The American Staffing Association named hospitality employee and professional actor and dancer Wendy M. Hobbie as the 2017 National Staffing Employee of the Year.

Hobbie is an employee of HMG Plus in New York City, where she works on assignment as a hospitality captain and waiter. The flexibility that staffing offers enables her to audition and teach dance to deaf children. Hobbie currently teaches hip-hop dance to students aged three to 15 at the Lexington School for the Deaf, and also teaches dance to blind children and teenagers at Camp Helen Keller in Farmingdale, NY. When Hobbie first moved to New York City, she taught Sunday school to underprivileged students in low-income neighborhoods through Metro World Child, a religious organization committed to providing services to children living in adverse conditions in metropolitan areas in New York and around the world.

“I am honored to be the National Staffing Employee of Year, and hope that my personal story is inspiring to others considering work as a temporary or contract employee,” Hobbie said. “Being a temporary employee is perfect for me at this time in my life. Staffing lets me support myself financially while pursuing my professional dreams and sharing my passion for dance with children, which means the world to me.”

Hobbie was selected from a class of National Staffing Employee of the Year All-Stars in five industry sectors — Industrial; engineering, IT, and scientific; healthcare; office-clerical and administrative; and professional-managerial. The announcements mark the beginning of National Staffing Employee Week, which honors the contributions temporary and contract employees.

• Industrial: Hobbie
• Engineering, IT, and scientific: Sharon DeWitt’s partnership with LaSalle Network in Chicago provides her with the flexibility to travel, continue her education and volunteer in her community. DeWitt currently is a contract program manager focused on enterprise process transformation with Reyes Holdings, the 12^th-largest privately held company in the US.
• Healthcare: Brenda Riser, a pharmacist, is a 13-year employee of Rx relief who has worked on more than 500 assignments during her tenure with the staffing company. She currently is on assignment with Valley Children’s Hospital — a top rated US children’s hospital in Fresno, Calif. — and has worked in a variety of other health care environments during her tenure with the staffing company.
• Office-clerical and administrative: When Dominic Berrini graduated from college and realized that a career in teaching wasn’t what he expected, he turned to Westaff, in Burlington, Vt., for work. He was placed in a variety of temporary assignments, and recently bridged to a permanent job at Burton — a worldwide manufacturer of snowboards, bindings, boots, outerwear and accessories.
• Professional-managerial: Jeffrey Burt first joined Corporate Brokers in 2010 to pursue a contract opportunity as senior art director with Bank of America in Wilmington, Del. Fast-forward six years, and he remains on assignment with the bank’s in-house marketing agency.