At Extra Space Storage, we believe our greatest asset is our employees. From the people who work in our National Solutions Center to the managers operating our self storage facilities across the nation, the team behind Extra Space is what makes our company better every single day.
Each quarter, we announce the EXTRAordinary Employees of the Quarter award. These aren’t given to people who just do their jobs. They’re awarded to those who go above and beyond in demonstrating our core values, and the nominations are submitted anonymously by other employees, team leaders, or entire departments.
Below are the EXTRAordinary winners from Q3 2023, featuring the nominations from their peers!
Jamie Greenfield – Sr. District Manager
During Q3, Jamie stepped up in many ways to help her teammates, the division, and the company. Jamie was recently promoted to Sr. District Manager for her constant and unwavering support of her peers. She has trained or mentored most of the team and goes above and beyond giving of her time, challenging the team to succeed, and helping them navigate complex issues. Additionally, in Q3, Jamie jumped in to facilitate the Life Storage Guiding People to Success 1.0 classes. She did two full classes that lasted an entire week each, created much of the content, and presented all week. The impact Jamie had on these new District Managers was clear. She also trained multiple other District Managers who started during that same quarter, several with short notice, and onboarded two new Life Storage stores, which was a massive undertaking. Jamie accomplished all this while seamlessly managing a challenging market and exceeding performance goals. You don’t have to look any further than Jamie to find someone who truly lives our values and goes above and beyond to help her team and drive business goals.
Jeremy Rutherford – District Manager
Jeremy has shown growth, confidence, and passion while being a newer District Manager. He has taken on a large number of stores and continued to provide a consistent and uplifting experience for his team. Coming from another line of work, it’s not easy to transition to the ever-growing business of storage. He has been one of the best District Managers I have worked for—great leadership, great motivation, and great energy. It makes working for Extra Space Storage a pleasure!
Mary Solis – District Manager in Training
Mary has been a breath of fresh air for our district. Her genuine, humble, and kind nature has strengthened our team, our relationships, our and engagement. She has been actively working on building relationships and integrating our Extra Space and Life Storage team members, preaching “One Team One Mission” across the district. She takes the time to visit and show us how to set ourselves up for success, and always leaves us feeling motivated to give out best. Mary lives by our values and is a living example that our company is a great place to work. Thank you, Mary, for showing us how great you are!
Lynnmarie Montanez – Operations Support Manager
In Q3 our merge with Life Storage shifted from the planning phase to the execution phase. While that shift swept through every team in our organization, the field team experienced tremendous change. It is hard to imagine supporting the field through the extensive changes without Lynn. Being an expert on Life Storage operations and a familiar face to team members int the field was something we simply would have been missing without her. Her leadership and ability to see all viewpoints helped bridge gaps for us here at the Store Support Center. Beyond that, Lynn has jumped in meshed with the team so quickly that it almost feels like she’s always been here. Lynn is an example of the many great people at Life Storage that we now have the privilege to work with as one team.
Josh Ludington – Facility Services Manager
Josh was our interim facilities manager for about six months, and I learned so much from him in that time. He was patient with me being less than a year in, and still in need of more support than other facilities. He went above and beyond to spend time teaching me and explaining his decisions. Josh would push back on the requests I submitted inaccurately, and it was always a learning experience because of his delivery and extra support to make sure I understood the reasoning behind his decisions. He would think of new creative ideas to solve an issue, discuss options, and recommend the best solution all while being over 1,000 miles away! I know in speaking to my peers, this gratitude for Josh and his incredible support during that time, was felt by all! Thank you, Josh, for being an extraordinary partner!
Ben Cedeno – Sr. Security Engineer
Ben consistently demonstrates our company values and produces excellent results while going out of his way to help other teams. He has a true passion for digging in and solving a problem and not just doing a quick fix. From creating specific security dashboards for different teams in IT to constantly refining and improving our security automations, he can always be counted on to bring new team members up to speed. Ben always has a smile, and his upbeat attitude is contagious. He truly has a passion for his job and goes above and beyond. The status quo is not good enough for Ben and he really wants to make the company and its system better. I regularly receive positive feedback from the other teams Ben works with, which demonstrates his teamwork and excellence in the difficult work that he does. Ben is on-call 24/7 and stops the bad people out there from compromising our systems and services on a regular basis. Much of his work is behind the scenes and if he’s doing his job well, often times no one is aware of the great work he does. Thanks, Ben, for everything you do!
Heather Desantiago – Sales Manager, National Solutions Center
Heather’s immense dedication to our entire department during the merge of Life Storage and Extra Space deserves and EXTRAordinary award! With so much uncertainty and nerves in the air, Heather made it her mission to meet with each team member individually, even multiple times, to talk through any concerns—concerns that she always met with honest answers. With her dependable leadership and encouragement, all members of our customer care department were able to feel confident about how their strengths could open possibilities with Extra Space. She even took time to help those who decided to not move forward with the company after the merge to look for other opportunities. Because of Heather, our team was able to join Extra Space with confidence and excitement. For these reasons, and countless others, she is an incredible asset to the National Solutions Center and the company. Once the merge took place in July, Heather still had to keep things running on legacy Life Storage platforms until all stores transitioned to Extra Space technology. For a 6-8 week period, she had to manage quite a bit—maintaining performance for stores still on the legacy platforms, meeting with her new leadership team to coordinate everything from transition technicalities to upcoming trainings. Once the technology changes were complete, she jumped right in to learning her new role as a Sales Manager, and has been eagerly learning our culture, approach to how our contact center runs, all while doing a great job working with her peers and the team.
Interested in joining an award-winning team? Visit our careers page to learn more about company culture and job opportunities.
