 Good evening. We're about ready to start the program. First, let me introduce myself. I'm Ramiro Salazar and the director of the San Antonio Public Library, your director of the library system. I want to send to you a very warm welcome to your central library. We're very excited to be offering this program this evening. And at this time, before I continue with the program, let me recognize a few individuals here. We have the chair of the library board, Jean Brady. We have Laura Expert, also a member of the library board of trustees representing District 6. And I see we also have former president of the Landa Gardens Conservancy, Anne Ventelt, who is here. Thank you, Anne. And we also have the president of the Friends of the San Antonio Public Library, who are celebrating their 50th year anniversary serving the San Antonio Public Library. Thank you, Linda, and thanks to Friends for your support. Offering a program like the one we have this evening requires the collective efforts of many. I would like to recognize the staff committee that worked very hard to put this program together. I would like to also thank the logistic team that worked on all the logistics to make this program happen. So thank you, staff, for your support, for your efforts in bringing this program together and making it a reality. I also want to thank the San Antonio Public Library Foundation for their support. They're sponsoring and hosting the reception after the program. They have been great champions of the San Antonio Public Library. So I'd like to thank them. And Casey Bennett, who is the president and CEO of the Library Foundation. I also want to thank Charlotte and Lucas and the team from Nowcast for streaming this event, which will be streamed live. Those that will sign up to the website. In addition to that, we also made arrangements because we were expecting a standing only crowd. We made arrangements to bring this event and panel discussion in the connect space here at the Central Library. One housekeeping item that I'd like to share with you, you may have noticed construction out in the foyer area. The bathrooms are under construction, but we do have bathrooms that are available. And I do want to take this time to publicly thank City Manager Carol Scully for her support in providing funds to make a whole bunch of improvements here at the Central Library. The bathrooms here are only one of the many improvements that we're making. There are bathrooms and we have people outside, volunteers, we have teams that are volunteering to guide people over to the other bathrooms that were just recently renovated and that are in close proximity to cafe commerce. Talk about it another time, but it's a great project. March is Women's History Month. It is a time to really celebrate the contributions of women. And I was really excited when I heard that the staff committee had thought about this panel discussion to invite influential women in the community to come together and to sit with us and to share with us their path to leadership. And so we're extremely excited that we have some women that have been extremely successful and have had a tremendous impact in this community and they will be introduced shortly. At this time it is my pleasure to introduce our panel moderator, Ms. Eileen Pace. Eileen has been a news reporter with Texas Public Radio since 2010. Eileen joined the news department at KSTX San Antonio's National Public Radio Member Station, covering a broad range of general assignment stories and the first reporter in the station's newly formed news department. Eileen was WAI's first female news anchor joining Bob Bathry during Morning Drive for more than a decade. She's a veteran radio and print journalist with a long history of investigative and features reporting in San Antonio and Houston, earning awards for outstanding anchoring, investigating reporting, feature reporting and sports reporting. We are truly honored to have her here with us this evening to moderate this panel discussion. Please send a warm welcome by Eileen Pace. Thank you, Ramiro. That was a nice introduction. I'm really excited to be here. This is such an important event and we're so glad that all of you are here. The women that are joining us to speak this evening are truly pillars of our community and exemplify the national theme of Women's History Month, celebrating women of courage, character and commitment, and I know many of you and I know that to be totally true. Our first panelist is Janie Barada, president and CEO of Axion Texas. Axion Texas Inc. is a nonprofit agency that provides small loans and management training to micro enterprises of all kinds. As founding president and CEO, Barada is responsible for the organization's financial management oversight of its annual budget and the development of methodology and loan delivery procedures. Janie, thank you. Our second panelist is Dr. Edina Williams-Lostin, president of St. Philip's College. Dr. Lostin has served as the 14th president of St. Philip's since 2007 and possesses more than 38 years of higher education experience. She was appointed to the president's advisory board for Title III administrators and is a member of the San Antonio Women's Hall of Fame, the boards of directors for the Alamo City Chamber of Commerce, SA 2020, and San Antonio for Growth on the east side, also known as SAGE. Dr. Lostin, thank you for coming. Next we have Bear County Sheriff Susan Palmer Lowe, who became the first woman to be elected to Bear County Sheriff ever in 2012. Prior to being elected Sheriff, she served 32 years in the Air Force where she rose to the rank of Major General. After her retirement from the Air Force she served as Senior Vice President at USAA and she serves on the board of directors for Government Personnel Mutual Life Insurance Company. Sheriff, thank you for coming. Next we have San Antonio City Manager Cheryl Scully. Scully began serving as city manager in San Antonio in November of 2005 with more than 30 years of public management experience. Under her financial leadership, the city's general obligation bond rating was upgraded by standard and pours to AAA, a first for the city of San Antonio, quite an achievement. She has served on the San Antonio United Way Board of Directors since 2007 and was the 2013 United Way Campaign Chair where she raised a record setting $52.5 million for our community. Cheryl, thank you for coming. Our final panelist is Patricia Plego Stout, CEO of the Alamo Travel Group, Inc. Since 1990, Alamo Travel has expanded to become a nationwide provider of corporate, leisure, federal and state travel services. Stout has been featured in Latina Magazine, Readers Digest, Hispanic Business Magazine, among others. She was included in the 100 Top Latinas of America in Hispanic Magazine in 2003. Stout is the current chair of the San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and just put on a really big gala. Alright, I would like to, if I may, take a few minutes to allow each of our panelists to share some of their background with us. And in terms of your success, your ability to move into management, your desire to move into management, if you could share, each of you could share a little bit about yourself with us. What attracted you to a position of leadership? And I'd like to thank, to start with Ms. Pareda. Eileen. Good evening, everyone. Thanks for coming. It sounds to me that when we celebrate, yeah, we not only celebrate with ourselves, but we celebrate with everyone. It's an honor for me to be here to share a little bit, not only about myself, but also of our work. And so Axion, as you know, is a micro and small business. Actually, I'm the first employee. Twenty years ago, 1994, we opened up shop with two other, three of us did, actually. And now we are the largest microlender in the United States. Microlending, you know, is very prominent in developing countries, but not necessarily here in the United States. So for us to be able to become the largest meant we had to learn, character people, be able to mitigate risk. Because most of the people that we work with, the reason they can't get a loan is because they have bad credit. And so if I have bad credit, the person next to me has bad credit, why am I going to co-sign for one? So what we're trying to do is level that financial playing field. So why would I want to be doing something like this? I have zero banking. I have an MBA, but never worked in a bank, never actually worked for a financial institution. But my parents did have a Mexican restaurant in Corpus Christi, my first job for 20 years. My first job was as a waitress at the restaurant. And what I learned from those days watching my parents was that they were good at having a restaurant. They were great cooks. They were great at customer service. They respected every single person that walked into that restaurant. But they were terrible at, was finances. And so we didn't sit around the kitchen table talking about finances. We didn't talk about stock market. I didn't even know what a stock market was. I didn't realize that if you borrowed money and you paid it back on time, that actually helps your credit score. And so at the end of the 20 years, my parents retire with zero retirement, except for the $100,000 that they were getting from social security. So they ended up with nothing. That to them wasn't the big deal, though. But I thought, why? Because they had lived great lives, rich lives. And so I thought, why can't we open up that financial playing field? Why can't we teach everybody? I used to think that capitalism was terrible in terms of being a socialist or capitalist, because I come from also a social service background. So the fact that capitalism is a good thing, I think, because if you don't have a dollar, how can you then feed the hungry and shelter folks that need housing or clothes, people that need food, shelter, and clothes? You have to have a dollar to do those things. And so by incorporating both the mission of being able to level the financial playing field with economic development in terms of financing is a great job to have. What we're doing is we're putting together the not-for-profit and the for-profit world together and be able to talk to the President of the United States one day, which I had the opportunity recently as he has to be on mission for financial capability, sitting closer than I am to the front row here with a person who is probably the, not probably the most powerful person in the world, and then coming home the next day and going to a little restaurant down on the south side and talking to the husband and wife who own that probably net worth is 25,000. So the reality of being able to put these two worlds together and everyone is equal in that way, you know, you can always talk, you can have major conversations about ethnicity and gender and everything else. But at the end of the day, if you have a dollar, everybody's treated the same way. So if we can teach people how to A, handle dollars, how to handle money, how to borrow money, pay it back on time and be able to grow assets, I think that's very important. When closing, I just like to say, you know, that saying you give somebody a fish to eat for a day, you teach somebody how to fish, they eat for a lifetime. What we do in our work is that we help people buy the pond where they fish. And so they're able to have assets and able to then to have something, own something to give it to the next generation. Because I believe that's how we can break the cycle of poverty is by owning something and giving it. So thank you, Eileen. Jamie, thank you so much. Dr. Lawston, same question. What attracted you to a position of leadership? Thank you very much. I must say, as being selected to be a part of this panel, I'm very honored and to be a part of this Women's History Month program. So thank you to the members of the board and to the library and the administration for considering Adina Lawston to be worthy to be on this panel. We were asked to talk a little bit about ourselves and then why administration. I can tell you I grew up in Mississippi in the 50s. If you know anything about Mississippi in the 50s, my vision was as big as my big sister. Whatever she did, I wanted to do. What she majored in in college, I majored in. It was always following in my big sister's footsteps. So when she left home and went off to college, I was devastated because she left me. Growing up in Mississippi, it was the segregated south. I was not in an integrated environment until I went to graduate school because growing up in the south, the schools were segregated. When I went to college, went off to college, it was in historically black college. So that was not integrated. So it was not until I decided that I was going to work on my master's degree. And I went to Ohio and that was my first time being in an integrated environment. And deciding to work on my master's degree, as we talk about leadership, it was in the 11th grade, my aunt came to visit. She had just achieved her master's degree. I didn't know what it was, but I knew I wanted to be called master. So I decided I was going to pursue. I didn't know. Lolo came by the house and said she just received her master's degree from LSU. Had no clue what it was, but I just remember then, I determined that I was going to be called master. And so I wanted to finish college in three years. This was laying in the top bunk bed in my bedroom. I was going to finish college in three years and get a master's degree in one year. So by the time everybody else was getting their bachelor's degree, I would already be master. Going to school in Mississippi and growing up in the south, as you remember the freedom riders coming down south, having sit-ins and establishing the freedom schools, I attended those freedom schools every summer when they would come. So and then going off to work every job I have ever held throughout my entire professional career, I was the first black or the only black. So leadership, being in a leadership position was truly not a vision that I had, nor did I have a role model for that growing up in Mississippi. But it wasn't until I selected a job, I was at Arkansas State University, the first African American female hired, instructional female hired there. And they were pushing me to go back to get a PhD. If you're going to teach at a university, you need to have a PhD. So that was the push. And when I went back to work on my PhD, then instructor there, Ronald Jones, when I learned he had been a college president, the light bulb came on and I said if he can do it, certainly I can do it. Dr. Ronald Jones, but throughout my entire professional career, as I've said, every place I've ever worked, I was the first black or the only black, even going to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. I was the highest ranking African American female in the agency. It is not until I came to San Antonio, Texas that I followed another African American leader. So my journey over 40 years has been long. It's been trailblazing. But to move into the position of leadership, I understood and learned quickly that leaders set the agenda and you have an opportunity to make a difference, a meaningful difference in the lives of others. My goal has been, since being in a leadership position, to ensure that there is opportunities for inclusiveness. Everyone is present at the table in the decision making processes and to know that you set the strategic agenda and with that comes great responsibility, but I do own that. So it's been more or less just knowing that I can make a meaningful difference and so that has been the reasons why I have chosen to be in this leadership position. Thank you. Dr. Lawson, thank you. Probably better being called doctor than even being called master. I got that too finally after Ronald Jones. Sheriff Father Law, we'd ask you the same thing. What attracted you to a position of leadership? You know, I think all of us have something in common. This is echoing. Is that okay? Pretty loud, but it's okay. Let me back off. But I think there are some common themes here and I too am honored to be a part of this panel as I look down this table. These are great women and so I'm really humbled to be part of this group. But I, and what Dr. Lawson said, got to know that she can wear the t-shirt that says, I'm a rocket scientist. And similar, I didn't grow up in the south but I'm a preacher's kid and I grew up about the same time. And so when I was a senior at the University of Wyoming and I'm getting a degree in sociology, I'm thinking I don't think so. And therefore recruiter came along. What I didn't know at the time was that about the same time she came to visit my sorority, National Defense Authorization Act of 1968 was just being passed by the Congress and in it, there were two provisions that were being repealed. U.S. Code Title X, Section 625, which said women may not rise above the rank of Lieutenant Colonel or Navy Commander and women may not comprise more than 2% of the armed forces. Those rules had been in place since 1947 at the end of World War II and when the new, when the War Department was morphed into the Department of Defense, the Air Force was established. Because men were coming back from war, they needed jobs and so there were limitations on how many women served in the armed forces. They were going back to additional roles of being mothers, housemakers, each nurses, those types of things. So I entered the Air Force at a time when there was great social change. It was at the height of the Vietnam War and so a lot of things were changing. And so through the 70s, one Equal Rights Amendment was being debated across the nation and a lot of other things were changing in the workplace. So when I entered the Air Force in 1968, there were 2,000 officer trainings at Officer Training School right across town at Lakeland Air Force Base. They had doubled the number of women who came into Officer Training School that class from 20 to 40, the odds were great. And so like Dr. Lawson, she was the only black woman in the jobs that she was in or the first one. Every assignment I had the next 10, 12 years, I was either the most senior woman officer or I was the only woman officer. And so working in a traditionally man's environment is nothing new. It's sort of like, it's always been. So here's what I would say about being in a leadership position. I never really thought about being in a leadership position. I was fortunate enough to be in an organization that valued professional development. It valued education. It valued hard work. It valued having a focus on something larger than yourself. And growing up as a preacher, I would say that I started off with a great foundation of service, commitment, helping others who are not as fortunate as you are and just had, you know, a great foundation across the board. Now you say, why would I want to be the sheriff of Bear County? The Chief Law Enforcement Officer of the County, based on Texas law. And again, after having two successful careers in the military corporate environment, why would I want to be in law enforcement? Why would I run for sheriff? I've never been in law enforcement before. But it was looking at what the real job of the Sheriff of Bear County is. And that's one of leading a very large organization, managing a very large budget, focusing on a very specific mission and making sure that we provide those who are serving in the Bear County Sheriff's Office the tools that they need to provide for public safety. And so when I looked at what kinds of experiences I had, what kinds of skills that I could bring, and after being recruited to run for County Commissioner position and not winning, I was so inspired by grassroots people who care deeply about their community. And I thought, I chose Senate in Bear County as my home. So why shouldn't I be involved? And I think that's an important lesson there is we all have a responsibility to our community to use our skills, our talents to make it a better place to live and work. Thank you, Cheryl. Ms. Scully, can you also share a little about yourself and what attracted you to a position of leadership? Happy to. Thank you for the invitation to be here. Thank you all for being here. And I thank the panel members as well. I'm happy to share the panel with you. Well, I wasn't born a city manager, but I was born the oldest of seven children. And so I've been somewhat in a leadership role for much of my life. My sisters might describe it slightly differently. But I was the older sister and had a strong foundation of my family as well. My parents raised seven children, all of which went to college and graduated and have very different kinds of careers, but they stressed the importance of education. I was a working class family. My mom stayed at home in a very traditional role back in the 50s and 60s. And I was told that if I did well in school, I'd be able to go to college. And so I had to work very hard to earn a college degree and grew up in Northwest Indiana just outside of Chicago and was able to earn a journalism scholarship to Ball State University and majored in journalism and political science and became very interested in local government. And my father had been a democratic recent commitment as I was growing up and both of my parents volunteered at school and at the church. And so I grew up in an environment of public service and volunteerism and also was told by my parents that I had to do well because there were six others following me and if I did something that wasn't quite right, the rest of the family would be labeled and those kids would have a hard time in school and so I had a huge responsibility. But as I graduated from school and took my first job out of college working with the city of Kalamazoo, Michigan doing some research writing for them on a project and became enamored with the work and knew that I wanted to work in public service. And I can't, I was thinking as each one of us has said we've been the first woman in every position over my career so I don't know if things are starting to change although I've been in this business this year will be my 40th year in city management and public service but it's been slow to change and I think there are still many things that we need to work on men and women in the community to support women and their roles in their careers. But throughout my career I've worked in Michigan for 15 years I started in an entry level position and moved up to the city manager's office working on projects and progressed in that organization and competed for the city manager's position there at age 32 competed with an older man who was in his late 50s and on a split vote the city council appointed me city manager and in the world did I know about that but they saw promise in me but I have to share with you that throughout my career and even in those first 10 years as I said and stated what I really wanted to do in local government and what positions I was aspiring to both men and women told me that I was setting my goals way too high that there was no way that city would ever hire a female city manager I think back on that now and wouldn't dream of telling a staff member that they couldn't achieve their goals and what they wanted to do but I'm looking out and seeing a number of city staff in the audience and those have worked with me know all you have to say to me is you can't do it and that makes me work even 10 times harder and so we worked pretty hard we worked very hard and I would say hard work passion for the work that we do courage to do the things that we think we cannot do reflecting on Eleanor Roosevelt who said that so many times do the thing that you think you cannot do and having the courage to do the thing that is right it's right for you if it's right for the organization if it's right for the community and so I worked in Michigan for 15 years and was recruited to Phoenix had never been to the Southwest had never even been to Phoenix wasn't quite enamored with it the time I saw the city but ended up moving there and taking the risk my husband quit his job our children were preschoolers and took that opportunity and was the first female there which to me seemed pretty hard to believe in that day and age nonetheless was able to excel and work on projects that were able to establish me in that organization and in that community as being a risk taker and someone that would take on the hard duties and responsibilities and one of those toughest things to do I think as women sometimes and I'll say this you know we almost in growing up in the time frame since we're all in similar time frames maybe I'm the oldest one here but we won't talk about age but you know we were expected we were expected to be so much better than anyone else and you know we used to say that equality will happen when you can be mediocre at your job and still be okay because there were so many mediocre men at the time that we would say oh my gosh I could I can do that I can do that better I have some other ideas together we can even make the organization greater if we partner but it motivated me to do even more to take on those greater challenges and so when the opportunity came to San Antonio what a wonderful city what a great opportunity to be a CEO again and that was nine years ago which is hard to believe but we've covered a lot of territory and made we think a lot of change and improvement and I'll just say that not only within the city organization but as a community working together and I've been a united way volunteer for my entire adult life and it's important not just to work at the work that we do but to make sure that we are as has been said involved in the community and contributing our talents in a variety of ways tomorrow morning I'll be with my reading buddy on elementary early in the morning and just knowing that one little girl that I'm helping as a second grader with her reading skills perhaps will motivate her to take an interest in a particular subject or become an avid reader and excel in her education so that she has an opportunity to do the best and be the very best that she can be so a career of public service that I'm motivated to do because it is about serving others it is about bringing greatest value to those who are paying the bill to the taxpayers of the community making sure that we're providing the very best that we can with the resources we have available and presenting the community with options on how we can be better and that does motivate and excites me to do an even better job each and every day thank you Cheryl and finally Ms. Stout would you be able to share a little bit of yourself with us and tell us what motivated you to become a leader well it was not in my plans and you will see why first of all I was born in many years ago when little girls were not expected to do anything else to get married and so I was raised that way Catholic environment I was the first granddaughter the first daughter so I was really thought very special and I intended to go to college and I had a big fight with my father because he thought it was a waste of time because I was expected to get married in two years but I managed to go to the University of Mexico and then we had some riots and then my father said you're not going there because you know you can't get killed and things were really really bad in 1968 so I agreed so I decided just go not pay for whatever education you may want you know take so I decided to go for languages which really opened my world to learn almost anything I wanted to learn I learned French, I learned English and Italian then I went on and took other different courses and in the meantime I was not allowed to work because that was not you know something that was agreeable so they let me work for a man who was afraid of the family and that changed my life this man has he's from Monterrey and it's a man of great relevance and maybe you know the company is Molinos Azteca they make you know go for tortillas and they, it's one of the largest manufacturing of tortillas in the world they, a man owned a bank home I don't remember exactly from Banco del Norte in other companies so when I started working for these men I realized that he was the most outstanding person in in the world of his company of his building when he would walk in would recognize him for me he knew everything he had answers for everything he would bring deals and then I knew that I wanted my father was an entrepreneur my grandfather was an entrepreneur and I thought that he was the easiest thing but then I got involved with my other future and my family had prepared for me and then I got involved in getting myself ready to get married which did not happen and so I got about all of that nevertheless I continued studying so my fracture education was something that I chose by design I found something very very interesting when you are attracted to a certain learning possibility you learn so fast to become and I started to look at numbers I started doing accounting then I became the manager of that and then later I went to another company where I met my ex-husband and we moved to the US I arrived here going to be 41 years I arrived with my ex-husband and myself and my pet and we had the plan a branch of his father's construction company which we did it was very relevant we made a lot of money I managed the book and he managed the ideas and we were the best pair therefore we made a lot of money and therefore the marriage went sour so there was too much oops I didn't touch it there was too much money too much freedom my two babies I had I was leaving the American dream looking back or anything of the sort and then we got involved in a franchise for travel agencies that I didn't approve of but it was done and then our marriage collapsed and I ended up with a one person travel agency that I accepted as part of my divorce agreement and the reason why I accepted a lesser deal which was not good at the time was because I saw that this will be my passport for my independence somebody who could take care of her children that I for the first time in my life I was going to be the master of because I've always lived at home with parents I always lived with my husband and I had a happy marriage for a while but I found that I had never been on my own and that was frightening because I didn't know I was capable I was going to be strong enough to do this in a foreign country divorce to kids and at the time there were no loans for minority women we're talking 1980 it was very difficult I didn't have a college degree I had two kids I had a fabulous home and I assumed not to have child support or anything else I didn't know that was in the pipeline as many women don't know and they trust that when they get divorced that there's going to be a moral responsibility from both parties but sometimes it didn't happen to me but I think that that was the catalyst that made me find I decided to continue with the business and grow it, develop it with my credit card because nobody would lend any money to a Latina just divorced with a new business so I decided to use my Visa card at the time so Solacev was my best friend the coupons at the grocery store I had them all in alphabetical order perfectly the good thing is when you have money you buy too many clothes so I didn't have to buy clothes for 2 or 3 years I had shoes forever and so I had the whole package and now I had to deal with this package I'm not going to ask for money for my family or I was going to ask for in Mexico you don't ask for the government to help you so you just make it I work as hard as I could but I found mentors along the way I find people who told me you're going very slowly join this non-profit do so I joined all the chambers I was not afforded but I found the credit card so anyway I started going to all these meetings and one day the city of San Antonio economic development along with the Hispanic chamber at a meeting with small business to teach them how to do business with government and it was like we're talking to me I was like in a trans believing absolutely everything government contract there's two billion etc minority, small business and I totally and I'm glad I did because I was able to be trained by some experts at the city I had mentors from the chamber Ramiro Cavazos was the president now this was the president then we had a little chamber with very few people with one staffer and that's why I'm the chairman of the Hispanic chamber because all these years I had that gratitude and I'm paying back now but I was able to get my first contract in 1994 for four million dollars with the GSA with the help of all these people because I realized that I was an excellent sales person and everybody believed me I've never done this before but I was like yes it's me and I'm going to do it and I knew that in this country if you work hard you persist don't let anybody tell you that you cannot do it you can do it and I was so impressed with the fact that being a woman it really didn't matter that much you work hard the results were gonna be there and it happened one contract started hiring other people I am very in touch with the needs of single parents both men and women and it looked like my company, my type of business attracted that type of group so we understood each other we knew sometimes we had to go pick up the children etc my company kept growing and we went from state to federal and then I became the largest Latino businesswoman owner that was working with government contracts and I was at the right time at the right place for the wrong reason unfortunately but this is when the war really exploded and my company multiplied the first time 600% from one quarter to another and the growth was a little bit unsustainable at times because we had to work a lot of overtime but I never forgot to be very grateful about it because that work brought a lot of good things for the families that depended on me but then I realized that without planning I had become a leader and that people follow me so I thought that this is an opportunity working for others for my employees, my community so I had tried to serve different capacity supports to be able to pass on a passion that I still have in my heart for a small business or for business but more than anything else to tell aspiring entrepreneurs both men and women as you can do it because if someone like me has made it so well in this country anybody can and all it takes is learn, work hard persist, never give up and know that it's gonna happen it's impossible that it would not happen because I have seen it many times I have seen it with other women today I'm just so proud and honored to sit here and listen to the stories because I am here in front of great talent great intelligence and all of us at the same time have been mothers and mothers and we keep going like the little rabbit but we're gonna keep going because we have so much to give so much to offer we wanna mentor, we wanna share and so that's thank you we have a list of questions here some of you have already touched on many of these things but maybe we can just kind of go into a little bit more about the greatest influences that have marked milestones for you along your path and maybe tell us why you do what you do Janie can I call on you there have been many people of influence in my life and most of them have been women talking about the entrepreneurial spirit my grandmother Rado Texas built a grocery store for the neighborhood and so mom would let me go and spend a couple of weeks that's where I learned how to sell stuff to good customer service obviously my mom was a great influence on me as well and I don't know if part of my bio in my background as well is that at 18 I entered the convent so for 15 years I was an important sister the leadership there taught me many things as well so sister Bridget O'Neill was my novice director what she told me was don't ever put yourself in a corner that you don't have enough room to turn around and I thought that was great advice so if you do get yourself stuck in a corner turn around and everything opens up so as I do that training in terms of discipline in terms of community in terms of social service social work I learned then to listen I think that's one of the great traits of a leader needs to listen to then be able to do something about it listening to or listening is not good enough but how do you connect the dots right how do you connect the dots of what you hear to what the potential is out there so people of influence in terms of what the people that I surround myself with also are people that are smarter than I am and compliment that I do so as first employee of oxygen Texas 20 years ago remember I have no banking guess who was the first person I hired banker right so since that time I also have been blessed to be surrounded with many people who get the kind of work that we are doing and so you know here I am my 30s in San Antonio I don't know anybody but Al Martinez Font was the chairman of the greater chamber that year here in San and also the president of Chase Bank so what did Al do he introduced me to all the bankers in San Antonio because he had the credibility when he opens the doors he vouched for me so then people might frost at frost so on were listening because of Al's credibility and as time goes on to be able to fill positions within even our organization that are also complementary to what my skill sets are so as you as the question is you know who has been influence well there are people that are that gravitate to this kind of work I think would be a way of saying it and the other lessons learned is I stay away from people that don't get what we life is too short and I'm not going to spend time with folks that have bad energy or bring things that say like our city manager Cheryl I say really when people say you can't do it okay see how can we do it and that I learned from my dad because you know he would say if there's a door that's closed it's locked there's another way around the house so there's a will there's a way right so that has been part of my history of people coming into my life at a certain time when it's just it's I don't call it coincidence call it providence because things don't happen just because things happen for some reason you're here tonight listening to all these old ladies talk I wonder if we could open it up to a discussion about that we have a couple of minutes for each person to talk but I think it might be more fun to just share what do y'all think who has something to say about that about the greatest influences along your path so with one simple one I think that when you're young or a child pretty much you get in my case at least it was programmed by family my grandmother called me one day I probably was nine and she told me I have noticed that you're pretty good with numbers I know that you you know etc. I know that you've been saving your money so I'm going to teach you how to take care of money is you are going to have a lot of money but you need to know how to utilize it properly so my grandmother was she had five children and she handled all the money for the the house expenses and she spent every afternoon showing me what to pay this to pay that how much money was coming in and she told me if you learn how to do this you will always be successful and to this day that's where I have a passion for I love to count money I love it and not only that I spend it invested very very very in a very conservative way so I think of my grandmother almost every night and I thank her because one thing that you just said Cheney I have had four business and when I go with a partner I tell them as long as I sign the check I will partner with you or with a man or woman the problem is that the back office in small businesses and in art companies or cities sometimes it's not managed properly and that's where bad things I'm telling you that if you know how to manage your income you're going to be successful family, your business your grandmother she told me that I could do it I I was just adding cents and pesos or etc but that was the beginning and I had other influences but that that statement from her still lives inside me and I've always been very very careful with money and I tend to make it grow just because I am careful I try to expand into that and tell people watch your money watch your back office and you will be happy so for me my grandmother was the greatest lady on earth and allowed me to be a very good business woman Thank you listening to that comment I want to add to in terms of my greatest influencers or my parents my father believed in Booker T. Washington so he's mandated that all of his children would have a skill or trade something that you could do with your hands because he would say a black person is fired from a job every day but no one can ever take away a skill or trade so starting even in the fourth grade I learned how to sew my mother believed in William Edward Barnhart Du Bois everybody had to have a college degree five of us we all have a trade and we all have a college degree daddy being he only finished the sixth grade but he ultimately went back to school to get his plumber's license at Alcorn State University he was the first black self-employed plumber in Vicksburg, Mississippi so he had a great deal of plumbing business my father charged people according to the way he talked to his children many people called daddy for business and in Mississippi we were in the inward and we were many different ways of the inward with different adjectives and adverbs our charge for daddy was always you had to write down exactly what the person called you or said to you daddy would always take the child that took the message and when he called the person back or if they didn't have a phone and he had to go to their home he would take that child and he would always say I have a special price just for you so depending upon how many different ways you were called a nigger you had to pay more and a child was standing there because daddy would always say never turn away or never hang up you don't turn away business so he would charge people according to the way they talked to his children if people were very nice to us that's innovation very nice to us daddy would take us and sometimes he would do the plumbing work and then say no charge people never understood the price for you and daddy was jacking the price up people were smiling and happy and so that was the way we learned to negotiate our negotiation skills doing business you never turned business away and both my parents were great influencers but I've learned the influence of Artemisia Bowden our founding president at St. Phillips College she was there for 52 years I'm still learning and still growing she was the president and then when we formed the Alamo Union School District she was stripped of her title as president and she was given the title of being but she continued to lead for 52 years the mission was greater than her title I'm still learning and I can say that I enjoy doing what I I believe I'm doing what I'm all to do and I enjoy it that's great Sarah I think often in our work life when there are opportunities barriers are thrown in but I think it's important to look at barriers not as obstacles not as a bad thing because certainly in the business time and now we put up barriers to protect people like when they're flooding and overwhelming rain and we put up barriers to keep people from drowning or losing their car and so those are good things they're also barriers I think that when we're so impatient that we want to do that next thing sometimes holding us up a little bit helps us to develop mature learn more about what it is that we're doing so that when that opportunity comes up again then we're ready for it we've thought about it we've trained for it we've gotten enough experience that we make better decisions when we get to that the other thing is there are barriers that are cultural certainly if I had given up and thought well I'm not going to stay in the Air Force because they encouraged me to get out when I got married and if I had a if I got pregnant I was out in a matter of days well those things change sometimes it's being patient with what the barriers are because things do change policies change opportunities change certainly when I came in there were women were mostly in administration, personnel communication they were not astronauts pilots doctors, lawyers aircraft maintenance officers, four star general and all of those barriers have been broken because women stuck with it they had a dream they had a vision what they wanted to be what they could become they pursued so recently I had an opportunity in January while I was in Washington DC to hear the new director of the F.D.O it's only been in office for a very short time but in a video that he provided a thousand employees of the F.D.O he said here's what I expect of you and there are probably three or four of these five that he said that have resonated with me and I thought no that's about the best advice that you can give anybody work hard because the work to do is valuable and makes a difference find joy in the work that you do especially when it comes to law enforcement it's because there's moral content find a balance between family work life because the joy of a two year old running up to you when you open the door and come home shouldn't because you never go back and recover and four have a balance your work life your spiritual life your physical fitness and your family because all of those are things that will sustain you really tough tough times are really tough and then one bit of advice that one of my bosses was one of those who saw a spark in me and gave me some opportunity that was to fail or to succeed it was my choice he said bite off more than you can chew chew it I like that well quickly the only thing to add my parents also were the greatest influence in my life and told me that I could be the very best and was the best and it was probably well into my 20s before I realized I'm not the best at this but they encouraged me to be the best that I had the capability and now you also have the responsibility to use those talents and to be the very best that you can be also a couple of professors that encouraged me and pulled me aside to give me a chance to fail and to also do well and a couple of bosses over the years and I've never forgotten them because they not only gave me opportunities to excel and use my talents but to step outside of my comfort zone early in my career I made a conscious decision because we all started I think in the time frame women were identified to do certain kinds of work and I always chose something else where it was only men doing that and in the city management profession when I was first appointed a city manager back in the mid 80s there were only five female city managers in the country in cities of greater than 50,000 in population so it was almost all white men back then in that time and they were all engineers who'd been public works directors so you can imagine having women in that environment was so different but eating to the words of my parents and to those who were guiding me were mentors to me that I could be anything that I wanted to be and had a responsibility to be the very best at it was so important in words that really encouraged me along the way thank you Cheryl Amida would you like to come back up we're kind of getting close to our time to get out I don't think we have time for another round but maybe you have questions or you want to talk a little bit about I mean history Mark first of all thank you Eileen first of all I want to ask the audience for another big round of applause for our panelists thank you so much panelists for being part of our program this evening it's important for the library to continue to offer programs that provide an opportunity for our members of the community to be enlightened whether it be about individuals that have succeeded in spite of obstacles in their professional work or any of the other programs that the library provides that bring again attention to important matters to the community for people to allow them to make smart decisions tonight's program is a program to recognize the contributions of women and we're very pleased that we have five women very influential women that continue to contribute to this community in big ways and we're very proud and privileged to have you part of our program so thank you again for participating Eileen I want to thank you for accepting our invitation to moderate this program thank you so much you did a great job we would like to present each of the panelists with a copy of Sheholy by Donald B Cuspid as a token of our appreciation you know we're very fond of Sheholy we have a great piece here who the piece draws many visitors to the Central Library and it inspires also our visitors and I think you will be inspired by this copy of the book we have asked the teams from the John Igo Branch Library here are part of the Teen Leadership Council to make those presentations to you they will be coming out shortly here they come we also have for you a certificate a certificate of recognition for being a member of this panel and being a woman of influence thank you teens thank you also for your work at the John Igo Branch Library I would like to also in closing thank now cast for screaming this event we do have a reception sponsored by the San Antonio Public Library Foundation in the gallery so I would like to invite all of you to stay and join us in our refreshments thank you again all of you for being part of the program for coming and thank you again