HR Director Keni Lanagan to retire after two decades of service to MC
May 26, 2023
If there’s one thing Keni Lanagan will remember from her early years at Maryville College, it’s all the paper.
Benefit plans and forms … leave requests … employee files … payroll … just so much paper.
Of course, that was almost two decades ago, when Lanagan first went to work in Human Resources at the College, and as she prepares to retire on May 31, navigating the transition to digital record keeping has been one of the numerous highlights of her lengthy career.
“Everything was paper!” Lanagan said. “Open (benefit) enrollment meant that every employee received paper copies of every benefit plan and every enrollment form. Those would be collected and hand-delivered to the benefits partner in Knoxville. Leave time was kept on a large index card, one for each employee, and the leave requests were slips of paper in triplicate. We would calculate the leave time, write it on the form, and separate the three. One would be sent to the supervisor, one to the employee and one kept in HR!
“Now, we have the pleasure of automation through Paycom (the College’s human resources software system), so not only are payroll and benefits automated, but also leave time, timekeeping, applications and resumes, and employee files. I feel like that was a great accomplishment.”
Originally from West Virginia, Lanagan moved to Florida with her family as a child. She and her husband, Wayne, have been married for 38 years, and in the late 1990s, he opted to move the family — the Lanagans and their three children — to East Tennessee for work. On a visit to the area, Lanagan was unimpressed by Knoxville — “it was large and too much orange! I knew it would be difficult to be a Florida Gator anywhere in the area!” — but a trip to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park revealed the charming and bucolic town of Maryville.
Back in Florida, she began to explore the Maryville area further, and a friend first mentioned Maryville College. Upon relocating, she worked four years for the City of Maryville, followed by a stint in the family construction and renovation business and the Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont, before joining MC as an administrative assistant for public relations and church relations in 2003.
“About a year and a half later, I applied for a position in Human Resources as an HR assistant,” she said. “I had been interested in HR more through an employee communications/relations aspect and thought I could use my communications skills to be helpful in explaining policies, benefits, payroll and more to employees. They agreed, and I was hired.
“I completed the University of Tennessee-Knoxville Certificate in Human Resources program and was promoted to assistant director of HR after three years. I then earned the Human Resources Certification Institute Credential Professional in Human Resources (PHR). The Society of Human Resources Management (SHRM) began their certification program, so I completed that one, too.”
Those growing qualifications led to Lanagan’s promotion to director of Human Resources at Maryville College in 2009. Today, she oversees a department of three, including HR Generalist Kristen Pietrafese and Payroll and Benefits Specialist Julie Beaton, and over the years has provided the steady guidance needed by departments and employees to maintain MC as an equitable and professional workplace.
Along the way, she’s become rather fond of orange — as long as it’s paired with garnet. Her daughter, Meagan Lanagan Byrd ’10, is an alumna, and her granddaughter, Realynn Lanagan ’24, will graduate next year.
Given those ties and the friendships she’s made over the years, her departure doesn’t mean she won’t be around, either as a visitor during Homecoming or as an advisor to HR employees who need the wisdom of a woman who remembers what the office was like before technology streamlined the job.
“I am looking forward to spending the summers with my family here in Tennessee and skipping off to visit Florida family for a few weeks each winter,” she said. “I will miss my co-workers, some of whom have been here my whole career. I feel the College is on an upward trajectory, and I think it is an exciting time to be here!”