SF Fed Workplace Services Manager Champions Change through Motivation and Creative Thinking

When Roy Sanson-Mosier brings his workplace services teams together, he asks one question: “How can we make this better?”

Event management, video conferencing, and support services are all under Sanson-Mosier’s oversight, so “better” takes many tangible forms. It can mean tweaking a furniture layout to create more opportunities for conversation and engagement. It can mean optimizing software. Or it can mean changing business processes to create efficiencies.

His goal is always the same: to evolve workplace services in a way that adds value to the business.

Keeping pace with—and exceeding—industry standards and employee expectations is a balancing act. It can take outside-the-box thinking to provide the best resources, tools, and services while staying within budget. As an experienced change agent, Sanson-Mosier knows he can’t do it alone, embracing a full-team philosophy in his management style.

“When our team comes together, there’s so much energy and creativity. Although we have three separate sets of duties, we all work together to define our future, establishing strategic objectives around how to enhance our services,” he explains.

Senior leadership and peers have taken note of Sanson-Mosier’s unique abilities to mentor and motivate others. In 2018, the San Francisco Fed honored him with an Engage, Enable, Excel (E3) Award for his ability to guide others in their development paths, always applying the appropriate level of support. Management noted that when consensus isn’t possible, he effectively provides reasoning that’s logical and easy to follow, moving projects along while inspiring faith in his coworkers.

Sanson-Mosier comes by his motivational gifts naturally, the son of a Texas high-school football coach. While Friday Night Lights culture was never his thing—he chose to study advertising and photography at Texas State University—Sanson-Mosier has a real knack for building a championship team. As a career coach, he’s skilled at identifying and building on the strengths of the individual, breaking down tasks, building confidence, and helping colleagues strategically and successfully tackle the job at hand.

And people like him.

Sanson-Mosier has an unassuming way about him that puts others at ease. His confidence comes to the forefront when it’s time to give his opinion.

“I’m not shy to share my ideas. If it’s a good one, management usually lets me go for it,” he says.

It’s the kind of confidence that comes from experience. After college, Sanson-Mosier spent 13 years working at Austin Community College, one of the largest community college systems in the country. He worked first in procurement, then followed his manager to the information technology department. It was the first time he did something that would become a pattern.

“I created my own job,” he says.

Working on a little of this and that in the IT department, he learned about everything from networking to telecom to programming.

In the back of his mind, though, he yearned to move to the West Coast. When his partner, now husband, landed a job in Sacramento, California, they knew it was the right time to make their move.

It was 2007, and the country was in the midst of a historic financial crisis. Many state agencies were furloughing employees, and government labor union rules made a transfer difficult. Sanson-Mosier spent nine long months applying for hundreds of jobs. He used the career pause as an opportunity to define his goals and decided he didn’t mind where he started as long as he could position himself to succeed.

Sanson-Mosier accepted a position as a mailroom worker in the office of the California Secretary of State. Though below his experience level, he remained humble but ambitious. Soon, he began to transform the job for himself, taking on challenges far beyond sorting envelopes.

“We had a grand time with it,” he recalls. “To speed up processes, we were documenting processes, building training materials, and creating little job aids, like macros.”

He had a great manager, and he stuck with her for the next three years working in different capacities. In the end, he was her manager. Despite that reversal, they’re still good friends today.

Then Sanson-Mosier moved on to a software development project with the California Employment Development Department (EDD). He found himself drawing on his past IT experience and adding to it with new knowledge about software implementation and change management.

“It was a couple of years of the best on-the-job training experience that I could have. They were some of the best and the hardest years of my work life,” he says.

Sanson-Mosier and his husband bought a home. And yet, they knew Sacramento wasn’t where they would build their life together long-term.

“We always thought of Sacramento as our stepping stone. We knew we wanted to live in San Francisco and started to devise a plan to relocate. In 2012, my husband was offered a job in SF that put that plan into motion,” he says.

The couple sold their house. At first, Sanson-Mosier spent his weekends in San Francisco, taking Amtrak to his job in Sacramento, living in a hotel Monday through Thursday. Then he began telecommuting, which was less stressful, but left him feeling like it was time to fully commit to life in the City by the Bay.

“My intense EDD project was winding down, and I needed a better life-work balance. I started exploring advancement opportunities in San Francisco,” he explains.

The perfect opportunity presented itself at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. Sanson-Mosier was hired as a financial analyst, but from day one, he found other challenges. His very supportive management put their trust in Sanson-Mosier, giving him the green light to do what he does best: create his own role. He participated in a leadership exchange to implement new software within three Federal Reserve districts, working across business lines. He’s also helped his department make better use of an already-implemented-but-underused software product, proving that the right solution can be one the organization already has.

Sanson-Mosier continually looks for new solutions to productivity challenges. He’s not a “one-and-done” kind of guy satisfied with the status quo. At the same time, he’s genuinely committed to bringing out the professional best in everyone he manages and mentors.

“I’m that person that champions the good ideas and the people on my team. I’m proud to say we do amazing work. If our employees feel like workplace services fall into the background but make their work more streamlined and easy, we’ve done our jobs,” he says.