Trinity Felton

I would attribute all of my success to all of the trials and tribulations that I've gotten through. I had kind of a rough life when I was younger. My mom passed away when I was young, and my dad is a Marine veteran who dealt with his own PTSD struggles and alcoholism. I had gone to 4 high schools by the time I was a sophomore, so I had kind of a crazy life. But I ended up graduating as a junior and went right to college at a young age. When I look back, I almost wonder if God could have made it even harder on me, because I would have been even better right now. My dad always told me, you either already cried, you're crying right now, or you're gonna cry in the end. Basically, there's no way around it. If you want success and you want to really build a life for yourself, you just gotta get through it. I've gone through so many hurdles and so many different struggles, especially being biracial too, and as a woman. But every single thing that I went through, that is why I'm here, honestly.

The best career advice I've ever received is to always do it the right way the first time. That's probably the best advice I've ever received, because it has always applied to every single thing, no matter whether I was working at McDonald's, if I was working for Walmart, wherever I was at, I always kept that in the front of my mind. And that has never failed me.

In the finance industry, I would tell women to never allow gender to determine what they can and cannot do. A lot of times in finance, people want a white male to handle whatever, and that's just the stigma in it. I mean, it just is what it is, but I would tell women that you can do everything a man can do, and you can actually do it a lot better, because I've done it. And it'll always be that way. In finance, you know, it's a tough career. You deal with a lot of stuff head-on, you deal with trusts and estates, and power of attorney, and wills, and business, and all kinds of stuff. But if you just remain confident and you just know that you can do anything that the next person can do, you'll be okay. Just never doubt yourself. That's probably what I would say, never doubt yourself. Because you know who you are.

The biggest challenge I face is sexism. That's a pretty big one, that's major. Another challenge is that a lot of the people I work with probably have better foundations family-wise, and they maybe know more about that kind of world. For me, that was challenging, because I had to blend in still, even though I didn't maybe have the resources that they have. Having that learning curve was probably one of my biggest hurdles, because my demographic is different. Most people I work with are not diverse people, it's pretty much the same demographic for the most part. So that was probably a little tough, learning the ropes a little bit and finding my way. As far as opportunities, I've done a lot of presentations for financial wellness for youth. I think that's one of my biggest opportunities, just because I work with one of the local colleges around here pretty often. I go in there and talk to the students about whatever topic they want to talk about, like credit, how credit works, fraud prevention, and how to purchase a home. I would say that's probably one of my best opportunities I've had, just working with the youth in the area.

The values most important to me are integrity, so doing the right thing even when nobody's watching. Following up with people is also really important to me. And giving them good customer service, because that's just not a thing anymore, unfortunately.