fit for her. She also began pursuing her bachelor’s degree from Mount Vernon Nazarene University in leadership, taking dual coursework for her master’s degree for organizational management.

As the shipping coordinator, Carr tracks the deliveries of customer orders from the time the poles are completed in production until the time they deliver to the customer. She maintains the shipping paperwork after the poles are made and tracks the metrics for the poles — things such as quality, on-time rate for deliveries, truckloads and size.

“I’m learning new things as we grow," she said. "We’re tracking things that were never tracked before and developing new processes and procedures, making frequent updates. We’re a close team; we have to be flexible to help each other and learn all roles of the business. I love what I do; the team makes the job so great. I enjoy the variety of work I do, whether it’s tracking products or being out and about in the pole yard. My husband is a lineman, so this helps me relate to what he does.”

Carr said she would love to be involved with 4-H — the fair board or 4-H advisory board — and wants to be a Cloverbud adviser as soon as her oldest child is Cloverbud age. She attends NewPointe Community Church. She also would like to join a service club such as Kiwanis.

Jolinda Kistler, human resources at McWane Ductile and LCC Alumna, spoke highly of the program. Carr had filled out the paperwork two years ago but decided to wait until after her daughter was born to apply. Carr’s supervisor also had heard about the program from others at McWane and thought it would be a good fit to improve her leadership skills.

Carr said she wants to network with people in the community and learn more about the community and ways to serve. She said she’s already made connections with people in the class. Going into the program, Carr said she knew three or four people already but has already learned more about them.

Of the community, Carr said, “A definite difference in how people work together to solve community issues since moving back home.”

She said she appreciates there is more community involvement and more events such as the concerts, shop hops, pub crawls, car shows, summer concerts, First Farm Fridays, the food truck festival and the Apple Butter Stirrin’ Festival.

“There is plenty of happenings in the community, and I can see it continuing to grow,” she said.

To make the county stronger, Carr said, “Build a sense of community. Grow the agricultural community. Encouraging involvement of the youth will encourage continued community involvement.”

Carr and her husband now can’t picture themselves ever leaving Coshocton.

Carr said she would recommend Leadership Coshocton for others and has been telling others in the office about it. "It’s a fun and exciting way to learn about Coshocton,” she said.