Her Story
About Deidra
I started my career in my hometown of Memphis, Tennessee, where I had the opportunity after college to help start a startup nonprofit centered around education advocacy. We worked to empower parents to be advocates for their children's educational quality and to be more actively engaged in not just the classroom, but the political environment around education. I started as a logistics coordinator and assistant, and when I left in 2019, I was serving as the Chief of Staff. That work really grounded me in my purpose of supporting individuals who had been marginalized or have not had opportunities to lead, to be unconventional leaders, because those closest to the issues have the solutions. I continued that work through consulting with an organization called Tandem Ed, where we created community interventions and equipped community leaders to navigate and lead narrative change in their communities. Our work was to really empower people in communities of Detroit, Newark, New Jersey, New Orleans, Louisiana, and Jackson, Mississippi, to create campaigns for their community that bolster their love, their wisdom, and their community assets. In 2020, right when the pandemic happened, I got accepted into Columbia and started my master's in social work there. After I graduated, I continued to do the community work, and now work for a nonprofit based in Atlanta called 3D Girls Inc. I recently stepped into the Director of Programs position there, where I get to support moms and girls in grades 3 through 8 with STEAM exposure and empowerment and social-emotional learning skills. Our programming has been really allowing me to bring all of my past experience into this one program to cultivate an ecosystem and a multi-generational approach to serving families in Atlanta. I also have the opportunity to provide therapy to people, so I'm a clinical social worker working towards full licensure. I'm currently with a private practice that serves Gen Z and Millennial women, and some Gen X women too, with navigating their past experiences of trauma and experiences of maybe being a first-generational professional or student.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Deidra
01What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I think the biggest thing that I'm still grappling with and learning and processing and internalizing is that being yourself and knowing yourself is going to open up the doors to all the places you want to be. Because when we lose sight of who we are and what we want, we start following another's path, or maybe someone else's, and we become unhappy because we think we've done the thing we should do or are supposed to do and have checked all the boxes. But then when we realize we've not checked any boxes for ourselves, we've not tuned in to what we want out of life and how we want to be experienced and perceived. So, tap into yourself, know how you want to be experienced and perceived, and what you want to experience in life, and follow that pathway. And even when the world seems to want you to redirect, grounding yourself in your why and in your purpose can still help you find your place within the evolution of the world.
02What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
I would say there are a couple of things. One is compassion for others. And critical thinking. I really value those of us who are willing to be uncomfortable and look beyond the discourse that we're seeing, that we're hearing, looking at our past to inform where we are currently, and applying our own thinking and feelings and lived experience to that, rather than just taking the news for face value. So having conversations that are difficult, but without judgment, applying critical thinking to those conversations.
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