Yolanda Okundaye

I attribute my success to my family and my support system. I consider a lot of people family - friends, teachers, and of course people who I share blood with. I wouldn't be where I am if not for my teachers over at New Mission High School who poured into me so much, not only me but my graduating class. I'm so very grateful for the teachers and administrators at New Mission High School. When I went to BC, I had Father Michael who poured into me a lot as well. In social work school, I had Dr. Bradley who poured into me, and in business school, I had Professor Issel who poured into me. Of course, my family members and my friends are always my backbone and my support. Regardless of what the situation looks like, they push me and will always tell me to be better than I was yesterday, so I appreciate all of these people for sure.

The best career advice I've received came from something I saw online from Nipsey Hussle and his friends. The quote basically goes, if you don't own it, it's not yours. You can take that however you want to take it, whether it's being an employee and you don't own the company, so you are unfortunately, on the basic level, disposable. But if you own something, it's so much easier for you to pour your passion into it, and it's something that no one can take away from you. That's a different level of contribution, a different level of stamping and making your stamp upon Earth. It's just a different spirit, a different spectrum. I'd say that's the biggest advice that I've gotten career-wise, because my aim and my goal is to become an entrepreneur and own something of my own.

I really do believe that as a woman in these spaces, you have to be bold. And it's not a boldness that just shows with your appearance, but it also has to be intelligent, and it has to be work ethic centered. Be bold with your intelligence and also your work ethic, because that is something that will always speak volumes for you before you even enter a room. It's easy to get caught up in everything else, but I definitely think if you are bold with your work ethic, I think that goes a very long way.

Within the retail and tech space, the biggest opportunities right now are really AI. I use AI every single day, but not the way I think people would think of using AI. A lot of it is being able to create assistance. There's something called Notebook LM that you can feed in up to like 50 documents. Rather than going online and browsing these documents wherever they're housed, you can just ask it a question like when was this document created and who was the person of contact, and you'll be able to pull it up in seconds, whereas you would be looking for like 30 minutes. So definitely AI is the biggest opportunity - AI not to replace people, but to make your work more efficient by creating shortcuts for you and just being a conduit to faster results. I think the strength areas within retail career-wise is that it's so flexible. It's such a place where anything can happen. For example, one of my associate directors started in merchandising, then he went to platforms working on partner home to create tools that support learning for our suppliers, and now he's back to doing merchandising but more in a technical role. It's super flexible when it comes to your function. You can have a multitude of roles and just be well-versed in different aspects of the general business that you're doing. I think that's the greatest thing about retail.

In my work, my values are threefold: communication, visibility, and decision making. I need to have open communication because I feel a lot less confused and convoluted that way. Visibility is always super helpful because even if there wasn't any communication, at least you have access to all the documents so you can be informed. And decision making really is more like input than just being the decision maker myself - it's being able to have input in decisions in general. Personally, my three values are definitely my relationship with God, which I think is my number one value in life. My second value is my relationship with my family and people that I consider family. And my third value is intellect, whether that is gaining education, whether that's becoming an entrepreneur, just being able to educate yourself and being an intellectual to get yourself from point A to point B regardless of whatever situation that you're in. Those are definitely my top three values personally.