Vickey Luckadoo, administrative assistant for three groups in the Chemical Sciences Division of the Physical Sciences Directorate (Photo Credit: Genevieve Martin, ORNL/U.S. Dept. of Energy)
Managing day-to-day operations, staffing the phones, handling emails, preparing documents and presentations, scheduling, managing calendars, screening, ordering, networking, communicating, supporting. If this sounds like a lot, it is. It is what the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory administrative assistants do daily. They are, in a word, indispensable. In recognition of their work and in their honor on Administrative Professionals Day on April 26, ORNL Communications talked with some of them, and here is one of their stories, just a small representative sample of the people who help keep ORNL running.
Vickey Luckadoo feels pretty lucky. Administrative assistant for three groups in the Chemical Sciences Division, Luckadoo says she can’t imagine any better job.
“I think the work environment is wonderful and the people here are great to work for,” Vickey said. “I really just love ORNL as a whole. I have a great team of people that I work for, my leadership is one of the best and they really care about me at a professional and a personal level.”
Vickey, who serves Nuclear Analytical Chemistry and Isotopics Laboratories, Chemical and Isotope Mass Spectrometry, and the Radioactive Materials Analytical Lab groups — as well as the Transuranium Analytical Laboratory — has been with ORNL since 2010 and the Chemical Sciences Division since 2019. She worked at three different area businesses before coming to the lab, in senior administrative assistant roles. But what really prepared her for a career at ORNL was her time in the military, she said.
Vickey spent 24 years in the Air National Guard, the reserve unit of the U.S. Air Force, with the first 11 years in St. Louis and the next decade in the Tennessee Air National Guard. She held several positions, including heavy equipment operator, administrative assistant, personnel administrator and knowledge operations specialist. She attended the Non-Commissioned Officer (NCO) Academy and was deployed to Incirlik Air Force Base, in Turkey, and Al Udeid Air Base, in Qatar. On May 6, she will retire as a Master Sergeant.
“Serving my country has been one of my greatest accomplishments,” Vickey said.
But she readily agrees that a military career is not necessary for a successful career at ORNL. “I have been able to succeed because I’m able to figure out what my team needs and deliver it to them,” she said.
Administrative Assistants are given many opportunities to train and learn ORNL programs, that enable you to be successful in your career at ORNL. ORNL provides the training up front to know what you need to do
Also, she enjoys taking care of people. “You’re fulfilling the needs of the staff. You’re taking care of all the peoples’ needs and making sure they can be successful in their jobs. Doing your job makes them successful in their job, and I like doing that,” Vickey said. Another useful skill, she said, is that “I am able to figure out what my team needs and deliver it to them.”
Vickey said she wants to continue performing at a high level. She has earned enough college credits for an associate’s degree, and she is enrolled in a Professional Administrative Assistants Certificate of Excellence program, or PACE. “Being the best I can be every day, I still want to raise the bar,” she said.
In her spare time she enjoys spending time with her husband and family, including five “wonderful” grandchildren. The couple enjoys motorcycle riding, working in the garden and listening to music. — Lawrence Bernard
UT-Battelle manages ORNL for DOE’s Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. DOE’s Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit https://energy.gov/science.
