Teresa Jensen is celebrating her 40th anniversary at Diamond S Company. As part of the fourth generation of the Smith family that runs the business, she has an even longer history with the company.
Teresa has been around the family business all her life. When she was a teenager growing up on a ranch in Park City, she started doing “construction cleaning” for DSC. She then worked in the office answering phones for two years while she was attending the University of Utah. She spent the next three years in Kentucky continuing her education in history. While there, she lived on a 100-acre horse-breeding farm and showed horses in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Indiana.
When she returned to Utah, she began working in the Park City office and, after a year or two there, moved to the Salt Lake City office where she handled payroll. She says that she is basically a “self-taught” accountant but did take a few accounting courses.
When Teresa looks back at her career at the family company, she says that she loves her job and attributes that to the people she works with. “I love working with my family and our long-time employees,” she says. “We’ve had some of our employees for so long that there is a huge comfort factor in working with any of our foremen, like Bo and Clark for instance. In fact, I don’t remember a time when those two weren’t here. It makes the job better. I can’t imagine coming to work every day and hating it, especially when I put in so many hours!”
Teresa credits her success to putting forth the effort. She says, “You have to put forth the effort and be here. School helps, but it teaches you the mechanics of HR; it doesn’t teach you how to work with people. You have to be willing to jump in and do what is needed. You also have to have a good attitude and accept that you are going to need to learn new things all the time.”
Teresa says that it helps that every day on the job is different. The job is always evolving and she’s growing and jumping in where she can.
As for the future, Teresa is excited to see the younger generation getting interested in moving the company forward, building on the work that her ancestors started, and she has happily done for decades. She knows that this family business is hard work and appreciates both her biological family and her family of DSC employees. “When I see the guys after a long day in 103-degree weather, I’m just so grateful for everyone that works here and am happy to help run the family business,” she says.
When she’s not in the office, Teresa enjoys taking piano lessons, traveling, and spending time with Kerry and their family. She also enjoys doing crossword puzzles and says that she “does pretty well” with them!
Please join us in congratulating Teresa on her long tenure with DSC and wishing her and her family more success in the years to come!