sharon matthews: i am sharon matthews i ama member for the advisory council for the women + girls research alliance and in myday job i am the manager of hr policy and corporate employer relations at wells fargo,it is an enterprise job that keeps me kind of busy and i have a couple of kids but ikicked them out of the house, they are in college so the rest of the time i connectwith my husband and enjoy being an empty nester. i hope you have had a wonderful time today.you have (clapping) very good. we don't want to take very much time at all away from thedynamic panel that we have but i have one item this will give you just a minutes worthof energy those lovely center pieces are yours for the taking but only for the lucky personwho has a red dot on the back of the chair.
so i am looking at this one and i think thisone is mine. so take just a minute, look behind your chairs let's get this out of the way.(people walking around the tables) ok good, alright all claimed. ok let's havesilence again; oh i also see that center pieces are leaving tables that didn't have occupants,that is very smart, alright. alright ladies i would like to go ahead and introduce ourpanel this last segment. in a few minutes i am going to get a chance to take a seatand channel oprah. now i recognize that i neither have the shoes nor the hair nor thewardrobe but i want you to work with me as best you can, that's my objective for theafternoon. we have a dynamic panel of women who are symbolto share their unique story of success. this
grows out of an idea that we have used atour previous summit two years ago, it was a big risk, big reward and it was one of thehighest rated sessions. we have a number of trailblazers in our mist all of us are trailblazersin our own way and we heard from olympia snow today, talked to some of them in the panels,you know women whether they are our mothers, aunt, our uncles, women that we work withor for who are blazing trails who are leading the way, charging ahead and we have some ladiestoday who are going to talk about that. when i went to look for a quote that wouldget us started and help us think about the roles of trailblazers i went to maya angelou.i had the opportunity to hear her speak with my 13 year old daughter at a girl scout eventin washington dc and it was the first i heard
her use the term "sheros".we have the opportunity to celebrate, it is very important to celebrate our heroes andsheros; i would like to introduce you to some of our sheros. joining me today and not inalphabetical order and let me tell you how women work, can i just tell you how womenwork, i'm not going to take much time. they first discussed going in alphabetical orderbut someone whose last name starts with a wanted to be last and then the other two movedinto position and left this chair one open. so we will start not in alphabetical orderbut in position seated. to my left is janet cowell who is a politician, she is our northcarolina state treasurer. the bios for the women are on pages four and five, we wantto make sure that they get the time to talk
and you ask questions so i am not going toread fully from that bio but just know that she is responsible for 80 billion dollarsin pension investments. that is a pretty significant role, to her left is cathy bessant, we meta while earlier and we did not talk about the fact that we worked in competing organizationsbecause women wouldn't get into that and i just don't think it is appropriate. kathyis a business women who is now leading information technology for bank of america and has beennoted as one of the 25 most powerful women in banking for three years in a row, welcomekathy. the woman whose last name starts with a but didn't want to go first deborah aguiar-velezis an entrepreneur and founded the sistemas corporation in 1983, her perspective todaywill be very valuable and then ophelia garmon-brown
introduced herself to me by saying that ijust don't know why people want me on these panels. so we are going to help her understandwhy she is here today. but she is a physician and she is also the senior vice presidentof physicians services with novant health. if you read a little further into her bioyou will know that she also has a degree in divinity and i will just mention to her personallythat i was at the ceremony in 2010 when she was named charlotte woman of the year so ihave actually had the opportunity to hear why you are on the panels. so with that iam going to let each of the ladies get started each of them will have the opportunity tospeak for about 5 to 7 minutes. the question that they have each been asked to respondto is what is your unique journey to success?
what obstacles have you experienced that youhave turned into opportunities? what successes have you had, what challenges, what leadershipin philosophy, so not a traditional bio but what is your unique path to success? let'sstart with janet. janet cowell: so, thank you for having mehere today. one of the things that has served me well is taking risks for me i got startedi would say in high school, i was an exchange student in germany for a year, i remembermy mother getting angry because i went onto the plane and didn't look back, as i headedoff. then i went on and took non-western languages, i took chinese this was back in the 80's andstudied in china that was an important experience for me because i was there during the democracybenefit and watched chinese students who were
protesting for greater authority over makingcareer decisions and freedoms. being a foreigner in that environment and not having a voicethat we had started demonstrating with all the students but as soon as it got very seriousand we knew that people you know might get hurt and things could go wrong we became bi-standards.i didn't want to spend my life as a bi-standard i wanted to come back to america and be involvedin my community in one way shape or form not knowing exactly that it was going to be electedpolitics. then finally i will translate that risk taking obviously to run for public office,there's some degree of risk just putting your name on a ballet, that can be a scary phenomenonbut you can prepare yourself through leadership trainings, i am sure there are opportunitieshere in unc charlotte. in my first term as
a legislature they said there was a very closevote on the lottery, i happened to be against the lottery and they needed one person toflip, one democrat to flip in the state senate and they looked around and they said oh maybethat young women freshman legislator would flip because they tend to think that womenare not going to have as strong a back bone. so i held my own and didn't flip they endedup of course passing the lottery later but we held it off for that moment and in theend as i was very worried how that was going to affect my political career because i hadopposed the leadership in the state senate and opposed my own party i think that endedup being probably one of the best things i did as a state senator and people knew i wasindependent, they knew i could say no and
they knew that i could stand up to folks tryingto force me to do things. ultimately then somebody came to me years later and said maybeyou should run for treasurer because we need someone whose independent and can say no andso those are just a few of the risks that i took both politically and later on in life,it served me well. i will end with that and turn it over to cathy.cathy bessant: thanks janet, thanks for having me as well. one of the great things that iget to be a part of is i am on the board of trustees here at unc charlotte, it is greatto be on campus and i am so proud of this institution. you know it is interesting thebusiness that i run today technology and operations is a business of a hundred thousand peopleat bank of america and thirty five countries.
i grew up in a town of twenty thousand peopleand i often think about the irony of life and the majesty of life and say how does agirl from rural michigan get to be comfortable in hong kong, i would actually rather be inhong kong than in a lot of cities in the united states and how does that really happen andi would say for me probably four or five things really important in that journey. one is educationi went to i got the opportunity to go to a big institution i took full advantage of itand i scraped together every penny i could cobble together or work for and turned thateducational experience instead of just a simple door for a girl who walked in with a simpledoor into a massive amount of door opening and widening. so this was really a horizonbroadening experience for me. i think the
second thing is i have always been willingto take the hard job when something needing defining and something needed fixing or somethingwas challenging to most people i made sure that was the job i stood in line for or pushedmy way to the front of the class first. in a way it is a little bit like risk takingjanet but it's also a willingness to do the other things that people won't do. we cantalk about that all you want but i have also had a funny zig zaggy career, you know lotsof lateral movement across a wide range of businesses i have done everything from corporatecommercial banking to run branches, i used to be able to balance a teller drawer, i can'tdo that anymore but back when teller drawers were manual i could actually balance a tellerdrawer. i think what helps me the most in
the decisions i have to make and the peoplei have to influence every day is i have at least a couple of years in every businessof the firm and so that willingness to do different things whether or not it was inmy wheel house you know i call my four years as chief marketing officer a woman who grewup with pnls running businesses to be the chief marketing officer was a complete totalout of body experience. when ken lewis asked me to do it i said have i done something wrongum, i did but the willingness to take on those broadening assignments and to have that kindof variety in what i have done i find serves me well not just in the fact of what i dobut in the influence i have to have to do it every day. i am a big believer in a coupleof things i am a big believer in performance
we can talk about how we lean in and leanout all we want but at the end of the day performance is the thing that matters mostand while i do know that there are glass ceilings, certainly people tell me there are at bankof america i have never experienced it and i think that is partly because i have beenvery focused on performance and accountability for outcomes as the way in, i also am a bigbeliever in talent i think the most important things i do every day are make decisions forthe 10 people that work for me and the 10 people that work for them so really understandingtalent leadership is not a solo game it is a team game especially in a big organizationtalent has been important. i guess the last thing i want to point out to you and believeme i have seen it all, it has been like a
country western song i have had periods ofrapid rise and periods of demotion at least a couple of times, once in particular i amvery visible and open to talking about that. i actually believe that you are more definedof what you do with your setbacks then what you do with the periods of rapid success.the other thing i pay a lot of attention to is balance i knew when i was seven i wantedto be a mom i am still not sure i want to be a banker so i pay a lot of attention thebalance between my work and my children and my civic work is very important to me andso i haven't ever had a day of work when i have come to work and only had one thing tofocus on. i think being really deliberate about balance is a huge part of the decisionsyou make to become a leader.
deborah aguiar-velez: well it is so interestingto hear your stories because in my case i think that i have lived a life that i haveimagined and there are two things that have lead me to do that. first you decide whatyou want to do and the price you can pay and how much suffering are you willing to endureand the second thing is you can have it all but not at the same time. i think the mostimportant thing i ever did was decide to be a chemical engineer and i made that decisionin 7th grade and the reason why i did that is because my mother used to say we have nomoney. so the only thing that i can give you as an inheritance is an education and so iagree with you and also if you marry a dumbo you can dump him. so in her wisdom remembershe was born in the 30's and i was born in
the 50's it was very important to have a manin puerto rico so i knew if i had an education i didn't have to depend on that and from myfather the set of values that i got from him was that as long as you have two hands youdon't have to get any handouts from anybody. so, it was my responsibility to be successful.so in 1978 with a chemical engineering degree i started college when i was 16 years oldi accepted a job from exxon corporation but what i didn't know i was the first puertorican woman with a chemical engineering degree hired by the largest company in the world.which meant that they didn't know what to do with me when i got there i was the onlywoman and i spoke funny and i looked chinese and they said what do we do with her. so thefirst year i thought i was doing so fantastically
except in english when you say "eat your heartout" i thought literally you would take a heart and eat it and so my first performancereview and the people around the table is a horrible experience because it is basedon perception. they told me you are this close to being fired. i remember sitting down andcrying and i thought you know i am not going to cry for more than 24 hours because youget wrinkles and i am going to prove to them that i am not going to go back to puerto ricoto my mom and dad. so i went to toast masters i went to english classes and i still speakfunny but believe me i have spoken at harvard, smith college, princeton and no one thinksthat is strange anymore and i now have more than one language so i use it as an advantage.exxon opened the doors for me except one day
i went into a room and i see all the ceo'sof exxon they were all white men and i don't have anything against white men but they didn'tlook like me so i started sistemas corporation in 1983 we celebrated our 30th anniversaryand what is so fantastic is i am ceo of my own company. now the challenge that i encounterwas that when decide to start your own business you really experience the rest of the worldwhen you come out of exxon or the corporate world. exxon only hires the very best. soi discovered, so somebody told me that i was brown i remember the day when someone toldme that it was 11 years after i mean it was 5 years after i started with exxon i thoughtmaybe i used too much foundation and they said no you are latina and then i said whatdoes that have to do with anything, i mean
you're not evaluating me for my brains, buti developed very thick skin and i can do anything i mean especially when you are in a businessyou don't take anything personally and the beauty of that and because i got so involvedin the different groups the governor of the state of new jersey asked me to run the divisionof small business for the whole state. so, my life experience of coming to exxon andable to start my own business has opened so many doors because the governor of the stateof new jersey said to me that i need to interview you and i said why and he said because youare the first puerto rican woman to have a degree in chemical engineering and to haveeverything. so i said this is my particular advantage meaning that because i am so differenti can either say gosh i am weird i said no
that really provides me with an opportunity.so having my own business has really taken me from being smart to be an expert to bea trusted advisor i am serving to corporate boards and believe me you can ask the ladiesespecially cathy because she was just telling me that she is preparing a big board meeting.you don't get onto a board because you need to meet a quota you need to be filling a spotbecause you have the brains to be able to bring value to the table. so what i am tellingyou it doesn't matter what people tell you, you have to decide what kind of life you wantdecide on the price you are willing to pay and then just go for it. thank you.(clapping) ophelia garmon-brown: she told me that shewas a dry person that talked engineering terms
i won't believe you again. (laughter) i thinkif i were to say about what has been the thing that i have leaned on for most of my lifein reference to my success that others say that i have would be faith and family andi would have to kind of intertwine those because it was faith and family when i was reallyyoung that really sustained me. my father died when i was two and we lived in detroit,i'm a michigan girl and we lived in detroit and we lived in a house in detroit becausemy father worked for general motors when my sister was four and i was two and my motherwas pregnant with her third child and my father at age 35 developed encephalitis, it is infectionof the brain and not clear in particular in the 50's health care for african americanswas not that great and so he subsequently
died and my mother lost the third child becauseof the stress of that. we had to leave our home because my mother did not have she hadsome technical education but she was a stay at home dad because to have a job with likegeneral motors in the 50's was a major thing you rose to middle class in particular asan african american so to be able to sustain ourselves on social security my mother movedus into the inner city of detroit and so i was raised in the projects of detroit andwhen i went back to detroit a few years ago as a consultant to university of michigani actually flew into detroit and a cart came and got me and as i was talking to the driveri said i was raised in the jeffery's projects how are they doing, he said they no longerexist. they had to tear them down there was
too much drugs and even when they tore themdown there was so much in the way of needles that they couldn't even they decided not evento do anything else with it so there is a garden there where your projects were andi think about the fact that at age four i decided that i was going to be a doctor becausei wanted to save all daddy's it had nothing to do with science it had nothing to do withany of that but it is the struggle it's the pain and even at four i recognized that ididn't have i know that i really needed for myself and for my family and because i didn'thave that and was this child who tended to take care of and take charge of it reallypushed me even though i was the younger child at that time, mother later had a brother thatis ten years younger than myself it pushed
me to be this person who did things for mymother and my family. i was the one that just pushed them and pushed them and pushed them.i think it was this drive i had to be this person who took care of others and it continuedthrough my life. in the late 60's my grandmother had a stroke she asked my mother if she wouldmove to north carolina, my mother moved to north carolina it was right there a coupleyears after the integration of schools, eastern north carolina my grandfather said when integrationhappened you are going to go to the white school and it was just a journey of struggleit was a journey of struggle in the south, a journey of being in classrooms where youwere considered less than but you did have the brain to be this person who was a chemistryperson and a science person but holding onto
your dream and i say faith and family becausethough i was living in the inner city ghetto for most of my formative years in detroitand even though i would say i wanted to be a dr. i had a mother that had a strength thatwas just incredible and i did not know she was in the situation she was in and couldhave been a victim and could have been a lot other things. but all i knew was my motherkept telling me and this is the faith part for us is that i could do all things throughin our faith christ jesus strengthens us she never let me veer from that and so subsequentlyi became brain washed and so i became brain washed and the brain washing went throughundergraduate and the brain washing went through chapel hills medical school and it was interestingin chapel hill's med school there was 16 minority
students in a class of 160 in the 70's andthen i was first african american female in family medicine at carolina's medical centerwhere i did my residency and then the first african american at the nalle clinic and thenthe first african american to integrate the private sector of health care in charlotteand i never felt like i couldn't because my mother brain washed me and so for me it iscalled faith and family. having this stick to it to ness that came from a mother, whostruggled, clearly struggled with the death of my father and never allowed her struggleto take her focus off her children and what they had to have to be able to be the mostsuccessful persons that they could be in life as with my colleagues here education was theway that my grandfather, that is why my grandfather
said you're going to the white school becausemy grandfather knew there that his grandchildren could get the best. so education was somethingthat was extremely important for my family and what i would say to you as well in particular,i've come to this one more in my old age probably much later than my wonderful panel of colleagueshere is this thing of really focusing on caring for myself and knowing myself and a way thati really appreciate myself. my focus has been so much on others i was at a southern christmasshow many years ago i went to this stand this vendor that had your name and what your namemeant, your name means so much in other countries in particular what they name their children.well my father's name was oliver my sisters name was olivia and my name is ophelia nota whole lot behind that other than the o's
right. well i found out that biblically myname ophelia means helper of mankind. how would my mother have known that, she didn'tit was this faith and family and this faith that my mother fell into this name and maybethe name that you have and for you young people that are having children pay attention tothe name that you name your child. maybe the name that she named me having no sense ofwhat it meant i grew into it though, i grew into it from the biblical perspective andthe perspective of spirit for me, religion is not the big deal for me it is the spiritfor me and so faith and family i would say i am undergirded.sharon matthews: did that get you thinking? (clapping) margaret fuller who was an earlyfeminist said that if you have knowledge let
others light their candles in it. i thinkyou have given us some words of wisdom here that we can now dip our candles in i am sureyou are formatting and thinking of questions, do we have mics in the audience? so when youare ready raise a hand but in the meantime i am going to lead off with one and sincecathy offered i actually have another question janet if you don't have questions. but cathytalked about setbacks often being more defining than the successes would you talk a littlemore about that or share a setback that you experienced and how you turned that into anopportunity. cathy bessant: sure i can easily share theone that the charlotte observer had a lot of fun writing about at one point in my career,so not to bore you with the back ground but
to make a long story short in a matter ofa couple of weeks and a lot of things that happened i went from reporting directly toour ceo to reporting to someone who reported to him with my portfolio of work having beencut in half and it is hard in uttering those two sentences in order for you to understandthe abnormity of that in a big culture where up is good and down is bad that was a very,very painful set of moments. i learned something very important immediately is that i had tomake a choice if i was coming to work the next day. what i really wanted to do was puton my jeans go in my office shut the door and not talk to anyone less they would figureout how devastated i was. what i decided that that was the exact wrong thing to do and madea deal with myself if nothing else i would
behave with style and dignity of every secondso that the only thing that anyone could ever say would be can you believe the dignity withwhich she behaved. now did i feel a lot of dignity, no i felt lower than low but i puton my best suit bright color kept my door open, walked the halls and basically justfaked it till i made it to being able to actually fully function, i was numb for about threedays just completely numb for three days. so i do think step one with dealing with thesetback is showing up and whether it is just fake it till you make it or just diving inand doing the work, just flat showing up because 99 out of 100 people won't if you want tobe the 1 person out of 100 that is step one. the second thing i decided to do is not touse it as a moment to leave because i decided
it was very important not to run from somethingbut to complete something and if the choice was to move on to do it to go to somethingnot to run from failure. then the good mid-western value we stand up to those challenges buti just instinctively knew what people would've told me in books which is that demeanor inapproaching it but that meant some investigative work and find out how this happened. not whydid it happen or who did you make mad what organizational convince did it provide atthe moment and really why did it happen and i will just share with you for the momentone of the best coaches that i ever worked for he said to me well you know cathy i havehad a chance to see you out in the community and people who do work with you out in thecommunity really respect you they love you
they want to work with you. people insidethe bank don't, ok fortunately this was 15 years ago so i can talk about it and not completelyloose it but imagine hearing that. we all want a lot of things in life but you wouldlike to be loved by the people you work with and spend time with every day and that wasclearly his message was not the case. i think part of the journey then is deciding the gapbetween being able to see who you want to be, see who you are and decide see what isgetting in the way of you are being manifested in what you do and that for me was the criticalmoment who i was not being manifested how i was doing my work. so, hence the journeyof exploration, still the style and dignity everyday one at a time privileges that i hadwould be taken away because of the change
and it wasn't a quick fuse or a quick flameand the humiliation was over but digging in and doing the work staying proud and dignifiedeven when i didn't feel it and then doing the work to make the changes necessary toacknowledge and own the fact that i made mistakes and i needed to change things to continueto move forward. i am convinced i continue to sit today because of that moment not becausethings went well but because of that moment. (clapping)sharon: questions from the audience? oh now, really. sorry, behind me, yes?audience member 1: i wanted to ask you a question about, for example if medicine had come alonglater in life, say in your forties or fifties then you would have had the opportunity togo to school then instead of when you did,
do you feel that it would have been worthwhileto continue that, or would you have stayed in whatever career you had chosen prior?ophelia garmon-brown: it is hard for me to imagine the answer to that question becausei think i was called to be a physician. i don't think that being a physician was a careerchoice that i just decided i was smart enough to do and that it was a good job and a goodmeans of living, but i think i was called to it and therefore i believe that if it werethat then i would have engaged in medicine in a proper way and becoming this physicianlater in life and having done something earlier, it would have been something that would havebeen still care giving in some regard whether that -- i don't know what the care givingwould have looked like if it had not been
with the m.d., but it would have been caregiving in some regard. i could have been a nurse, a cna. i think cnas are incredible.they're the ones that are in there with their hands wet and doing the work, a nurse, a p.a.i think i would have been something or maybe i would have reversed it and instead of gettingmy masters in divinity and becoming this ordained baptist minister in my early fifties, lateforties, maybe i would have done that and that's care giving because there's so muchcaregiving in being a pastor and i often think about myself now having these two careersand when i think about this faith and when i look at bible times back when it was writtenand you go to the fifth chapter of james and it says that the same person would go outand anoint with oil and pray and oil back
in that day was really for medicinal purposesand i think that it is not a coincidence that for me the spirit took me to doing the hardwork of going to seminary for four and a half years because i say the seminary was a wholelot harder than med school, maybe because i was in my twenties when i was in med schooland i was far from my twenties in seminary but i definitely see how a preacher can takea verse and preach all month long. (laughter)sharon: there you go, yes ma'am. audience member 2: thank you very much. icame all the way from new york city to attend this summit we have a chemical engineer andwe have a banker and i want to ask you a very silly question but i want to know how manytimes you have faced a tough time from your
female supervisor in terms of you know ofin your workplace or how many times do you feel that i am not getting feedback from thefemale friend or family or especially in the workplace in the supervisor, thank you.sharon: who would like to take that? ophelia garmon-brown: it's probably a difficultquestion for us because, have any of us had a female supervisor? i've never had a femalesupervisor. cathy bessant: one time for a very brief periodof time. ophelia garmon-brown: i will say this, i willsay this to us females, is that even though we may not have had female supervisors foran extended period of time, we've worked with lots of females and we can be very difficultwith each other. we can cause each other more
pain than others can and so i think i sparkedsomething, she just raised her hand on that one but i think to your point females canbe sometimes worse than men in terms of not really having your back and not only not havingyour back but trying to figure out how to pull down your back and so...deborah aguiar-velez: from the point of view of women entrepreneurs i always say that womenare ruthless. it is much easier for me to make a deal with other men than with a womanbecause it is so difficult to get ahead and to get a client that women tend to have allof their contacts very close to their chest and they don't share so it is a completelydifferent game. i think things are changing but because it's taking us so long to be ableto get a position of respect. i would rather
be respected than loved. don't love me, respectme and the thing is with women is that we tend to be absolutely ruthless so hopefullythings are changing but i hear what you are sayingcathy bessant: you know, it's interesting, i have to watch myself and how i deal withthe men that report to me and the women that report to me so that i don't fall into thetraps of differential treatment. do i start a business conversation with a guy but tellthe woman that walks into my office, "your shoes look great," look we're all human. thosethings actually really do happen and if i know that a woman knows something but she'snot diving into the conversation do i call her out and say "look bridgett, i know you'vegot a point of view here, can we hear it?
what am i doing to make sure the playing fieldis level at all times because we can be our own worst enemies and you know you can explainwith your degrees and background you can probably explain why more than i can i just have todeal with it every day and i really try to check myself as a manager and by the way wheni say love i mean respect. (laughter)sharon: a view from politics? janet cowell: you know, it's such a male dominatedarena that certainly most of my mentors, most of the advice, most of the fundraising it'smen and yeah, you know they are tough with the lottery vote. i think there was a femalestate senator who was almost bullied me for the rest of that session you know becauseof that vote so unfortunately i don't have
a great story to tell there about how womenall rallied around and supported me, it was really a lot of thoughtful and supportivemen who have really made the biggest difference in my career up to now, now i would say theoffice my chief of staff is female, my cfo is female and i have a lot of great womenand that's been the really great part of being treasurer and being able to hire my own folksunlike politics where you end up serving folks that are independently elected so you haveno choice. i've been able to work with people my own age which is also different since politicsare an older game as well as hire and promote some really great women.sharon: yes ma'am. the microphone is on its way.audience member 3: okay, my question is that
youth today do you think that because we didn'tgrow up in the fifties or the sixties that our path might be easier or more difficultbecause we didn't overcome those obstacles? sharon: oh, that's a very good question(laughter) sharon: who'd like to start?cathy bessant: a. (laughter)cathy bessant: i'm just teasing. sharon: c volunteered.cathy bessant: c volunteered, yeah. (laughter)janet cowell: i do think you -- i don't think you can label it difficult but the thing thatwould make it more challenging is that there are a lot more choices now and the discriminationexperienced is more subtle and people will
say it's over and you know i just say likefor example women -- obviously you can get elected now and vote but you will find asa female there is a double standard that you are not only supposed to be confident, youare also supposed to be likeable and with men, they just have to be confident, you know,another double standard that you deal with as a female is that being a woman and havinga good idea, people don't necessarily think it's a good idea. you need validators andthat's pretty depressing for me to hear after decades of you know the degrees and the educationhere that i still have to find male validators, but i do. so, i think that can be just a littlemore complicated more subtle and less recognized as an issue and so therefore i would say maybeharder.
sharon: sometimes surprising, i think. i havea twenty-two year old daughter and that's a conversation we sometimes have. any otherswho would like to respond to that? (laughter)sharon: see who went first and who has spoken for the group, very good. yes. what do youhope is your legacy, preceded by none of you are old enough to have thought about thisyet. (laughter)sharon: that's the most important part of the question.deborah aguiar-velez: one of the things that -- i'm fifty-eight so i've been thinking aboutmy legacy a lot and i remember i went to a special class at harvard and i needed to comeup with a project and i said you know i'm
going to create my own virtual community andi'm going to create a virtual community of expert latinas and i went and i googled "expertlatina." ninety-nine point nine hits were about pornographic sites. i was completelytaken aback so what i said is i'm going to invest my money i said a hundred thousanddollars of my own money to create a portal for women for latina women where they canorganize, promote, showcase them. the challenge that i have women that i want them to be thereto showcase their expertise are already experts and therefore they don't want to come intomy site and the younger people that i want them to learn from them or come in, they don'thave the experience so i have been learning on the process of social media and tryingto talk to the different people and what i'm
doing is i'm getting an education from mytwo daughters. they are a twenty-nine year old and twenty-four year old about they don'tthink that they have to show, like the young woman that spoke like we don't have to facedifferent things but it has taken us twenty five years to become an overnight successand one of the challenges that i have is that what kind of impact would i make so peoplecan start paying attention to latinos and people thinking that you want to go from smartto expert to trusted advisor so i would be so happy if i don't have to put a label onme that says "latina expert" that people will admire me just because i am so knowledgeablein a panel i think this is such a blessing because when you go to technical conferenceand when you go to many, one of us will be
missing probably nation woman so we will becomplete so that's what i hope will be my legacy that i have made a difference in thelatino community so people do not think that we speak funny or we're not smart that we'rejust bartenders or maids or cleaning people that we are really making a lot of contributionsto this country. that would be it. (applause)ophelia garmon-brown: i'm so taken by how kind you were with thinking about that becausei'm fifty nine and sixty this year and so thinking about that and really having hadan opportunity to have been in medicine and a person who has done mission work in othercountries and in the united states because there's lots of mission work to be done hereas well to now actually through my job live,
i say sometimes that i feel like i have justdied and gone to heaven because carl armato who was my ceo of novant health has givenme the opportunity and jesse cureton who is my supervisor who came from bank of americathank you for that jesse, have allowed me to be the executive leader for a communitywellness initiative and the community wellness initiative is an opportunity for me to goout into community. i love community, you know, it's just like i'm crazy when i'm outin community and now i'm going out in community and i'm doing a1c testing for people for pre-diabetesand diabetes and i'm doing blood pressure and bmis and i've got a team of people andhe allowed, they allowed me to do it, not just in this area, but from virginia downto georgia. i have teams of people that are
doing that. now, why is that legacy for me?because we have now in our world and in particular this united states of america, an epidemicof illness. we have an -- and when i was in medical school, they taught me nothing aboutnutrition, they taught me nothing about prevention and i don't blame medical schools during myera. they're doing more of that now, but when you think about medical schools, by the timeyou get to chapel hill or duke, you're so sick that nobody's talking prevention, they'rejust trying to snatch you from the jaws of death because you have come from your localhospitals and you were still declining. that's how you get to those places. the beauty ofit for me is that now as this physician and this person who is a helper of mankind, right,i can now go out and look and search for people
who have pre things and really when you takea person who has pre-diabetes, within two to ten years if we intervene none, they willbecome full blown diabetics. i have a chance to change the trajectory of what we're seeingin healthcare right now and what we're seeing in our world and be a part of with other institutionsthat are wonderful as well, i just have this beautiful job that it is my primary focusto go out and my teams to do that to help us to create a culture of wellness. what ithas done for me personally, now i'm even looking at myself and asking myself why. why do iwant to be healthy? why do i want to be my best self? because as i determine my why iwill help others to think about their why. so for me, i could not have stayed in medicinelong enough to be able to now i feel like
i've stayed in medicine long enough, to feellike now i have the dream job of really going out and then i do this also in corporations.i get to go out in corporations and talk to people as well about a cultural wellness soi'm really living mine. i tell people i'm not going to wait until i can't see or can'thear or can't walk to feel like i'm really out there and having fun and making a differenceso i'm just really grateful to novant health and what they've allowed me to be able todo. sharon: sure.cathy bessant: for me actually it's an easy question. it seems like it should be a hardquestion but for anyone who has faced a crises and i've faced two almost the demise of anindustry that i care about right and faced
and stared down and beat cancer and anyonethat has had those kinds of crises as you would be able to say i feel like you can'ttake your next step forward without thinking about why am i here, what's my legacy? so,i'm lucky enough to believe that banking is a very noble profession and the legacy, notjust career but personally that i would like to have, legitimately have and be known forwould be creating opportunity and not just because it used to be our tag line but whenyou give someone a mortgage loan and they're in a home versus an apartment or you helpsomeone start a business or your make capital markets move from large corporations so theycan employee people and change lives, i think that's creating opportunity, you know bettychaffin rash, betty's husband committed—seriously
committed accomplished civic leader herself—betty'shusband, dennis, taught me a community development and affordable housing business and the ideaof revitalizing neighborhoods to create opportunity is just part of the fabric of who i am thanksto dennis and also part of the legacy i want to leave. it's why i think having my childrenand why they're so important to me creating opportunity for them is what it's all aboutso it doesn't really matter what part of my life it is vocation or avocation for me itis knowing that what i've done potentially will have created opportunity for people whocome after me. (applause)janet cowell: i guess i come from a more spiritual perspective on this in that you really trynot to be attached to all of these worldly
outcomes which are transient and ephemeraland really just try to focus and i'm really trying to do this on what is it that i'm supposedto be doing and what is aligned with who i am and then the rest will just follow so maybethe goal is not to want to leave a legacy, not to want to have to have some kind of imprintbut to just be—do what you think god wants you to be doing now and you know put yourtrust there. sharon: thank you for that question, it wasa powerful question. we probably have time for one. let's go here. thank you. go aheadand speak. audience member 4: i wanted to take this opportunitybecause we're in this room and we're talking about legacies and we're talking about womenand women's issues and whether we've been
kind to one another and whether we've reachedout and helped one another and where we go from here and i wanted to take this opportunityto tell you cathy, in 2003 2002 i had started with the charlotte chamber we had just movedhere recently and i had gotten very involved and i became very involved in a volunteeraspect and i want to thank you because there was an opportunity for you to reach over andinvite me to the table and you did so and i am here now because of you, thank you.sharon: very nice. (applause)sharon: is there one more question? here we go.audience member 5: my question is, can you hear me? well first let me just say that ithink that you all are gracefully gifted,
empowering women. i know you've done thatto a lot of us in this room today and i just want to know basically, how do you make itall work? you know, all that you are, how do you make it work because a lot of us probablywant to you know follow in your footsteps somewhat, but we want to know how do you makeit work? sharon: is that around the question of balanceor just -- audience member 5: balance.sharon: very good. (laughter)sharon: they're deciding alphabetically who's going to respond first.cathy bessant: i don't think ophelia's gone first.ophelia: right i've gone first three times
but i will. you know i don't do that well,i don't do that well. in my office four years ago the chaplain at presbyterian hospitalretired and one of the gifts that he gave me on his retirement was one that i'm overchaplaincy now, that wasn't necessarily the gift but in his office he had a cross andthe cross with the four arms of the cross it was work, worship, play, and fun is it,let me see, work, worship, play, and love i think it was or something like that andi look at that cross often because at the bottom of the cross what it has is four differentcrosses and one arm of it is longer so the work arm is long or the play arm is long orthe worship arm is long and in a life that is not balanced disease happens. a life thatis not balanced is a greater chance for disease.
now, as cathy mentioned about cancer survivors,did you say that? i am a cancer survivor as well as of a year and a half ago, balanceyou know this balance, yes, yes. but when i think of that i think also some of it, someof that may have been because i was out of balance and even right now, today, i thinkof today i was somewhere i was speaking earlier today down here tomorrow i'll be somewhereand i just think ophelia, you've just got to start saying no, you've got to start sayingno. i wish i—i have a person who is in my life more as a coach and she says to me iwas in a conference call with her just the other day and i was volunteering our servicesand on the conference call she doesn't like to do this but on the conference call shetook away what i gave, she told the attorney,
no we're not --i don't think we'll do that,you do that you know in terms of creating this phrase that i was going to help the attorneydo and then when the call was over as she will sometimes do we will talk after the conferencecall and after the conference call she said i don't like to end the conference call whilewhat's going on or go against what you've given away she said but i had to because yougive it away because you just want to nurture people, you want to help, you want to makeit right, you want to do all of these things she said if i could just get you to turn thatback on yourself, if i could just get you to turn that back on yourself. so, i guesswhat i would say in terms of being the persons that we are is that give because to whom muchis given, much is required, give, but turn
it back on yourselves, turn it back on yourselves,turn it back on your family, and have a person in your life that is very honest with youthat will tell you, you know you might be all of that and out there but you need todo this in here or you need to slow yourself down or this or that but balance is not easybecause once you do what we do everybody wants more of you to do it and it's good stuff andyou want to do it but you really do have to have people to help you to say come on pullup a little bit you've got to take some time for yourself.sharon: anybody else like to respond? deborah aguiar-velez: i also think the partneryou choose, i told you that i started college when i was sixteen. chemistry lab, one o'clockand i met another boy who was also sixteen
years old and at that time i was wearing avery big blouse and the first question he asked me was how many kids do you have andi said are you stupid? well we have been together for forty-two years(laughter and applause) deborah aguiar-velez: and i think the decisionof—that decision was one of the most important—he's catholic and protestant so we got marriedby a priest and a minister so we knew we were never ever going to divorce because it wouldbe so difficult that we made it work he cooks, he's brilliant, i come around here, when icome home, everything is done, but he is a puerto rican man who has his brain in theright spot. so, your partner, the person you select to be your companion forever that isthe key because he keeps me grounded. when
i think i'm such a hot stuff i will say mygod i moved to the big leagues i am here with cathy and ophelia and the treasurer of thestate, he's like dinner is on the table okay so reality strikes. so, your partner, choosewisely because that person when you're—and you know it's interesting because i am alsoa cancer survivor and he was the one staying with me every single moment when i went throughmy ordeal and it made such a big difference. that's my advice, choose wisely.cathy bessant: i'll be quick. in addition, i agree with everything that's been said,i think you have to declare your priorities, but i think the only person you actually haveto declare them to is yourself. it doesn't have to be a public broadcast of what yourpriorities are but i think you have to know
what they are and you have to organize yourlife in order of your priorities. the other thing i think is that you cannot judge yourselfevery day. you know, you're going to think i've got all of these rigid routines, buti judge myself about once a month. if it's the first of the month i say to myself howdid last month look not because i'm going to judge it to be good or bad but i'm goingto decide how i want the next month to look because in any given day i could be all workyou know next friday when my kids are off of school and i'm driving to nashville, tennesseeto the miley cyrus concert because they couldn't see her here, i would like to ring her neck.(laughter) cathy bessant: but next friday when everybodyelse is working, i'll be all mom and so to
me it is know your priorities, line up yourlife to execute against them, not always in an academic but in a spiritual, and socialand family way too and then don't judge yourself every day, judge yourself over the portfolioof what you're doing. janet cowell: my only quick add would justbe for those who may not have a spouse or that great puerto rican man with his brainin the right place but a political concept that i really think has been helpful is thekitchen cabinet you know most politicians will have a set of advisors who are helpingyou and that can be i've got suzanne here and brenda williams who both work with mebut my staff, my friends, i also do have a supportive partner, you know there's lotsof people who can help point out you know
if you're being insane or getting away fromyour priorities or just be supportive in times of need that can be a broad circle spiritualor otherwise but choose wisely in your staff too, so—sharon: please join me in applause for these ladies(applause)