What does a typical day look like for you?
Well, the only thing that's typical is that I have a straight office job, so I do that Monday through Friday, but everything else is a wild card. What's going to happen when I get off work is almost never the same. I do have class on Wednesdays right now, I am addicted to starting clubs of which I have many, sometimes I write for an arts magazine, I’ve been putting together independent craft shows for about 10 years, and I’m involved in a lot of community projects. This year my friend and I launched our own events company. We used to run the St Louis Craft Mafia together, but we decided that it was it was time for people to graduate.Time to switch it up. Let's see,last weekend, weran a section of the St Louis World's fair of Heritage Festival in Forest Park.
Oh, wow!
We were subcontracted to run a portion of that. we spent the whole weekend there. I could be hiking. I do street outreach with the homeless. I've got a real passion for that. I'm going to LaunchCode, I'm in Codergirl.
Nice!
Yeah! I'm on the UX track and I feel like I found my tribe. I love it so much! So much! I have my undergrad in psych and my master's in nonprofit management and it's the most perfect blend of all the things that I love. I'm a huge believer in collaboration and community, and UX is all about that. I get to interview people and do psych type tests.
In your journey, when did you know that you can use your psych major in the career that you're using?
I work with students now, and I've always been in some sort of public-facing job where knowing something about people is useful. I think that my strength is I'm pretty good at reading people, and I have a lot of empathy. This came with the street outreach in particular, and with using students. Just with doing crafts shows, planning events, and collaborating with people - [I've learned to have empathy]. I do a lot of one off community projects. [One of which]is is STL Food School where I teach low income kids how to cook.
Wow!
I've done one installation of that. That project will evolve as I have time because I think food insecurity is criminal, right?
Yeah, it's at the core of basic living.
Knowing how to cook just a little tiny bit can totally change your life. Our first lesson was breakfast. For example, if you have food stamps and the only thing you can buy is from the gas station, what can you make? I taught the kids how to make a bunch of different things with eggs. It's cheap. You don't have to have a real grocery store to go and get that. So you see where I'm going - no day is the same. I've always got something cooking. I like a full plate.
I think that's great because some people shy away, but I think shying away doesn't allow us to grow.
I love community. I really believe that if you want a strong community you have to participate. It's easy to sit on the sidelines and be like, "Well that stinks," and I don't like that. My perspective is that if you want something better, build it. Be a part of the solution.
Yup!
One of the things I got involved in most recently by accident is called Buy Nothing. I opened a local chapter on Facebook. It’s hyper-local gift economy for people in my area. They post things that they don't want or need anymore and people wish for things that they want or need it's a totally free gift exchange. There's no trading, no bartering, no exchange of money and that helps build community among neighbors.I've met so many amazing people.
Nice!
I actually met someone who's a really awesome in the UX community because she gifted me something in the Buy Nothing group before I had my first Codergirl class.
That's so awesome!
Isn't that crazy? I was in my first class, they said her name, and I thought "Wait a minute, there can only be so many people with that name.:" I sent her a text and asked, "Is that you?" And she's said, "Sure is!" I just think it's amazing, and I love the idea of lifting each other up, supporting each other, and I think that we're better together.
You're mentioning tribe and community. Is there any mentor that you've had, or group of mentors, that have allowed you to be where you are today?
Oh, absolutely! think I've been very fortunate to have some really amazing people in my life who have supported, and believed in me when I didn't. When I first went back to school: I was a single mom, I had a GED, and a couple college classes. I had come off a not-so-great marriage, and my self-esteem was not at its highest at all. I went into the office [at UMSL] and ran into a woman named Dr. Sheilah Clarke-Ekong . She was the interim-director of the night school at UMSL at that time and that was, oh my gosh, almost 20 years ago. She's one of the most amazing people I've ever met. She earned her PhD in Cultural Anthropology. She got it when she was 40 raising kids on her own, plus a nephew. She would tell me every time I didn't want to go to class, "If I can do it, you can do it. Just keep showing up. Just keep going." In terms of education and believing in myself, I thought everything was stacked against her, and if she can do it -- I could do it. She was really generous with her time and her wisdom. Also, I had a really good friend that I worked with at my old job, who's since passed away, who was very different from Dr. E. But, she just was one of those people, if she loved you, she told you. She was fearless with her affection, and that was something I really needed. She would say to me, "Kid, you're smart. You can do it." She taught me what a 401k was, you know, just life stuff. She also loved to sing, tell terrible jokes, and play Scrabble. We had a really good time, but the life lessons never quit.
Being human, but still being there to teach you along the way as well.
Yeah. She was no stranger to the struggle either. I think knowing people who overcome significant adversity, and had been successful in their own paths [helped me]. I think they taught me to take risks and to believe in myself. I've been really fortunate. Another woman I worked with, passed away a couple years ago,, she was very much the same way. No shortage of love and no shortage of hugs
And we need it, too! You mentioned risks: going into your career was there ever a pivot point that was risky that you felt like you had to take in order to get to where you wanted, if that makes sense?
I think a couple of times. When I first went back to school - I thought, "Oh my god, 120 hours of college classes." It just seemed huge. And the money sounded scary, but I also knew that my chances of having a job where I could fully support myself and my daughter were slim if I didn't take that risk. And there were people along the way who urged me to advocate for myself to say, "Hey, why don't you let me try that?" My first career job, I was there for 10 years. In that 10 years I was promoted three times and I got to do all kinds of different things Lots of things that were really exciting that I never thought that I could do or was capable of. And I had a bossI still talk to who saw something in me that I didn't. He was a programmer, and he would let me do little programmer tasks. He would say, "Hey, I think you could do this. Why don't you give it a try?" I screwed up a few times, but he still wanted me to keep trying. I think to have people in your life who give you the freedom to make mistakes, try again, and not give up on you - it's just huge because people are messy. Nobody's a robot. Nobody's going to do it perfect.
Yeah, definitely! And I think people being forgiving, and allow me another at bat - that's what's super helpful for me.
Yeah, and a friend of mine taught me if you mess something up, don't wait for somebody to find out - go tell them. That was a hard lesson to learn because the way that I grew up: you don't tell anybody you mess up, you hope they don't find out because there's going to be hell to pay.
Right!
Learning how to undo that unhealthy behavior took some time. Now I'm like, "I messed up. I don't expect you to clean it up. I will clean it up as quickly as possible, to the best of my ability and I'll try really hard not to do it again. I hope to, especially with my daughter, to set an example for her in that way. People are messy, we make mistakes. Sometimes the things that we need to learn the most, we learn from our mistakes and not from our successes. I think that was important to learn. Sometimes you learn more from falling down.
Exactly, yeah. With that said: what type of legacy would you like to leave?
I hope that people will reflect, and think, that I helped other people and I was kind. I think in the end that's all that really, really matters. How much is in your bank account or how many fancy/expensive things you own - that doesn't really matter. You can't take that stuff with you. What matters to me are the relationships and the connections, you know? That goes back to that belief in community. Those are the things that really matter the most out of anything else in the world. That's part of what is so important to me about street outreach. I think about how lonely that can be to be overlooked and disregarded. A lot of folks never had a chance to begin with. That's really hard. The people that I know who are involved - we try to be community for them and be family for them where we can.
How did you get to this intense desire to have a strong community. You seem to have a great sense of, "I do well when we do well." How did that occur for you?
I think a little bit family, a little bit life experience. My mom was very strong with the idea that diversity is important, and that you judge people by their character. Not where they come from, not what they look like, not what kind of clothes they have, not what color somebody is, or what neighborhood they grew up - that's not the important stuff. It's the quality of character that you're looking for. That got drilled into me early, and she demonstrated it. I don't know that she necessarily had a particularly ethnically diverse group of friends, but when I was growing up - her two best friends were a lesbian couple who lived below us. In the eighties, that was pretty racy stuff. They were very kind to me, so the idea that somebody would not like them because they loved each other just didn't make any sense to me. I remember her talking about experiencing segregation when she was growing up and how she always felt disturbed by it. She had written letters to her mayor in opposition. She was really upset and bothered by it even as a child, even when everybody around her was saying it was okay. I think that part came from there. My family is really scattered, and not very close. That desire to build community for myself is pretty strong. I don't have much in the way of family that I'm connected to, so community is probably more important to me than maybe it is to somebody who's got a big family and a bunch of people to lean on. I use to have this neighbor, and I loved her so much. She was so pretty. She was the Auntie, and they called her BaeBae because she was the family babysitter.
Yup.
Right. There was always, at any given time, there's five kids over there. She babysat everybody's kids. All nieces and nephews. And I was always so jealous. I thought, "Oh, that must be nice to have such a big family." And I know that big families also have their trials and tribulations - they get on each other's nerves and all that stuff. But, they knew they had each other's back. As I got older, even if I wanted that with my family, they all live out of state. My people aren't here. My husband, mom, and my daughter are my only relatives in Missouri. If I want big family here, I'm going to have to make it.
Speaking of your childhood, was creativity a part of your childhood in anyway?
Huge! When I was a kid, my mom was a full-time oil painter. She used to teach art classes in our finished basement. If I close my eyes and think about it for maybe two or three seconds - I can conjure up the scent of turpentine because that's what you clean brushes with when you're an oil painter. I had a lot of questions when I was kid. A whole lot. I don't think they knew about ADHD back then, so I drove my mom slightly crazy with my constant inquiry. She said, "You had some really deep questions for a toddler." I had asked things like, "Does God exist?"
Heavy hitter!
I was very philosophical for a little person. It was very busy up there -- still is. By dinner, she was exhausted. So there were a lot of art projects because that would distract me long enough for her to catch her breath and it was also a way for us to bond together. We had this big, huge roll of newspaper print in the basement, and - I think this is hilarious now because she would tell me to go down and trace myself - essentially I would draw crime scene drawings of myself. I must've done it a thousand times. It was a favorite art project.
(laughs)
Yeah, she would say, "Go to the basement and trace yourself."
What is your current album on repeat?
Okay, this is embarrassing, but I can't remember the last time I had an album on repeat.
Nice! This is interesting actually. I like it. It's different.
Yeah, I'm in the car and almost always listening to podcasts. I love true crime, and I'm listening to a podcast series called "Small Town Dicks". Kind of a cheesy name, but it's all true crime stories from small towns all over the US. It's two twin brothers who are detectives and it's really interesting to hear from a detective's perspective. I mean I enjoy music. I do, butI also have a hearing impairment.
Really?
Music is different for me than it is for other people. If I really want to get my cleaning on - I bust out my reggae. It keeps a, you know...
(laughs) Uh huh, a little groove going.
There you go, "groove going." Feel like it's hard not to shake your booty. You can work it while you're dusting, you know? (laughs). I love the Beatles, the Beastie Boys, but I don't think I have bought a new CD since 1990 (laughs). Yeah, a really long time, but I do enjoy music. I just don't keep up.
That's pretty cool.
I want to make sure I give a shout-out to my friend Andrew who did LaunchCode. I met him, and some other folks, through Reddit maybe 5 years ago. He loved LaunchCode! He said, "You should do Codegirl You'll love it!" He was super encouraging.