Stephanie Bassette

I had good parenting. I think my parents were the best, and although my father is no longer with us anymore, those values are still here with me, along with my mother. So I say that my upbringing was the key part, along with my faith. That caused me to be who I am today. I'm not quite where I want to be, but I'm not where I was.

The best advice came from my father and mother when I first started working. As an African-American woman, we have a lot of limits. So, the best advice was not to settle on just one career, but to diversify myself into many different buckets, so that if anything happened, I would be able to have opportunities open up based on the things I've done in my life. And thankfully, I've done just that. I worked retail sales, worked diamond sales, I've done banking, I was a police officer for a spell, I worked in banking for over 10 years, now this hospital position for over 3, and I worked at a university for 7. So I say to anyone that you never put all your eggs in one basket. Make sure that you can do more than one thing.

This is gonna sound kind of chauvinistic, but don't depend on a man to get you through anywhere. Actually be dependent upon your faith. You know, I pray on everything, and that that I pray on works. I say to people, females, all the time, is always make sure you have skills. Continue your education. Don't be scared because of your age. There were people that were sitting in college classes I was in at University of Delaware years ago, and one woman was in her 70s, still achieving her degrees, and she had no regrets. She was just there. So I say to my women friends, my sisters, to always be willing to further your education, follow your dreams, let nothing stop you from doing what you want to do, and just keep pushing. You know, there's a whole world in front of us, and age should never stop us.

I think the biggest challenge is that you have people that are threatened by someone that has education. When I mentioned that I have a master's degree and I'm working on a doctorate, to some people that's a threat. It's not considered as something that could be a win-win situation, not just for myself, but for those who are around me, because I tend to share my gifts, because we're supposed to. I think people don't understand that there's no threat in surrounding yourself with people who have knowledge. We're supposed to sit around people who have like-mindedness. That's how Christianity and faith works. And when that like-mindedness comes about education, if you have a desire to further your career, a desire to learn more, you want to be around people who know. What I've met with, especially at the hospital and even at the university I worked with, is young ladies who saw competition, or should I say, threats with people who have more knowledge than them. They saw it as a way to be negative to the person who has knowledge. I had to fight and go beyond that person to be able to make her understand that I'm not a threat. I just want to do my job, I want to learn what you know, I want you to learn what I know, so that we can make a success story out of all of it, but don't see me as a threat. I think the biggest challenge sometimes is other females. We tend to block each other's voice instead of just encouraging it.

I'd say integrity and fortitude are most important. I think that sometimes things get rough, and people tend to run. I say instead of running, stay and just figure out ways to make things work. Hopefully your mind will be a lot more flexible. Be honest with what things you're able to do versus some of the things that you may need to learn. Always be willing to learn. But I think integrity is one of the major ones, because I think sometimes people forget that our word is our bond, and if you're going to do something, you need to do it.