Capitalizing on the Corporate World

You weren't always in public service. You started your career at AT&T, where you developed a model for corporate-wide diversity and inclusion. Then after nine years at AT&T, you left the corporate world for public service. Why?

Well, my dream and my passion has always been around service. You know, when I was in middle school, I thought I wanted to be the president of the United States. Unpacking all of that, it really came to that I wanted to make change. And I thought the only person who had the ability to make change was in a political position. And I learned through AT&T, a power house of a corporation that has so much influence on social, cultural and industry behaviors and strategies and approaches, that I could really do change in a different lens.

For me, AT&T gave me all of the tools to be able to really tap into and hone into that passion back to service. And how do I use what I was given for the past nine-plus years at AT&T to other organizations or nonprofits in the communities that I really am deeply passionate about. So for me, it was really just tapping back into what I always knew was part of my future. But now I knew I had the toolkits to actually do it effectively and do it with the level of urgency that I knew and understood for the communities in which I wanted to serve.