La Keisa Patton

I would say my parents. I was actually just in a conversation with someone a minute ago about my upbringing, and I would just say my parents. They just raised me to just, what my mom would say, it's just nice to be nice. And I think they built great character, and they've always told me to treat the person in front of me the way I want to be treated. And so I've just taken that and just in my everyday experience with people at work, that I treat the person in front of me the way I want to be treated, no matter their race, ethnicity, their religious background, that there's good in all people, and so that's been, to me, the best advice that I've taken, even in my work and career field. I've also had many mentors, but in specific, I will have to reference my mom. My mom is this renaissance of a woman. She's had many different careers that led to a lot of things. She's really my inspiration for working in nonprofit work and community engagement and outreach with the things that she does. I've had a college professor and a prior church pastor who have just really instilled some things in me about character and community.

The best career advice I've ever received is that you can always do something different, and that every job or every career you have just builds on the next one, and that you have many gifts and talents, and you may use one gift here and build upon the next, but you don't have to wait till something gets bad to try something new. I think that was good advice because it gave me permission to explore different paths and understand that each experience adds value to the next chapter of my career.

The advice that I give to women that are entering into the field that I do, it's first important to know that you belong in the room, and you belong at the table. And always, your gut feeling, always go with that, and the intuitions that you have. And that the gifts and talents that have been put into you can be used and be transferable. So I think that's what I would say to young women coming into this field.

I would say the biggest opportunities in our field is the creativity. You can make this job of community engagement and outreach, or also if you're in the field of ministry, working with children's and student ministries, or the next gen, which is building the next generation, is definitely a wide-open field, and you can make it what you want to make it. You can be as creative as you want to be. There's so much opportunity in our communities to reach out and to bridge gaps with business and organizations and partnerships, because people really want to see communities thrive, and there's a hunger for that, so I think there's a wide range of opportunities for you to find out what's unique to you and how you would want to do that. And you're able to bring that into that field.

I would say honesty, good character, and people who you can just be real with. By nature, my gifts are developer and encourager, so I love being in an environment where I'm able to help and encourage people, so people who just have great character and just are honest about their feelings and emotions. Those are the values that matter most to me.