Being a mediator helps in managing change

By Don Shilling

The Youngstown postmaster likes to settle disputes in her spare time.

YOUNGSTOWN — Being a manager today is all about managing change, as Veronica Rice knows well.

The Youngstown postmaster has seen a mix of factors reduce local mail volumes by about half. The Internet has encouraged people to communicate with e-mail and pay bills online, and the recession has caused companies to trim their mailing costs.

As mail volumes fall, the post office has added new equipment that processes mail more efficiently.

Less mail combined with better technology means fewer mail handlers are needed.

The Youngstown office — which includes branches on the North Side and in Cornersburg, Poland, Boardman and Austintown — employs 345. There were more than 700 employees about 10 years ago.

In the past two years in particular, Rice has led a management team that has re-evaluated workloads and consolidated job responsibilities.

It’s helped that Rice is a trained mediator.

“People generally don’t adapt to change very easily, but things have a way of working out,” she said.

Rice, 54, began working as a volunteer mediator for the Cincinnati Better Business Bureau in 1979 when she worked at the post office there.

Today, she volunteers to help settle small-claims disputes in Akron Municipal Court. She also works as a paid mediator in the legal system and was vice president of the Mediation Association of Northeast Ohio in 2007-08.

“In talking to people, you often find they share common goals but they express them in different ways,” she said.

Rice said that she started with the post office thinking it would be a temporary job until she finished college. She found she liked the work, however, and was promoted several times in Cincinnati.

She attended Ursuline College in Cleveland and the University of Cincinnati but graduated from Myers University in Cleveland with a degree in business management.

Rice was promoted to the postal district office in Chicago in 1990 and then the regional office in Chicago in 1992.

In 1996, she accepted the postmaster position in Warren so she could be closer to her home of Orange Village in suburban Cleveland. She still is a resident of that community.

She became Youngstown postmaster in 2007.

She keeps connected to the communities she serves through volunteer groups. She was a member of Warren Rotary and is a member of the Youngstown Kiwanis.

shilling@vindy.com