Her Career Ladder

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Her Career Ladder is provides experience Black, Latina and Indigenous women in STEM with career advice to advance their careers into management or technical leadership roles.

Episodes

  1. Episode 3: Mindset For Reaching Your Goals

    01/06/2021

    Episode 3: Mindset For Reaching Your Goals

    Mindset For Reaching Your Goals **Michele Heyward discusses how mindset is pivotal is reaching your goals. With all the planning and accountability, you won't reach your goals without the right mindset.** https://fb.watch/2g0YNZR4pn/ Facebook Live. TRANSCRIPT Hey, everybody, and welcome to mentor Monday, I'm Michele Heyward, the mentor for women of color STEM professionals, and we are still digging in strong for our goals, yes, we're still going to focus on goals for the next few weeks, because many of you have realized that you have some really audacious goals, you have the desire to do so much in your career. But you're not sure where to go, where to how to really structure your goals, how to really get them up and running, much less achieved. So first of all, we talked about last week how to go through and really, really what's included in your goals, right, what's included in your goals. But what I want us to look at today is the mindset, the mindset that you have to have, in order to reach your goals. And I'm gonna share with you something I haven't shared with people in a long time. These are five k race numbers that I did Oh, back in between 2010 and 2012. And I had a goal at one point in time to do like 13 or 12, five k races in a year. Now, was I in the best shape? had I ever run? No, those were my goals to do multiple five k races. Do you know I achieved it, but it was simply because of my mindset, and not necessarily my physical well being. And that's what's important. That's really, really what's important is your mindset. Mind over matter really does make it make it easier, and even possible for you to achieve your goals. So number one, believe in yourself. And many like Michelle, I have never done this, write down the things that you have done, you have already achieved what many people no matter race and gender have not done which is obtain a stem degree, right? Where you like this in your freshman engineering class and look to your left, look to your right, only one of you will be left. And when it comes to people of color, it is one out of six, not one out of three, it is one out of six, that will make it to their four year degree, you have already won you have already accomplished so much, just by being a stem professional having that degree, many have not done so. So that is a huge accomplishment. That is a huge accomplishment. So that is one thing many of us have many of you have up and relocated moved away from your family. Maybe you moved to a huge city, and you're from a small town, maybe you from a huge city and moved to a small town or a smaller city. So you've both gone through cultural changes. And you are doing things differently than other people, you know, in your circle. Guess what, that is an achievement You should be proud of. A lot of people refuse to move there. They are afraid. They don't know what's on the other side of the interstate or the other side of the state line or the river. So it's truly truly important that you really say you know what, I did do that. I did leave. I did move on. Yes, that is a huge accomplishment. And for others of you, you are still doing great things, whether it's volunteering, it is doing voter registration, you have other accomplishments, which you're like, oh, everybody does that. No, everybody does not. You are truly doing different things. And if you don't believe me, ask them your friends posts on Twitter, post on Instagram, ask people what do they think that you've done differently and they will tell you take some of your friends. They will let you know how much you have accomplished that you just figure. Everybody does. It's a part of what you do. And it really, really isn't okay. Number two, if you can see it, you can achieve it. If you can see it, you can achieve it. I literally want you take a pen and I'm reaching for some paper and a sheet of paper and draw what it looks like what is your goal look like? You can do it in AutoCAD. You can do it in Canva, whatever that is. You can even do it. vision board. But what does it look like when you achieve that goal? Or goals? What does it look like? Because when you can see where you want to be, it makes so much sense. If you can see it, you can achieve it. That's why they call them vision board. And people are more likely to achieve something. If they're Look, if they know where they're trying to go. And they have that clear vision, you don't know what's in between where you are now and where you want to be that destination, you don't know that it's filled in. But when you know, this is where you're supposed to be where you're trying to go, it makes it so much easier, you're less likely to give up. So literally create a vision board, take some magazines, if you're like me, you have some egg magazines, yes, in essence, you might have some ASE American scientists and engineers, whatever it is, take those magazines and cut them up and really make it it may be the cover of a book because you want to write the next book or be featured in a book, whatever it is. Take that and make it real. A goose a stick of glue. It's really cheap. Um, you could also do the same thing on a Pinterest board. So we talked my Pinterest, we're talking about physically putting together a vision board. You can also do Canva, or something like AutoCAD to really draw them together. Yes, pull them together. Yes. So when you have that vision, if you can see it, you can achieve it. Number three, fear doesn't make you stop. I do not believe people are fearless. I do not believe people are fearless. This is what I believe. I believe your dreams. Your Dreams are truly a goal with a deadline or a date, write a due date are greater than your fears. Your Dreams are greater than your fears. And what that what this means to me what I've come up with when your fears are greater than your dreams, you will do one or two things, you will keep walking your run like hell. When your fear is greater than your dreams, you won't stand like hell. And you're gonna be really, really, really, really mad and hating on other people which goes into a bonus. So your fear like Michelle, how do I overcome the fear? How badly do you want it? How badly do you continue to dream about this and look at that vision board and look at that Pinterest board and go I really, really want this. But I'm afraid when that dream becomes greater than that fear, guess what, you will still be scared. But guess what, you still want to do it. Think about all the things you did when you were scared. All the things you shouldn't have been doing and you did them anyway. And you were scared. This is something that you really, really want. And you're afraid you're scared. Do it anyway. What is the worst that can happen? And sometimes that's what you have to do. You have to write down what is the worst thing that can happen. In order for you to manage the fear, what is the worst thing that will happen? So I one of my friends went skydiving, he knew not he texted me when he was about to go. Because he knew I was not the person to tell he was about to go skydiving. Because I would have come up with 5011 reasons like you're gonna jump out of a perfectly good plane. So that's not Don't call me when you go skydiving. But you have to write down and literally write down next to that vision that you created. What is the worst that can happen? What are the fears that you have about achieving that? And and next to that right now? How do you overcome those fears or obstacles that you have? Because that fear is truly an obstacle? So how do you minimize it so that you can continue to reach that dream? Right? You can you can achieve that goal. That's what I like. Yes, I managed my fear that way. I write the worst that could happen. Yeah. And people don't realize writing it down is like Well, that's it. That's all that's the worst that's gonna happen. Oh, I can do this. Because after you realize what's the worst that's gonna happen. You get over it, you deal with it and you move on. It is quiet. All right. Okay. Now, what do we have next? What do we have next? This is something that I got from Grant Cardone. And if you don't know Grant Cardone that is quiet. Okay. He had a post somebody posted on Instagram. Probably about a month. month ago, something that grant had in relation to haters are haters, they're really quitters. So what does that mean haters are really quitters. So what according to Grant Cardone people who are hating on you aren't really hating, they gave up, they could have been better at you better than you. They could have kept, if they had they kept going, they would have done it better than you. But you know what they did, they stopped. And because they stopped, guess what? They look at you and you kept going, you kept going. And that is truly, truly important. So you're going to have people that are going to talk negative to you, that are gonna say negative things behind your back. But you know what happened? They gave up. You didn't. And because you kept going, you persevere, you're going to win. So the end of the day, don't worry about the haters who are really quitters. Because you got this, and it's really, really important that you know this, and you don't let those people stop you from going from where you want them to be, where you want to be. So Shelly elder, who else came in here, Stevie, Heather, thank you, ladies for joining me, what I really, really want to remind all of you when it comes to your goals or anything in life, your mindset, your belief that you can do it has to be greater than you realize. It truly truly does. It cannot be it cannot be only focus on, on what you think you can do. What you feel you can do, what others tell you you can do. It has to be centered on what you believe you can do. And then some, because sometimes we set smaller limits because we feel safe with this dream. But we know our reality, our

    14 min
  2. 12/31/2020

    Episode 2 : How to Pivot from Engineering to Tech with Danielle Pollard

    Danielle has a background in Industrial and Systems Engineering with more than two decades of training, executive coaching, and most importantly real life in the trenches leadership experience. https://youtu.be/GUwPQgHe0E4 How did you become an engineer? I went to college, and I majored in accounting. I went to NIU or Northern Illinois University, which is a pretty good business school. What came to my thoughts when I saw a fine gentleman reading a book at a table with the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) banner. Our physics teacher, which was an older white male, invited two of his friends, which were two other older white men to come and talk to us about the field of engineering. And that’s all I remember about engineers.  The next day (after talking to the guy at the NSBE table), I changed my major to industrial engineering.    How did you end up in tech when you’re an industrial engineer? I had these job experiences building applications and picked up new skill set. I kept building until someone told me that I would be really good as a scrum master. What software coding language do you primarily use to create the applications? A language called FORTRAN. How would you recommend getting a scrum master position from a QA background with a CSM certification but no Scrum experience? No one has any idea whether you can do the job or not. Until you get there and you do it. So how do you win the role? It’s whoever is not the best person for the job because No one’s done the job, yet for you to be able to compare and contrast, if you’re a hiring manager, the person who wins the role is the person who is best able to articulate their value to the interview. Scrum is just a framework that is designed to be the answer to uncertainty. And so what that means if we think about right now with the Coronavirus, the COVID-19. Right now, this is very complex time and a very uncertain time and there’s a way to successfully navigate uncertainty.  How do you feel when they fail?  How do most organizations deal with the failures?  Do they reorganize? Subscribe to Her Career Ladder on Soundwise

    1h 5m

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Her Career Ladder is provides experience Black, Latina and Indigenous women in STEM with career advice to advance their careers into management or technical leadership roles.