Cathryn M. Harris

I attribute my success to my mother. She passed away, and her death was really hard because I wasn't connected with her the last years of her life, but my mother played a really strong role in my work with Global Teen Club. There were many nights we'd go to Kinko's back in the day, and we'd sit there and make the newsletter, and we would just laugh. She'd always say, one day you're gonna forget about me, you know, when you're gonna remember this when I'm long and gone. I always remember those moments, and I remember how my mom always said if I wanted to do something, I could do it. She always believed in me and gave me that initiative to go out and do things.

I would have to say, I would go back with Jolene Godfrey from Independent Means, when she said, no more frogs to kiss. I think that has a lot of meaning in so many ways, and that's what's gonna help me start my own nonprofit and help young people. You know, not relying on somebody to do something that you can do it yourself, that you can actually go out there and do everything yourself. It just takes determination and being persistent to keep following your dreams.

I would have to say, don't take no. If someone says no, there's always gonna be some doors that will close, but there's always gonna be doors that will open. So always keep going, and don't listen to a no, just remember that there's always yeses that will come. After many of those doors, like for me, a lot of doors have shut, but like I said, there's always a yes. So just keep going, and keep believing in yourself, and following your dreams, and just stay persistent, and just have that determination to get to where you want to go.

Funding is the biggest challenge. But then again, with the way the economy's going and everything, it's learning other strategies to get the funding, and that's what I'm learning about. That's why I learned to be a grant writer. So it's just being, you know, looking at new techniques and new things that will get you out there and get the funding you need to start your organization.

Honesty is most important to me. Just being yourself, being authentic, and being able to speak to other people and being real and being relatable. I think those are really important values.