Dearice Spencer Shackleford

I attribute my success to my faith and perseverance and resilience, and my faith in God most definitely. I wouldn't have been able to be here without my faith in God, my continuous faith in God. The best advice I ever received was from my grandmother who told me, 'Do your best and let God handle the rest.' That has been my mantra ever since I was a little girl. Another scripture that every spiritual leader I've consulted with has given me is 'I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.' Those two statements have taken me so far, and with that, it has carried me through everything, including losing my husband and father within 30 days of each other and being diagnosed with anxiety afterward.

The best piece of advice I've ever received came from my grandmother who used to tell me, 'Do your best and let God handle the rest.' All you gotta do is do your best, and God will handle the rest. That was my mantra ever since I was a little girl. Along with that, there's a scripture that my grandmother and every spiritual leader I've ever consulted with have always given me: 'I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.' Those two statements have taken me so far in my life and career. With that mindset, I went into the Miss Corporate America Texas competition just doing my best and letting God handle the rest, and it worked out - I won even though I wasn't expecting to.

First, I would insist and constantly tell them, you need to heal. You cannot pour from an empty cup. You have to heal first. Take your time and go heal. You can help while you're healing, but you can't help anybody when your cup is empty. So I would definitely tell them to go heal first and take your time with figuring out what your passion really is. Not everybody is here to help people heal. Some are here to help people laugh. Some are here to help people dress well. Just because one person is doing something and you see them successful at it doesn't necessarily mean that's the road or the journey for you to go down. Healing provides you the resource and the compass to direct you in the right way for your own personal journey of success.

With speaking, the biggest challenge is breaking into and walking through those doors and barriers that were a masculine-led industry. For a long time, men were doing more speaking than women, and now you see more women on platforms. So it was about staying steadfast even when you got those no's, keeping persistent regardless. You're gonna get 9 no's before you get that 1 yes, so just being persistent and knowing that it is a glass ceiling, which means it can be broken. As for the biggest opportunity right now, it's becoming Miss Corporate America Texas. I believe this is the door that God has created for me to walk through. With this title, I've opened many doors and met so many people. I believe being Miss Texas MCA is going to open so many more doors for me to be able to do my passion work, providing food for people and being able to help with ending food insecurity.

The values most important to me are doing your work as unto God. Do all of your work as unto God - it's not for people. Let your work honor God. If you keep God first, everything else is going to fall into place. So if you do your work as you're honoring God, not doing it to be noticed or acknowledged and recognized for it, but you're doing it to honor God and for God to be pleased, then that's it. That's all of it in a nutshell. Because promotion comes from the North, so if you're doing it to honor God, then everything else will fall into place.