Director's Message

Katy Coba, DAS Director and State Chief Operating Officer

Flowers blooming, warmer winds, and more sunshine in our days have indicated that we have entered spring, a season of change. With the changing seasons, we are celebrating some executive leadership changes at Department of Administrative Services. Join me in congratulating Debbie Dennis, Kelly Mix and Jeremy Miller for earning promotions to new executive leadership positions, which you can read about below. In addition, I would like to extend a warm welcome to Juliet Valdez for joining the Office of Cultural Change as Affirmative Action Manager. 

This edition of DAS News also provides you with an update from the 2022 legislative session, written by External Relations Director Adam Crawford. Lastly, I would like to give my sincere gratitude for the fortitude that state government has displayed over the last two years. I extend my thanks for the continued adaptation, perseverance, and ability to overcome the multitude of challenges that this pandemic has presented. I look forward to fully reopening to the public this May. 

Debbie Dennis promoted to administrator of enterprise goods & services (EGS) where she will provide executive support and leadership to Procurement Services, Shared Financial Services, Risk Management, Financial Business Systems and Publishing and Distribution. In this role she will also serve as the co-executive sponsor of the state’s first statewide disparity study focused on contracting.

Having spent 10 years at the Oregon Lottery and five after that at Mentor Graphics, Debbie came to DAS in 2007, to work in the State Procurement Office and has spent nearly 10 years serving as the state chief procurement officer prior to this recent promotion. She is excited about the opportunity to branch out from a procurement-focused role and to provide support to the fantastic group of program managers in EGS.

In her spare time, she enjoys traveling and spending time with her husband. Her greatest personal accomplishment in 2022 has been to master driving and backing her horse trailer, as she hauls her 15-year-old daughter to horse events around the valley. In addition to her youngest daughter, Debbie has four adult children, each with a very special significant other, and her five grandchildren are the apples of her eye.

Kelly Mix has served over 25 years with state government including work at the Department of Consumer and Business Services and the Oregon Department of Transportation. In 2013 Kelly joined DAS, initially serving as a procurement manager and later as the deputy chief procurement officer.

Kelly recently promoted to state chief procurement officer where he will oversee the state’s central procurement office, including statewide price agreements and complex, high risk, high dollar contracts. He will also be responsible for statewide procurement training and certification, statewide procurement policy, research, eProcurement system and outreach to small businesses and local government partners. Kelly is a business owner for the Oregon Buys project and leads a team of four managers and 60 staff.

In addition to being respected for his collaborative leadership style, he is well known for his jovial nature and colorful tropical shirts. In his spare time, Kelly enjoys spending time with his beloved, Joanna, his two adult children and his two grandsons. A favorite pastime is travel. He spends many vacations creating memories, camping with his grandsons all over Oregon.

Jeremy Miller joined Oregon as an electrical project manager for multi-million dollar commercial electrical installations. He worked as the DAS Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) operations and maintenance manager for five years prior to taking on his new role as the DAS EAM deputy administrator and capital planner.

Jeremy's new role puts him in charge of capital planning for our existing portfolio. He will be managing capital financing and cash flow, partnering with agencies to determine their medium and long-term facility needs and folding the enterprise view into our long-term capital planning going forward. 

In his time with state government, Jeremy has organized and implemented an updated version of Tririga integrated workplace management solution (IWMS) to a cloud solution. Through this effort several other software solutions were no longer needed and resulted in cost savings for EAM as well as much higher functionality. His work has helped make the state of Oregon a more sustainable operation; decreasing water usage by 40% in the past two years as well as a continual decline in electricity use. His continuous development and fostering of relationships with state agencies has and will continue to create solutions that solve common needs throughout the state.

Juliet Valdez joins the Office of Cultural Change as the affirmative action manager. Previously she served as a senior talent acquisition partner at Oregon Lottery. Prior to state government, she spent over a decade in graduate management education as a recruitment professional for universities, including Willamette University MBA, University of California Irvine and University of California San Diego. Juliet shares, “My career in education opened my eyes to inequities in the public and private education system. When students have the desire and dedication to go to school, we must carve out pathways for them to access resources to make it happen."

Juliet's approach is centered on the candidate and employee experience through an equity lens. Throughout her robust career, her mission remains: “Our job has a direct connection to our livelihood. It allows us to live the life we want to live. As a recruiter my job was to create pathways for job-seekers to job opportunities, no matter where they were in life. As your colleague, my job is to create a work environment that welcomes you to show up as you are."

Juliet earned a BA in Public Relations from California State University Fullerton and an MBA from Willamette University. She enjoys singing, playing her ukulele, hiking with her dog Stevie and playing social deduction games like One Night Werewolf, as well as other board games.