PT with a Business Degree

When people ask Suzi Sobolik, ’19, what her occupation is, she normally tells them she is a stay-at-home mom because it is easier than explaining her career journey. She’s a physical therapist by trade, but she only does that part time these days, covering for maternity leave or when the hospital is short staffed. She spends a majority of her time volunteering in her hometown of Dickinson, ND, serving as a city commissioner, working with her family business, Steffes, and investing in her children.

Suzi knew she was called to be a physical therapist when she was 17 and her grandfather had a stroke and was hospitalized in Bismarck. “I had just gotten my driver’s license, so it felt like freedom to go visit him,” she said. It just so happened that he was often in therapy when she was there. “It was such an uplifting, motivating place, and I already knew that community service was really where my passion was. For me, becoming a physical therapist was a way to serve people.”

After spending some time away from Dickinson for college and a short stint in Minnesota, Suzi and her husband, Damian, decided to move to Dickinson when they were planning their wedding and “just never left.” Suzi started working full time as a physical therapist when they first moved to town but has slowly shifted to spending more time on her other passions as time’s gone on.

Currently, one of her biggest roles is serving on the family owner team at the business her grandfather started, Steffes. “My grandpa was a jack of all trades; he could fix anything. He started building cabinets and got into the woodworking business and built church pews,” Suzi said. “He also got involved in building machinery and working with metal. When my dad got his engineering degree, they decided to take it to the next level, and so they started a metal manufacturing shop.” The company now specializes in steel fabrication and electrical services for a variety of diverse industries, including oil and gas, contract manufacturing and electric thermal storage, and has facilities in five states.

“I’m the liaison between the family owners and our board of directors, and so I do a lot of communicating with our board. We attend the board meetings and work with our board and our management team,” she shared.

When Suzi decided she wanted to get more involved with the family business, she decided she wanted to get a master’s degree in business to learn more. “I had some business sense and some business skill, and I managed some of the PT departments that I worked in, but I didn’t have any formal business background,” she said. “I know that I’m just not an intuitive learner — I’m more of a book learner — and so a business degree was important for me to be able to tie the skills that I’ve learned together and to intellectually understand business principles.”

Suzi, pictured here with her family, says being a mom is her most important job.

Suzi started to look into what it would take to get an MBA and realized there could be one big roadblock. “I realized, well, shoot, I’m going to have to get another undergraduate degree to meet the pre-requisites to apply for master’s programs,” she said. “But then I found out that the University of Mary has it set up that if you have experience in the business world, that can count for your pre-requisites, so that was such a great opportunity for me to get the degree I wanted without having to go back for another undergraduate degree first.”

As an added bonus, Suzi’s sister went through the program at the same time, though Suzi was an online student and her sister attended class in person in Grand Forks, ND. “That was really fun,” Suzi said. “Definitely a great opportunity.”

At the same time as she was going through her degree program and learning more about business, Suzi was also learning more about the Catholic faith that she was raised in and participating in Bible studies. “Attending University of Mary business classes at the same time I was diving deeper into my faith was impactful. I could see how the morals that we’re taught in our faith correlate to the principles and morals that are needed in business. Going to a faith-based university and being able to share those things in conversation was really cool,” she said.

“One of my big takeaways was that faith can tie in with the business world; they don’t have to be separate. I’m not sure I fully understood that before I went to Mary. I not only learned good business skills, but I also learned how to connect my work with my faith. That was a big ‘aha’ moment for me in my life,” she shared.

Suzi and her dad, Paul Steffes. Her father is the founder and innovation advisor at Steffes, their family business.

Suzi is passionate about serving others and serving her community. One program she is particularly proud of is Leadership Dickinson, a program for high school seniors. She had been through the program herself years ago, but it had since ceased to exist. The program had a big impact on her life and the lives of her classmates, so she got it going again in 2010. The program runs eight days throughout the school year, and they take a group of 12 students and immerse them in the community. Each day has a topic, and the students learn leadership skills and visit different facilities based on the topic for the day, such as health and human service, economic development, government, tourism, and more.

“We aim to broaden their perspective of what’s going on, so that they’re not just seeing the small little world that they live in, but really opening their eyes to all the opportunities that they could have right in Dickinson, or to share Dickinson’s story as they go somewhere else. My goal is always that all of them would stay or come back, but I tell them that in reality, that’s not going to happen. So I want them to be a good proponent of Dickinson, to be a salesperson for our community,” she said.

Suzi serves the City of Dickinson as a city commissioner.

As Suzi continued to get more involved in her community, volunteering at the local Catholic schools and serving on some local boards, she was approached about running for city commission. “At first I said no. I didn’t think that was up my alley,” she said. But as she continued to learn more about the city, she decided it was something she was open to trying. She decided to run in 2020 and was elected.

Although serving on city commission is only part time, there’s not an off switch with that kind of role. “It’s really all the time, in the sense that you always get to hear what the citizens are sharing. In my other roles as mom, volunteer, or as a physical therapist, I hear lots of what’s happening, so it really ties everything together in that way,” she said. “We get to hear people’s perceptions about what’s going on in our city, and then how can we make that better or keep it going if it’s something that’s good. Gaining people’s perspective has been one of my favorite parts of being on the city commission, that we can learn from what’s happening today to help make our city a better place.”

On top of all of those roles, Suzi says her most important role is being a mother to her three children, Nicklaus, Gabriella, and Lincoln. They are all active in extracurriculars and sports, and Suzi and her husband, who is a teacher, love to attend their events.

“I’ve been reading a lot about Mary, Jesus’ mother, lately, and the most remarkable thing about her was that most of the things she did were unremarkable. She was making sure Jesus was raised, and so it’s humbling to think that sometimes those little things are the biggest things. When you’re folding laundry, be glad that you have kids, and that means you’ve got lots of laundry, because some people don’t have that opportunity,” she shared. “Sometimes blessings come in goofy ways.”

Suzi stays busy, but she believes that we are all called to share the gifts God has given with those around us. “This spring, I visited with the Trinity High School business class, and the opening line of my presentation was, ‘This is my journey, this is not yours, and that’s okay. We all have different gifts,’” she said. “What would this world be if we all had the same gifts? It would be pretty boring. We have to complement each other, and that’s what’s so cool about leadership — there’s all different kinds.

Just because somebody isn’t the one who’s getting up in front of the group presenting, that doesn’t mean they’re not a leader. We need different types of people to do a project, to run a department. And so you have to be a good steward of what God has given you; embrace the talent He’s given you, and let it show.”