Falencia Ratcliff

I attribute my success to my parents. I had some hard-working parents, and I grew up seeing them working, just always working, taking care of the household, making sure they were very strong, just always working. That put those characteristics into me, understanding that you have to work hard if you want things in life. Seeing them working and having things, I wanted to be that example for my kids as well. They showed me what it takes to succeed, and I carry that with me every day.

The best career advice I've ever received is from my mom. She always told me, do what works for you. Don't look at other people's situations, do what works for you, and then also, to always stay motivated. Always stay motivated. When making decisions, especially on jobs and everything, I have always looked at my circumstances and to see how it would benefit me, or how it will work with my lifestyle or my family, and then I went with that, not based on how much the money is. I just went with how's it gonna work with me and my kids. Sometimes you get caught up in thinking this pays this amount, and then you're miserable because you got your family at home.

I would say, and I tell this to the ladies in the office, everything that you want, you can get everything you want, but that doesn't mean it's gonna be easy. That doesn't mean once you get it, it's gonna be easy. You have to stay determined and be motivated and keep at it. Don't give up just because it gets hard. Keep pushing forward and stay focused on your goals.

I think some of the challenges is just balancing and working with different people, different personalities, different backgrounds, and then learning how to just balance your behavior or balance your work with all these people. When you're supervising multiple people, men, women, from different backgrounds and everything, you have to make sure that you're aligned. That's one of the challenges with my particular job, because you work with so many different people. You're working with mayors, you're working with city council, you're working with fire and police officers, you have people in the office, you have the residents in the city, and then on the back end you have your own individual circle of people that you're working with, like the banks. You have to stay focused. You also have to be structured as well, because if you're not, you will be all over the place. And when you're working with accounting, you have to have everything in order. Everything has to be in order. You just have to have some type of structure, you have to be focused at all times.

In my personal life, I think just, and I learned this later in life, as a mom you have to make sure that you're putting yourself first. Some people may not agree with this, but if you're not okay mentally and physically, it's no way that you can be there for your kids, or your family, or anybody. A lot of people forget that. They think they should sacrifice everything for others, but then you end up feeling resentful or miserable because you haven't taken care of yourself. But if you put yourself first and make sure that you're okay, everything around you is gonna be okay. People have people watching them, kids watching them, and you need to be in a good place to be there for them.