Washington Women Leaders Association Chapter Meeting: People, Passion and Persistence

all right next we have Zena Barrett um on passion persistence and people a journey of honesty and resilience uh she is the director program Excellence at North rumman Dana Barrett is space Vehicles program director at Northrup Space Systems in this role she is responsible for the espa Star product line and growth of space vehicle Market within the division prior to this role she served as the program Excellence director for the Space Systems tactical Space Systems division Barett joined Northrup in 1997 and has held various program management and operations management positions within DOD civil Commercial Business areas Barett has a n Bachelor's in business and a MERS in information science systems from the University of Phoenix and a graduate certificate in project management from the University of California Los Angeles she earned her project management professional certificate from PMI in 2011 she currently represents northr On The Board of Trustees for the Leukemia and Lymphoma society's National Capital Area thank
you you guys hear me okay awesome let's see here let's move forward okay I am so excited there's a little bit of feedback so excited to be here with you today and that I want to thank the Washington women leaders Association for inviting me my name is Zana and I'm going to take you on a little journey the first part of this journey is Passion it's the core an essence of what drives you each and every day for some of you that might be setting a goal and then achieving it for others it might be the recognition of doing a job well done or really working hard at something and figuring it just so it's a problem that is in front of you and you are going to solve that problem and still for others it might be family or some other path that propels you forward each and every day for me it's been a journey over the years you see I'm married young at only 20 years old and I had to work my way through school so setting the goal of achieving my bachelor's degree and my Master's Degree was a key part of my path
during that time I also became a mom my son gave me a purpose like no other I needed to be there to support him but I was also incredibly determined to be the best role model of working hard to success as he got older I started to get a little more introspective I realized what really drove me was learning and being in the classroom I mean I was in school most of my adult life but what I loved even more than that was mentoring others and teaching others watching that spark go off that aha moment that Lara was talking about so while I have an incredible day job at Northrup and a career that I could not be more grateful for one day I hope to be able to step aside and teach so some of you may already know what that passion is you may have learned it at a very young age well then the rest of us we've got that journey to figure it out and it takes us just a little bit longer once you find that passion become a force of nature don't let anything get in your way take all of that energy and turn it into optimism and enthusiasm become that Force multiplier as colen Powell
said from Passion and optimism I'm going to move on to persistence if you've set a goal or on a path it's imperative to understand that it's okay to fail the more is how you pick yourself up learn from that failure and take that next step forward every time we fail or reach a roadblock we learn we adapt and we move forward which is the very essence of resiliency it's your character and your drive that True Grit that keeps you moving
forward resiliency can be learned and I was fortunate enough to have my mom as the best role model you see she grew up in the Middle East in a very small town to an illiterate mother not only did she push for an education she was the first in her family to go to college Not only was she the first in her family to go to college but she earned her entire degree never stepping foot in a college classroom she would purchase the books read them on her own and her cousin would drive her three and a half hours in order to take the final exam and she was a straight A student she never received lower than 100% mark on any of her courses that's a really hard act to follow but that's not the impressive part after three children and I was the youngest she immigrated to the United States not speaking a word of English she went to school and ultimately became a CPA with an impressive career in the nonprofit Arena here in DC and then in her early 50s she was diagnosed with breast cancer she got through her treatments only to have it return four years later she went through chemo and radiation she continued working and she still made family dinners almost every night
and she went into remission again which we are all very thankful for so when I was diagnosed with Hodgkins lymphoma only four years later I was only 21 newly married working my way through school and I had no idea what to do I lost my hair I was sitting on the bathroom floor feeling sorry for myself and she came in and she said get up get dressed we're going out and I fought her and she said again get up get dressed we're going out and it was in that moment that I understood what she had already endured picking herself up off of that bathroom floor getting up and taking the next step each and every day and being there for those that you love if you're starting to feel sympathy please don't you see I learned so much from that experience I learned the value of each and every moment and how precious it really is I learned how important it is to put one foot in front of the other even when you're not sure where you might be headed my mom she was Unstoppable because she continued despite her failures and her doubts but you don't need to go through something as traumatic as we did to learn resiliency how do you handle a bad day do you sit and complain about it or do you try to figure out how tomorrow will be a better
day which brings me to the last part of our journey people and Leadership we're at a Women's Conference right it's taking that passion it's taking the persistence and translating that to connecting with people and being a leader I've talked a lot about my personal life to give you insight about my character but it's the people and the leadership that inspires me to go to work each day it's being able to connect with people and being a leader they can trust Laura talked about your core values mine is integrity and being able to trust people but having them trust me sharing that mutual respect surrounding yourself with people that can give you honest feedback and say uh you're off Base today being able to inspire and provide people with a safe B where they can bring their best selves to work each day and be kind as women leaders it's difficult to show confidence and assertiveness without being aggressive so you have to show kindness and if that underlies all of your actions you're already a step ahead people who have worked with me over the years have consistently given me a couple of key pieces of feedback you're genuine and I trust you you're comfortable about not being the smartest person in the room and you ask for help I believe you truly
care being a servant leader you are there to serve the teams you lead if that means removing roadblocks or providing tools it's doing whatever needs to be done to make that team successful I don't take those statements lightly and it does take a lot of work to get there but a few things I practice each day that I hope you can take with you I am as transparent as possible with my teens sometimes that means being vulnerable and showing some emotion I try to practice empathy every single day you don't know what someone else is going through I'm standing up here today but you don't know the struggles I go through to stay healthy each day you don't know the UPS or Downs that people are going and experiencing around you so assume good intent it has served me well knowing that managing and leading are two very different practices you manage by Direction you lead by inspiring lastly As Leaders to do the right thing even when it's hard giving constructive feedback to an employee or a friend that may not be ready to listen going to bat for your team in the face of a really tough customer being a leader is never easy but it's one of the most rewarding jobs I've ever had the pleasure of pursuing so with that I thank you very much I think we have a few moments for questions if there are
any my question is I would love to more your to you know into play at Job um the question was for those who are on Zoom was what is my role in program excellence and how do I use those tenants in my job so program Excellence is our kind of internal Consulting Group within North rep where we dive in and help program managers and programs solve problems we dig through the risks we kind of find the root cause of why things are happening so that we can then set the team on a path what I have discovered over my career is that the primary root cause is always Communication in some way shape or form someone missed something it was misstated there was a misation we didn't have the contract that said just so right so it all boils down to Communication in some way shape or form so being able to bring people together and really talk through the challenges the best path forward but also giving free space for innovative ideas so that we have the best ideas to solve a problem rather than a singular voice in a room has served me very well thank you for that question Hannah
uh the question from Hannah was how did I manage my personal and professional life at such a young age um the best way I can say it is I had no choice right I had a young family and I had a career path and I couldn't provide for my son um without having a source of income so there is a sense of that grit where you do what you have to do to make things work I had an amazing support system with my mom um I talk about her a lot she is absolutely a pillar in my life and she is my source of strength but she was the one that would say you've got it easy like you've got it so easy you can hire a babysitter when you're in class I didn't have that opportunity so it definitely gave me a very different perspective on how difficult her life was and no matter how hard might mine might have seemed I could get through it if she got through hers but I will go back to I don't know if it's work life balance I think it's work life choices and so there were choices that I made along my path to spend time with my son or take a job that may not have been as intense early on to be there for him where I have the room to take on more responsibility now did it impede my career earlier maybe but it was a choice that I made and a thoughtful choice to do
that any other questions thank you so much