Tiffany Brown

I would have to say my faith. I'm a believer in God, and everything stems from that - ethics, integrity, caring for people. My faith shows me to just keep moving, to not listen to people who are scared. I feel it inside of me that I need to try to do things, and opportunities just come to me because I had already done enough work and put it in the atmosphere. Your gift will make room for you. I didn't realize that my biggest commercial of my career is a health commercial where I was able to mix both my pharmacy background and acting. The Disney Marvel opportunity came because I take care of myself and had already put in the work. I never swallowed the pill of choosing one job - I never subscribed to that, even though there was a lot of pushback from everywhere. I had to lean on the people that had my best interests at heart because I'm clearly fearless, so I could not have people around me that were always saying that's too big of a dream.

The best career advice I received comes from my kindergarten teacher, Veronica Titus, who I'm still friends with to this day. She told me, 'When the student is ready, the teacher shall appear.' That works both ways. If I'm ahead of others and I see something different, that doesn't make me wrong - it just means I'm the teacher but the student wasn't ready yet. Everyone back then was telling me I was wrong to pursue multiple paths, but I was just ahead. On the other hand, I am a constant lifelong learner, so I'm always the student too. If someone brought an opportunity to me years ago and I wasn't ready, the student wasn't ready. Now I'm ready to soak up all of the knowledge that the teacher's ready to give me. So don't listen to everyone around you saying you're wrong - if you feel that strongly about it, you're just probably ahead, and it's okay, they're not ready.

I would say lean into the skills that you have already, naturally. Because then it's not work. If you're doing something that comes easy to you and that you love to do, I would start there. Lean into what makes you happy and you're naturally good at. See if you can make that a career first. Once you find out what's so special about you, you wouldn't want to be anyone else. Having this range means you never know who you will connect with and relate to. For example, I can tell young women that the reason I'm able to be an actor and not accept just any job is because I was a pharmacist first - I have money saved before, and I do not have to accept any job. So everything ties together.

Things have slowed down with DEI bans and different things - the world is constantly changing. The keynotes have slowed down because of this. The last keynote I did was maybe 2 years ago for 5th and 8th grade elementary school girls. But I'm seeing that people are asking when the TED Talk is coming out, because now I walk into rooms and this is a bigger billboard of what I've been doing. Maybe I do need to do a TED talk on how I was doing a 40-hour job and all of this in the background to build up to be able to leave full-time. I'm at the stage for collaboration now, meeting other influential women with similar mindsets and sharing more of my platform to a larger network.

I would have to say my faith. I'm a believer in God, and everything stems from that - ethics, integrity, caring for people. I'm in healthcare and entertainment, so caring for people is at the core of what I do. I know that there needs to be more joy and happiness in the world. Living through COVID, living through 9-11, living through all of these things that we have survived through, and being on the healthcare side, I hear people that are already ill on top of physical pain. So I know that there needs to be more joy and happiness. I'm starting with myself by living in more joy and happiness. If that's wanting to be a superhero when I was a kid, and now Disney Marvel asks if I want to be second to a superhero, yes. All of this ties into my motivational speaking and helping people find their uniqueness.