Her Story
About Ayesha
Ayesha Butler has spent over 10 years working in the federal government as a contractor in the intelligence division. For the past four and a half to five years, she has focused on program management, ensuring programs are fully staffed, employees and clients are satisfied, and contracts and proposals support expansion and retention. Butler holds multiple degrees, including an associate's degree, a bachelor's degree in legal studies, a master's degree in community-based education and leadership, an education specialist degree, and is five weeks from completing her final class to begin her dissertation for an EDD in education. She attributes her success to the strong work ethic modeled by her mother, a single parent who raised three girls. In 2025, Butler was named Employee of the Year at her current company. She is a member of the Legal Technology Association, the National Society for Leadership, and Associated Black Charities. Butler values honesty, open communication, reliability, and dependability in both her professional and personal life, and she advises young women entering her field to learn everything possible because skills combine to reach career goals.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Ayesha
01What do you attribute your success to?
My mom calls me an overachiever. A lot of that comes from me just seeing her be a hard worker as a single mom of 3 girls. My dad is in the picture but didn't live in the house with us. Watching her do what needed to be done and making sure that me and my sisters had everything that we need, that work ethic just made me go I'm gonna do that and more but just in a different way with what I wanna do.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
Be open-minded even if you think you know what you're doing just be open to new things and new ways of doing it and also to use your resources whether that's books SOPs standing operating procedures continuity books or the people that you know around you. Reach out and bounce ideas off of them. We have a really big group of admins and I tell them all the time you all work in different departments but you're all admins so whatever skills you don't have or don't know how to do if you call one of your fellow friends here I'll guarantee you they know how to do it and they can walk you through it. Use each other to be effective to get the work done to complete the mission.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Learn everything that you can because you don't know where that can lead you. When I started I was doing like a little HR here a little travel here and then I was doing records and from records I went I kept moving up and up and up because I was willing to let me learn how to do this and oh how do you do that or what's that about or oh we may have a new position sure I'll take it. I had a goal of just learning everything because all of those skills you combine them together and it can get you to the goal that you want.
04What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Just to be honest and communicate with people and just be upfront with whatever it is that you're trying to do. I'm really really big on communication. Working in office environments things can go under the radar so quickly if you're not communicating at all and if you're not being honest about your slip-up from your failure of not communicating then that has a domino effect on how the work gets done. So my thing is just be honest. Reliable and dependable and just keep the communication open.
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