Written by Cheri Lane, Ortivus North America Communication Manager

Brit Eddy is a System Architect (or computer program developer in layman terms) at Ortivus North America (NA). I had the great pleasure of sitting down with Brit to learn more about her and her role here at Ortivus North America, and I’d like to share a little of what I learned.

First of all, while most people are delighted to have the opportunity to talk about themselves, I found the same was not necessarily true of Brit. Being a very modest and hard-working person, I am sure I moved Brit out of her comfort zone quite a bit when I asked her to serve as the candidate for this Sweet-TALK issue employee spotlight feature. However, as a very gracious and cooperative person, she reluctantly accepted. She supplied me with a few short paragraphs of information, as I had requested, and even permitted me to take a photo of her. So here you go…please meet Brit.

Brit started with Sweet back in 1993. She was hired in the development department to begin working on the new and upcoming A2000 product release. As Brit gained experience and familiarity with the Emergency Medical Service (EMS) industry and the program needs, she next found herself serving as one of the developers of the next generation of EMS billing software, Amazon Billing (which evolved into Sweet-Billing). The specifics of Brit’s day-to-day job responsibilities include not only design, implementation and testing of Ortivus NA software, but also a lot of troubleshooting within the support department. In fact, Brit was originally stationed right in the middle of the support department, so that she would be easily accessible to the support technicians at any given time. Brit especially enjoys the opportunity to work closely with other departments on a frequent basis and states that the most enjoyable part of her job comes along with the opportunity to work with the customers. “It’s fun to develop software,” says Brit, “but it is also fun to see how the software is used by our customers.”

One of the most intriguing aspects that I discovered about Brit, however, is that she didn’t get into the field of computer science until after establishing her family. Brit stayed home with her two girls during their early years, and started college after her youngest started first grade. Her college education revolved around mathematics and computer science – which was an area somewhat unfamiliar to Brit as computer classes had not yet progressed into the high school/middle school/primary school curriculum when she was going through the system. As a personal comment from a person who thinks more from the right side of her brain, I find it pretty amazing that someone who never grew up with computers can start from scratch and develop into the amazing computer program developer that Brit is today. I believe it is a great testament to the incredible talent, skill and dedication that Brit has been endowed with.

One additional credit to her account is the fact that she is also fluent in two languages – Norwegian and English. Brit was born in Norway and moved to the United States in 1977, where she has lived in Minnesota and Iowa. And I believe that I speak for all of the employees here at Ortivus NA when I say that I am so thankful to her husband for finding her in Norway and bringing her to northeast Iowa to share her wonderful talents!