I’m blowing the dust off this blog and back atcha with some HR wisdom and more! Let’s recap on what I’ve been up to:
I co-started a non-profit community activist organization.
In the wake of the 2016 election, I became connected to my local community and co-founded a non-profit advocacy organization that focuses on civic engagement. In the past three years, we’ve established ourselves as a community voice for all things that affect our city. We have grant-funding, leadership teams, dozens of volunteers, and super swanky swag. As a leader, I know how hard it is to motivate a team that you pay; imagine doing the same without pay! It’s certainly been a learning experience in understanding group dynamics, engaging volunteerism, and marketing/branding. Overall, I’m lucky to have beautiful people around me who are passionate about equity, accountability, and inclusion.
I’m in grad school for I/O Psychology.
My first courses started in 2016, but I didn’t announce until I was officially accepted in 2019. As of today, I’m in my second year of a four-year part-time program for Masters of Applied Industrial-Organizational Psychology (a mouthful, I know). So far, I’ve taken three statistics courses, an organizational behavior course, and I’m currently in an industrial psychology course. While I thought I’d hate the stats classes, I enjoyed them and got into learning SPSS and deciphering and analyzing data. I loved the org behavior class and notated my book like it was going out of style. The one thing about this program is that it’s all research-based, so I’ve become an avid reader of case studies. I have binders full of them. I’ve been working on an Org Behavior presentation to distill down some of these broad concepts into “edible bites” for front line managers and execs, but I’m still working on it. Something like “Using Research to Create More Effective Teams” or something of the sort. Overall I’m enjoying the program and think it’s the right fit for my future endeavors.
Multiple speaking events, including PASS Summit.
The significant change from 2016 to now is that my high school student is now a college kid in Boston. So for me, that means more free time and the ability to travel for work and fun. So what does an HR person do in their spare time? Give presentations, of course. This year I’ve had the pleasure of presenting at PASS SQL Saturdays in Dallas, Birmingham, Pensacola, and Baton Rouge. Additionally, the Junior League of Baton Rouge invited me to do a training on “Navigating Tough Conversations” (a custom-built training program to help have more productive dialogue). I was also invited to speak at Houston Tech Fest and for the grande finale, gave a “Giving Effective Feedback to Your Employees” talk at PASS Summit in Seattle.
So between work, school, and various training and presenting, I’ve been a busy little bee in 2019. One of my goals was to get my blog back up, and here we are. Stay tuned for more HRTact brain dumps, and thanks for reading!
Now excuse me while I go and update all the broken links… 😑
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In the wake of the 2016 election, I became connected to my local community and co-founded a non-profit advocacy organization that focuses on civic engagement. In the past three years, we’ve established ourselves as a community voice for all things that affect our city. We have grant-funding, leadership teams, dozens of volunteers, and super swanky swag. As a leader, I know how hard it is to motivate a team that you pay; imagine doing the same without pay! It’s certainly been a learning experience in understanding group dynamics, engaging volunteerism, and marketing/branding. Overall, I’m lucky to have beautiful people around me who are passionate about equity, accountability, and inclusion. 
HRTact 