TOPEKA (KSNT) – Forty years is a long time to work for one company. But for Renee Franklin, it’s been much more than a career. She’s worked in nearly every department, moved into management and today serves as a community engagement coordinator.
As she celebrates four decades on the job, she also reflected on her roots and why serving others has always been part of who she is.
Franklin grew up in the Oakland neighborhood, a childhood she remembers as safe, simple and full of community. She said service was part of her upbringing and eventually became part of her career. Franklin worked a number of jobs before landing at her current company, Moore Digital Print and Mail Center in south Topeka, within a year of graduating high school.
“I was a janitor for a while. I worked at Domino’s Pizza. I worked at Brass Buckle. Anything I could do to just kind of fill in space until I got here,” she said. “And I started working here within a year of graduation. This is my 40th anniversary here this year.”
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Franklin thought she was going to stay about eight months. Four decades later, she’s still there. She’s worked in almost every department, spent years in management and she said she now uses that institutional knowledge for quality control and community engagement.
“It uses all of who I am. It uses my institutional knowledge, and it uses my community knowledge. It uses my brain and my body, and it allows me to be a complete human, and bring all of me to everything [that] I do,” she said.
Renee serves on four different boards, and one opportunity has often led to another. She has a simple rule when she’s asked to get involved.
“I try to say yes, as often as I can, because I know that it’s hard to find people that want to be involved and want to do some of the tedious work if you would call it that, but I find it to be invigorating,” Franklin said. “I think that my nature kind of suits it, and I’ve found myself in a position to help folks in that stage. I would love to get into it further and become certified.”
And when retirement does come, she has no plans to stop serving. She’s interested in mental health, nonprofit work and even becoming an end-of-life doula, a person who provides assistance for medical patients. For Franklin, service isn’t about getting recognized — it’s about showing up.
“I think we do the work, those of us who are busy, and [we] are doing the work because it suits us. It fills our hearts, our minds, or souls, and I think that we don’t really need it to tell us that we’re doing a good job because we know we’re doing what we can do,” she said.
And she said what she hopes people take away from her story is that leadership doesn’t have to look one particular way.
“It doesn’t have to be loud, and it doesn’t have to be sitting on a bunch of boards. It can be being a really great wife. It could be being a really great mother. It can be being the best grandma on the planet,” Franklin said.
Through it all, Renee said she has had another important source of support — her husband.
“My husband is honestly the most wonderful man on the planet. He allows, and I say allows in the sense that he gives me the absolute freedom to do all the things I do,” she said. “When we have that kind of support at home, when we have that kind of love and absolute caring from someone, we fly, and that goes both directions. We become the best versions of ourselves when we have someone that says ‘you go do your thing’, [and] ‘you got to be the best you can be, and I will be here cheering you on.'”
Renee said the job may have changed over time, but her reason for doing it hasn’t. She wants to keep using her experience, her connections and her voice to better serve the community she’s called home all her life.
If you know someone we should recognize in this segment, please go to KSNT’s Everything Woman to nominate. We feature these stories during 27 News at 10 on the last Tuesday of each month.
