Chelsea White

I would attribute my success to my children. They will always be my biggest drive. When my dad passed away in 2023, I was seven months pregnant with my daughter, and I had to sit back and ask myself what I wanted to do and where my life was going. I knew that I wanted her to want more. I wanted her to see her mother do more than just struggle. The big thing for me was that with my dad not being here, I wanted him to be able to still look down and be proud. Having two extremely career-driven parents was definitely the biggest driver behind my success. My dad was a cop who worked for the United States Marshal Service, and my mom works for Hilton and is absolutely phenomenal - headhunters go after her all the time. I could have taken one path or the other growing up, but I followed my dad's path with wanting a career and wanting more. I watched my mom struggle, and I wanted more for myself. Beyond my family, I've learned to take every single task at work and not look at it as a job, but look at it as a lesson. I may not have had the best day, and this may not have been what I planned on doing, but I choose to see each challenge as a great opportunity to learn and carry forward in my career.

The best career advice I ever received was from one of the best district managers I ever had. She was mean - oh god, that woman was so mean - but she was so good at what she did. Her and I were having a conversation one day, and I said, I feel like I'm just never gonna go anywhere, you guys are so hard on me. I was young, I was like 17, and I was already a manager for that company. She goes, Chelsea? And I said, yeah, Gwen, and I was expecting the chewing of a lifetime. But she looked at me and she said, you're gonna go as far as you wanna go. Don't you let anybody tell you otherwise. And I was like, okay. And she repeated it: you will go as far as you want to go, don't you let anyone tell you otherwise. That's something I don't think I'll ever forget, and I will never forget her.

Being a mom is the most important thing to me - it's the best thing I could have ever done in my whole life. I have two small children, one will be 3 in June and the other will be 1 in July. I wasn't supposed to be able to have children, so when I had my daughter at 35 and my son at 37, it was the biggest shock of my life, but it was the best thing that could have happened. I was more settled down and already in my career, which made it even better. Outside of being a mom, I read a lot for fun, I do a lot of cooking and baking, and I do volunteer work. As extroverted as I am with work and volunteer work, I am very much a homebody otherwise. I just enjoy being home with my little ones. Equality and inclusivity are also deeply important to me. My brother came out as gay a long time ago, and I was the only one in the family that knew for a very long time. I started seeing little things, like when he deserved a promotion but maybe somebody at work knew and somebody said something. I've also been told that certain things are 'more of a man's job,' so equality and inclusivity tie into everything I do, including my work on the boards for OVG Pride and Topeka Pride.