Standing on the Shoulders of Those Who Paved the Way

What would you say are your top three values and how do you assess alignment between your values and your actions every day?

I value integrity. I value things being equitable. And I value empathy. Those things can show up in many different forms or ways. But I feel like those are the things I resonate with the most and come up with in situations where I find a conflict that challenges me. What holds me accountable is General Marcelite Harris was the first Black General in the Air Force. Rest in power. And she was a first in a lot of things in the Air Force. She was a mentor. And I remember asking her once… I got an assignment in the Air Force that I thought I got because I was a Black woman.
And I said, “I know I got this job because I’m a Black woman and it doesn’t feel good.” She said, “That’s their fault, it doesn’t matter.” She said, “Now that you have this, what you have control over is what you are going to do with it and how you react to it and when you go to sleep every night and you look at yourself, are you proud of what you did with this opportunity? It doesn’t matter why you got the opportunity that is in the past now.” And I think about that often. And so for me, what holds me not accountable is necessarily looking at myself in the mirror every night, but I stand on the shoulders of giants, whether those are Tuskegee Airmen from my military experience or Marcelite Harris, my ancestors have done incredible things for me to be where I am today. So, it is not about me looking in the mirror and facing myself, it is me having to look at them and say, am I doing right by the investment they have made for me to show up and excel in the way that I am?