Pat Keenan, owner of the Tallulah Group marketing firm, led a roundtable discussion with the 2011 Black United Fund of Illinois (BUFI) Flame honorees recently in Chicago. The roundtable conversation gathered insight on leadership, career opportunities and power.
Pat Keenan: How do you define leadership?
Deborah O. Brown, NBC5
“Leadership means integrity, fairness, and confidence.”
Paula R. Jones, Hyde Park Bank and Trust
“A leader is more like a visionary…with your vision, you see things that are coming and you prepare for that and you inspire people to help you to move forward with your leadership. You bring others along; I use everybody around me and then I bring them with me.
Nakisha Hobbs, Village Leadership Academy
“I view a leader as a gatherer, someone who brings people together. Who can recognize the strengths and talents that other people have, and to bring those strengths and talents out of them. I also believe leaders have to be audacious; leaders are bold people, people who will take a stand on something when no one else is willing.”
Pat Keenan: Who is your mentor?
Eva M. Brown, Women’s Business Development Center
“Yasmine Bates Brown, she was the first African American president of Harris Bank, and every young African American woman who entered into the training program right after college, she takes her time to take you to lunch. [Brown would explain] that this is not traditionally where you would see an African American woman at the helm of a company, so I’ll show you how to get there, I’ll show you some of the mistakes that I’ve made and some of the people that I’ve met along the way, and what to do.
Also, Julie Reich, she’s our past city treasurer, and director of government relations, [taught me] how to balance everyone’s interest and still keep your integrity. You don’t have to say ‘yes’ to everyone, and sometimes you do have to say ‘no,’ but you can do it in a way that people will still respect you.
Naomi Davis, Blacks in Green
“My mom, who is my absolute shero. She was the president of the garden club; she was the president of the PTA, and founder of the alumni organization (we all went to HBCU schools). About her leadership, she didn’t care whether you liked her, but they knew that when Ms. Davis put her shoulder to the wheel it was going to get done, it was going to be done well and everyone was going to benefit from it. She stepped into the breach, she didn’t stop until she was finished, she spoke truth to power she didn’t care who liked it, and she got stuff done. She taught me everything I know.”
Pat Keenan: Some of you are on the corporate side, others are entrepreneurs. How do you see your opportunities existing today?
Eva M. Brown, Women’s Business Development Center
“Most of my background is in corporate, in the commercial banking group at Harris Bank. Most recently I transitioned into a nonprofit where I help entrepreneurs. In the financial services industry, Black women are really a hot commodity because there aren’t that many; there is not a big talent pool. I had a great experience, I have not had one complaint, and each opportunity is utilized to the fullest, getting exposure, getting mentors, getting additional training, I received seven power promotions within six years at a bank.”
Anita Andrews-Hutchinson, Village Leadership Academy
“Sometimes being on the entrepreneurial side, you just keep taking steps even if you’re not really sure that there’s ground there; but it magically appears just because you keep moving forward and you keep that audaciousness in your pursuit of whatever the goal is.
When I think about being an entrepreneur you’re led by passion, this is something that you’ve thought about, this is something you would do if you were paid or if you weren’t paid. And so for us, in early education, it’s a passion for us to reach every single child out there and make sure they have the quality education that they deserve.
Probably a similar thing as people in corporate America, you both have a passion for the thing that you do, it’s just that for some reason, we got the notion that we would start our own.”
Pat Keenan: The concept of succession, how do you think we do in our community in terms of succession? Are people embracing you as you come along and say, ‘come on in, one of these days you’re going to take this over?’
Nakisha Hobbs, Village Leadership Academy
“I was actually talking to Anita and a few of the teachers in our school last night and I was frustrated and sad and my exact words were, ‘I feel lonely.’ There are tons of black educators in the city of Chicago but somehow I feel that we are still on an island and we don’t have the kind of mentorship that I think that is important for us as black women educators in the city of Chicago.
There’s so much work to be done in our community and it’s overwhelming, we have 80 percent of what we need. I feel that we have a lot to do around succession.”
Keisha Watson, ComEd
“Frank M. Clark has done a lot for Black folks at ComEd and I’m living proof of that, and him and Mr. Hooker they definitely have a stable of us that they put in really solid positions of opportunity. And even though they will move on, we still have the opportunity and we’re helping people. An entrepreneurial spirit can’t be cultivated, really, if you don’t have that proper partnership from the corporate side.”
