Nina Hodge is the the owner of the Above and Beyond Learning Childcare Center and a Detroit honoree of rolling out‘s Sisters with Superpowers initiative. As a recent alumna of the Goldman Sachs investment banking program, Hodge was educated on a new skill set that taught her more about business leadership and financial tools.
She opened up about the importance of investing in financial and mental health.
How has the Goldman Sachs program prepared you for your next act?
It’s helped me regarding negotiation because if you accept anything, you’re going to get anything. People are going to have a price and then you need to know your bottom line, what you can afford, and what you can do at the same time. The negotiation piece was very instrumental, and also my leadership style because a lot of times we can take a leadership style of African American women [as] being bossy and aggressive. However, it’s about passion, [and being] driven. Once you know your leadership style, you can always figure out [how to] use it positively, instead of people sharing how negative our leadership style can be.
Why is investing important for the future?
Whether it’s financial, whether it’s your health or wellness, we always got to make sure that we invest in our future because I look at it like even employees that work for me, we don’t want to be like cosmetologists. No disrespect, but [they] stand on [their] feet all day long and we didn’t save and invest. There is going to have to be an end goal for all this. It’s important to put pennies, dollars, and whatever to the side to save because we don’t want to do this all the time. We want to be on the beaches, drink some wine, or something like that. For our health and wellness, you always want to invest in it. Go take some time off and get your mental health together. Go get a massage, go take care of yourself, and take care of us. We do so much in this field that I do, whether we are teachers, we become the social worker, the mom, the grandma, and just a lot of stuff. You have to make [an] investment in yourself as well. Financially but our health and wellness too. That’s so important.
