Meet Catrena Reid, Director of Internal Audit. When asked, what advice she'd give to the next generation of women, she stated: "Be yourself, focus on what you want to achieve, work relentlessly to achieve it, learn from failure and success, stay committed to your values and whatever you do – don’t stop until you get what YOU want."
Teresa Edwards and Bernadette Locke-Mattox were both great influences in my early life and their lessons have stuck with me to this day. They each are respectively outstanding women in their personal accomplishments and have spent decades demonstrating self and team leadership. As a youth, I grew up having the privilege of knowing these two women and really hung onto every word they both said. The lessons they taught then are still used in my everyday life, they are foundational pillars of my personal leadership style.
Teresa is the greatest woman’s basketball player and Olympian to step on the court. I very vividly remember Teresa teaching me how to shoot a basketball, and to perfect my form. She directed me to stand as if I were in a telephone booth and to shoot in that confined space. It helped my game tremendously as the arch increase on my shot prevented defense opponents from blocking the ball as it left my hands. However, the real lesson for me was in the way that she explained what she wanted me to do, rather than speaking in a technical manner and repeating corrective actions, she made the experience easy to process and memorable by associating my action with something relatable. Her communication style inspired me to tell stories and help my audience visualize messages, this enabled easy communication interactions with people. In addition, she always reminded me “You must work for what you want," she would further follow that with, "someone is always working harder than you are, how bad do you want it?” She knew how to motivate the competitive spirit in me and in those around her. She was also living proof that work was a requirement to success and complacency was not an option. She never took her skills for granted and continued to always improve, even when she was literally the best at her game. Teresa’s commitment to excellence is the reason why she was the youngest and the oldest women's basketball player to receive a gold medal in the Olympics, as she played in five consecutive Olympic Games for the United States.
Bernadette was a trailblazer in breaking the glass ceiling for women on multiple levels. She was only allowed to play three-on-three in high school because women were not allowed to play full-court at that time. She chose a community college to attend that was newly allowing five-on-five full-court basketball for women. She transferred from a junior college to the University of Georgia where she played competitively in the Southeastern Conference (SEC). She was the University of Georgia’s first female athlete to earn All-American and Academic All-American honors. Upon graduating she entered the coaching field as assistant coach for the women’s basketball program at the University of Georgia. In 1990, she was asked by Rick Pitino to join as assistant coach of the Kentucky Wildcats Men’s Basketball team, becoming the second female assistant coach in NCAA history for a men’s team and the first African American woman to coach a men’s team. She later became the first African American women’s basketball coach at the University of Kentucky and the first in the SEC, turning the program around to one of its winningest stretches. After a successful career at Kentucky, she continued her coaching career as an assistant coach in the WNBA.
I knew Bernadette when she was an Assistant Coach at the University of Georgia, where I spent summers at camps and had the good fortune of getting to know her. She of course reiterated hard work is a must for success, but most of all she preached “To achieve, you must believe." She taught me how to feel belief in what I wanted in order to manifest it into reality. She taught me the importance of self-confidence and self-destination, and I learned how to believe in myself and my own ability. I learned how to persevere through failures and to find solutions. What I appreciated most about her though was she was always so approachable and genuine. She would control a room when she spoke, but she did not take the path of intimidation, rather she relied on tapping into your own inspiration to create motivation. She helped the people around her feel and embrace their own power. This was the foundations of faith I needed to drive towards success in my own life. It also inspires my leadership style in wanting people to strive for greatness because they have greatness in them, not because someone else demands it. She brought her dreams to fruition, she is living proof anything is possible.
It has been my mission to bring forward the lessons taught to me and to share them. There are countless others who have contributed many lessons and left impressions on me, but when I think about the foundation of my leadership, I owe a lot to these two outstanding examples of women leaders. I hope I am able to inspire others to commit to their own greatness and to strive for excellence in all that they do.
