Winefred Ross

I attribute my success to my family. My parents were married 50 years. My father was in the military and had gone to Vietnam for two tours. He came out and was a merchant marine seaman where he traveled the world. Because my father saw the world, he brought it back home to us in music and culture. So, we were able to experience cultures we had never experienced before through either their music or their food, and just simply his experiences there. We felt like we were right there with him. So, I contribute those things to my family, my father, and his father before him, and their fathers. It was just the way that we were raised.

The best career advice I ever received was to duplicate yourself. My brother was in business for years, and he was my business mentor. When I was in corporate, he gave me information on how to survive corporate. When I started my entrepreneurship, he was also a very sounding ear and advice giver for me. He was the one that told me to duplicate yourself and don't be afraid to duplicate yourself. When you do, you grow more. And he was right, that was true. He also told me to trust people to know what they know and refer to them as the reference. You don't have to know everything in every section of the world, but I should be able to trust a nurse to be a nurse and a psychiatrist to be a psychiatrist.

Define who you are so that no one defines you. And pay attention to what YOU are doing. When you start looking at what other people are doing, or what other people have, and what other people don't have, and comparing and all of that, you're wasting time and you're not paying attention to what you should be doing. If you pay attention to what you are doing, then you'll be able to see the opportunities clearly because you're looking at them. Sometimes we have to try a couple of times to get things right, and that's all of us, and that's okay.

The biggest challenge I've faced is finding the strong team. You can have these values, you can have the mission, but also understanding who is the right people to be in those positions. What I have done since then is practice the six needs of humans and understanding how to get the information that you need in order to make the decision if that is the correct team member, based on who these people truly are. Slowing down and focusing on the people has allowed me to understand who they are, invite the right ones on the team, and part company as friends with the others. As for opportunities, it's reaching the community, getting the right information, meeting the professionals, and knowing that none of this can be done alone, that we do have to come together.

The values most important to me in both my work and personal life are integrity, transparency, and compassion. These values go through both professional and personal aspects of my life.