Valerie Mason Mason Cunningham

I believe it started with my parents - the foundation of my success, because they instilled in me that learning is something that nobody can take away. So that knowledge base, staying curious, staying engaged, staying involved, and not allowing people to tarnish your values is so important. Now, your values may shift and grow, but make sure that you have anchored-in values. And so I would say that's what's been part of my success. And then also, I've had the very fortunate opportunities of mentorship, sponsorship, and allyship supporting me all along the way. I stay curious. I'm a hyperachiever, I am a stickler, but I do like to learn, and so I'm always curious and always engaged. And I also like giving back. That's part of what my parents instilled in me, that to whom much is given, much is expected. And so that stewardship is always there as well.

One of the best pieces of advice to me was always stay grounded on what you believe in. And when things start to get shaky, that's the place you go to for your anchor. And then be open for change, because the only constant in life is change. And when you do that, you'll go through it as if you have an armor around you protecting you. But you will fall, but you just have to get back up. Those are kind of a bunch of people's thoughts that came to me, that if I had to pull it all together, those would be the key nuggets that really resonated with me.

I would give them this advice: Stay true to yourself. And first of all, make sure you know who you are. And by doing that, you will find those communities that not only embrace you and give you everything that you want, but they challenge you because they love you. Don't get so enamored with all these shiny objects that are out there. You have a whole life ahead of you if you work it right. And by doing that, you don't want to have everything right now. You want to go through some experiences, and experiences do matter. There are times when you may feel like this opportunity is a sideways opportunity. It may be, but what is it that you don't have that that experience is going to bring to you? And sometimes you can't see that right away, but as you go through and get there, you look back and go, oh, now I see. So patience, understanding who you are and staying with your values is so important, and allow yourself the openness to continue to learn.

The biggest challenge is the fact that the workplace has five and sometimes six generations, and those generations come from a different set of experiences and sets of cloth, and nobody understands how to leverage all of what each of those generations bring. One of the challenges is to really help the boards and the senior teams understand inclusive leadership - and I don't mean the letters that everybody's all freaked out about these days, DEI, but what I am talking about is really how do you harness this talent that you already made an investment in and really support this new way of thinking. It's really not a hierarchy in the business anymore, it's really an ecosystem. Those are challenges right now because you have these five generations, and you have the more seasoned leaders who have a certain way that they believe and they've been successful in, that they think is going to be the same way that they need to do things. And you have the next generations coming up saying, listen, this is not how it works. We have so much information that's coming at us, we need to take a pause sometimes and really make sure we're keeping our wellness in place. AI has not advanced those challenges, but in some cases it has, because people believe that it's just going to take over, but you still need human discernment because AI doesn't think like a human. And so that intervention has to be there. There is no playbook because these are times that we've not been through before. However, if you go back to the basics, which is stop, pause, think, stay focused on your mission, and be able to have discernment of that inclusion of thoughts and ideas, then you will start to move ahead of the rest of the pack.

Faith, family, and my foundation for giving back - those are three of my values. And if you add two more, it's always about trust and respect. Those are some of the secrets to my success.