When Kurt Sieve was growing up just east of Clovis in the small town of Sanger, he watched his dad serve as a State Farm agent helping people. But as he started to get older he developed a love for computers and how they were built.
After graduating from UC Davis with a degree in computer science, Sieve gave it some serious thought and decided that his ultimate goal in life was to serve people so he decided that becoming a State Farm agent like his father was the best way he could do that.
“I really had a choice to make between computers and people and I decided that I could better serve people,” Sieve said. “I mean don’t get me wrong computers could technically help somebody, but the reality is, do I want to sit there and make computers or do I actually want to help somebody one-on-one with their finances and basically create a legacy and build their financial future, which State Farm affords me that opportunity.”
He started his first agency for State Farm in Sanger and began to realize there was more ways to help people. There he began serving on the Rotary and Chamber board, where he served as president at one point.
“I wanted to help people more directly, I saw that my dad had done that and at that point he had done it for almost 20 years,” he said. “I had seen the work he had done so I said ‘You know what maybe that’s the place for me so I tried and I liked it and people started to like me doing it so I stuck with it.”
As Sieve continued to work for State Farm, he began to make his way up the totem pole. He started management and leadership positions with the company, but that took him out of Sanger and out of California. After serving in those positions for a few years, he decided it was best for his family to move back to California and a city like Clovis.
“What it really boiled down to is I’m a little more of a small town, Clovis sized mentality,” Sieve said. “And really it was my family, my kids wanted to go to school in California and they had a vision of going to a college in California so it worked out that an opportunity came up that got us to come back home.”
When asked if he had any doubts on not pursuing a career in computers or even continuing in the higher positions with State Farm, Sieve was quick to think about his family and the opportunity that being an agent in Clovis brings to his ultimate goal.
“Yeah know, I have no regrets or second thoughts just those little visions of what if I would have gone there,” Sieve said. “I’d probably be sitting in a cubicle somewhere making computers and I wouldn’t be getting that one-on-one interaction that I wanted and really family outweighed any executive dream, if the family isn’t happy then it’s not worth it.”
Sieve has now been back in Clovis for six years serving the people of Clovis as a
State Farm agent but he has been with the company for 25 years. Late last year, as he was serving on the Chamber Ambassadors, he was asked to serve on the Chamber board and he now serves the city of Clovis through that role.
“It was a natural progression that I would just work hard to be involved in the community,” Sieve said. “Be a resource and then be seen as somebody who would be worthy to be on the board.”
He says he plans on serving the city of Clovis in that role as long as the people of Clovis see him fit to do so. He even said that maybe he could see himself in a higher role as long as it means serving the people of Clovis.
“My objective is make a better Clovis because I’m a Clovis business owner, a better Clovis is better for businesses and it brings more new people into town,” he said. “If I’m seen as a resource then people will come to me for information on how I can best help them or how they can be helped and maybe it’s not with me, it may just be referring them out to another business in the community, my main objective is to help people when at all possible.”