Teresa proudly holds her bachelor’s degree in IT management. She completed the degree in 2025.
For the past few months, Teresa Butler has been keeping her eye on the Horizon — Project Horizon, that is.
“Horizon is how we’ve been referring to the upcoming move from Cherwell to ServiceNow for our IT request ticketing system,” Teresa says. “I’ve been working on organizational change management and helping folks understand the benefits of ServiceNow and also getting them comfortable and prepared for the change."
As the Information Technology Service Management team lead based at our Seattle Headquarters, Teresa is responsible for making sure our IT teams are able to provide fast, reliable support for employees — including through access to a robust, easy-to-use IT incident and request tracking system.
“We’re excited because ServiceNow is probably the number one tool in the industry for IT service management,” she says. “It will make the end user experience easier than Cherwell, and it will transform the way our IT support teams work. I’m all about introducing it in a way people will understand and get excited about.”
Teresa, her husband Sheldon, and their daughter Dominique at Dominique’s college graduation. She was inspired by Teresa going back to school to do the same and graduated with a degree in digital marketing.
MEET TERESA
What do you do as the ITSM team lead?
I just recently became an ITSM team lead in June, so I’m still learning! Luckily, I’m learning fast — I was promoted after eight years on the ITSM team, working my way up from analyst to senior analyst. I first started working for Weyerhaeuser as a contractor in 2003 and became an employee in 2011.
IT service management is all about making sure our IT teams understand best practices for delivering IT support. We’re also responsible for making sure that whenever we have a big outage — for example, Microsoft Outlook is down — we send communications to everyone impacted. We’re not the technical people who bring the services back online, but we help to make sure all the right people are collaborating to get the issue resolved as quickly as possible.
Another key responsibility is our IT support request tool. We’ve been using the Cherwell system for 12 years, and it’s being sunsetted — that means the product is no longer supported or updated. We saw this as a great opportunity to replace it with a best-in-class system that’s more user-friendly for both the business partner submitting a ticket to request IT support or order IT products, and for the IT support team that helps them troubleshoot.
What’s a typical day like?
Right now, my days are about 80 percent Project Horizon — everything from project meetings to change management and training preparation and go-live planning activities. I also still handle request escalations. Angela McKinney on my team is managing day-to-day operations of ITSM and facilitating stand-ups with our leaders. We make sure our leadership teams are aware of IT changes, as well as planned or unplanned IT events and outages.
What’s your favorite part of the job?
Helping people understand the benefits of following IT best practices. I get to help our teams understand the why behind the what. I love helping people see the value they add to the company by the work they do. Because my team is responsible for process facilitation, we get to work with everybody, and I enjoy the exposure to all the different services our IT organization provides.
I also like to emphasize the importance of making sure work is tracked. A lot of times in IT, you’re just trying to fix an issue. Once it’s fixed, you don’t always put in a ticket to record what you did before jumping on the next issue. But if the work isn’t recorded, it’s not in the system where we can track it and improve our services. That’s why we put in tickets and record our changes. When I tell people we want them to follow the process of ticket creation and tracking because we want to see all their great work, they’re thankful because it helps them understand the why. Plus, they get to see how they’re contributing to the company’s overall operating expenditure and see their own OpX value contribution.
Teresa and her husband at the beach in Des Moines, Washington.
What are the biggest challenges of your job?
Driving adoption is always a challenge — but that’s not necessarily a negative. There’s always some resistance to new things, no matter how much we expect the new thing to improve the existing process. I enjoy the challenge of helping explain a change.
Recording the work of our teams is important for recognition, tracking and data collection. While I know documenting work with a ticket can sometimes feel secondary to resolving issues, ensuring every task is recorded — no matter how quickly it’s resolved — helps us tell a complete story of our team’s hard work. By capturing our team’s great work, we not only capture data points that help us evaluate areas of opportunity and improvement but are also able to acknowledge everyone’s efforts.
What accomplishments are you most proud of?
I recently got my bachelor’s degree in IT management! I was able to pursue my degree later in my career as a nontraditional student. Every day I look back and I’m like, “Wow, I actually finished school in the midst of my crazy personal life.” I’m very, very proud of that accomplishment — especially because seeing me go back to school inspired my daughter to do the same. She recently got her degree in digital marketing.
What do you like to do for fun when you’re not at work?
I’m a mother of five and a grandma of 10 (and a half — we have a new one on the way!). With such a big family, it’s always someone’s birthday or a holiday. Literally, every other month we’re planning something as a family! Family time and church activities — especially participating in our prayer partner training or going to prayer meetings — are my favorite hobbies.
