Tamekia Rhodes

I attribute my success to the impact I make in the community and within my company through servant leadership. What I'm most grateful for is the piece of my leadership that helps give back, not only within my company but outside of it. The mentorship I've received has been crucial - from my late mentor Reggie Butler who taught me the three pillars of life (grace, grit, and gratitude), all the way up to my CEO Ed Bastian. These mentors really gave me the avenue and the drive I needed within my career. I also believe in the three guiding pillars of life: leading with kindness and giving yourself grace for not knowing everything, gratitude for thanking others who helped you get there and changing your lens on how you view life, and grit, which means never quitting and never giving up. If there may be a no, keep going because there is a yes. It's not about where you start, it's about where you want to go.

The best career advice I ever received was to never give up, to keep going, and that any no that you receive is also a yes. If you fail, don't look at that as failing - you look at the simple fact that you can fly. I'm a firm believer that the sky's the limit, and with determination, you can keep climbing and achieve remarkable success.

The advice that I would give them is come in and be ready to make a change. One of my favorite quotes that I like to say is, what if I fail? Oh, but darling, what if you fly? I'm a firm believer that the sky's the limit, and with determination, you can keep climbing and achieve remarkable success. So keep climbing, keep going, and don't give up. A lot of things with women is that we don't think how men think. If we see a job application and we see the criteria, and as a woman, we see one thing on there that we don't have, we may not apply. But men, they will still apply regardless. They may only have one thing that the job says that they have and 20 other things they don't, but they will still apply. Women, we don't think that way, and so we have to get out there and put ourselves out there and just go for it.

The biggest challenges are getting others to see things from your perspective. In my field, I'm in a field with majority men. When you are a woman in your field, a lot of times men do not want to hear what you have to say, and they will try to dominate the conversation, dominate the room. The challenge is standing your ground and ensuring that you get your point across firmly and not backing down if it's something that you really know needs to take place. I would say that piece there would be kind of challenging for myself sometimes, but a lot of times things have now smoothed out.

What's most important to me in my work and professional life are what I call the three pillars of life, which I learned from my late mentor, Reggie Butler. These are grace, grit, and gratitude. When you look at grace, you're thinking about who do I need to give grace to in life that helped me to get where I'm going, and you have to start with giving yourself grace because you won't always have all the answers, but you give yourself grace to know, okay, I may not have it here, but I know that I will. Gratitude is who do I need to thank along the way to help me to get where I'm going in life - it's about giving thanks to others who helped you get there for not giving up on you, and just thanking for where it is that you get there, as far as changing your lens on how you view life. And grit is pretty much never quitting, never giving up. If there may be a no, but keep going because there is a yes. I also believe in leading with kindness as the first piece.