Kacey Ortiz knows how to take her own advice: “It’s never too late to go after what you want. There is no set timeline to do things – if you decide you want to do something, do it.”

Ortiz was recently named Lubbock Power and Light’s finance director. However, when she first started at LP&L not too long ago, she had accepted a temporary position with an entirely different vision in mind for where the next few years would take her.

“I was staying home with my kids while I got my accounting degree and didn’t have much experience yet, so I signed up with a temp service,” Ortiz said. While with the service, she interviewed for and accepted a job as a temporary administrative assistant at LP&L. “We immediately hit it off,” Ortiz said of herself and her interviewers.

At the time, Ortiz had already received an associate degree as a legal assistant and was pursuing an accounting degree with the ultimate goal of running the administrative side of a law office.

Once she started at LP&L, however, Ortiz began to see a different path available to her. “I was learning a lot,” Ortiz said. “I knew that if I could keep growing my career here that I wanted to stay here.”

When an accountant position opened, Ortiz jumped at the chance to permanently join LP&L’s team. “Once I got the accounting position, I was able to continue learning and found that I really enjoyed the job,” Ortiz said. “I enjoyed the work, and I enjoyed the people.”

Committed to growing her career at LP&L, Ortiz said she was “learning as much as [she] could from everyone [she] could” in her role as an accountant. That included taking advice from her then supervisor, LP&L’s former finance director, and pursuing an MBA, which she recently completed. “It was hard. I had a full-time job here, and I have two kids, so it was definitely tough,” Ortiz said.

Evidently, her hard work paid off. When LP&L needed a finance director, Ortiz was ready and able to step up. She was a natural fit, having taken the initiative to get her MBA and to learn about the business from her predecessor. So, she went after the job.

“A piece of advice that my former supervisor told me was, ‘don’t wait for things to be given to you. If you want something, ask for it.’ That was something I took to heart, and it’s really what got me here – asking for what I wanted,” Ortiz said.

As she has begun to settle into the finance director role, Ortiz hopes to continue to learn the more technical aspects of the business and the details of what goes on in the field. “As an accountant, I would prepare all the financial statements for my supervisor to review. Now I’m understanding what goes into those numbers, what affects those numbers, and can make decisions based on that information,” Ortiz said. “I want to gain even more knowledge of what we do and how we do it.”

Looking forward, Ortiz wants to help her team develop their own successful careers and achieve the goals they set out toward. “Working here, I have a really great team,” Ortiz said. “I want to help them get to where they want to be.”

Outside of work, Ortiz enjoys spending time with her family and friends, especially if that time is spent in the outdoors or while getting active. She has two children and three dogs and is currently planning her wedding, set for March 2023.