Beena Nair

My most notable achievement is that I got this far while being a single parent, and my kids are at NYU and Johns Hopkins University. I provide for them still - my oldest had a full-ride scholarship for her bachelor's, but now we're paying out of pocket for her master's, and my younger is a transfer student to NYU. I was married off when I was 19, and I've been fighting and getting the funds since I was young. I had my first baby at a young age, became a single parent when the kids were 7 and 4, and their father doesn't pay a dime. I fight for my kids every day. I'm still working, I'm still climbing, and I didn't give up - I kept fighting. For the past two and a half years, I've worked on my internal growth, dealing with the boxes I've hidden from my past traumas, dealing with everything I went through financially, physically, and emotionally. I learned to love myself and deal with it all so I can be better for my kids and help other people get through what they're going through. That resilience, that ability to keep fighting no matter what, and my commitment to being authentic and true to myself - that's what's gotten me here.

The best career advice I ever received came from my mentor when I first started cold calling for life and health insurance. I called someone who threatened to call the police on me, and I freaked out and apologized profusely. When I called my mentor back, he asked me, 'What do you think they can do to you?' I said they could call the police, and he told me, 'No, they can't. At some point, they requested the information, you call them, they're not on the do not call list, so they can't call the police on you.' That's the biggest takeaway I have, and I tell people that story all the time. Cold calling - the worst they can do is say no to you. These people, when you're selling on LinkedIn or anywhere, you're not selling to family and friends. What can they do to you? They can't grab you through the screen or over the phone. They can say no, they can hang up, they can say something mean over the phone - but did it really hurt you? What can it do? Nothing. Another piece of advice that changed everything came from a supervisor at a medical device company. I was working in the cleaning department, and when I finally told him I had a degree in biomedical engineering technology, he fell back in his chair. Then he said, 'If you don't toot your own horn, who's gonna toot it for you?' That's something I'm still learning to do, and I give that advice to other people now. If you don't toot your own horn, nobody else is going to toot it for you.

The most important values to me are authenticity and advocacy. I want to be authentic in my answers, in my interviews, in everything - whether I lose the opportunity or not. I'd rather you see who I really am and what I'm bringing. I love to advocate, and that's why I want to be people-facing. I want to be the voice between the company and the customer. I believe that everyone I meet is who I was yesterday, or who I am today, or who I'm going to be tomorrow, so connecting with them is easy for me. I've learned to trust myself again and speak my truth after going through a period where I doubted my choices. Now I trust my judgment over anybody else's, whether it's fighting for my kids, my animals, or my clients. Building genuine relationships is the best skill set to have - being able to meet somebody where they're at and build a relationship, period. I don't just push paper the same way every day - I talk to people, I learn about their background, and in the first call itself, I can get who they are, what they're doing, their personal life. It's amazing. And ultimately, everything I do is for my kids - making sure they're happy the way they define success. That is my reward in life.