Dione Edwards

My success is solely based on my faith. That's my foundation. My foundation is my faith and my belief. My belief system derives from my level of faith. I made a decision early in my career that I wanted to go to the C-suite, and if I was going to do the profession, I wanted to be the best executive assistant that I could be. So I made that decision, and I stuck with it. And I did it because I decided it was more that than anything.

The best career advice I’ve ever received is to trust the process and stay grounded in the truth of each step along the way. I’ve learned that growth rarely happens in a straight line, and success is built through patience, consistency, and a willingness to keep going even when results are not immediate. By remaining committed to doing things the right way, learning from every experience, and not rushing outcomes, I’ve been able to build a career that reflects both integrity and resilience.

First, be true to yourself, and be true to this work, because this is a very unique type of work that is not everyone is not set out to do this level of work, despite all of what people say, because there's a misunderstanding and misinterpretation of what this work really is. So my words of encouragement would be, first, be true to self and be true to the work. Learn and understand what you're entering into. This is a true profession. This is not a step-up type of work. This is a true profession, and so I would just tell someone that be sure that this is the direction that you want to go in. I would be true to those two things, and that will help, I believe, to make the decision as to whether this is a space that they want to step into or not, because it is a very, very different type of work.

Every level and every experience has its challenges. I've faced many, many obstacles throughout my career, and I can tell you that I think every level had its challenges. Every experience yields its own outcome. What I gained from the very tough times is learning who I am and learning the level of resilience that I have, because I've bounced back from so many different challenges throughout my career. You may look at it surface level and say, oh, you know, she did all this, what great accomplishments, but they came with trade-offs, trust me. A lot of them, even all the way through my exit coming out of corporate America, it's just been very turbulent. But the upside to the experience is that I wouldn't trade it, and the reason why I wouldn't trade the experience is because of where my next level is. The work that now is being done has a lot to do with where I'm just coming from, out of my entire career. So had I not experienced the things in my career, I wouldn't be positioned to do the next level of work I'm doing. Right now, it's a transition of the AI disruption. That's what's causing this, so I think relationship building is key. I think relationship building at every level is key, not just relationship up, but in all dynamics, across, down, up, and around. And I was pretty good at doing that, and I think that contributed to a lot of why my experiences were what they were inside of the realm of corporate America.

The most important thing for me is to be the truest and most authentic version of who I am. And if I give that, then ultimately what I receive in return is that back. I believe that what you give, it will call back. It's not very easy being true, being authentic, being vulnerable, because most people don't operate at that level. Most people operate with ulterior motives. They don't operate in their true form. And when you come in and you don't have the guardrails around you and you're just showing up as you are in a natural form, I've learned to just be. It's not driven by someone else's decisions, not driven by their behavior, it's not driven by their own ulterior motives. I'm just here, and I'm being. And that's it.