In this employee spotlight, we feature Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Dakota (BCBSND) Team Lead of Content Becca Opp.
Meet Becca Opp
Rebecca “Becca” Opp originally grew up in Glen Ullin, North Dakota, a small town in western N.D. After high school, she studied art, English education and communications at North Dakota State University (NDSU).
In 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic, she experienced a layoff. She went looking for a new job and found a few options, but BCBSND was the only one that offered a leadership position. Thinking it would be an interesting challenge and curious about the inner workings of health insurance, she gave it a try. Now, she’s three years into her position as Team Lead of Content and still going strong.
The skills she brings to Blue
As an education major, Becca believes her student teaching experience served her career well. She had to learn how to train others and communicate effectively – skills that she often needs as a leader. Her communications background gave her many opportunities to develop her writing and editing skills. She polished those skills in her first “real” job out of college working at a local publisher. There she practiced interviewing, editing and writing different types of content for web and print. This gave her great confidence in her writing abilities as well as her people skills.
A typical day at Blue
While every day is different, Becca often starts her mornings by logging in, checking our social media pages, attending a standup meeting with the Creative Services team and then other meetings before lunch. In the afternoons, she typically will be shooting a video, writing content or working on some other type of project. Before she knows it, it’s 4:30 p.m.
“It may sound like I’m doing the same thing every day, but the projects are always varying from day to day. One letter can be completely different from another letter,” she shared.
What Becca likes best about #LifeAtNDBlue
As a leader, Becca enjoys working with our president and CEO Dan Conrad and the rest of our senior leadership team. She respects their involvement in our community and appreciates their smiling faces in the office and on virtual meetings.
Becca also likes her team members in the Creative Services team and their individual strengths.
“Our team members are very talented and it’s fun to see how everyone tackles a problem differently,” said Becca.
One of her favorite benefits is the flexibility BCBSND offers. With her flexible work arrangement, she can work from home on Mondays and Fridays. Also, as long as she follows company policy, she can go and sit in a coffee shop downtown and work on a project.
“I like having a place to go in the morning. It helps me focus throughout the day. I joke that Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are my super productive days because I don’t have the laundry sitting behind me,” she said.
Another, important thing she likes is the opportunity to work on her health. After joining Blue, she did a surgery she had been putting off for a long time. She was able to take the time off that she needed and even worked remotely for a time.
“It was great for my overall health and I don’t think I would have done it if I wasn’t working here,” she shared.
What Becca hopes to take away from Blue
Since this was Becca’s first “real” leadership role in her career, she wants to continue to be a people leader and grow her team. She looks forward to practicing more of her training skills from her education background as well as exploring more of the social media landscape.
“There’s so much uncertainty [in social media] that I want to become an expert and then let go of the reins and hand them to somebody else,” she said.
Another thing is her knowledge of the health care industry and the lessons she’s learned along the way.
“This job has been instrumental in helping me understand my own health and financial well-being. I’ll take that with me wherever I go, no matter what I do,” she concluded.
What will you bring to Blue?
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