Holly is Paladin’s Ms. Know-it-All in a Good Way

Most businesses have an employee who may not have the job title or status, but they know nearly everything about the company, can answer almost any question, and just seem to run the place. Holly Horn is that person at Paladin Data Corporation.

“Holly is the truest of team players. She is always willing to help everybody. In this past year, she has been a huge support in bringing in new benefits and bringing in a new payroll system. And she continues to advance her skill set so she can do more for Paladin,” says Holly’s supervisor Lynn Hoffman. “People go to her for almost everything here and not once have I heard her say ‘That’s not my job.’”

Holly, who marked her 10th year with the company in January, hasn’t done it all with Paladin, but she’s done a lot. Originally hired as an administrative assistant, she has also managed the marketing department, represented the company at hardware dealer markets, worked in finance and now handles the company’s HR benefits.

Her breadth of knowledge about the company earned her the nickname “Radar” from Chief Experience Officer Charles Owen, who participated in her hiring. For those of you not familiar with the legendary sitcom “MASH,” Cpl. Walter “Radar” O’Reilly was the company clerk who earned the nickname because of his eerie penchant for knowing exactly what would happen or what somebody needed.

In the past 10 years, Holly has seen the company go from roughly 330 clients to nearly 1,100 and move offices from a hangar at the Bend Airport to our current campus. Her husband, Mike, started with the company a few years after she was hired.

“It’s been really cool to see the transitions. There are things I miss about the old days,” she says, adding that sharing a single hangar bathroom with 25 other employees, most of them guys, is not one of them. “The cool thing I like about Paladin is that upper management is very kind and considerate about real life issues outside of work.”

At work, Holly remains the go-to person for most of the Paladin staff. It’s a job she does, even though her official title is AP accounting specialist.

“If everything works out, I can picture retiring here. You can’t predict the future. I would love to find my niche and work in my niche. In school my two favorite subjects were math and art. So, it is kind of nice, I’ve been able to do a little bit of work in both of those,” she explains, also admitting an unexplainable attraction to working with Excel spreadsheets. “My favorite thing right now is these benefits because you get to help people. A big thing for me is seeing people use these tools to help themselves.”