Laarni Zapanta, center, poses for a photo with Rotary Club of Saipan officers at her induction ceremony on Tuesday, Jan. 30, during the club’s weekly meeting at the Crowne Plaza Resort.
DURING her induction to the Rotary Club of Saipan on Tuesday, Laarni Zapanta said the Public School System’s Cooperative Education Program “definitely” played a role in the trajectory of her professional career.
She said in 2005, the PSS co-op program was able to place her at IT&E as a sales and marketing intern. She eventually became a staff member of the company. Today, she is one of its senior managers.
“I’m grateful [to IT&E] because there’s really a lot of opportunity for me to grow,” Zapanta said. “You would think it’s just a ‘small’ company, but I was in different roles that helped prepare me for a leadership role. I moved up in the company and held different positions.”
Those roles included a stint at the engineering department to learn about networking. She also became a full-time service representative, a position she held as a high school graduate and, later, as a Northern Marianas College student.
She assumed a supervisory role in 2013 and was a customer operations supervisor in 2017.
Three years later, she became a manager. This year, she was named to a senior manager position.
She said the PSS co-op program was a “life changer.”
“It got me to where I am right now,” she added. “I’m also very thankful for all the guidance that I received from all my mentors at IT&E. The leadership team there really believed in me and molded me to become one of the leaders of the organization.”
Zapanta recalled that in 2005, IT&E was paying its interns more than the local minimum wage while other companies did not pay their interns at all, she added.
Her advice to new co-op students is to be “intentional” about their professional future.
“Be prepared,” she said. “Absorb everything that you’re learning with your mentor at school because I know they teach you how to project yourself in an interview. Write your résumé and also be really intentional with the job you’re applying for because you’ve got to give it your best once you get in.”
For students who want to be company managers, she said, “Have a service mentality. You’ve got to have that desire to serve people. Leadership is not a position … it’s … an opportunity to serve others.”
In her capacity as a new Rotarian, Zapanta will be a member of the club’s community service committee.
