Lori Womack Bostic

I attribute my success to my mom. When I got pregnant at 16 and had my daughter at 17, I told my mom I was pregnant - I was always a good student, but I just made some poor decisions. When I told my mom, she just said, 'Your dad and I will help you, but I seen you going places, graduating, and leaving and being successful.' And that's what I did. My mom believed in me even when I had made mistakes, and her support and belief gave me the foundation to keep going and achieve my goals despite the challenges I faced as a young mother.

The best career advice I ever received was 'Figure it out.' I say that because it gave me the confidence to realize I am capable of whatever I put my mind to, especially since I work well under pressure. This advice taught me not to hide from any challenge and to never let any challenge be discouraging. I always dig down to the roots of anything that I'm working on so I can get an understanding of it, because at the end of the day, it's all gonna come together. If you're just working to do just the task and not understand it, it's very robotic, and you can't really excel in that skill because you don't understand the foundations of what you're actually doing - which takes me back to my teaching roots. You can't write a paragraph unless you know how to read. You gotta know how to read, you gotta know how to write, so you have to have the foundations in order to understand the makeup of whatever you're doing.

Hit every challenge head on and don't be discouraged. I mean, I'm not gonna lie, when I started accounting, it's a different language. In my master's courses, and even now, sometimes I have to just Google some stuff, and once I get my definition, I have to copy and paste it into Microsoft and reword it for words that I actually understand and learn the lingo for accounting, because then now I have the understanding of what that word actually means. Because anybody can read a sentence, but if you can't explain what you read without just spitting out what you read word for word, you didn't really understand it. So just gotta dumb it down. As an educator, we had a saying of, you know, just KISS - keep it simple, stupid. And that, I think, applies to everything in life. Some words are really big, and if you don't understand what it is, don't just nod. Find some synonyms that you do know and then make that relation between the two, and then that's just how you keep on learning.

The biggest challenge in my field right now is being overworked and taken advantage of, especially as a woman in a male-dominated environment. I'll take my ownership on part of this - I am eager to learn, and I want to know how everything comes full circle. So if I'm asked to take on a task, if I don't know how to do it, I'll be the first one to say yes, and I will figure it out, and I will build on that. However, the downfall is it gets taken advantage of. At Campbell Oil, the field was male-dominated, and when I filed a complaint about harassment, I was told to forget about it. Even after meetings of reconciliation, I told them this was not reconciled for me and that I would look for another job somewhere else. I had to be okay with standing up for what was right. They even offered me a promotion after I filed a complaint, which was strange, but I can't be bought. It was so uncomfortable, and my integrity means more than just money. My work, for me, is a way of living - it's not who I am.

Integrity is the most important value to me. I have to be honest. For example, if I don't understand something, I have to keep it honest. I can't fake it till you make it. I have to ask questions, I have to do research, I have to learn it so I can be truthful in my work and in my life. I can't just pretend. Sometimes, you know, it gives you that red face because it's embarrassing, but I'm the only one that is responsible for me. So if I'm embarrassed, those are my feelings - nobody else is going to be embarrassed for me, but that's just something I have to be comfortable with and learn from it. This value of integrity is what led me to report harassment at my previous job even when it was uncomfortable, because I knew it was wrong and I had to do the right thing.