Amanda Garza

I tell my team that my goal is to guide them, counsel them, protect them - whether that means from themselves, or noise, or too many demands, you know, bandwidth - and it's to remove obstacles. It's also to help them achieve their goals, both personally and professionally. My goal in 5 years is to continue reaching positions in which I am able to do that for more people and at a grander scale. I really do believe that we receive things to give things, and so as I continue to pursue higher opportunities, larger opportunities where I can hopefully make a difference in people's lives, even if it's just one person. I learned a long time ago what I call a count-on-me number - sometimes people look at their org chart and they go, okay, I have 10 people reporting to me, I have 5 people reporting to me, or I have no people reporting to me. That could be your count on me number, and your count on me number is the people that are counting on you to make good decisions every day to help them, guide them, protect them. But you can actually time that by 4 or 5, because ultimately, they have people counting on them. In my current role, I'm helping these 50,000 frontline agents achieve their goals, because they have to understand what the products are, what the plans are, what the pricing is, and the better we do at our job, the better they can do at their job and the way that their count on me number also is affected.

When I was Chief of Staff, Erin Scarborough shared with me that you have to be specific in these things, because that's what people are going to remember. When you share that next role that you want to be in, or your dream, or your vision, if you just want to do good work, it's not going to be that memorable. But if you can be specific, then people around you can rally with you and be your allies. Since she gave it to me, I've challenged myself to try to be more specific, even though I'm like, I would have never dreamed 5 years ago I would even be right here. Erin is just an amazing leader and woman - I didn't know I was interviewing to be her Chief of Staff when I met her. It was more just like two people that should get to know each other, and a couple weeks later, she reached out to me and was like, I'm gonna get announced as the SVP of broadband marketing, will you come be my Chief of Staff? Even though the timing didn't feel ideal for me - I'd been about a year into the sales director role that I was in, and it was kind of a fruits of my labor type of thing - it just was such a good opportunity that it was like, absolutely. What I didn't know is when I met her, she had just finished her treatment for cancer. She had got diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 38. She's just such an inspiration, and she beat cancer. She's very big on we all have one life to live, and every October, I was able to help her do fundraising and just rallying the teams on breast cancer awareness and wellness. It would be impossible not to be inspired by her and the way she is as a human.

I think my advice has really honed in recently, especially as I got my master's and graduated last year. Life is kind of like a choose-your-own-adventure, and everybody is on their own choose-your-own-adventure, and everybody has the power of choice. One of the things that's become so obvious to me is what power that is, but also the responsibility that comes with it, because when you are saying yes to something, you are saying no to something else. You can't say yes to something and not say no to something else. It is inherent. It happens automatically, and so our yeses matter, and our no's matter. When we do make these choices, they do have profound impacts on our lives and people around us. I started with AT&T, and I made a decision, and I made a choice - I've moved many times, my daughter had done basically 5 cross-state moves before she was 5. My yes to being over different states had its benefits, but it also had its trade-offs. While we can't beat ourselves up, you shouldn't take your choices lightly, because they do define what your experience is. They're going to define the adventure that you end up going on. Sometimes not choosing is also a choice. Saying I'm gonna show up today is saying no to I'm not gonna quit, I'm not going to go look for something else. When my daughter was born, I had never imagined becoming a stay-at-home mom, but then when she was born, I for the first time was like, what if I want to be a stay-at-home mom? I decided to go back to work, but I made a choice and a decision that if I was going to not choose to become a stay-at-home mom, then I was going to be really intentional with my career, and I was going to make it the best that I could, because otherwise I felt like I was doing wrong by my daughter. So my advice is you have a power of choice, and you have - don't take it lightly and embrace it, because it's actually awesome.

Amanda will be diving into add more detail regarding her inspirations and the things that have motivated her career path, how she would like to connect with other women in our network and in her industry, how she would like to inspire our readers, additional details regarding her interest and hobbies and things that bring her joy in life, any additional details regarding her mentors and inspirations including her family and her first boss, and any additional accolades or accomplishments she would like for us to highlight within her feature or any additional details she would like to share regarding her career path and what she looks forward to achieving in her future.

I feel like my job is to guide them, counsel them, protect them - whether that means from themselves, or noise, or too many demands - remove obstacles, and help them achieve their goals, both personally and professionally. I really do believe that we receive things to give things. I learned what I call a count-on-me number - the people that are counting on you to make good decisions every day to help them, guide them, protect them. I co-parent with their father, so their father and I got a divorce in 2021. We made a choice, and we've fully embraced our choice too, in that we decided it wasn't the best for us to be married, but we did want to have the best relationship that we could for ourselves and for our children, and that was kind of our North Star. I think North Stars are so important, because you can align yourself to it even in moments of turbulence. It wasn't certainly always easy, and it still isn't, but we have a beautiful co-parenting relationship in which we do Sunday dinners together, we bring both families together. My ex-husband's significant other has become just my absolute best friend. She's also raising my children, and so we've poured into each other. We just went on a writer's retreat to Charleston, her and I, and we're kicking around a co-parenting idea book. When my daughter was born, I made a decision that if I was going to not choose to become a stay-at-home mom, then I was going to be really intentional with my career, and I was going to make it the best that I could, because otherwise I felt like I was doing wrong by my daughter.