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AMBITION Is Not A Dirty Word – How to Be Your Own Champion To Find Your Niche and Achieve Your Career and Life Dreams
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Today’s guest in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is Tandalea Mercer, a professional diversity, inclusion and equal opportunity champion. She is the current executive of compliance at the Professional Diversity Network (ProDivNet.com). Tandalea’s message is that everybody wants to do something meaningful; everyone has a purpose and unique talents that, if valued, developed and leveraged will undeniably lead you to achieve your most precious goals. Her message inspires listeners to believe that they can do and be anything they want to be, regardless of the circumstances they come from.
As a woman of color, Tandalea understood from a young age that the stakes would be higher and that “certain things would not be given to her” as a result. Against the backdrop of a tumultuous upbringing, the message of the importance of education was very clear to Tandalea early on and she always aimed for her personal best in school. With many circumstances pushing her in the direction where she easily could have became a statistic, Tandalea knew that an effort to break the cycle of poverty and to be more than some of the women in her family or others she grew up with had settled for was a non-negotiable life goal she would set and achieve. Observing that many people in her community were not as motivated to move up in the world as others had a profound influence on where Tandalea knew she wanted to go. Throughout her career, Tandalea Mercer took ideals and lessons she learned from childhood and used them to guide her to achieve her most ambitious dreams. Listen in today as she shares: how to make certain you never allow yourself to be taken advantage of; how and why to always be respectful, no matter what; how to be a strong, confident communicator, even in the face of naysayers; nuts and bolts advice on how to tap your network – which equals your net worth – and become a powerful team player. Today’s show shows you how to be your own very best champion – how to have your own back as you go for meaningful, challenging work and getting what you are worth.