This profile was part of our 2020 Women's History Month celebration. Read the main story. 

What do you think are the biggest issues that women still have to face today?

Getting up at 6am, pumping, feeding my kids, and getting my family out the door. Dropping my three kids off at daycare, then going straight to work and being on right away. It’s great when I can be a mom from 6am-8am, then work from 8am-5pm, but often times these two things collide in the morning. Through Enriched, we’re really hands on and are really purposeful about which educators we assign to go to each school in the morning. One morning I was pumping, holding one of my three daughters, and on my phone making sure I can place teacher. Sometimes it’s a quiet morning and I can do each of those things in turn, but it’s tough. There are times when I need to put my phone down. One day when I put my phone down, one of my youngest daughters, Mari, stretched and smiled; I would’ve missed that if I’d been in my cell phone. I’m also an individual and a partner. Sometimes I have to re-center and determine priorities before I can move forward, because there are a lot of things pulling on my mind and time. 

What skill or resource do you feel has helped you the most in being a female leader?

My first role was working as a social worker. This experience, and my experience as a teacher, helped me be able to communicate with people, and to talk with empathy and patience. I’m skilled at dissecting and de-escalating challenging situations, and this has helped me in my leadership. Having these experiences as a base has really helped me. I can literally talk to anyone. As a social worker I had to adjust my communication depending on if I was speaking to a child, parent, or attorney and I had to speak in multiple environments. The same was true in teaching. Learning how to speak in many different contexts to different people and learning how to multi-task were all valuable skills. The relationships and connections I made teaching and through TFA have helped me in my Enriched role with partnerships, and has helped our organization be successful.

What the ways you’re championing female leadership?

Onboarding and supporting Brianna Stephens (Indy ‘17) after her two years of corps service in Indy is a major way I’ve championed female leadership. I was committed to making sure our Enriched team mirrored the students we work with, and we do. Brianna and I work as a strong team. I’ve asked her to take the lead on some important things in our organization, and I’m helping her develop her leadership in hopes that, one day, she would be ready to take my place as head of Enriched in Indy. I’ve been working, and legacy-building, with her so that she could pick-up where I’ve left off and push our region forward. 

Doing what I’m doing every day. Getting up and being the female leader I hope our students and my daughters see as resilient, strong, and mission-driven. Bouncing back after bearing twins was really hard, and I haven’t let life circumstances get in the way of what I can do as a leader in our city and for all of our students. A quote from Beyoncé’s song “Girls” says this best: "Women bear the children and then we get back to business.” That is me; I’m continuing to move forward with what I started I want to make sure I see everything through.