Cynthia Betts

Honestly, yes, of course the way I was raised, the family, the support network, all of those things definitely contributed to my success and my accomplishments in life, and I would never want to minimize them. But to be honest with you, it's been the challenges that I've faced. Things that I walked into thinking, I don't know how this is gonna go, it's not looking good. Those have been some of the biggest aspects that have shaped my life. My mother once told me, you know, you're one of those people that if you didn't have bad luck, you wouldn't have any luck at all. But those are the things that really made me into the person that I am today, the person that is able to look at those situations and say, we got this. We can do this. This is not something that is unattainable. We can accomplish this.

My father was a firm believer of don't ever ask anybody to do anything you're not willing to do yourself. And that's how he managed, and that's how he kind of focused his life. He believed in trying everything once, you know, what's the worst that's gonna happen? That philosophy of being open to new experiences and leading by example has really shaped how I approach my work and life.

My advice would be to be open. To be open to every experience, every opportunity, and to learn from it. If you have an opportunity to try something new, don't be afraid of it. Reach out for it and follow it. I carry over that being open to new experiences into everything I do. I was raised with a father that was, you know, try everything once, you know, what's the worst that's gonna happen? Those unique experiences, if you have an opportunity to try something new, don't be afraid of it.

I really think that it's important to get out the message and to get out the support and that universal knowledge. In the human resources field, it's really hard to remember why we do what we do. In a lot of the jobs, you hear such amazing and such challenging stories that sometimes it gets difficult to not just read and apply the policy. Sometimes it's hard to remember that these are people, individuals that we're being there for, they have a story too that brought them to where they are. I think those are the important aspects, making sure we remember the human element in human resources.

The values that I hold dear are ethics, of course. That's a huge aspect of a lot of the aspects of my life, both professional and personal. Compassion is a huge value for me. Being able to be aware of people's surroundings and situations. Fairness and clarity. Being able to be balanced in the decision-making, because we, as HR across the board, and even as managers, as humans, we make a lot of decisions in our day-to-day, and it's really easy to allow our experience, our biases, our past to influence those decisions. So, being able to be cognizant of those biases, and to still make decisions based out of fairness, with that clarity, is a huge aspect of the values that I hold dear.