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Unlikely road leads to niche for Szablewski

By: Erika Strebel, [email protected]//December 3, 2015//

Unlikely road leads to niche for Szablewski

By: Erika Strebel, [email protected]//December 3, 2015//

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Holly Szablewski - First Judicial District, Milwaukee County
Holly Szablewski – First Judicial District, Milwaukee County

Holly Szablewski had no idea she would end up working in the court system.

She started as a student in medical technology at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, then after deciding that it wasn’t the route for her, switched her priority to criminal justice and later applied to be a law enforcement officer in Arizona.

“This is completely not the path I originally thought I was going to take,” Szablewski said.

Things didn’t start to fall into place for her until she started volunteering at the Milwaukee County jail, which led to more than 21 years working in various capacities in the trial court system, including the county’s pretrial services programs.

In August 2014, she was appointed as the top administrator of Milwaukee County, the state’s largest judicial district. Her primary duties have been in helping Chief Judge Maxine White run the state’s 47 courts.

Szablewski said the work she is most proud of led to the adoption of innovative, systemic changes that improve outcomes for litigants.

In previous positions, she had struggled with budgets and programming and some of those difficulties remain in her current job.

“In a sense, they’ve driven me to work harder, try harder,” Szablewski said. “… They have driven me to really work on those issues and improvement.”

It took some time for her to find her niche, but now she can’t imagine doing anything else.

“I love the challenge of working in a complex system,” she said. “I like that no two days are ever the same in this work world. I really have a passion for our system of justice and making sure it’s operating at the best that it can.”

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