UNSUNG HERO – Sarah Norberg — Wisconsin Department of Safety and Professional Services

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When Sarah Norberg was in grade school, she said she started watching the television show “L.A. Law.”

“I was drawn to the smart, witty and fashionable character played by Susan Dey,” Norberg said.

It was that experience that first piqued Norberg’s interest in the legal field.

Today, Norberg is an attorney supervisor for the Wisconsin Department of Safety and Professional Services. She joined the department in 2010 and has led a dramatic transformation of its legal team.

Norberg was part of the strategic planning that recognized the inefficiency of having credentialing legal services distributed across the agency legal team responsible for enforcement and discipline.

Her contributions led to the leadership decision to reorganize the credentialing legal services and concentrate the work and people into a dedicated team within the credentialing division.

Norberg then oversaw a comprehensive review of credentialing statues, rules, policies and practices. The project identified opportunities for greater efficiency and smoother processes, and legal review wait times were cut from 12 to nine weeks.

“Sarah then identified additional staffing needs and championed for another attorney and paralegal,” said Jennifer Garrett, assistant deputy secretary for the state Department of Safety and Professional Services. “When federal emergency funding became available, she articulated exactly the impact the team expansion could make, and she aggressively recruited to fill the project positions funded by federal emergency resources.

“When these positions were filled and trained, legal review wait times dropped again to six weeks,” Garrett added.

Norberg said the biggest challenges in her work are the number of available resources.

“We are not always at liberty to hire the staff we need to get the job done the way we want to,” Norberg said.