Sheila Bernae Nealy

I would attribute my success to my parents. I grew up thinking that I was so restricted - you can go to church, you can volunteer, but looking back now, it was such a great foundation. Now that my parents have transitioned and I'm a seasoned adult, I know the foundation they were laying was for a reason. The structure carried over into my adulthood. I feel like if you do something from a child on up, it becomes embedded in you. It's hard to go against the grain. I attribute everything that I have done and accomplished to my parents, because they instilled in us the importance of education and the importance of work ethic. If you don't have that taught, or even have that as a passion, it's hard for you to embrace that. I see that a lot in some of the kids these days - they've been given things a lot, and maybe it's just because our generation felt like we're gonna try something different. But really, it has crippled the new generation coming up to where they think everybody's supposed to just give it to me. My parents taught me that if you're gonna ask for something, be able to put some leverage behind it. Give a legitimate reason why, because you need to know who you are and know the value that you bring. If you can't do that, then you're just setting yourself up and really hurting yourself, missing out on an opportunity that could help you become what you aspire to be.

One of my accounting professors suggested that I go to law school. He was a retired CFO, and he said if he could do it all over again, in conjunction with his MBA, he would have went to law school. He told me he saw the potential in me and said I should do that. He encouraged me to just take the LSAT, and I did. That advice really catapulted my career because getting my law degree gave me a better understanding of employment law and workers' compensation - understanding it all from a legal standpoint as well as looking at it through the lens of a business standpoint. It gave me a broad overview of business operations as a whole and how important human resources is to a business.

I would say, take your time, but be persistent. If this is what you want, stay with it, because there are moments where you're gonna feel like you're unseen. Just know you're very valuable and what you're doing.

The most important value to me is service and making an impact in this world by connecting with people - people helping people. That's where I am in my career, and one of the reasons why I work for a credit union is because that's their values: people helping people. I want to be a part of any organization that shares the same values I do. I'm not chasing a title anymore - I've already got there. I'm not chasing the salary anymore - I have that. I am about the service and what I can do to help make someone else's life better, because there's a lot of people hurting. Even those who have a smile on their face have something that they're battling alone, and they won't share that with you. So it's always important for us to show kindness to one another, because you never know whose life you're gonna change just by saying hello or letting them know that you see them.