Last updated: May 12, 2023
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Staff Spotlight: Suki Skye
Courtesy of Suki Skye
Meet Suki Skye, the InsideNPS Manager for the Office of Communications!
How did you find yourself at NPS?
My path to the National Park Service was a long and winding one and involves a lot of luck and simply following my intuition. After graduating with two bachelor's degrees in art history and marketing, my career started in marketing and events management. This was followed by doing communications and marketing for a start-up and several art museums. I spent several years as a strategic communications consultant for Booz Allen Hamilton before discovering my passion for internal communications around 2009. While at the Department of Homeland Security, first as a consultant and then as a federal employee, I noticed that the employees in our group—an office of about 300—needed better information about what was happening from the leadership level down to simple social engagement with their colleagues. I stepped in to fill the gap and created a full suite of internal communication tools, plans, and staffing to support internal communication efforts while also in an acting role as the Communications Director for our office.
I regularly kept an eye on USAJobs and one day saw that the National Park Service was hiring an Internal Communications Specialist. I just knew: this was my job. Not knowing almost anything about the National Park Service at that time, I applied with excitement, researching everything I could get my hands on to learn about the organization, and realized that I had already visited over 30 National Park Service sites (but had no clue all of them were under the National Park System!)
Finally, my NPS journey truly began in 2012, which was supported by many kind people who educated me about all the unique, wonderful, and sometimes wild things about the National Park Service. For many, the National Park Service is a calling. For me, I find great satisfaction in caring for my stakeholders: the employees. Nearly ten years later, I’m still learning something new about our organization almost every day and have an even deeper appreciation for the workforce who literally fuel this organization with their passion and dedication.
Not knowing almost anything about the National Park Service at that time, I applied with excitement, researching everything I could get my hands on to learn about the organization, and realized that I had already visited over 30 National Park Service sites.
Left image
Suki with NPS Communications Team (far right)
Credit: NPS Photo
Right image
Suki Skye with the National Web Council at the annual meeting (far right)
Credit: NPS Photo
NPS Photo
What do you do for the NPS?
While my role over ten years has shifted a bit, my obsession has always been on connecting people through communications. For the first several years, I was the national level Internal Communications Specialist, and my focus was on modernizing internal communications strategies, creating and reinforcing feedback loops between employees and leadership, leveraging new platforms, and reinventing or reinvigorating existing channels—all with the lens of connecting the daily work of employees to our mission.
Since 2015, I moved into a different but related role, connecting employees across 420+ parks and over 10 different offices, from Guam to Puerto Rico, with the help of our intranet: InsideNPS. I completely redesigned the internal website experience with employee input all along the way and through several website iterations. And I continue to add and improve content.
My primary role is to understand and advocate for employee needs, primarily via InsideNPS, but also through various roles, such as co-leading the LGBTQ+ Employee Resource Group, and as an active member of the Workforce Ambassadors, a group of about 30 employees working together to improve employee engagement across the organization.
Currently I am in the Interior Coach Training Program, practicing to become a personal coach with the intention of helping DOI employees reach their personal and professional goals. It’s my honor to support my fellow employees in this way, reinforcing the concept that each of us is creative, resourceful, and whole, along with the fundamental belief that all we need sometimes is a little support to fulfill our dreams.
What do you find most rewarding about your job?
My greatest work-related joy is when someone tells me that they found exactly what they were looking for on InsideNPS! Although I work from home, my biggest thrill is actually visiting a park in order to show staff who work in parks the many resources on InsideNPS. Watching their faces light up when they found the exact form, or piece of information they needed, is just awesome. It’s also enlightening for me to experience park-life challenges like slow internet speeds, interactions with visitors while multitasking on InsideNPS, or simply a lack of screens available for them to use (all things we’re broadly hoping to improve over time). After these visits, I love being able to go hiking in the park and truly understand why we’re all so passionate about protecting and promoting these special places.
In my coaching practice, similar rewards come when a client’s face lights up in the discovery of some new knowledge about themselves, or a new path towards their goal. I hope other employees learn about the Department of the Interior coaching program either to be coached or become a coach.
NPS Photo
What does it mean to you to represent your community?
Having had a significant life change after getting divorced at 39 and then truly discovering my queer identity, I’m still getting to know myself and which communities I am a part of. As a co-lead of the LGBTQ+ Employee Resource Group, I help create a safe space for our members to gather and find support, guide leaders and the general workforce in understanding the challenges we face, and channel our community’s needs to decision makers (hopefully for action). It’s my honor to learn from and grow with this community.
I also do my best to empower women and others to ask for what they want, and to understand, create, and reinforce their boundaries. I do this primarily through my coaching practice, but also by sharing my own struggles in this area in order to create more respect for people’s boundaries and keep learning about and expanding this skill. I’m still trying to decide what I want to be when I grow up but setting my own boundaries, and helping other folks do the same feels like a great start.
NPS Photo
What advice do you have for youth and young adults thinking about a career at NPS?
Keep learning! Get connected into a professional community. For the communications realm that includes the International Association of Business Communicators, American Marketing Association, Public Relations Society of America, and the National Association of Government Communicators. There are organizations for any profession offering networking, job, leadership, and learning opportunities. If you are interested in a long-term career with the National Park Service, I highly recommend learning more about our key partner organizations like the National Park Foundation, National Parks Conservation Association, The Wilderness Society, and the major concessioners like ARAMARK.
I would also encourage you to keep your options open! Learning more about the partner organizations above will help you understand the National Park Service better, but you may also be able to find a job in these organizations. Permanent jobs can be hard to come by in the National Park Service, but working with concessioners, partner organizations, and even other bureaus within the Department of the Interior offer very similar experiences and career opportunities.
Do your research! Before you apply for a job, explore the different career options and talk to at least three current NPS employees about their experience to really make sure this job and the lifestyle that goes with it are for you (keep in mind that most National Park Service employees don’t wear a uniform!). Measure your own values and principals, and check them against the NPS values and principals and make sure they strongly match. Check in with yourself and make sure you are passionate about the NPS mission.
Ask for you want! You will never get it unless you ask first.
This is the most important lesson I’ve learned so far, but also sometimes the hardest to execute because of low self esteem or fears, but the worst thing that can happen is the person says no and then you move on. Also don’t make assumptions about people, instead be curious and ask questions. Being curious can take you really far in life overall.
Photos Courtesy of Suki Skye
What are your hobbies?
Learning is a life-long hobby, and after getting my master’s in communication from Georgetown’s Public Relations and Corporate Communications program, I have continually implemented my learning from the amazing professors (and students). I am also really interested in learning and practicing non-violent communications, especially from The Communication Dojo here in the Bay Area. This hobby also correlates to my coaching practice, which I am constantly practicing and reading more about.
I am a low-key makeup addict and like to test out all the new makeup formulas, colors, and techniques by watching beauty bloggers. But I think most of all my passion is cooking for my wife and family, exploring many different cuisines and flavors, while generally keeping them dairy-, gluten-, meat-, alcohol-, and sugar-low/free. Exercise is part of my daily routine, and my wife and I love hiking and biking through all of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area sites and our local parks.
We also travel whenever possible, loving international trips the most and visiting parks and historic sites wherever we go. We also often take road trips in California, Oregon, Washington, and Nevada and finding fun techno concerts in those new cities so we can practice our other passion: dancing! Otherwise, you’ll most often find me curled up at home with our cat Phoenix, either watching a documentary or reading a sci-fi book.