Good afternoon. I'm Shalia Ford and I serve as the leadership program director at FOCUS Saint Louis. At FOCUS Saint Louis, we educate leaders, connect leaders, and we convene the important conversations in our region. Today, we're recording this podcast live at the Missouri Athletic Club. And my guest today is Wendi Richardson. Hello, Wendi. Hello. Good afternoon, Shalia. Thank you for accepting the invitation to come in and have a conversation and for us to learn more about you.
Well, thank you for inviting me. I was saying before we began recording. There is nothing that I would not do for you. Yemi and the team at FOCUS Saint Louis. Because what you do for our region every single day is critical. Thank you. I appreciate that. Absolutely. So here's where I want to start. I'm going to ask the hardest question, and then I promise it will get easier. Oh boy. Tell us who Wendi is. Okay. Wendi is a retired. Oh yay. We're going to get to that. Executive from MasterCard.
After working at MasterCard for 25 years and in banking prior to MasterCard and at MasterCard, I worked a variety of different roles. I am thrilled to now be taking the time out with friends, family, traveling. And I my most enjoyable thing that I'm doing right now is volunteerism. One of the things that leadership Saint Louis through FOCUS taught me the how, the importance of giving back to our community. So I am working with the United Way. Shout out to Michelle Tucker and the team there.
I'm on the board of the Urban League. Shout out to Michael McMillan and their whole team. And again, anything for Shalia and for Yemi at FOCUS. Thank you. Retired. I'm going to mix it up a little bit. You have a 25 year career at the same organization. First, I want you to tell me about lessons learned on your journey. And then the next question may be, depending on how where this goes is when did you know it was time to retire?
Let's start with lessons learned, because 25 years is almost unheard of these days, right? When you think about career and we think about I even think about the leaders that are coming through our programs in particular, young professionals, 25 years long time. Yes. Unlike our parents these days, you do find people kind of bounce from organization to organization and I think that is absolutely fine. I was blessed to have found an organization that was a right fit for
me. I was able to go from different roles there at MasterCard, some that were fabulous, some not so fabulous. I always feel like we can endure, even when you're working in a role that you don't necessarily feel is the right one for you. But those years flew by, Shalia. They really did. The 25 is just is amazing. It's almost like I blinked when I woke up and it's like, my gosh, where did all the time go? And through that journey, there was so many lessons learned.
I would say the biggest lessons were A, to know that we're always a work in progress. We're never going to be perfect. We're always going to make mistakes. And we learned through those mistakes and it's okay. We can keep on rolling through all of those things. Ask for help.
Sometimes I believe that there's this trope of this strong black woman and we're, you know, I can handle anything and I can do it all and every now and then we just need a little help from our friends and don't hesitate to reach out and to ask for help because it's so important.
And then one other big thing, and you and I have talked about this before is making sure that all throughout the way, since we're growing and evolving and changing, that we're getting the feedback that we need in order to make sure we're as effective as possible. Okay. So I want to go with feedback before I go with how did you come to the decision to know now is the time to retire? Feedback is something that sometimes is hard to give and hard to receive.
What would you share as pointers to one give constructive, effective feedback and then to the person on the receiving end? What do you need to do or how do you need to be prepared to receive feedback that may or may not be what you choose to act upon? But how do you receive and give feedback? Tell us a little bit about that. As leaders, it's our obligation to give feedback to those people who are part of our team, and it's always designed to make them better. We all have our strengths.
We all have our opportunities for growth. And so as a leader, when I see someone who may be struggling or when I see something that I think could be perhaps tweaked, adjusted, made better, again, I want to make sure that I'm sharing that with the people who are part of my team. And you share those things in a way where you show them you care.
And I think we've all receive feedback throughout our lives and throughout our careers, and we know the feedback that's coming from a genuine place and a good place and perhaps some other feedback, because as you mentioned, as a receiver of feedback, there are times and it may hurt or it may not feel so great, but it's so important that we understand. And where is the source of that feedback? Is this something that perhaps other people may see or believe in?
Perhaps it's a blind spot for me and how can I grow better? And if it's okay, I'll share one quick story. Yes, Shalia and I go way back. She knows that I like to tell stories. One of my favorite stories is from a really great book by Carla Harris. Expect to win. Yes. And Carla Harris is a bad girl. she is sharp. She is driven. In her book, she talks a little bit about how she worked at a Wall Street investment firm. And in that firm, she was known as a star. She's somebody who closed deals.
She delivered. She was someone you can count on. And so she really rose through the ranks and she climbed what she called the corporate monkey bars. It wasn't a ladder straight up. You had to make lateral moves. And every now and then, we may have to take a step back in order to broaden our learning and our understanding in order to move forward.
So throughout her career, there was one time when she saw an executive position someone was about to retire, and Carla wanted that job so what Carla did, She went and she talked to a lot of her supporters, her mentors, her sponsors, people who she knew in the organization would have an impact on who fill that role.
So what's interesting is the very first person that she went to, she brought in some recent wins and she walked through the wins and walked through the great things that she had been able to accomplish. And finally she said, I know that you will have some input in that new position, and I would love it if you'd put my name on the table for that. He looked her right in the eye, he folded his arms, and he sat back and he said, No,.
Carla, I think you are driven and fabulous and an asset to this organization, but I don't think you're tough enough for that role. The person who takes that job has to be willing to make some really tough calls. And while I think you are super at what you do for us today, I just don't think you're tough enough for that. So Carla had a choice, right? She could take that feedback as a gift and she could make sure that if he felt that way. Do others feel that way?
And what do I need to do in order to change and evolve my brand? So one of the things she did is she went and she talked to one of her female mentors. And I think we're sometimes a little more intuitive and can share more insight. So this particular mentor said to her, I think I know why he said that. Let me tell you what I see you doing sometimes. You'll be in meetings and you'll say, I'm sorry, but I disagree. Stop apologizing. Right. We pay you to have an opinion here.
And when you have an opinion, put it on the table and do not apologize for having that opinion. I want you to start saying the word no. Sometimes that's simply the answer and no is a complete sentence. You can feel free to follow up and explain your reasons why, but get comfortable with saying the word no. She shared with her. It's so important to think about getting rid of verbal graffiti, the uhhs, the umms, the likes. You knows that we litter into our speech every day.
Because when you use that, Carla, this is what her mentor was telling her. It waters down your message. And when you say something, I want your message to be clear, concise and powerful. The last thing that Carla did on this journey is she began to plant seeds. She would see a colleague in the hallway, and let's call him Joe. And Joe would say, Hey, now that Shalia is a part of your team, she loves being a part of your team. You're getting some really great things done.
Carla would respond by saying, That's great. I'm glad Shalia’s happy. But please know it's not easy being a part of my team. I'm tough. I expect a lot of the people who work for me and let me tell you, they deliver. And it's through consistency. And over time, she evolved her brand to someone who was much more tough. So that feedback is so important for the giver and for the receiver. Thank you. And I love the story and I'm familiar with Carla Harris.
I probably have that book on my bookshelf and I will go back and skim through some pages and suck in some more of that wisdom because I think it's so important for our message to be concise and clear and powerful. And when you know what you want, being willing to one, ask for it. But two to receive any feedback that might come with that ask. So thank you for sharing that. That's a good one. I love it.
One of the things I love about that book is at the end of every chapter you'll see a string of pearls, and she always talks about Carla’s pearls of wisdom. So I do. From time to time, I'll go back and thumb through to say, I may need to gather a few additional pearls today. Exactly. Exactly. I love that. I love that. The next question. So I'm going to go back to how did you come to the decision that it was time to retire?
Was it always in part of your plan or was there something else happening at the company where you said, the writing on the wall tells me now is my time? How did you know that? It was such a tough decision and my husband and I had planned my husband, Chris and I had planned for years, we thought and we worked with our financial advisor and wealth manager to say we want to retire at this particular age. That particular age came and went and we kept working.
And so we were blessed from that perspective. And what wound up happening is I was so enjoying what I was working on at MasterCard, but I think it was a combination of I saw the writing on the wall. Things were changing a bit within the organization.
I felt like I had fulfilled some things that were really important to me and I wanted to go out on a high, and I think about, you know, Michael Jordan and some of these others who, when you retire, you want to walk away and hopefully leave a legacy that's a really positive and a really great legacy. The last thing that I was able to accomplish while I was there is I worked with a program called Access Point and again, shout out to the Doherty team who run access point.
But one of the things that was really nice is with MasterCard, in our support, we were able to hire on lots of wonderful new apprentices into the organization. What's so interesting is many people here in the St. Louis area know that MasterCard is all the way out in O'Fallon, so it's a nice little drive from where we are today in the heart of the city.
And so a lot of the young people who were part of the program and who worked really hard to be software engineers were saying, I’d love to work for MasterCard, but how in the world am I going to get all the way out there? There's no public transportation, the subway or the train, our Metro stops right at the airport, so we were able to work with Uber. Uber was able to give one full year of rides to our interns. That’s amazing. I would tell you, it warms my heart every time I think about that.
It's a blip on the radar for our friends at Uber. But it was a wonderful gesture to say we're committed to making sure that we are giving opportunities to those who need opportunities. And hopefully through this effort, we're closing that wealth gap and making sure that we're giving income into areas that may have been previously underserved. Wow. Congratulations. The impact of that accomplishment on the lives of those that participate in that program and perhaps their families is huge.
And what I do know is that when I learned that you retired, it was on a post, I think that you gave or some or you were responding to someone who was saying, you know, congratulations, happy retirement. And as I read through the comments, you know, I was like, let me read one or two. And I actually found myself kind of scrolling down.
There was a few consistent things that people appreciated you and your leadership style and that even if they didn't know you well, they knew you enough that you had the reputation of building and developing other leaders. And I was like, oh my gosh, how does someone do that? What's your philosophy?
So tell me a little bit about how you developed other leaders in your role, maybe those that were your direct reports or maybe others, because it seemed like there was a lot of others who maybe were not on your team but benefited from your leadership influence at the organization. So tell me, like, what is your philosophy or what helped you become the leader that you are?
I will tell you, it was so many people before me and in what I always feel like is there was so many people who enabled us to sit right here at the Missouri Athletic Club. Exactly. And we owe it to those who came before us and had a rough road. And we had a rough road. And so now we have to pave that road for those who are coming behind us.
I always feel like, again, we have to make sure that we're mindful and thoughtful of again, all of the things that have been come before us that enabled us to be where we are, to walk into the places that we can walk into today. So I wanted to make sure that again, my legacy was one where people could come to me if they needed me. I could try to help out as much as I could. And the last thing I'll share with you and I think you and I have talked about this before.
One way that I try my best to live my life is it's John 16:33 and the Scripture says Be ye of a cheerful mind and I'm sure I am misquoting it, but in here Jesus is talking to his disciples and he said, For I have overcome the world and we are all going to go through trials and tribulations and hardships and rough times. We're going to have bad things that come our way.
It is simply a part of life, how we manage and how we bounce back and how we make sure that we're finding ways to be our best selves through the storm. I think that's the measure of who we are. And so I try to make sure I share that with others. So that's a kind of a something that grounds me. Okay. Thank you. I'm just thinking like the impacts when we're thoughtful and intentional about how other people experience us, and sometimes it's because we're mindful of that.
Other times it's because of who's we are. Yeah. And that shines through. That shines through. Definitely. Definitely. One of the things I will tell you, Shalia, that I love about you is that point right there. It’s not just who we are, but who's. Yes, yes. And again, because we were so beautifully and fearfully made and I think we do, we have that responsibility to make sure that we are representing that. Yes, all the time. All the time, no matter what is the situation. I love that. I love that.
So you mentioned, you know, some of the pearls of wisdom that you've gathered from Carla Harris and her experience and the things she shared in her book. And I know that mentorship and sponsorship are things that she talks about a lot and that you and I have talked about. Tell us, you know, how you found your own mentors and then how have you in your tenure either at MasterCard or previous opportunities, mentored others and or served as their sponsor?
Tell us a little bit about that and then start off, in your opinion, the difference between the two and then why why each of them is essential as you're thinking about your career trajectory? I love this question because there is such a big difference between a mentor and a sponsor. And when I think about mentors, I've been blessed to have many mentors throughout my career. What I usually try to do is find someone who is really strong at something that I want to be strong at myself.
I try to pick people who are very different than me and I'll share one of my favorite mentors and I hope she gets a chance to see this is actually a dear friend of mine. Her name is Crystal Riley Stark. Crystal and I are very different in our styles and there's so much I love about her style. It will never be totally mine. But throughout our friendship and our mentorship, she's taught me so much. She's helped me grow. She's helped me see things in a different light.
And she is someone who I know is always going to be super honest with me, whether I like it or not. And we all need mentors like that. That will tell us the truth. yes, yes, yes. Anyhow, yes, yes. And that is my friend Crystal. And when I think about sponsorship, sponsorship is earned and I will have people come to me and say, Hey, will you be my sponsor? And what I try to help them understand is in order to earn a sponsor, people have to see you hustle.
They have to know that because when you are sponsoring someone, you're basically putting your name on the line for them and you want to make sure that again, you use your political capital as wisely as you possibly can. And so, again, if you haven't demonstrated that you truly, truly deserve that sponsorship, it's going to be hard finding that. Many times people may be in a role that they're not happy with. Perhaps they are not working for the right leader.
My theory is you must bloom where you are planted. Okay, if this is where you are planted right now, you hustle, you work hard, you try to make sure that you are delivering, even if it's not like something that you're super passionate about. Continue blooming because if you don't, why in the world would someone want to pick you out of that garden and plant you into theirs? If they don't see you blooming. So keep on blooming.
Make sure that you are doing what it takes to earn someone’s sponsorship prior to reaching out to ask them, Hey, will you sponsor me for certain things? I love that and I love how you broke it down because it's very now it's easy, right? And I think sometimes we confuse it or we want to interchange the words, but they're very, they serve very different and unique purposes. And I love that. Thank you. Absolutely.
That's good. That's good. So I'm going to ask another thing about career, and then I'll kind of shift the conversation. If you were to offer advice to someone who's, you know, up and coming early in their career, what two or three things might you share with them to help them as they're just getting started? Yes. Wow, that's a great one. And I often think if I could go back and talk to my 20 year old self, then and again, know you're young, you're eager, you're ambitious.
My advice to young professionals who are coming up is to and I will tell you, these young people today, I love they’re a different breed. They are. They have so much courage they step right out there. You can say to them, I want you to do this presentation in this board meeting. Okay. When I was in my twenties, I was like, ooo.
And so I would say, make sure that again, use that courage in the right way, use that energy and harness it, but make sure you remember who is your audience and deliver a message in a way that's important to them. I think God gave us two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much than we talk. I agree. Amen. As you are in town halls and you're listening to your executives understand what's important to them, what makes a difference? What are they focused on?
And make sure that when you're delivering that message back, make sure you find ways to tie in your message so that you can grab their heartstrings. Go for it would be another piece of advice. Take some risks. Don't be afraid to step out there on faith. You have been blessed with a lot of great knowledge and sometimes it's scary. It's hard. But keep working and keep moving forward. And even when you do make mistakes, it's going to be okay.
I have one other small story. When I was an I don't know, this is probably early in my MasterCard career, but I had just become a leader of people's first leadership position. And we've been working on actually rolling out a new application. And we worked hard. We did lots of testing, we worked with our customers before we rolled it out. We did so many things, Shalia. We rolled it out and it was terrible, very, very honest and it was just like some key things because we were a young team.
There was some key things that we honestly missed. As an example, in our zeal to try to make sure that it was super secure, we locked it down too tight. Customers couldn't get the information they needed. So like, okay, well, long story short, we had a lot of blowback from the customers. I’m going down to get coffee one day. And this is like during the midst of this storm and I happened to see our president and he is such a nice guy.
So I stopped him in the hallway and I said, Hey, I want to let you know before you start hearing this from the customers, let me tell you what happened. We rolled out a new version of this product. We did some things that the customers are not very pleased with. Here's our plan to fix it. And it was so interesting. He stood there just like you. He nodded. He listened. And at the end it was so funny. One of my colleagues was standing next to me.
And he thought, oh boy, I'm about to watch her get fired. Can you believe she's? She’s confessing right here in the hallway to this man. He looked at me and he laughed and he said, I've made much bigger mistakes than that. And he said, I appreciate the fact that you have a plan to address this, but mostly I appreciate the fact that you owned it. It's your team. You may not have made all the mistakes, but you owned it. Yes. And we have to own sometimes when we make those mistakes.
So that would be a little bit of just some tips and advice to those who are new in leadership. I love that. Fail forward, learn the lesson, own it, take responsibility, and then have a plan. Right. Yes. Don't just say I goofed with no plan, but we goofed. Here's what we learned. Here's how we're adjusting. And I have a plan to move us forward. I love that. Yes. Yes, yes.
And in addition to that, what I learned, how am I going to make sure I mitigate ever having this situation again once this is all resolved? Again, making sure that I'm learning the lessons throughout the way and those lessons stick. They do. Sometimes through fire we learn the biggest and the best lessons. Exactly. I am going to shift gears now and ask you a little bit about FOCUS St. Louis, because that's how we've been able to like, connect and come together.
You were a part of Leadership St. Louis, which is our flagship program. I want to know from you why you chose the program and what was like maybe one or two of your biggest takeaways. How is it still impacting you today, even though some time has passed? Well, when I was in Leadership St. Louis, by the way, it was the best cohort ever. That's a running joke.
That is with all of the Leadership St. Louis participants, every person that you meet who's been through Leadership St. Louis says Yeah, I was a part of cohort number X and it was the best cohort ever and I must say that mine was one of the best.
What I loved about the program was it gave you a chance to learn so much about our region and truly what's right with the region and what's not so right with the region because it's incumbent upon us, the people here in Saint Louis, to make sure that we address our challenges. So I not only built a phenomenal base of contacts, my network grew and I still keep in touch with so many of the people who were part of my cohort. But I learned a lot about our city.
Throughout the program, we spend time understanding the justice system. We went and spoke with the acting district attorney. At that time. We did a tour of the city work house. We went through so many things that educated us on so many challenges from food insecurity, education inequities and what winds up happening.
And what I love about Leadership and FOCUS overall is once you uncover all of these things that are challenges that we have all of these now like like truly newly blessed leaders within our region really start to pick what like rings my heart strings. What's most important to me. And then they focus on that and they focus on a way to address it and to make sure they're doing things to resolve some of the challenges that we have.
So it's like this great big full circle thing that I believe that FOCUS does. You educate us, you connect us, and then you give us some tools to come back and do something to make St. Louis a better place. And I love that. And you probably were from the best class ever. It is a fact. I love it. I love it. Now I want to ask a question and it's been evident through even our conversation here. There is a joy that exudes an energy that just exudes from you.
And I want you to talk to us about where is that joy and how do you sustain it? Because life is hard. Life is lifing. Things are difficult out here in these streets right? Yes. But how do you maintain the joy, even in the midst of all the things that are happening, whether you share them publicly or not? But we see what's happening in the world. How do you maintain the joy? It's so hard. Oh my gosh. It is not easy to maintain that. I try to focus on those things that we are, are blessings.
That's what I try my best to focus on that. But you are so right. It is so hard. And this adult thing. Ooh, I have another quick story. It's interesting. I was talking to a friend the other day. Her son just bought his first home, which is super exciting. So her husband went over there and so and I love this because we've seen a video of parents doing this. He walks in, he throws his jacket on the chair, but it falls on the floor. He starts flipping on lights,
you know, in every room. He goes to the refrigerator, opens it up and just stands there for a little while, you know, and then starts kind of eating food and his son is like, Dad, why are you turning on all these lights? And he’s going behind him, turning off lights and you left the refrigerator door open. And it's so funny because we don't realize and now his son realizes now that he's paying an electric bill, that he’s paying a water bill like you got to turn the water on. Turn that stuff off.
We don't realize until we have to go through it how rough it is being an adult. So, yeah, my young people out there appreciate this time. Yes. Appreciate it. Yes. Because again, as we get into this adulting thing, it gets harder and harder and harder. That is for sure. But again, I firmly believe that no one promised us that life was going to be easy. And many times I think it's the hard things that we go through.
I think it's the perhaps people that we run past in our lives who don't treat us the best. I think it's going through those situation that makes us appreciate the good people so much better. It makes us appreciate the good times. So much better. And so to me, I'm always trying to dig through and look for where's the light in this? Where's the gold in this moment? And even in the smallest moments, You and I had coffee one day just downtown Saint Charles.
And it was just so nice just sitting there, relaxing, having a cup of coffee, talking. I left there and my heart was full. And so I try to appreciate those moments. The small ones to the big ones, Yeah. Those are the things that we have to cling to, that's for sure, because our time here is pretty limited and at a woman of a certain age, I realized that I probably, probably have more years behind me than ahead of me.
And so as I'm looking at this journey, I just want to make sure that I try to, like, relish all of the goodness that there is in this journey. Thank you.
I heard you say, well, you didn't use the word what I heard or what I took away from that is that when we focus on our blessing or we can express gratitude for the smaller, the big or the in-between, when our focus is on that rather than the trouble or the hard time or the negativity, that will push us over the edge because we can always find something good in each situation. So I love that. I love that, you know, we learn from those rough situations.
We learn through it all, that's for sure. Yes. And one of the things I said to myself is we’re always these works in progress. We're always learning, even now that I'm retired, I want to continue learning every single day. One of the things I said, if I make it to 100 at that point, I'm like okay, You can't tell me anything. I love that. That’s your marker when I'm a hundred. No, no, I've got this. I'm going to feel like I pretty much know it all at that point. Right?
But until then, I'm still learning. I'm still growing. I love that. And that's something important because I think whether you're a leader in a professional setting in community or at home, being someone who is open to learn and has that teachable spirit will carry you further in life than a lot of other things that we think will help us. Amen. Okay. Ooh, I like that teachable spirit. I like that. And it's so important being open to learning something new.
There are a lot of people who feel like I'm going to be the smartest person in any room I walk in. It's like, well, you need to walk into some better rooms. You need to switch it up a little bit. Yeah, a little bit. Yes, I agree. A few years ago and I actually found it recently, I was going through some old papers. I'm in this place. I want to purge, I want to clean. I want to, you know, organize a little more. And I was going through a box of papers and I found this quote, It's mine.
So I'm not being funny, but it actually was from the Holy Spirit. And what I wrote was just when you think you have arrived, the destination has changed meaning into me in that moment. And while it was years ago in that moment and what it continues to say to me is that we're never done. We're always growing, evolving. And if we're open, like you said, we can always learn from any and everything, right? I can learn something from a toddler. I can learn something from a CEO or a billionaire.
I can learn something from every one as well as every situation. And in particular, the ones that are most trying and difficult. Yes. So just when you think you've arrived, the destination has changed. I love that quote and I am going to use that quote Shalia Ford once said. I like it. Yes. Well, let me ask two more things, because I think although the conversation I don't want it to end, but I need to be mindful of time is if you had to give a TED talk today,
what topic would you talk about? Wow. That is a very, very good question. And let me tell you, it is my dream to one day do a TED Talk. Okay. You've put that out there in the universe on our podcast, so it will be okay. Okay. So whoever's listening, right. Call me. I’m ready for that TED Talk. My topic would be finding joy and making sure that we are seeking the joy in every little thing.
I would love to make sure that again, I am sharing perspectives that help others find their joy and again, joy in the midst of the storm, joy in the sunshine. Because it's so easy to be this great, happy person when you're, you know, lounging on the beach in Aruba. But again, it's harder when you're in the midst of those storms. So finding joy that would be my TED Talk. All right. Your TED Talk is on the way. It's coming. You have said it here. You have said it. Right here, right now.
What is it right now? June 17th? Yes, 2024. Okay. Okay. I'm ready. I'm going to be in the audience cheering you on. I love it. And I'm going to be looking for you. Yes, I love it. We have a plan. We do have a plan. When we think about and you're retired now, but you're still active and busy and there's things to do. But when we think about time, we hear so often I'm too busy or there's no time or just, you know, we seem to, it seems to be fleeting.
Yes. If you had one more hour in the day, what would Wendi be doing with it on this day? Oh boy. One additional hour we do. We fill up our lives so much with all of these things to do. I would probably take that time. And this is going to sound really strange. Well, not strange, but one of the other volunteerism things that I've been doing is I volunteer at an animal shelter called Five Acres there, right there in Cottleville.
I would spend that extra hour working with those dogs, and here's why I love it. And my friends and family laugh at me all the time. So I go and I call it my new job, you know, and basically all I do is I walk the dogs, and Shalia, it’s something about coming in early in the morning and you see these sweet, furry faces in the kennel.
And when I walk in, I always say, good morning, baby. And and to see those tails wag that somebody is coming in here to give me some love and take me for a nice long walk. Sometimes I take them, I'll take them to Lowe's, buy them a pup cup over at Starbucks. And just the love that they give you back is just amazing. So I think I would take that extra hour in the day and I would spend that hour with those sweet, furry babies. I love that.
Even though you're being of service and being intentional to give back, it seems like it fills your cup just as much. which I think is so important, right? We can give out. We can give out. But if we don't fill our own cup, at some point, yes, we will run dry or we will run empty and, then who you show up in that moment may not be the best version of yourself or how you want others to experience you. So I love that you're like, I can give to them, but it gives me back so much more. It does.
And that's important. That’s important. Without a doubt. And it's something I, there was one dog. His name was Koby and I’ll tell you this quick story. But Koby and I had gone on a field trip after we walked one day, so we went out to Lowe's and it was so funny because at the, I'm bringing him back and he was sitting in the driver's seat and he’s a great big like Saint Bernard and something else mix probably a pit bull a little bit of everything.
And so, you know, mainly rescues a bit of a mutt, but he was huge. And it was so funny at the end, He just kind of like leaned his head on my shoulder. I'm like, What are you doing? What are you doing? You are going to make me take you home. And so I will tell you, every time I go to my work, my husband is afraid that I'm going to come home with like two or three I tell him don't worry. Don't worry. And that's it. You are exactly right.
I am filled up and they fill me up when I go with just the love, the tail wags, the snuggles, all of it. It makes me feel so good. I love them. I'm laughing because I'm thinking your husband is saying don't bring work home. Don't bring work home. Leave it at the office. Literally. Yes, yes, yes, exactly. Oh my goodness. I have really enjoyed our conversation today. And as we wrap up, I want to give you the opportunity for the last word.
What is a word of encouragement or final word of wisdom, a pearl that you want to share with our audience this afternoon? First, I want to say thank you so much for inviting me to do this. I have had a blast. So have I. This was fun. It was. It was, and again, it was just like sitting, having a cup of coffee with you again. And so I love that. My pearl of wisdom would be check out FOCUS St. Louis and check out the team. The team is fabulous.
Shalia, Yemi, everyone is there to make sure that we're doing what's right for our region and the programs that you offer are phenomenal. So I would say if you have not already been through any one of the leadership programs, if you have not participated in any of the programing that's available through FOCUS, check it out today and get involved. Get engaged. Awesome. Thank you so much for this time and conversation. And our next coffee is coming up really soon.
It won't be on record, though, and then it only gets better, right? Exactly. Exactly. Well, thank you. Thank you.