Wanda Johnson

I attribute my success to being a mother of three at a young age and living in the hood, in urban areas. My kids' fathers were actively in their life, but they did not live in my household. My biggest fight was to not allow society and statistics to be a part of my kids' life and their journey. Everything that I did was so that they could see you can have anything you want, that you can be anything you want to be. As long as you have a desire to succeed, you will. It may not be in your time, but your time will come. So everything that I did up until getting my first master's degree was attributed to my children. I just wanted to be a light to my family and to my children, being as though they were boys.

The best career advice that I've received is that every no isn't necessarily a no. It just means that it's not your time, but your time will come. No's eventually turn to yes.

I tell people that want to be in my industry, no matter where, whatever you do, no matter what you do, make sure you can do it anywhere you go. If you limit yourself to one thing in one place, you're gonna always find yourself burnt out, because you've learned it in that place, well, in that space, and everything you've learned in that space is specifically for that place. So, whatever you do, make sure it's something that you can take anywhere you go. Align yourself with something you are passionate about, and no matter where you do it at, it's gonna be done with authenticity, and it's gonna be the best of you. Don't limit yourself, be limitless.

Now that I'm older and my children are adults, I still face challenges, because as a mom, you still have to let them go and spread their wings and fly. I realized them being younger, they needed my attention, but I didn't think once they got older, they would need more of my attention. So, the struggle is still trying to be that role model for your kids, even though they are adults now. The struggle now is how can I flip that a little bit, because what I thought I was doing by helping them, it kind of entitled them to something. So, I didn't see that coming. Professionally, my struggle is having all of these degrees and being limitless, where I have a degree in network, multimedia visual communication, MSIT, MBA, BSIT, and now I'm getting my doctorate. My problem now is how do I utilize all of these degrees in one role? How do I structure my resume? Because technically, I have 3 different resumes. One, I could do HR, one I could do IT, one I could do networking, one I could do graphic design. So I have all of these degrees, I have all of this knowledge and everything. What can I do? I've summed it up to say, no matter where I go, I can apply them all. Getting my doctoral degree, I really would like to be in an administrative position, a role in an organization where I can help them to streamline their diversity and inclusion policies to include different programs where employees have integral programs that keep them on balance when they feel like they're swaying. I really would like to be in a position where I could streamline integrity within organizations to help them build plans that not only benefit their customers, but also their employees, so that the baseline of the back end of the organization stays integral.

Values to me and my work is integrity. I stand for integrity. I try to live my life with integrity. It's been a theory that I applied to my life early on, only because I hate to be lied to, I hate to be disappointed, I hate to be deceived, I hate to be manipulated in any type of way that is all surrounded by integrity, and that is the lack thereof. So, I lead with the highest integrity, and I tend to close myself off from people that are not integrity, because that means if you'll lie to me in one perspective or one aspect, you'll lie to me about anything. And you'll not only lie to me about something big, but you'll lie to me about something small. In my professional life and in my work, I'm also a Christian radio show co-host, so we talk about that a lot. On this show, I have a segment called 'A Minute with Wanda,' and we are always just trying to pick topics that are around integrity, not necessarily right and wrong, or left and right, but what would you do in a specific situation. The mindset of an individual, when you ask them a question, pretty much tells you, point-blank, period, how they will handle a situation. But it all starts with integrity. I tell people, when you tell one lie, you gotta tell a thousand lies to cover that lie. If you just be honest and open about the situation, nobody's perfect. Nobody expects you to have all the answers. Nobody expects you to be able to present yourself the same way someone else did. If you just have integrity behind what you do, everything will align, and that's just how I live.