Bold in Business: Life Lessons with Regina Calcaterra
On Friday I had the honor to welcome Regina Calcaterra to this year's Bold in Business forum, a signature event for the GE Women's Network. Regina helped us all gain some insights on handling obstacles we face in life - her gut wrenching story of foster homes, homelessness, abuse, and rising above it all through education to escape poverty. If you haven't read Etched in Sand, I highly recommend you do so...it really puts into perspective the challenges we face in business and in life...and how personal success can be achieved through tenacity and resilience.
Regina left us with a few of her takeaways on how she beat the odds & broke the cycle of abuse:
- Set achievable goals.
- Finish your goals of the day. Allow yourself to get panicked, allow yourself to get sad, but never allow yourself to give up.
- Don't let society define you. Be gutsy & fearless. Be Amelia (Earhart of course!)
- Be prepared....and keep knocking on doors until a door opens.
- You don't achieve anything by yourself. There is always someone shining a light on you...now it is your turn to open doors for others.
Regina's inspiring story motivated me to look into how I can do more to help youth in poverty/homelessness. My parents fostered children when I was young, and I didn't realize how rare my family was until I was much older. I'd like to think that the time these children spent with our family helped them in a positive way, and I often wonder where they are now. I hope that they too, were able to beat the odds. Today, there are over 400,000 children in foster care in the United States. Unfortunately, less than 3% of these foster children will get a college education. If you can't open your heart and home to foster children, there are many other ways to have positive impact on their young lives. Our jobs are to help build their self-esteem and encourage them... whether this means we become foster parents, kinship care parents, parents of friends of foster children, or their mentors, particularly to older foster youth.
Remember that the light we shine on the youth can have lasting positive impact...Be kind to our youth.
-Kristen