Tech Exec Wellness Podcast: Conversations to Reignite Your Soul

Ep. 10: Interview With Tia Hopkins

• Melissa Sanford & Erika Eakins • Season 1 • Episode 10

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Prepare to unlock the secrets of maintaining wellness in the high-stakes world of tech with cybersecurity maestro Tia Hopkins. Our enlightening conversation peels back the curtain on how this tech titan balances her demanding roles at East Entire, shapes the future minds in academia, and champions diversity with her initiative Empower Cybersecurity. Tia doesn’t just celebrate her triumphs; she gets real about the hustle behind the highlight reel, sharing how she keeps it all in harmony, including an unforgettable brush with Outcast that underscores her multifaceted life.

As you tune in, Tia's candid revelations about burnout will resonate with many striving professionals. She charts the terrain of professional exhaustion with striking honesty, providing a roadmap for recognizing the red flags and navigational tips for the rocky road to recovery. Her tale isn't just about the fall; it's a phoenix song of reclaiming time, establishing non-negotiable boundaries, and leveraging technology, like the Oura Ring, to keep her health in check – strategies that anyone can adapt to safeguard their well-being amidst the relentless tempo of the tech industry.

Wrapping up our session, Tia’s narrative takes a motivational turn, reflecting on her journey from a recurring college dropout to an academic powerhouse. Her relentless pursuit of knowledge, despite stumbling blocks, serves as a clarion call to anyone doubting their ability to conquer adversity. Her story isn't merely about academic accolades; it’s a stirring testament to grabbing hold of personal power, setting the stage for self-empowerment, and the indomitable spirit needed to "go get your stuff back." Join us for a journey into the heart of resilience and practical wisdom, and walk away armed to thrive in tech's ever-changing landscape.

Tia is a member of the Forbes Technology Council, Tia has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Dark Reading, and Information Week. She contributed to ‘The Rise of Cyber Women: Volume 2’ and co-authored ‘Hack the Cybersecurity Interview’ and ‘Securing Our Future’. Tia founded Empow(H)er Cybersecurity to inspire women of color in cybersecurity and is on the board of Cyversity, promoting diversity in the industry.

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Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome back to another episode of Tech Exec Wellness. I'm your host, melissa, and today we are solo, so it's just myself and Tia Hopkins, who is a SANS Institute winner. So before we get into this here, I have to say that I'm very delighted to have Tia on. I have been a big advocate and supporter of her on LinkedIn. She's a phenomenal human being and what I'm about to read to you I did not want to condense this because of all the wonderful things she's done, so I'm going to go ahead and get started.

Speaker 1:

Tia Hopkins is a seasoned IT and cybersecurity professional with over two decades of experience. She's currently serving as the Chief Cyber Resilience Officer and Field CTO at East Entire. She's also an adjunct professor in cybersecurity, a women's tackle football coach, keynote speaker, published author and LinkedIn learning instructor. I'm going to have to ask her later how the heck she does it. Tia holds multiple industry certifications and degrees, including a BS in information technology, dual MS in information security and cybersecurity and an executive MBA. She's currently pursuing a PhD in cybersecurity leadership, focusing on cyber resilience and communication between digital and non-technical leaders.

Speaker 1:

Awarded multiple honors, including SC Media's Outstanding Educator 2019, the software reports top 25 women leaders in cybersecurity 2020, and Cyber Defense Magazine's top 100 women in cybersecurity 2020. Tia also received the IFSEC of SEC Global Top Influencer 2021 and dark readings eight more women in security. You may not know, but should 2022. And in 2023, she earned a lifetime achievement award from AmeriCorps and the president and the president of the United States and was named one of the top 25 leaders in cybersecurity. A member of the Forbes Technology Council, tia has been featured in the Wall Street Journal Dark Reading and Information Week. She contributed to the rise of cyber women volume two and co-authored hack, the cybersecurity interview and securing our future. Tia founded Empower and that spelled E-M-P-W-H-E-R cybersecurity to inspire women of color and cybersecurity, and is on the board of cybersecurity promoting diversity in the industry. So, tia, welcome to the show. Before we get started, I need to know what are your favorite music genres and artists, and can you please tell us about a favorite concert that you've attended?

Speaker 2:

Oh man, well, first off, thanks for having me. I got to get over the embarrassment a little of you reading through that very long bio. But music, wow, what a fantastic question. I really do think it depends on the mood that I'm in. Typically I'll go for either some neosoul, or some Southern rap.

Speaker 2:

My favorite groups of all time Outcast and CeeLo Green I would say my favorite concert experience was actually with Outcast. So I went to the University of Miami when I graduated high school and like I didn't know what to expect. And I'm just walking around campus one day and I heard somebody say, hey, outcast is here. I was like what are you talking about? I had no idea they did things like that on college campuses. So like I go to the courtyard and they're in front of me is Outcast like giving a concert at my university? So I'm like yep made a good choice and that kind of solidified it for me.

Speaker 1:

Well, I'm going to age myself here, but I'm a big fan of Outcast and I remember the prototype was one of my favorite. Oh yeah, yeah, oh, we could get into this all day long, but yeah, he came out with a frequency type vibe on Spotify. Are you aware of that?

Speaker 2:

No, no, I got to check that out. Look at me learning something new every day.

Speaker 1:

Well, you know I was going to say before we get started, I was reading your bio and one of the things we do here at the podcast is we like to get an overview of our guests and I never want to condense it because of all the wonderful accolades. But I'm sitting here going, ok, she's doing this, this, this, this, and she's getting her PhD. How do you find time for it? So, before we jump into everything else, what are you doing to like? I mean, you're doing so many things?

Speaker 2:

I am. I'm relentless with my time. So you know I have to be very good about time management and the way I structure what I do with my time and I have to stick to that. And so it's like if I do everything I'm supposed to do almost like I'm a kid when I get to the end of the week I get my weekend. But if I don't, if I slack off, if I get distracted shopping or browsing around for nonsense and then I don't get everything done, well then I have to pay for that on the weekend and that cuts into my personal time. So I'm very strict about you know.

Speaker 2:

My weekends are my time, unless it absolutely can't be. I'm also a member of the 5am club, so you know 430, I'm rolling over and trying to be sitting at my desk at 5am because that's when I get my best work done before the rest of the world wakes up. So I do think it's a combination of being an early riser and really, really, really being relentless about the things I choose to dedicate my time to and then very structured around how I manage those things. Okay great.

Speaker 1:

So the 5am club. I've been asked to be a part of that and you know what? I keep failing to you. So I don't know if that's going to happen this year, but I'm going to try. So before we circle back on your wellness, what have you been up to lately?

Speaker 2:

What have I not been up to? I think that's the message we get out of your last question, right? But I think one of the more exciting things that just happened is I just participated in the launch of a new book and I think you mentioned in the bio. It's securing our future, embracing the resilience and brilliance of black women in cyber, and so 16 women of color got together and wrote this book and it is phenomenal. I'm super excited about it.

Speaker 1:

And now I know you and I talked offline about this, but specifically so, these wonderful women, and I know many of them what drove the collaboration together. How did you all like have a meeting of the minds and say we got to put this out there, and what is the reason from your perspective, on putting this out there?

Speaker 2:

I think the short answer on the reason for putting this out there is that it is needed. So Talia Parker, the founder of Black Girls in Cyber, is the visionary behind the book. She woke up one day and she had this vision and she wanted to do this thing. I was one of the lucky people that she reached out to to join her on this journey, and when she started describing her vision and what she wanted to be and the way she wanted it to give back to the community, she described it as wanting this book just to be a hug for people to know that they belong and that they can do it. And I asked no questions. I mean one I love Talia but two when she started describing it to me, I was in. I'm known as a question machine. I ask a lot of questions. I asked her no questions, not what's the time commitment? How long is the book going to be? Like Mark, nothing, nothing. I was just absolutely yes, yes, without hesitation, yes.

Speaker 1:

So I'm getting my book put on order, getting that ready to go, but I did read a clip of it at Amazon and we're going to put that in the link when we put our show notes out, as well as on LinkedIn. Can we talk specifically about your chapter and what were you thinking when you were writing it and what did you want to show other black women and women getting into cyber or in the field?

Speaker 2:

That's a great question, because I think I kind of grew into throughout my own journey grew into knowing what my story could do for others. Because something I like to say all the time is you are who you are the day you're born. So it's hard to recognize the things about you that stand out, because to you everything seems normal, because you do them all the time, or it comes easily to you, or however you want to categorize it. And so, throughout my journey, the more I talk to people, the more I realized that I needed to share more of my story. And then, eventually, as I began to move up in my career and build a brand for myself and have a platform, I was like, wow, I don't really like the spotlight, like I'm not feeling it, and so I had to have a conversation with myself and say look, tia, it's not about you being in the spotlight, it's about you having a light that you can then take and shine on a path for others. And so, for me, that's what a lot of the things I pursue in my career are about.

Speaker 2:

I find myself going after things sometimes not just because I'm interested, but because I wanted to show others that it's possible, and so the thing that I was thinking most about when writing my chapter is that it's not just about telling my story and what I did.

Speaker 2:

It's very important to share how I did it and the challenges I had to overcome and what are the things that I felt and learned while I was going through it, because that's what makes it relatable. Right, you pull up a LinkedIn profile and you can see everyone's success and accolades and look at me and look what I did. But what's missing from that is the struggle behind the scenes, the challenges behind the scenes, the lonely nights where you want to cry or just curl up in a ball or hide and not go to work on certain days when you have to do certain things. And so I really wanted to be transparent and say yes, like when you get to the point that you've been working toward getting to. It's fantastic, but there's a lot that goes into that and it doesn't mean that you can't do it, it's just let's get real and talk about what it's actually like.

Speaker 1:

So you had a lot of things and I'm taking notes here because when I do these conversations on the podcast, we can come out here and say this is the framework, but when we have the guests in, like yourself, there's so many things I want to kind of unwrap here. So branding you've been in the industry for a long time. Do you feel like the branding is going to empower other people? Because in your answer there it was a lot of giving back to it. It wasn't about promoting Tia, but hey, this is how I did it, so do you think that's why the branding is so important at your level?

Speaker 2:

I think that there's a lot of things associated with branding and, to be clear, I did not sit down one day and say, hey, I need a personal brand, I'm going to build this thing. I just kind of woke up one day and realized, ooh, this thing is out there and I got to make sure it's what I wanted to be. I got to make sure it's authentic and that I'm speaking to the right people, because, whether I intended it to be there or not, is there and it's not going away and I can use it for good or waste the opportunity. And so I think brand breeds credibility. Your brand enters the room before you do. Your brand is what attracts people to you or detracts people from you. So in this industry, I think brand is important, not from the perspective of I want to be seen and I want people talking about me and knowing my name.

Speaker 2:

Brand also breeds influence, and I do really feel like, if you want to be able to get things done, especially in an industry like this, especially as a woman, I'll double click even on that. Influence is very, very, very important. And if no one knows who you are and, more importantly, if no one knows what you're about, what you stand for what you bring to the table, then your quest for influence. That might be a steep hill to climb, but if you've built a brand for yourself, or you're building a brand for yourself that's rooted in who you are, what you're about, what you bring to the table, then that speaks for you and then the influence follows. And then you have to leverage that responsibly, obviously, to do the things that you were setting out to do when you first started out on the mission.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I can relate to so much of what you're saying, and there's women like yourself who've accomplished a whole lot and we want to be able to show women coming up in the field. Hey, this is what she's accomplished. But you mentioned earlier that people don't see the nights where you've cried, or maybe this didn't go right. Do you think, in this age of 2024, that the world is ready for authenticity and hearing the peaks and valleys, or do you think we need to still just show people all the good things that have happened, like? What are your thoughts on that?

Speaker 2:

I'm going to give you the raw and real Tia answer.

Speaker 2:

Please do, please do. I think some of the world is ready not all, but honestly I don't care, because it's necessary. I think that authenticity we just have to be who we are. If we're not who we are, then who are we being? What are we doing? Why are we doing it?

Speaker 2:

I wake up every day in the skin that I'm in and I'm okay with that. And I'm also okay if others aren't okay with that, because I know what I'm setting out to do every day and that is rooted in good. And I'm okay with the fact that not everyone is aligned with the way I approach things or my values, my core values. Somebody might differ even in what those are, but authenticity is all I know, it's all I've ever known. And so if I enter a room where I feel like I can't be my authentic self, I'll give some effort to kind of change the energy in the room. But if it's a stubborn room, if it's not moving and it's not worth it, then I'm just going to find another room. I'm not going to dilute who I am to please others. There's a quote that says don't not be you because someone else is being them, and I live by that.

Speaker 1:

I love that so much. So, one of the things that I've seen, and even myself, I lost my confidence after getting burned out. Tia, was there ever a time in your life where you were burned out and your confidence was just gone, and if so, what did you do to get it back?

Speaker 2:

This happened recently. That's a really good question. I had a rough go at it last year and I think that it was cumulative, repetitive burnout that just I mean balled up into whatever the next level of burnout is, because it was far beyond that. I regularly check in with myself to make sure that I'm still doing the things that I feel like I want to be doing, should be doing. Am I still passionate about things that I was passionate about a couple of years ago, things like that, especially when I start to feel weighed down and I have less energy at the end of the day? So I have.

Speaker 2:

I'm pretty good at having early indicators of when I'm burning out. I'm trying to get better at acknowledging it before I'm burnt out. But in this particular case, I was acknowledging burnout and taking breaks, but I wasn't recovering. I was stepping away and coming back and thinking I was recovering, but I was still burnt out when I came back. So I was carrying maybe a little less burnout because I stopped to breathe for a moment, but I was carrying the first burnout into the next burnout, into the next burnout, and then I just I hit a wall. I didn't know what I was doing, why I was doing it.

Speaker 2:

Where's my value? What does good? Look like I was just lost, and that was scary for me because I felt like I'd reached the point in overturned, because typically, when I'm burnt out, I know how to pull myself back. I know the things that'll give me energy recharge the batteries but, like in this situation, I felt like I couldn't even find the batteries to recharge them.

Speaker 2:

So I think the first step in that was acknowledging that I was in this really just dark and bad place and then finding the will to save myself, because one of the things that I'm relentless about in addition to my time is not giving myself to things that take me away from me. I don't mind losing money. I can lose all my stuff, like I'm fine with that, like I've been through some things and that's all right, but the one thing in life that I can never lose is me, and so that's what gave me the will to pull myself out of it. I actually went through a program and I'll share it. It was the Flow Research Collective. I mean, they're all about helping high performers achieve peak performance.

Speaker 2:

And it is all about being relentless with your time, automating things that are critical Like you can't not take a shower or a shirt to eat and take the trash out but they're not really valuable to you in the way of achieving your goal. So automate those things, cut out the things that aren't important and then protect the things that are important and valuable with everything. Identify the things that pulls a threat to you being able to get those things done and have a plan in place for that and then just make progress over time. It's not about here's where I am today and I wanna be there tomorrow and I'm gonna beat myself up every day that I wake up and I'm not there. It's about doing little things that compound over time, having a huge impact and getting you closer toward that end goal. So that program really helped me put things into perspective, set boundaries, ask questions around why I was doing a lot of the things I was doing.

Speaker 2:

When I'm being pulled into a million things, asking, does it have to be me that's doing this? When someone wants me to travel, taking a step back and saying, hey, is this something I really need to be doing? Because something I know about myself is that I don't like to disappoint people that depend on me, but that behavior can quickly turn into me just being an enabler and forgetting about myself, because I'm just being there for others all the time. So I know there was a long-winded answer, but it just took a lot of real honesty with myself because I've done the soul searching and I've done what I think is figuring myself out. And so when you find yourself in an unfamiliar place and you don't have answers, it's hard to tell yourself, hey, maybe you need to go through that exercise again, but that's what it was time for.

Speaker 2:

It's been a number of years. You're a different person now. You're in a different place in your life. You might have different triggers, different things that weigh you down, and you need to understand what those are so you could treat yourself the way you need to treat yourself. And it took a few months for me to get that pep in my step and that bounce and that swag again. But I gotta tell you now that I've come out of it. I'm a different person and I feel great and I'm able to handle things with a lot less anxiety and stress.

Speaker 1:

So with that and thank you for sharing. And you know what? I don't care, be as long-winded as you want, because someone on the other end needs to hear this, so please do not do not abbreviate anything. I wanna hear it all. So what were some of the wellness practices when you were experiencing burnout? What were you doing to do self-care? What did that?

Speaker 2:

look like I call myself a knucklehead, because when people show me things like self-help books, I'm like ah, whatever, I'm good, I'm strong. Throw some dirt on it, walk it off, it'll be fine. And so the littlest things that I just kinda turned my nose up at before I really needed them, like breathing I have taken breathing for granted for so long and there's different types of breathing. Right, there's a type of breathing that you do when you're getting to that three o'clock lull toward the end of the work day and you need to speed your heart rate up, right.

Speaker 2:

So that's just short, choppy breaths repeatedly, and then you bring your energy up, and then there's the. You got a million and one things going on. There's fires everywhere. You need to slow your heart rate down and just breathe, and you need to see a little more clearly. That's a different breathing exercise.

Speaker 2:

Right, that's long in and long out, long in and long out repeated, so breathing I was laughing at myself was one of the things that really just helped me, and I was annoyed with myself. Because I was annoyed with myself, it was so easy and I hadn't been doing it. Something else that really helped me, though, because I have ADHD. I was diagnosed with ADHD at the beginning of COVID, and how that shows up for me partially is that I need a million and one things going on and I need to be able to shift my focus to something once.

Speaker 2:

I've just spent so much time on something else that I'm just getting bored. I need to check out and do something else, but what that turns into is too many things on your plate, too many opportunities to be distracted, and then too many opportunities to not be as productive and creative as you wanna be. So, just taking a step back for a moment, something that I had to identify for myself was when I have the best day of my life. What does that look like? And the answer for me was my best days. My best work days are when I'm able to be creative and solve problems.

Speaker 2:

I don't like it when I'm in back to back meetings and I feel like I spent eight hours sitting on calls taking notes that I'm probably never gonna get to look at and I'm never gonna get to follow up the way that I want to, because it's the best opportunity to do it is when it's fresh in your mind, and so those days make me feel kind of beat down. But when I have time to be in what the flow reachers collective calls in a flow state, I am so, so, so productive. I get three days work of unproductive work done in like two to three hours of flow right, and so one of the things I have to do is get rid of distractions, I would say. And there are so many profound things throughout this program. I mean, like I wear a ring to bed now so I can track my sleep, like there's all these things.

Speaker 1:

Oh, I do too.

Speaker 2:

The aura ring. Yes, yes, I got an aura ring. I'm tracking my sleep, I'm doing all these things. But the most profound thing that I experienced in this program because I'm a technologist, you know, many of us in this industry are technologists it's, you know, automate this and ecosystem net and I learned that my technology was not working for me. I was working for it. I wasn't scheduling my calendar around me. I was living my life around my calendar.

Speaker 2:

And so I immediately started to remove distractions. I turned off all notifications on my phone, except for critical apps, like you know, the actual phone calls Only certain people can get through and an alert at certain times when they send text messages I scheduled do not disturb on my devices, turned off all badges, right. So the apps not sitting there staring at me with 10,000 unread messages, and I took my life back right. There's a whole bunch of people in the world, there's a whole bunch of businesses in the world and they all want our attention. And so what I was doing was every time there was a bing, I'm responding. Every time there's a notification, I'm responding. But if I turn those off and then I schedule time to go back and check on those things, then I get to empty my inbox on my time and in bulk.

Speaker 2:

And one of the examples that the facilitator gave, or our coach gave, that just made me kind of laugh. He said think about the way you do your laundry. He said you don't take off a pair of socks and say, oh my goodness, this is dirty and put it in the wash and just wash your socks. He said, no, you wait till you have a batch.

Speaker 2:

So that's how you treat your notifications, you address them and batches, and when I tell you distractions were eliminated, I mean, I did it for my phone, I did it for my work laptop, my personal laptop. I get notifications from nothing. I check things when I want to, because that stops me from having my flow interrupted and just doing things to have me disconnected. Like I bought a device called the remarkable. I don't know if you're familiar with that, but it's like a digital notebook, yes, like a digital notebook.

Speaker 2:

And so when I talk about it it's like, yeah, you can write on it. It's got different templates and people are kind of like, well, why don't you do that with, like the iPad? Can't you write on the iPad? I'm like, yes, you can, but the iPad is connected. This remarkable is nothing but a notebook. And so when I sit with this thing for a couple hours, again, I get days worth of work done because I'm not getting pinged from Slack, Phone's not bugging me and I'm just in my space and I'm able to work. And so that was really big for me just not being on call. I mean being on call 24 seven is one thing, but being on call 24 seven second by second that's exhausting.

Speaker 1:

Oh, my goodness, I think of when I used to work at Kroll and I would have breach watch for the weekend and it was so weird because every ping notification I was just there. You know so it's a fire drill. So question for you I have the aura ring as well and the question I want to ask you what was your sleep like before the aura and do you think that helped improve your sleep?

Speaker 2:

I do, and the reason that it did for me was accountability right. When you're not tracking your sleep. You go to sleep, you wake up, you feel like crap, you're like, oh God, what a terrible night of sleep. But what you don't do is say why. What did I eat? How late did I stay up? Did I put something in my body that was a stimulant? After?

Speaker 1:

a certain amount of time.

Speaker 2:

How much REM did I get? How much deep sleep did I get? How was you know? I'm breathing all these things and so the aura keeps me accountable. Like at first, I would get pissed off at the thing. I would open the app and there would be all the. It was like I was getting yelled at. I was like this is good, this is okay, this needs attention Pay attention.

Speaker 2:

And it's like what are you talking about? So it's like you know you weren't in REM long enough or you didn't get enough deep sleep, and contributors to this could be eating a large meal before bed or having an alcoholic beverage before bed and the list of things that give you. There was always something on the list for me, and so I had this thing where, like, I know exactly what I need to do, but implementation of it is a challenge, right. Like I know, you know the way that I want to live and manage my health and my wellness. I don't want to eat after eight o'clock because I want to be in bed by like nine 30s so I can get up at five and not feel like I got hit by a truck. So if I have a drink at nine o'clock and then I want to have a snack because who doesn't want to have a snack after they have a drink after work?

Speaker 2:

Now I've got alcohol and I've had a drink, and then I go to bed and my body's working through all these things and so I'm not resting, even though I'm asleep, and so seeing it in front of me is like, yeah, you know this, and so if you don't change what you do. You're going to wake up and you're going to look at this app and it's going to yell at you again tomorrow and the hard headed, very stubborn individual in me, my girlfriend, will tell you this. I'm like do not yell at me, do not tell me what to do.

Speaker 2:

And so I'm looking at my iPhone like do not yell at me, do not tell me what to do, but the only way to get that to go away is to you know, do what you're supposed to do, and so that's how it helped me.

Speaker 1:

I'm going to be fully transparent here as well. So I found out that I had ADHD too, over COVID, and I got to tell you what taking care of that has done. For me is be mindful, and a lot of the things that you're talking about are things that I am doing as well. And going back to the sleep thing, I was getting notifications to you that I was coming down with something.

Speaker 2:

Oh, my goodness.

Speaker 1:

So yeah, I actually had. If I look back at the graph when I got COVID, it was showing the temperature. I don't know if you ever checked that little Temperature oxygen it was showing me. Hey, you know, might want to be mindful of this. And what did I do after? Working Netflix? So I was staying up and maybe getting midnight to six o'clock. That was kind of my sleep pattern and I knew this because, like you said, the ring was like hey, dummy, get some sleep. It gave me the notification you might want to check this out the oxygen's off as well as the temperature. So I'm glad that you brought up those two points because we can utilize technology to aid us in our wellbeing and all of that good stuff. So was there ever a time that in your career that you felt like you gave your power away? Or can you talk a little bit about this? I know you and I talked offline yesterday and I wanted to bring this up when I got you on the podcast today.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think so.

Speaker 2:

The whole power thing and confidence, they're personal for me because I think I went through this in my personal life and it's weird to say I was lucky enough to go through these challenges in my personal life and it saved me in my career.

Speaker 2:

But it's true I went through a lot of things growing up, just being different in my relationships, because being different grooms me into an adult that lacks confidence and an understanding of my own self-worth. And so by the time I had had enough of that and recovered from that and survived that and changed my outlook on myself and the world and respected myself honestly, the way every human should, I just had this, I don't know. I think this bullish air about me that what's for me is for me and no one can take that away from me. And so when I have conversations with people and they say things like oh God, they just they took all my confidence away when they said that or I did this thing and I mean I thought it was great, and then this person said this one thing and then they just took all my power. I firmly believe that people can only do what we allow them to do.

Speaker 2:

And so when I was going through what I was going through in my life, people were doing things to me because I allowed them to do those things, and when I stopped allowing them to do those things, oh my goodness, miraculously they stopped happening to me. How did you do that, though, if I can interrupt, I just had enough. You know, one day you know it hurts, so you cry and you get over it, and then it happens again. You cry, you get over it, and then one day I was like you know what girl? This is different people, so you gotta be the common denominator.

Speaker 2:

So I think it's time to have a conversation with yourself and if you've truly had enough, then act like you've had enough and just stop taking it. And I think it takes a while, because it takes some guts to push back when you haven't pushed back, but the first time you do and you see that it works, or you try something that scares the hell out of you and something good comes out of it. It's addictive. You wanna keep doing it, like oh gosh, I love the way that felt. Or I loved how I didn't have to feel, because I didn't allow myself to experience that. So, little by little, I just started to push more and more until I got to the point that I was like, oh my goodness, I like this person and I just stopped taking people's crap and forgive my language here. But my motto is anybody's got a problem with me. I'm like that sounds like a you problem, not a me problem, because what you eat don't make me shit.

Speaker 2:

And that's just how I live my life. But we can't allow people to take our confidence. We can't allow people to take our power. And they don't take it. We actually give it to them. So for anyone that feels like they may have lost their confidence or they may have lost their power, you didn't, you just gave it to somebody and you forgot to go get it back. So go get your stuff back. It belongs to you, it's in you, it's always gonna be in you. It's been with you since the day you were born. So don't put it on loan, don't let people borrow it, don't give it to them. Keep it with you, keep the room, but don't leave your stuff in the room. Take your stuff with you.

Speaker 1:

Tia, you just did a master class in kicking ass and I love you for that, so that's awesome. Okay, I'm going to bring this up. And so when we were talking yesterday and I just want people to hear this because it really resonated with me and I thought about it yesterday, back when you were in school, remember you had talked about, like, some of the challenges with undergrad. Do you call? Can you tell them about?

Speaker 2:

that. So the long and short of it is, I am a four time college dropout but I now have four college degrees and working on a fifth and I write about this in my chapter. This is probably one of the things in my life that was actually a big deal to me. Like I'm not a person that's easily excitable, I'm a girlfriend that'll tell you, like Tia doesn't get excited about anything.

Speaker 2:

I'm like, yeah, that's cool. But like when I do a backflip or I jump up and down, I'm like, oh my gosh, that's awesome. It's usually me celebrating someone else. I'm not really big on celebrating myself, but when I dropped out of college four times you know, most people don't go back a fifth time and I think I had a right to say you know what? School is probably not for me, but this is something that I wanted for myself and I'm big on finishing what I start. And I think the other thing is, you know, so some people would have been okay with just finishing one degree and that's absolutely fine, but for me I had a score to settle with myself.

Speaker 1:

And so.

Speaker 2:

I dropped out four times. Well, I'm going to get four degrees, and so. But you can't just make these blanket statements and say I'm going to go do this thing. Right, you want to achieve a goal. You have to ask yourself why? What goes into it? What stopped you from doing it before, all the things right? So I can't just say I'm going to go get four degrees because it just failed four times. I couldn't even do one. What the hell makes me think I'm going to be able to do four? So there's some evaluation necessary. When I dropped out four times, why did I drop out? And the answer was because the four times that I went, I wasn't going for me, I was going for someone else.

Speaker 2:

When I graduated high school. I went to college because my mom said you get good grades and you go to college and you get a good job. Like that's the story that we're fed when you're a woman of a certain age.

Speaker 1:

Don't we know it, yeah.

Speaker 2:

And so I went and I did it and I didn't know what I was doing, I just knew what I was good at. So yeah, let's try. That Didn't work out. And then I went back and just a number of things wrong program, bad timing, cost too much and I couldn't afford it. Whatever it was just all these challenges. But what was missing in all of those things was a passion or motivation to make me relentless about the fact that I was going to finish. I didn't have any purpose behind going to school. So not saying I was lazy and I dropped out, there were challenges, but when you have purpose, then you're motivated. Right, because you have a passion and you figure out ways to get things done. You make a way out of no way. So the first four times I dropped out, I just think I didn't have that reason.

Speaker 2:

That was my own that would fuel me. So when I went back, it was because I need to finish. I'm losing confidence because I'm in this IT director role and I'm looking at job descriptions of roles like this and every one of them has a college degree, either a bachelor's or master's. Whatever it is, I don't have it.

Speaker 2:

And so I need to go and I need to be an adult. That's what started it. I need to finish and I finished. But then back to my earlier point about success being addictive. Oh my God, I finished.

Speaker 2:

You know, I was the first person in my family to graduate college with a degree and that success felt great. It's something that I thought I wasn't going to do. Like I failed four times. This I'm going to give it. I'm going to give it the old college try to make a really bad pun. But I just, in my mind, I'm like I'm going to do it to say I really gave it a valiant effort. But did I expect to finish within myself? No, and then I did.

Speaker 2:

That empowerment was insane. And it was so insane that I went right into my first master's degree without stopping, right into a second master's degree without stopping. And so, right there, boom, boom, boom, I got three and I'm like, well, hell, I got to, let's just settle the score and get four. But I took a break. Right, I'm doing other things in my career, I'm getting certifications and you know, just, you know building up and things like that I mean. Then I got to a point where I was like, all right. Well, what am I? What am I missing?

Speaker 2:

I do a gap analysis on myself Frequently, you know I lean into the things that I'm great at to build my confidence and then I bring along the things that I'm not so good at. Right, and so as you do more, you can do more, and as you can do more, you feel better about it. So I always identify my gaps and I go pull those things in the portfolio. Hey, we're going to do a lot of these things that you know are going to crush it every once in a while. We're going to touch on this thing till you feel a little better about it. And for me, that was, I think, the business elements of being a technology executive, because I think what got me into executive leadership was my intuition and my technical capabilities, my communication capabilities and my strategic mindset. But I hadn't. There was a point in my career where I just hadn't been immersed in the business side of it. And so I'm in meetings and folks are using terminology, financial terminology, like.

Speaker 2:

ACV, you know and, and I'm like, ooh. So I'm like writing down all these acronyms and then I'm bringing my little class to me, you know, with me to these meetings. And so my fourth degree long story short ended up being an MBA, because I'm like, yeah, I can't let this mess with my swag, I just need to go ahead and wrap this up. So I'm good. And so, yeah, that's where we landed. And then the PhD thing is for me. My bucket list is do a TED talk, write a book and become a doctor.

Speaker 1:

So working on that list. So do you mind if I ask this question because you brought up your mom. Can you talk about? Where are you from? Where did you grow up? Do you have any siblings? We've gotten so much information about Tia and then you brought up the college thing. Could you dive on that, dive into that?

Speaker 2:

for a second. Yes, I can. I am a Southern girl from Richmond Virginia. All right yeah. I also, I lived in North Carolina for about a year and a half, I think, when I was around 11, but I actually graduated high school in Greenville, south Carolina. So I have two brothers that I grew up with on my mom's side. We are real personal here. I actually didn't know my biological father growing up. I actually met him when I was 28 years old, not that he didn't want anything to do with me or anything like that.

Speaker 1:

I don't want to make that the perception.

Speaker 2:

There's other complexities behind it. But I met him when I was 28 and great guy, I moved to New York, moved away, but that's what got me back, because he's in Newark and I have two sisters on father's side and I am the eldest on both sides.

Speaker 1:

Wow, that is something else. This has just been incredible. So, before we go, because I think we want to have you back again at some point, just because we want to talk more about the book and maybe how it's like impacting people out there but what do you do for fun when you're not working? So how do you go out and decompress? What are fun things to do for you? I think that's where the football coach.

Speaker 2:

piece of it comes in when you hear me talk about football, and this is in the chapter two. Football changed my life, football saved my life, and so football is one of those things. I played women's tackle football for 12 years.

Speaker 1:

Oh, wow.

Speaker 2:

And so yeah, my body. I have a body of probably a 100-year-old person, like snap crackle pop every morning when I wake up.

Speaker 2:

So I definitely can't play anymore, but the game gave me so much I don't think I'll ever be able to stop giving back to it and it's continuing to give to me. I learn something every time I coach, but I do coach women's tackle football. I coach for an international team, so two or three times a year we go to an international location and play in a tournament against another country and I just absolutely love it because one I'm passionate about football in general, just being involved in it that way. But it is the most amazing way I can think of to just disconnect. There's no technology on the football field shy of maybe like a headset, and maybe I've got an iPad for instant replay, but it's not the very demanding day-to-day. That is my actual life and also I can't think of a better way to phrase it.

Speaker 2:

Not that I want to disappear, but I do get to disappear a little bit right Because in industry cybersecurity in and of itself very demanding industry high stakes all the time.

Speaker 2:

And so when you're in executive leadership, the stakes are even higher. You're making decisions, you're building strategy, you're solving problems and sometimes you're making decisions about things that haven't even been done yet. You're just taking the information and giving it your best, based on your knowledge and experience. And so to be able to be on the field and just take that in and it's one play at a time, and I'm just helping others get better, and I don't think I'm in the spotlight as a coach I mean, I'm the leader of a unit on the football field but I'm not like having to be on the way that I am every day at work, so I absolutely love it and obviously spending time with my better half I have to nail that every day.

Speaker 2:

Though, back to being relentless about my time you know, I got to cut off at a certain time and check in with her, like we going late tonight? No, we watching TV. All right, let's do it, she's my priority. So, that's my first place of retreat. When I have a terrible day, I ask if her lap is available and I just lay in it. But, my other source of refuge, so to speak, is definitely the football field.

Speaker 1:

You have an extraordinary life and I am so grateful that we had an opportunity to sit down and talk today, because I know we connected on LinkedIn, like each other's posts and I see all the incredible things that you've done. But to really just have you talk and give perspectives I mean I told you yesterday when we talked I was so inspired because you're just so passionate about life. I think all of this stuff is just amazing. So I am going to put a link on where to get the book and Tia, we are so glad that you came by the show today. Thank you so very much. Thank you so much for having me and for our listeners. Check this out. Check Tia out. We'll have some links. Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast on various platforms and check out our website at wwwTechExecWellnesscom. Take care and thanks for tuning in.

People on this episode

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Melissa Sanford

Host
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Lisa Sanford

Co-host