Seattle City (spot)Light introduces you to the people behind the scenes helping to power Seattle. This week in (spot)Light, learn about City Light’s Chris Armstrong. This week in (spot)Light, we introduce you to City Light’s Chris Armstrong.
Chris is the Internship Coordinator for City Light and has been with the utility for three years. He is responsible for recruiting high school and college interns and working with the various units within City Light to determine their intern needs. Once interns have been identified, Chris does the orientation, bi-weekly professional development, and organizes utility educational opportunities. At the end of each summer, he coordinates a showcase to highlight intern work from the year.
Prior to joining City Light, Chris worked at the University of Illinois in academic advising. Chris has an associate’s degree from Sinclair Community College, a bachelor’s degree from Wright State University, and a master’s in Human Resources from the University of Illinois.
Internship Coordinator Chris Armstrong
This job was the perfect blend of HR and working with students. It was a great merger of two things I love, and it was kind of a dream job. The timing was a little uncanny. I expected to move to Seattle and spend a few months looking for a job, but it just worked out that within a week I had the job offer and got started almost right away. My first day was a career fair. My manager asked, “Do you want to do that on your very first day?” And I was like, ‘”Trial by fire! Let’s do it!” So my very first day working at City Light I was out at the UW campus recruiting students.
I love getting together with friends and playing a card or board game. It’s good social time. There’s a great community of it here, kind of a renaissance of board games. I’m actually designing a game in my spare time. A lot of people have a creative outlet, and to me it’s always interesting when I talk to people to see what they do creatively. At work we usually talk about business, but when I find out what people are doing for fun – cooking, sewing, gardening, building a car in their garage – that’s always the cool stuff. It’s tough to know how to be creative with a busy life. You have family, you have work, you have other obligations, you’re tired. But how do you carve out that little bit of time to still be creative and still do something that you’re passionate about? Maybe you loved to do something as a kid but then kind of got away from it – but it makes you want to come back. So for me, it would be making that card game. I just had an idea and wondered if I could make my own, so I decided I’m doing it.