Dr. Rashonda Harris, MBA, CRA

I attribute my success to my grandmother who raised me. Her mantra was, I'll show you better than I can tell you. A lot of what I have always done has been showing people better than I can tell them based off of who they perceive me to be. People make snap judgments when they see you physically. I am a curvy, Black woman who looks youthful. They often think my daughters and I are sisters, and so I'm often judged by that, rather than my intellect and what I bring. And so, many times, once I start talking, it's like, oh, I have everybody's attention, because they didn't expect that.

The best piece of advice I got, and you know what's so funny? Throughout my career, I've gotten advice that has been condescending, but it's always turned into something very powerful for me, like endearment. This was from somebody who I actually asked for a rate promotion, and they told me I wasn't ready yet. But they followed it with this: A star is a star. No matter what environment, the star is the star. And so, the star may get dirty, and the star may look dim, but when you get close to it, or even if you don't get close to it, the star will show you who it is by how bright it shines.

I would tell them, do it. I'm a big advocate of being the first to do something. And what I mean by that is, let's not just talk about the problem. What are we going to do about it? You know, it only takes one person to be the change that you seek, and sometimes that person is you.

Right now, in my industry, the biggest challenge we have is the new administration's understanding of research administration. I don't mean that in any way to be shady or offensive. I mean that they don't truly understand the impact and the moving pieces of what research administration is. Research administration is the support for those who do the research. We support them, we keep them out of jail, we make sure that their project runs well, we hire who they need, we get their supplies, we get their collaboration agreements together. We do all of those things, and it's done behind the scenes, so it's not very transparent as what the benefit we give is. And so, because of that, we're being impacted by budget cuts, funding cuts. Research administration has taken a quiet blow for the country that we are going to probably have to recover from for the next 20 years. But our biggest opportunity is to create visibility where there has not been. That's actually one of the things that I've been doing with my professional development platform. My mantra is, the work that no one sees. Because that's the thing, people don't see us do the work, and so it's built for the work that no one sees, but also designed for the institutions that carry it. So we need to create that visibility so they understand who's doing the work.

In my life and work life, the biggest value that I say is transparency. I am a straight shooter. I'm a girl from South Philly, and I don't know any other way than to give it to you straight. Now, I've gotten much better with giving it to you straight. I'm much more polished. But I appreciate being direct, and so if you're direct with me, you're going to go very far, because I don't like the guesswork, but I'm also very intuitive, so I can navigate it. But for me, you know, being a person of your word, transparency. Also, being open-minded in this climate right now. I think we have a lot of people who don't understand what it means to be diverse. And when I say diverse, I mean in thought, in mind, in spirit, and in body. I don't judge anyone, because I too can be judged, and I'm not perfect. So I like to be open-minded, and there are many levels of emotional intelligence. And that comes with the diverse thinking, and being able to understand that emotional intelligence also means cultural intelligence, situational intelligence, you know, things like that.