alone welcome to the army to up close and personal i'm you're hosting this i'm here to take you through this musical dance we call life and to do that you know i bring on wonderful prominent people in the community to help us make it through today you know without ever i don't want to get all i got to go to the n today my guess is the perfect person to have here for m l k day she's a corporate vice president award winning marketeer acclaimed author empowerment speaker community advocate extraordinary phenomenal woman she's been featured essence for black enterprise the huffington post the network journey and many many many other media outlets i am so excited to have during the walker here at the r and b be up close and personal how are you i am with now we know that you are corporate v p so how did your corporate career start i started out and put into financial as a temp a temp over twenty years ago and i worked my way up through the through the corporate ranks and in two thousand and nine i wrote a proposal as to why the company should focus on women and multi cultural markets and essentially created a job doing what i love and love and what i do since two thousand and nine and it really propelled my career so that's how you did write would you say you should have this and i should be the person right you hear that have they said also it's all about timing and taking that risk right now you know to speak up about something that i thought was important right and it just so happened that the leadership thought that it was too yeah and so i got the backing and got to do the work that i loved for years and this year i decided to retire after twenty years of service ok because i want to be able to get back in and in you know a bigger way and since releasing my book i realized that god gave me a gift that i need to give to the world so do you think that anybody can do that in turn and rise to executive v p because a company has to be pliable too to accept that type of thing like we're going to give you a make of your proposal so you can create me a position that doesn't just happen to anybody it doesn't just happen to anybody but not everybody has the courage to speak up yes to take the risk yes you know my advice to anyone coming into corporate america is to bring your at them to excel to speak up when you see something is not the way it should be don't just go with the norm in a status quo you know what works for me was being a change agent  know so it always trying new things always volunteering for different things but always staying true to my passion which was around diversity inclusion equality and economic empowerment for women and people of color just given my own family l of legacy while i also like what happened there yeah so his wife inherited his fortune but she wasn't a good business woman she remarried and her husband was an alcoholic and so they really squandered the money and little bit that my thought to myself it can't be a coincidence that i work for one of the largest financial services management world and i have this legacy you know so it must be meant for me to do something about it right for other families like mine  right and to change that narrative particularly for black families in america now we hear we heard you say that you created his position and you had people that were willing and open minded to it but i'm sure that climb wasn't easy it wasn't talk about a few of the obstacles that you faced i think one of the biggest obstacles was having the confidence to know that after i was at the table that i had a voice and you know early in my career i used to be quiet and shy and one of the things i was really good at is project management and i remember i had a v p who i was working for at the time you know i was very angry with him because we had this strict deadline we were on this big project and he came in shooting the breeze talking about the cars that he went to in a week and he came to the meeting like forty minutes late so i'm like we got to get this project that you know he's like there and guess what it will get done but he said i want to give you a ticket he said i didn't have a meeting with you it any day and it always take five minutes because all you want to know is what do you need out of how do you want me to get it done and that's it he said you have to bring your entire self and you have to get to know people you have to be more personable and so that allowed me to start opening up and one of the reasons why i was hesitant to open up is because i would have a ged education i came from you know a dysfunctional family and i was a former drug dealer and i'm going to get all into that here so i had all this baggage that i was holding onto knowing that made me think that i wasn't worthy but what i what i realize now is that when god put me in that room i was worthy yes i got again when god put me in the room i was worthy and we're all worthy right so i like that you took command of yourself and just brought that to the table yeah we're going to go there so let's talk about so you just said a few minutes ago when we first opened that you were an be entrepreneur so tell us the difference tell our list our viewers a difference just in case they don't know so an intrapreneur or someone who works for a corporation who creates their own path in their own job so that's really an intrapreneur person or someone who blazes their own path their own trail increa you do for the community does that bring preventable in and also make it like a win win situation for you and prevent oh absolutely and you know i love the company and with the company stands for and you know they're really they have a mission to ensure that each and every family has access to financial services right so it's really important the work that i do because i don't want to represent something that i don't believe in right and they don't want to be right represented in something that they can't get behind so to do it and not everybody has the desire to do it and can you do have to depend on the company to because maybe the company won't allow you to mix to write a definite depends on the corporate culture and what you and your brand and your passion really if you're going to really step out and be the entrepreneur of the full fledge entrepreneur ali it's going to be hard to be doing as i was and ask you how do you how are you able to take off and go and do what you do when you've got a full time none of you have been fortunate you know that i've been able to use my vacation time a lot of the speaking i try to book on weekends and and then put into has been very you know supportive of me and when people say oh we know you're representing potential but can you talk a little bit about your story in your book and empower these women are these children  whatever to me and they've been you know very accommodating so let's talk about this book protected by purpose where did this title come from you know what it was my team and i'm pretty sure we were at an event and we started  brainstorming because they all knew my story and it was actually a woman named not you know who said you know what i think protected by purpose would be awesome so the title came before you actually wrote the book or it came before i wrote the book ok all right so what is protected by purpose means less let's hear your story so my story i was born to two heroin addicts my parents were beautiful people who suffered from the disease of addiction they were high school sweethearts and as a result of their addiction i suffer the consequences so my dad ended up going to prison when i was very young my mom ended up in an abusive relationship with a man that she met in rehab and he ended up abusing both of us mentally and physically and i went from a straight a honor roll student to an at risk youth at the height of my abuse i was a very angry young woman going to i was fighting a lot of time actually thought i was capable of killing someone  father was released from prison and i was free from the abuse and then less than a year later he was diagnosed with aids and that was back in the eighty's and you know we don't really know a lot about the disease i mean everybody was dying you know and so i ended up dropping out of high school i robbed a drug distributor and became a drug distributor myself so stuff you rather drive distributor and you're still standing here you read about that in a book  my mom disappeared and it was like my mom now does this appear this is a speak to me so i assume if she was dead and i attempted suicide i woke up in a psych ward spent six weeks in a psych ward was released into my paternal grandparents care because i was still a minor and guys that my great grandmother is an angel and she said to me you are not responsible for your father's burdens here and it's earth right god has a different plan and purpose for you and that started me on a different trajectory a path that was that that was the turning point best i was the start of it and you know i still had a foot in the street still was hanging out with the wrong people but i knew that death is not what god wanted me to do that there was something bigger and greater in store for me i just didn't know what it was wow so when you got this vision awesome when you got this vision was that the actual thing that made you say ok because i think i read something in the in the summary of your book that said i'm about to be eighteen so did your grandmother speak to you so i  subsequently got a job at a hospital but i still got a job at a hospital i did so under my grandmother we forced my birth certificate or law because i wasn't eighteen ok and i got a job in the hospital and but i went from making salt pepper haircut and these detectives rolled up on us and threw me guess the wall and started friskiness and i heard the voice of god say to me you're going to be eighteen in two weeks you're going to die go to jail was going to be and it was god's will to me awesome i mean you are told to prove that no matter what you go through no matter the darkness you can come through but you had deep inside of you so much sort of self assurance even though you probably didn't think so besides you know god speaking you have something else innate that allowed you and some people don't have that some people don't have that self esteem thing inside i mean some people don't have it all but some people have it in them and they don't know what's in there but they need something to tap it to bring it out and i'm so thankful yeah that i had it so i'm so thankful that somebody tapped it to allow you to go on like one of martin luther king's quote was keep moving forward no matter what right right and you just you kept doing that because you called your aunt and said come and get me so what do you think are the important steps to go from a dark path like that to a life path i think first and foremost you have to have faith on the three thing to say ok first foremost i think you have to have faith and i didn't grow up religious by any means or go to church every week but i knew that god existed and i knew there was a higher power so i had faith that god would protect me a second thing is you have to know that you are worthy that you are if you are put on this earth that you are worthy and you were put here for a purpose and sometimes we're in such dysfunctional and you know just dysfunctional situations where we can't see the light but know that is a moment in time and you have to put in a work of fortitude to changes changes circumstances and i'm not going to say it's going to be easy because sometimes it's not it's hard especially if your family is causing a dysfunction you write how do you separate yourself from family and order to go want to live a life the guy has destined you know how do you surround yourself with positive people right and you're so face with negative around the right that is a really hard thing because you don't want to separate yourself from your family you know you don't want them to think you know you have people who say oh you think you're too good did you ever experience that where people would say things like i did i spirits you know i experienced times when people said oh you think you're too good or you think you're better and that's not the case but you know not everybody is meant to go on your journey i've learned they understand your journey i understand it and sometimes you have to love people from a distance absolutely if they're not good for your so when you spirit and don't give you the peace that you need you know i it's ok to love them from a distance i naturally twenty nine years in a relationship but he's been my backbone and then also extended family i lost both my grandmothers last year within a month of each other but they were you know very instrumental in my life and you know my mom when she was alive so i had people who were pitching and who cheered me on that was the biggest thing because i talk about the dysfunction from addiction but there was so much love and we stayed with them throughout you weren't raised by anybody you know right so do you have children right i don't how many children at three children twenty seven twenty one in one thousand writing looking like twenty f life or different to walk it's planning it's collaborating i would love to collaborate with other women and just other people who are six at successful some were going on a whole bunch of things right now  it's you know winding down my corporate career and making sure that the people who are coming behind me are ready to to carry to the trail and have been so that's a day in my life and it's just filled with people on what you do and you want to do that for yourself and do more of what you want to do what fuels your passion and so they gave me the the the the encouragement that i needed so how long did it take to write t five weeks get out is my stories and that's what makes it i write it all in my head so you have three months to get the book proposal done right and so once we got the book proposal done my agent sent it out to fifty publishers twenty came back with interest and i signed with timothy and titus has been phenomenal and i got a great distribution deal you know amazon wal mart e books and it's been out since one april sixteenth of eighteen twenty seven twenty eight am so i was going really well it's doing really well so we're excited i've been torn a country and that's been amazing because it really opened my eyes to how many people were holding on to  here it is so important i always say that if you hold things in and don't let people know you think that it only happened to you right you can't heal if you don't let it out and then you find out that it helps other people exactly they were about two hundred women at that at that event yeah literally fifty one missed it on line and wait up to hour to speak to me and the first woman said nobody notices but i've been contemplating suicide yeah for the last couple of days yeah and see people think you know you can talk about that too so i'm a big proponent for that you know because if you don't anybody know then you don't know what you're going through and they can't help you and they were and the thing that i talked about in one of my sessions were there always signs people overlook them because they don't know with them what they are you know i have a tendency because i suffer from that so i have a tendency to tell you what the signs are so when i can't reach me you can yeah and if you can't then i just go to sleep on a system so let's let's move on because i don't want to lose time so let me go into one more thing before i do turn this hot seat on and when i just need a break somewhere warm and when people remember having met different what is the most important thing you want them to remember about you that i treated them with respect that i was in tech world and that i made them feel good you know that we our interaction was memorable we're i was at one of the events i think that you spoke and i think that that's when i decided that i want to talk to you it's been a while since i think was like last year sometime and like i said in preparing for this they were like all in my head in my sleep and i'm like yes i know that yes i'm like i feel like you know you're like a best friend in my head and definitely look up to your accomplishments and and how you open up and how you use yourself to help other women in the community i think that's just awesome so what's your advice for an inspiring author entrepreneur what are three things that you would tell them that they need to do first if they want to be an author if you want to be an author just start writing and start writing make sure that you do some research to find out if you want to be self publish or if you want to have a publisher and that was a critical for me because at the time i realized that i didn't have the time to south publish because i would have to do everything myself right so getting a publisher was very important so then i knew what combination of both i think is a combination of both ok so give me two to is be very authentic in your storytelling right and make sure you get a good editor that's going to be key and the third thing is just  do it do it and you know i'm a firm believer of darpa's division but it's up to you to put in the work of fortitude to make it happen because what i've learned and god has never let me down when i work to make that vision come true it become so much bigger than i ever imagined yeah yeah because he gives you over and above what you write ok and he was exceed your expectations period and so many times you know people come to me and say i want to do this and i want to do that and in the next breath they tell me haiti i want to pick up some put the leave my the train tickets or rather the plane tickets at the airport to say girls come and join me over here at yass madam you would say that yes i interrupted the flow and the last one is a perfect dick with your of flowers roses that's a long date yeah that's wonderful because we've got to keep the fires burning yet all the time tell me a little bit your children you said they what do they do so my daughter is a manager at home depot  late to live your dreams and when you do when you do i'll be there encouraging you make sure you tell someone to tell someone about the beast oh come on back and see us again next time and see who we talk to you get to go love you feel that watching