Natina Maria Hill

I attribute my success to sticking with what I'm passionate about and just not giving up. I have been on this journey my entire life in entrepreneurship, and my success comes from the ability to pivot but not give up. I'm not just following a trend or doing something for the sake of it - I do what I'm passionate about. Sometimes it's really, really hard work, and there's ups and downs, but the one thing I do is I'm very strategic. So for me, if it's not working, it's how do I pivot so that I can continue. I've worked on projects for years, and when I realized I would sign again just for money and it felt self-serving, I quit. That's not who I am. As long as I'm family first, I am spiritual, I put my faith first before everything else, and if I'm offered an opportunity and I feel like I'm only doing it because the money's good, it's just not who I am.

The best career advice I ever received was really life advice that came from a very wise woman, and it was to always remember that your word is what you have, is all you have. What you say you are going to do and willing to do, you have to keep your word, and if something changed, then you have to communicate. I got two things out of that advice that I use with business and life: I need to honor the things that I commit to, and I need to always be accountable for the things I commit to. That means instead of letting something fall to the side or not planning or forecasting, I have to communicate. If that means I can't do it anymore, then you just have to be accountable for that and speak up as soon as you know that you can't do it. That has shaped me in the last 20 years of my life. You gotta stand on your word. If you can't stand on your word, then how is somebody gonna trust you and how do you lead.

Family is most important to me - family first. I am a wife, I am a mother, and I'm a sister and I'm a daughter. It is always re-centering what I'm doing around family. For me, the work that I do should always make others better. It should be bigger than me, not self-serving. That's where my values lie and where my passion is. When I work on a project and get to see hundreds of people impacted, like the huge educator conference I put together this past weekend, it's always about the feedback. When I have teachers, administrators, and everyone coming up to me and they're satisfied, and I get to see how many people I impacted - whether that's students, young students, adults, or even seniors at the East Point library where I'm doing my AI literacy courses - that is it. My goal is, as long as I'm family first, I am spiritual, I put my faith first before everything else, and if I'm offered an opportunity and I feel like I'm only doing it because the money's good, it's just not who I am. I've worked on a project for 8 years building up a program, and when it became to the point where I felt like the community I was serving wasn't really being put in the forefront and staying meant I was staying because it was a great financial project to have on the books, I quit. This is not gonna work - it feels self-serving.