Lorna’s Extended Bio
Lorna J. Kibbey has more than 22 years of managerial experience in the government sector. Employed by the Florida Department of Children and Families for more than 24 years, Ms. Kibbey served as a line supervisor, trainer, program consultant, operations administrator and senior management consultant in a multitude of public service programs.
Ms. Kibbey earned her Masters Degree in Business Administration from the University of South Florida and her Bachelor of Arts in Communication Arts from the University of Cincinnati. While earning her MBA, Ms. Kibbey focused her studies in management and leadership courses. At the University of Cincinnati, Ms. Kibbey majored in Communication and Speech.
Lifelong learning has been a priority for Ms. Kibbey. She achieved recognition in the state of Florida as a Certified Public Manager. This program is widely recognized systematic approach to the training and development of government administrators helping them to achieve a prominent professional standard. She was certified by the State of Florida as a “Blue Belt” after completing a rigorous training program aimed at solving problems through data analysis and data driven solutions.
In her long career with the State of Florida, Lorna’s accomplishments are many. Her experience there began with determining eligibility for clients in need of economic assistance and quickly progressed to supervisory and management positions. For three years Ms. Kibbey served as a professional trainer to new employees. Lorna was quickly promoted into a mid management level position that required she manage all aspects of human resources including hiring, firing, reassignment, training, promotion and demotion. She selected and trained all line supervisors. With more than 200 employees grouped under 15 supervisors, Ms. Kibbey was able to lead her operation into excellence and her units became top performers in the state.
After ten years of successful management of economic services programs, Ms. Kibbey moved into the child welfare arena. There, she was responsible for operation of all child abuse investigation, foster care, protective supervision and adoption and developmental services programs and staff, in Lee County Florida. Under her direction, the programs excelled and Lorna was asked to manage all programs administered by the Department of Children in Families in Lee County in addition to child welfare.
Accepting this position, Ms. Kibbey operated, planned, organized and directed all child welfare, economic services, adult and developmental services programs. She supervised operational managers including hiring, training, mentoring and coaching. She designed and implemented an integrated service delivery system for the entire area. Ms. Kibbey worked in this position as in all of her positions with the department, to strengthen community partnership with provider agencies and advocacy groups and to market available services and programs through public speaking and media involvement.
In 2002, South Florida began serious efforts to privatize all foster care and adoption services. Lorna moved to contract administration to help the department manage this transition. She administered and supervised all contracted services including procurement, management and monitoring of all contracts executed for five county area. With the help of her contract team employees, Ms. Kibbey developed a radical new team meeting concept to ensure contract utilization and performance matched expectations. For the first time, this allowed the department to quantify and receive excellent results from their 40 million dollars of contracted services.
Once serious transition to privatization began, Ms. Kibbey was asked to move back into operations and manage all child welfare programs while preparing employees and the community for the transition to community based care. After the successful completion of this transition, Ms. Kibbey left the department to venture into a career in which she can use her talents in public speaking and training. Lorna especially enjoys motivational speaking and working with leaders and managers who need help solving people problems.
Ms. Kibbey has received many distinguished awards including Best Boss of the year as determined in a nationwide search by Regan Communications and the Davis Productivity Award (six-time winner). Her contract team won awards for Team Visionary and as Best Customer Service Team. Lorna is a graduate of Leadership Lee County and earned the designation of Certified Public Manager.