“If I could have planned my whole career out in advance, I couldn’t have done it any better than the way things have turned out.” – Robbie Endris, Senior Child Support Consultant, Government Solutions

When she joined Conduent in 2013, she brought almost four decades experience working in public assistance and child support services for the State of Louisiana and is one of our resident experts in government child support programs.

Robbie’s achievements, commitment, and service to helping families and children in need were recently honored by the National Child Support Engagement Association (NCSEA), which awarded her a Lifetime Membership for her decades of work in child support.

Finding purpose in child support

Robbie’s tenure with the state of Louisiana began almost 50 years ago, first working in public assistance, helping people access food support and nutrition programs, Medicaid benefits, other public assistance services, and then managing the Shreveport regional office at the recommendation of the State Child Support Director.

“I hadn’t been in the Shreveport office a month when I knew I’d found my home. The reason is I saw something very special in child support that I hadn’t seen in other public assistance roles. I saw that the child support program did so much for families, especially for children. What really impressed me at the time was the program’s emphasis on both parents being involved, particularly the fathers. I saw the tremendous value of both parents being involved in the health and well-being of the children. As my career progressed, other opportunities came up to move into higher roles that would take me away from child support. I really believed in what we were doing in child support, so when those opportunities came up, my response was that I wanted to finish my career in child support. That was the right decision for me,” Robbie said.

Conduent is a bright spot amid a devastating hurricane.

When Hurricane Katrina made landfall in New Orleans, Robbie was head of Louisiana’s child support division, and one of the division’s most important functions was the distribution of child support payment checks, and ACS, now Conduent, was the service provider that processed these critical checks.

Since most New Orleans residents were displaced or evacuated to other areas, Robbie and her child support division coworkers faced the enormous challenge of getting monthly child support payments to thousands of displaced families. She’ll never forget that it was ACS (now Conduent) who showed up and wanted to know how to help, Robbie said.

“I went back to the child support office when I was able to get back in, and ACS was there. We immediately knew we had a massive recovery effort to get those payments to the families that needed them. ACS sent people to the Astrodome in Houston and to the military base in San Antonio. They set up tents and put out signs to try to reach evacuees who needed child support resources. They gathered the info, the addresses, and sent all they gathered back to us in Louisiana every day. Without their help, I don’t know how we’d have done it. It was a massive operation, and it was ACS that partnered with us to get it done. Slowly, we were able to get checks to people, to families. I gained so much admiration and respect for the company and its people from that experience,” she said.

Finding rewarding work beyond Louisiana

Soon after retiring from her leadership role in child support in Louisiana, Robbie received an intriguing opportunity from Xerox (now Conduent) to extend her child support expertise beyond Louisiana. As a senior child support consultant, she can do what she loves in ways she hadn’t imagined, working on the private-sector side to provide solutions to child support program needs for states across the country.

“It was an incredible opportunity. Conduent gave me the chance to keep and leverage my connections from my career in Louisiana and from my work with the NCSEA. I’ve seen the great things that can happen when the public and private sectors partner together to provide better, easier services for people who need public assistance, need child support services. It’s much harder for government bodies, the public sector, to move forward quickly with technology as our company can – it’s a partnership that works, particularly when you have a partner like Conduent. Payment processing, child support and other public assistance payments are a great example. Imagine if we’d had that in Louisiana when Katrina hit. We now have the technology, the digital payment capabilities, to make sure payments get to the people who desperately need them, uninterrupted. I get to help share those payment solutions, and many other solutions, with people in need across the country. It’s very rewarding work, and I feel truly blessed.