Stephanie Davis, a library clerk in Louisville, Kentucky, has the right personality for her job: She describes herself as "very quiet," and she loves to read the young adult novels that fill the library shelves. Her hobbies are reading and cross-stitching, and she’d much rather spend a quiet weekend at home than socializing.
Until recently, she would never have guessed that she had the right personality for one-on-one conversations with strangers. "I’m a very quiet person and I don’t like people looking at me and having to do group activities and things like that," she says.
But after participating in the AFSCME Strong training, that all changed. Davis, a member of AFSCME Local 3425 (Indiana-Kentucky Organizing Committee 962) is now doing a little bit less reading and a lot more talking with her coworkers and fellow union members.
"I’m good at doing things if I know what the guidelines are," she says.
The AFSCME Strong training gave Davis the guidelines she needed to have effective one-on-one conversations with people she’d never met but who shared many of the same life and work concerns that she did.
"It kind of teaches you how to push through the fear of talking to a lot of people, how to interact with people and talk about our union," she says of the training.
Although at first she started conversations "beet red" in the face and feeling nervous, it became easier with time. As she’s continued to put into practice her AFSCME Strong skills, she says, she’s started to get "pretty deep" into her union activism.
"We have an unofficial goal of trying to get 100 percent membership in our union," she says. "I know it’s incredibly hard, but we’re going to try."
Davis is a native of Louisville who started working for the library system while she was still in high school.
"My dad said I needed a place I could work at that was warm in the winter and cool in the summer," she half jokes.
Her husband, Josh Dohrer, is also a library worker and AFSCME member.
Davis became more active in her union a couple of years ago and is now an executive board member of her local. She pushed her husband to become the local’s treasurer.
"I wanted to have a say in how things were being handled at my workplace," she says. "I wanted to make sure I had a voice."
Now Davis has a voice in her workplace and is helping her colleagues strengthen theirs.
Davis still likes to read for fun, including novels and young adult fiction by Jodi Picoult, Rick Riordan and J.K. Rowling. But today, she spends less time with Harry Potter and is instead working some magic of her own.