Inside DELTA: 5 Questions with Carrie Helms

“Wake up, drink coffee, be awesome.”

This is how Carrie Helms starts her days, though recently she’s cut back her coffee consumption to one or two cups a day, which she enjoys with Chobani White Chocolate Raspberry creamer.

“Holy smokes,” she said of the Chobani. “It’s all one needs in life.”

In her approach to creamer and pretty much everything else, Helms is effusive and exuberant. A big-hearted lover of life, of running, of her family and friends, and of all things NC State, she is partial to writing in ALL CAPS and with lots!!! of exclamation points. 

(Seriously. In an email exchange with her about this profile, there were no fewer than two dozen exclamation points).  

The effect of her caps and exclamation points in writing is similar to her effect on the people lucky enough to interact with her in real life. She makes people laugh, she impresses upon them her joie de vivre, and she makes people feel appreciated — because she genuinely appreciates them. 

The former high school teacher loves her new-ish position as REPORTER Financials Coordinator, which she started in January. Her job is split between the DELTA business and finance office and the Office of Information Technology (OIT).

It’s fitting that REPORTER (and DELTA and OIT) are acronyms written as all caps — though the caps were not the deciding factor for Helms when she took the job. 

“I have always been a HUGE NC State fan,” she explained, “and I was thrilled at the opportunity to work for such an amazing university and with two fantastic departments.” 

What is your role with DELTA?

Helms likens her job to a mullet.

REPORTER is NC State’s online learning management system for outreach, extension and engagement activities. As the Financial Coordinator for the platform, Helms navigates various projects, assists with the helpdesk email ticketing system, creates custom reports and onboards new users. 

Business in the front. 

But she cannot imagine a more supportive or fun group of colleagues with whom to do such work. “My team is amazing,” she explained. “Cheri Pipkin, Julie Talton and Lucy Babuin are the ninjas behind the scenes, answering every question I have. I send them a “The More you Know” GIF every day, sometimes twice a day, whenever I learn something new.”

Party in the back. 

Just six months into her role, Helms is still learning the ins and outs of financial reporting, like how to pull different kinds of information and “how to find any mistakes before Jessie Sova does.” She appreciates the opportunity her work provides to connect with other NC State staff across departments. 

“I love interacting with coworkers, and meeting new people through onboarding and other projects,” she said. 

Onboarding, she says, is similar to her previous job teaching high school students — except that NC State employees are less likely to suddenly yell out “Skibidi Toilet Ohio Rizz” while she is mid-sentence. (Blissfully unaware? You won’t thank us: Skibidi Toilet). 

In fact, her teaching years inform a lot of the work Helms does for DELTA. An enthusiastic multitasker, as all teachers are, she loves working on multiple projects at once and appreciates the variety of her days. “Each day is different, honestly,” she explained. “And I love that DELTA has frequent check-ins. I never feel disconnected.”

What is your background?

Helms grew up in Jeffersonville, Indiana, about a mile from Louisville, Kentucky, which she could see from her bedroom window… so she usually just says she’s from Louisville, despite it being the wrong state. 

She fondly recalls the days of “prehistoric texting.” When friends or family were dining at Louisville’s popular Kingfish restaurant, directly across the Ohio River from her house, they would wave and yell back and forth to each other. 

After starting college as a Hilltopper at Western Kentucky University, she transferred to Indiana University her junior year. In her last semester, just weeks away from graduation, her dad was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a cancer of the plasma cells in the bone marrow. She withdrew from college to spend time with him while she could. 

After her father passed away, Helms couldn’t bring herself to go back to school. Instead, she started running.  

Her father had been an avid marathon runner — even completing a 100-miler just a few years before getting sick. He instilled in Helms a profound love of running: shorter distances when she was a kid, growing to half and then full marathons as time passed. She runs in his memory and to honor their communal love of the sport, raising funds for cancer research along the way. 

These days, her preferred distance is the half marathon (13.1 miles). “I’d run a half marathon every weekend if that were a normal thing to do,” she laughed. 

Wanting a change of scenery, Helms moved to Greensboro, NC after her father died. There, she put her communication skills to use copywriting and coordinating digital content for the Greensboro News and Record. While at a Greensboro Grasshoppers baseball game, she met her future husband Wilson.  

Wilson encouraged Helms to finish her undergraduate degree. She accomplished this in one semester at Grand Canyon University, promptly turning around and starting a Master’s program in education with GCU. Two years and two babies later, she completed her Master’s with a 3.9 GPA.

After teaching high school special education for a few years in Wilmington, the family moved to Raleigh, where Helms worked for a time with the North Carolina School Boards Association. When she saw the posting for her current position at NC State, she said, “I knew it was where I wanted to be.”

Naturally, Wilson is a runner — as well as a high school PE teacher, football and golf coach, and Iron Man in training (the race, not the superhero, although we suspect he is that too). Their babies, now 11-year-old Kenson and 9-year-old August, “insist on playing every sport,” Helms laughed. And, she insists on attending every single school or sporting event her children and husband are participating in.

“I did not have that growing up, and I hope my children will remember all the times I was there, even if they’re thinking ‘oh my gosh, SHE IS HERE AGAIN?!’” Helms explained.

When she has down time at home — which is not often — Helms sometimes finds herself chatting with one or both of her high-energy black labs: 13-year-old Teddy “Boat Man” Roosevelt and 3-year-old Charlie “Biscuit Eater” Pancake.  

Her life is pretty hectic, but Helms wouldn’t change a thing. “Navigating all the aspects of this busy, busy life is something I smile about daily,” she said.

What is your favorite project so far?

Helms and her team are in the midst of testing the forthcoming REPORTER upgrade, a task that is currently taking up the bulk of everyone’s days. Since every aspect of the program is tested, then tested again, it’s an arduous process — but one she is enjoying. 

“Testing REPORTER has truly helped me learn the deeper pieces of the program,” she explained. “I love to discover all the various courses, events, camps and other programs that different NC State departments put together using it.”

In preparation for launching the upgrade, the team is also developing training videos for onboarding new users. “I am super excited that we are working on these educational videos,” Helms said. “I can’t wait to complete them so we can get them up and running for clients.” 

Her absolute favorite thing about her work, of course, is the people. “I love the team I work with! Jessie, Cheri and Stacy Somers are truly the best leaders I could have been blessed to work for,” she explained. “I literally work with THE BEST people.”

What is something people may not know about you?

Helms recently got a call from Be The Match, a national bone marrow and stem cell donor registry, informing her that she is a match for a man with blood cancer who needs a critical stem cell transplant. 

She was floored. 

Be The Match recruits heavily on college campuses across the country. Like many donors on the registry, Helms signed up as a college student — twenty years ago — then quickly forgot all about it. 

“I had to call a few friends from college to ask whether I really joined the registry, because I was sure I was being scammed,” she explained. “It turns out, we definitely did sign up to be donors.”

Once she got over the shock of suddenly being a donor match after so many years on the registry, and despite the potential for pain, inconvenience and risk to her own well-being, Helms knew she would proceed with the donation. 

“After losing my father to plasma cancer, it’s a no-brainer that I would want to help save someone’s life fighting such a horrible disease,” she said. 

Helms and the patient are still undergoing final tests to ascertain that they are a good match. An ideal donor matches their patient’s tissue type, specifically their human leukocyte antigen (HLA) tissue, which the immune system uses to recognize which cells belong in our bodies and which do not. The closer the match between the patient’s HLA markers and the donor’s, the better for the patient.

“I’m praying super hard everything matches up,” Helms said. “Please keep this man and myself in your good thoughts, so he can get back on the road to health again.” 

What do you do in your spare time?

When she’s not chatting with her dogs, outdoor recreation is high on Helms’ list of spare time activities. “I am on the go, ALL THE TIME,” she said. “I love to do anything that involves running, walking, hiking or biking.”

She does not have any road races scheduled in the immediate future, but plans to sign up for a couple in the fall. She loves running the Wilmington Battleship half marathon but detests the Oak City marathon. “No fault to Raleigh,” she explained. “The hills are just too alive for my liking.”

Helms and her husband enjoy live music, and were stoked to score last minute tickets to see Dave Matthews Band last month at Coastal Credit Union Park. “We were insanely pumped to go (thanks Jenn Scoggins!),” Helms exclaimed. “That’s a bucket list concert!!!!!” 

She also deeply values her relationships with her family and friends. With five siblings, her aunt responsibilities approximate a part-time job — minus any of the boring bits. 

Helms is characteristically optimistic about how life is going these days. “I think I am just proud of myself in general, every day,” she said. “I often think to myself, you woke up and nailed the day again, Carrie… you’re KILLING IT!!” 

All caps and exclamation points indeed.