We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Daphne E. Jones. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Daphne E. below.

Daphne, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s kick things off with talking about how you serve the underserved, because in our view this is one of the most important things the small business community does for society – by serving those who the giant corporations ignore, small business helps create a more inclusive and just world for all of us.

My purpose is to teach wisdom to the world. The way I do that is by ‘speaking truth to power’ and by ’empowering the underserved, undervalued and overlooked’.

I haven’t taken an oath to only focus on providing money or time to help the homeless or the uneducated, but I also have committed to helping people that are in corporate America to realize their full potential via changing their mindset. No matter what a person’s title is in a corporation, if they are a woman, if they are a person of color, if they have experiences, cultures, values and perspectives that do not match that of the ‘majority’, they may end up being underserved, overlooked and undervalued. their mindset is what can change what happens to them, so my goal is to change minds and change lives.

When women or people of color are ignored or overlooked, the company they work for then has missed out on opportunities to win at higher levels in the market place because they are not utilizing the full strength of those they are leaving on the bench.

But rather than waiting on the company to wise up and drive DEI from the top down, my mission is to help empower the leaders from the bottoms up with specific tools, mindset shifts and inspiration to persevere so they can win when others say they wont.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your background and context?

I started my post high school career as a secretary, when I was told by my HS counselor that I shouldn’t go to college, because black girls don’t normally make it in traditional college. My best bet, according to him was that I should go to secretarial college instead and become a secretary. I let him put limits and labels on me, but I didn’t know any better. I didnt know that I should define my own narrative rather than letting someone define it for me. So I did as he suggested– went to secretary school and then became a secretary at Women’s Day magazine in Chicago after graduating from High School. After a few horrible months there, I realized I shouldn’t be a secretary, but I should have a secretary. I decided to have a go at going to college, with his words of doubt always in the back of my mind. I pushed hard and got my BS and MBA after attending only 4 total years of college.

Immediately after college I landed a job with IBM, and my career in business began. I have been in the technology space for over 30 years, and have worked for some of the worlds most recognizable companies –IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Hospira/Pfizer, and General Electric. I’ve had roles that included Systems Engineer, Large Systems Instructor, VP IT, Corporate Officer Senior Vice President, Chief Information Officer, and I am a Digital director who also focuses on driving process & digital transformation & cyber security readiness into companies and their boards. My passion has always been to drive innovation, improvement and better outcomes for the companies that I’ve served and the customers who rely on products/services from those companies. I have had employees reporting to me in every continent in the world except Antarctica and Africa, and have broken the corporate glass ceiling twice. My teams and I have created new breakthrough solutions we were told were impossible to do, have implemented enterprise wide systems to enable a connected enterprise, and have partnered with external customers to create new solutions that would help the industry they were in. I now serve on the board of 3 publicly traded companies. AMN Healthcare (NYSE:AMN) , The Barnes Group (NYSE:B) , and Masonite International (NYSE:DOOR) . I recently launched a company whose purpose is to curate leaders to being truly ready to serve on boards as I do.

My purpose is to “teach wisdom to the world’ and my mission is to “speak truth to power” through my board service, and to “empower the underserved, overlooked and undervalued through my public speaking, my book, and my board readiness class”.
As I seek to return all I know to those that are still rising in their career, I want to accelerate their ability to win, and I’d like to help them have wins that are sustainable and continual. Continuous improvement is key to sustained winning, and my ambition is to help people define their win, on their terms, and help them go after the win.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

My dream job (although some of my friends humorously tell me they don’t ‘dream of labor’) was to work at IBM, and after my quick 4 year college run, I had an interview with them and landed a job with them as a systems engineer. My career with IBM began in Peoria Illinois, and I was one of 2 blacks in the sales office at the time. the other black person ended up being my husband just a few years later. I learned as much as i could about technology, computers, software, business process of billing and AR/AP, Inventory mgt, etc. IBM sent us to computer training for their computers, enabling us to go out into the territory and sell/install these computers into customer environments. I got married, moved to Houston, to Dallas, to DC, to Atlanta. After years of being on the rise at IBM, and one move too many across the country, I was laid off from the IBM location in Atlanta. I was devastated, and going through a divorce. Had a big house, car notes, and all the trappings of a growing family/career. seeking to get custody of my son , while being laid off was certainly going to be a challenge. I was in a state of disbelief, and then depression for some time, then asked my sister to come live with me to help with the bills and to help with taking care of my son while I was going through the divorce. I was afraid that after all this time, my counselor might have been right after all. I shouldn’t have a secretary, I should still be one.
I realized I couldn’t stay in that state of depression for long, because I had someone who was depending on me 100% for his life–my son gave me the motivation and the will to create a plan to pivot form being in Atlanta to another place. From being an IBM employee to either having my own company or work for someone else. From being married, to being a single mother. I had many pivots I had to do, but I had to also persevere and not give up on myself, lest i go backwards in my career or my life and not forward.
Through my network, continuous focus on my strengths, having a open mindset about opportunities, I landed a job in NJ with PSE&G and that was a new jumping off point for my career. It was from that time, that my career grew in a significant way.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

As a senior executive at GE, we are given executive physicals every year. In 2018, I left GE, but continued to get annual executive physicals. They are complete, comprehensive and robust at the medical center in Milwaukee. In fact, I love them so much I fly to get my physical in Milwaukee from whatever city I’m living in . In January of 2021, during one of my robust physicals, they found a lump in my breast that turned out to be cancerous. Between January and May 2021, I had to have 3 surgeries and 16 days of radiation. That wasn’t so much the resilience that I felt I had, but it was the fact that during that same time, I had to continue to be a pastors wife, continue to maintain two households (FL and NY) and was in the middle of a January 2021 activity to decide which publisher offer I would accept to publish my book, and which ghost writer would take all my writings and assemble it into a book. Then we had 6 months within which to write the book to meet a early 2022 deadline. My publisher didn’t know about the cancer until she read about it at the end of my book.

I felt that my purpose of teaching wisdom to the world was greater than the pain of the surgery or the treatment, that my mission was more important than the malignancy of the cancer. My conviction that women and men can accelerate their winning journey, and that they could have a sustainable winning career was palpable for me and important. These thoughts of determination came to me during the time when I didn’t know how complex or simple the cancer was, how large or small, how invasive or noninvasive it was, but I knew my book was real and was real important.

Thankfully, because of my annual exams, they caught it very early, and at a stage 0. I guess this means I will be able to write another book.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.daphneEjones.com
• Instagram: daphnejonesofficial
• Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/daphne-e-jones