Hillary Williams

I attribute my success to the commitment that my parents made into me and my future, and their focus on education. My father grew up in a very underprivileged world during segregation, and at the age of 12 he told everyone he wanted to be a judge, and people thought that was ridiculous. But he grew up to be a judge, and he always attributed it to education. He was the second Black judge since Reconstruction in East Tennessee. My parents instilled in me that education was the most important thing, and they gave me a high-quality education as a child and going into college. My father strongly suggested I go to Spelman, and when I say strongly suggested, he told me I could go to any school I wanted to, and his money was going to Spelman. When Hampton gave me a partial scholarship and I didn't have the other part, he made it clear I was going to Spelman. It turned out to be the best place for me. Spelman made it so that I was able to be the person that I have become. So it's everything around education that has contributed to my success.

Have a fundamental understanding of how businesses work. I'm not saying you have to have a business degree - I don't have a business degree - but you need to have some type of understanding of how businesses work, so you're not struggling with owning and operating a business while going through all of the intricacies of understanding child care and all of the testing and the policies and the painting of trees and everything else that goes on. You need to have some type of basic understanding of how businesses work and operate. Understand a profit and loss statement, understand the cost of care. If you're going to get into daycare, you can't just have some arbitrary pricing model. You need to understand how much does it cost you to care for each child, factoring in student ratios. Different age groups have different ratios and different amounts of students that can be with different teachers. So understand how businesses work, even just a basic, fundamental understanding.

The biggest challenge isn't even in finding children. The biggest challenge is in balancing the needs of the business and the needs of the children. It is a business that you are intended to make money from, but there are times when you have to make decisions that don't necessarily make financial sense, but they do make business sense. When you're dealing with children, you have to be very careful about what happens to children while they are with you, and what you notice might have happened when they were not with you. You have to make sure that you are doing things to protect the children at all costs. Most educators are mandated reporters, and there are times when I've had to make decisions that might have had a financial repercussion for the business, but it was something that needed to be done to protect a child. As for opportunities, there are so many. My center is on the outskirts of Atlanta, and there are lots of other centers in the area, but one thing I've noticed is the quality. The quality isn't just in how bright and flashy the building is - the quality is actually in what is happening with the children. What type of care are they getting? Are you watching children, or are you educating children? It's been a lot of fun to explore different curriculum models and different schedules and introducing different things into children's lives.

In my personal life, I'll say definitely honesty and a commitment to caring. I have always been taught that it is very important to help people. One of my dad's favorite songs was 'if I can help somebody along the way, then my living has not been in vain,' and I know that was instilled in me from a very young age, and that is definitely the way that I still live today. I think that even goes into my professional life as well. It's a business, so everything can't be free, but there have been plenty of times when I've seen people struggling, and we know that people need help, and if I can do something small to help you be able to get along in life, I'm more than happy to do that, because I know that that's something that needs to be done and that people need help in different circumstances.