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Lakia Elam:
Just as I was about to start my master's program, I found myself in a hospital sick for weeks. Honestly, when I look back and think about it, the distraction of class kept me positive. It kept me thinking. It kept me together. It kept me going. And it allowed me to focus on something other than what could have been a downer in my life at that time.

Nathan James:
Welcome to the UMGC podcast Unstoppable Stories with your host Nathan James. All right. And today I am joined By Lakia Elam, a two time UMGC graduate with her bachelor's and master's degree. She is an entrepreneur, the CEO of Magnificent Differences Consulting, and, uh, and she's a principal consultant. Lakia, thank you for joining us today.

Lakia Elam:
Thank you so much for having me, Nathan. So happy to be here.

Nathan James:
Yeah, no, thank you. And we're looking forward to digging into your story. Um, look, you've accomplished a lot to this point and the impact that you're making, uh, is big. Um, and I, I really want to approach this from your upbringing, like really take us back to the beginning. And if you can, um, tell us about your life, uh, um, before, You know, UMGC before education, your upbringing. Please go for it.

Lakia Elam:
Great. Thank you. So, you know, I always like to start. I'm an inner city girl. I'm a, you know, a D. C. native, uh, born and raised and, uh, you know, I came up and what was considered one of the rougher neighborhoods in D.C. Um, in the late seventies and early eighties. And honestly, education and learning outside of the school walls has always been a thing for me. I've always been a curious person. Um, and I was born into a young family, and so I had to get smart fast, and I had to keep up with the teenagers in the family, which also impacted who I was and how I thought about things. Um, I often tell people that, that nature versus nurture thing really kicked in for me. So while I liked education and while I love to learn, it really wasn't what was happening around me. So I had to, from an early age, Seek out opportunities to learn and seek out opportunities to engage in learning activities. And they always did not come within the school walls, if you will. Right? Like, if that makes sense. Um, but it just kind of, you know, that was my early life. And we fast forward again, nature versus nurture. I became a team mom. And, um, you know, from the time that I was like, I have to have this baby, I'm having this baby, I'm about to be a mother, I made this conscious decision that she would live a different life than I did, that education will always be first, that nature would not supersede and take over for her, and I really pushed that early on, and so through her, I continued my education journey. Didn't even realize I was doing it at the time.

Nathan James:
Well, that's good though. That's really good. Talk a little bit more about your daughter's impacts, right? On your life's trajectory. Uh, if you can.

Lakia Elam:
My daughter's impact on my life's trajectory is everything. And I hope she don't hear this cause she already has a big head and it might get a little bigger, but you know, honestly, having her. You know, a lot of people in my, you know, my family, right? Like I had one of these like her, they were all involved and everyone had an opinion and they were like, having this child is going to change your life. Having this child is going to stop your life. But they only saw a portion of my life. They didn't realize when I was into. But having that baby, um, gave me hope. It gave me a reason to want to do better and no more to be on. You know, I didn't, I no longer wanted to be into the things that I was into. That was taking me nowhere real fast, real fast. And even though I knew it, it was hard to get out. But now having this life that I was responsible for. I was like, there's no way she's going to do this. There's no way, like, I'm going to, like, I didn't even know how I was going to keep her, um, help her to get on the right track, right? But from early on, I'll never forget at her kindergarten graduation, my dad said to her, 11 more years. And she was like, no, 14. Like, I put, like, college is the thing for her. She understood very early. I'm like, college is it. It's no longer high school. Like, you know, it's like, she got to go to college. She had, college was so important to me. But I had given up, like, I was like, there's no way I'm gonna be able to do this. So now I have to do it all like she has to be able to do it.

Nathan James:
Yeah, sure. Absolutely. I mean, uh, I remember seeing you at this point. You had your GED, I think, right?

Lakia Elam:
Oh, I skipped past that. Were you working towards that? No, I got my, I got my GED. She was not even six weeks old, like, because I dropped out, right? Like I dropped out of high school. My dad had gotten his GED, so I come from a school of, you know, travel, you know, and I used his GED books to study, like, two weeks. I took two weeks. I would leave my daughter upstairs with my mom, go downstairs and study, and I went and took it and passed. I actually were flying colors the first time.

Nathan James:
That's huge. No, that's That's a big accomplishment. And so you're raising your daughter, right? You have your GED and here she is already talking about no 14 years, right? I'm just trying to imagine that is something they hear them say. And ultimately, um, talk a little bit more about, I think. The challenge of raising her, but some of the challenges you faced even during that during that time frame, right? I mean, uh, we're talking, you know, at one point, I think, homelessness, dealing with that challenge, um, and still ultimately pressing through. Could you talk a little bit about that? Certainly,

Lakia Elam:
you know, it's funny, right? Like, living life is just one of those things. And it's like, you know, you, you know, I had this child at this young age. In my mind, I was grown. I was grown, right? And I had to figure it out. And then I didn't want to live by certain rules. And we ended up, we did, we ended up homeless for different reasons, right? We didn't people just like, you got to do these things this way. You got to do this. Let us raise your child and certain things. I was not okay with ever, right? Like, just and every time I found myself in these situations with her. And I would be ready to just give up, honestly, and I would look at her and like, are you got to keep trying? You can't give up like something in me just innate was like, you can't give up. You got to keep going. You know, so you talk about, I'm sorry, this is so emotional and there's so many things going through my mind. And I want to get this message across to people because I know that so many people, they go through this and, and, and it's. And it's hard. It is hard and it's hard to do. And although we're all these years, you know, you know, beyond that, it doesn't take away that impact that it left. It doesn't take away that feeling when you explain it again, right? And you're talking about it. Um, going, I'll never forget. We, we were, we did not have any way to live and we were sleeping on a mattress at a friend's house. And my daughter, she, she was just barely two and I remember saying to her, I was just talking out loud. I wasn't even talking to her and I was like, you know, nobody believes in us. No one is here with us. We don't have anyone. I have no friends. And you know what? This little, this little person said to me, she used to call me Kiki. She said, Kiki, I'm here with you. I'll always be here with you. I'm never going to leave you. Can you imagine hearing those words? Come out of a barely two year old's mouth. Two. Two years old. Two. I, you know, in those moments, it was things like that that would happen, that would shift me. That would pick me up and be like, someone's watching. Someone came, like, right? This little life. And it's, it's those moments. And it, it, people always look for, like, one big thing. You know, accomplishment is not just one big, I took this one step and then this thing happened. It's lots of barriers. Right. And then it's lots of small touch points from people, from people that, you know, this little person that gets you to a big accomplishment. Right.

Nathan James:
You've said a good deal about how your daughter has, you know, inspired you. Um, I've heard you talk before about her being. Uh, a blueprint in a way, right? A blueprint for you. Um, when it comes to your education, but I think even more than that, um, speak to that, please. How? Because it's, it's, it's so great that you invested so much in her, right? Um, as a teenage mom and, and. For to see her come back around and then inspire you. Right. So please talk about that. If you can,

Lakia Elam:
you know, it's so this is great. Thank you. I used to say this in my mind. So I'm trying to say it in verbalized this, um, to to your listeners to the audience. I didn't know it at the time, but it was like. I watched her and my, my, my, my soul attention and focus went to her because I thought my life when I say done, done, right? Like everything that I could accomplish it would now live through her. So the way that I describe this to myself, I used to say, I walked backwards. I was watching her and I was walking backwards, laying a path for her in support of her and her dreams. I want to play soccer. They're not playing soccer in the hood. How do I find a soccer team? And I didn't stop until we found a soccer team, right? Like a little person. Okay, she's playing soccer. But through soccer, now we're in different spaces. But then I'm laying this path. Okay, educate, like, you know, school is a part of it. I'm backing up, backing up, backing up. And then by the time she got to high school, and then some of my support looked and felt different. I look up, I look around, it's time for her to go to college. I have, by walking backwards, making this path for her, I'm in a different space. Mentally, physically, like, emotionally, I'm in a different space. I've grown by investing so much into her that it helped me to evolve in ways that, and stretch me in ways that I didn't even know was possible. Right? Like, and so then I look up and we're in this, we're in the car. And it's a few months before high school graduation for her. And I remember saying, you know, so All these years I sat around at the soccer field watching you practice. I could have been walking, you know, exercising. I wasn't going to do that. I'm sitting in the car eating Chipotle. I could be doing all of this other stuff. I could have been in school. I could have been studying. I'm going to go back to school. And it was in that moment. I'm going to get my degree. It was in that moment, in that car. And I told her that. And I'll never forget, like, a couple days I was like, Why did you lie to that girl? You never tell her lies. You know, I had tried before and I was like, why did you tell her that lie? And, um, a couple years later showing up that that my trajectory started because I held on to it because I don't tell lies and I don't lie to her. But in that moment, I, I said it because I was feeling it, but I didn't see how it can happen.

Nathan James:
But I had to hold him to it. No, and that's really good and relatable too, because I think a lot of folks, whether it's starting school or they're starting something else that has seemed intimidating, you start. Telling you start the doubt start creeping in. I don't know. I start out. Maybe I don't have the time maybe this maybe that I don't have the confidence in myself to be able to do this Could you speak a little bit to that like I know it was a couple of years You said after that you made that incredible promise, right? To your daughter, but what was it like to kind of wrestle through that? I'm not sure to actually put your foot down and do it.

Lakia Elam:
Yeah, man was more so yet past. You've tried so many times and you did not succeed. You did not finish because work in life gotten away. So for me, I'm gonna tell you what it was. So I write, I'm a writer. I write my goals down and I go back and I look at those things quite often. And that's good. Yes, it's important to do. It's important to do. Um, because Yeah, you write it, make it real. Like, look at it, think about it. And I would just page after page. So, a couple years have passed and I'm just like, I gotta do something because the money wasn't coming in. Now I have this daughter in college that's still supporting. She needs help and money is just tight. I know what I'm bringing to the table at work. I know what I'm doing, you know, but I'm not being recognized in that way. What else is there? So I, you know, I got to a point where I was like, all right, I have to do something, what can I do? And everybody's like, well, you can, you need a degree, you need a degree, you need it. And I remember having this conversation with my manager. This was like the breaking point. And she was like, well, I was like, you get all these people, you know, degrees. What, what is it? I have it, you know, the, the CEO at the time would not give me. Allow me to even get a title to say manager when I was literally running the day to day operations of HR. I couldn't even get a managerial title. You tell me. So, I, the, so forget the money for a second, not even the title. And my manager at the time said well, a degree shows people that you can, you can, um, stick to something. You sign up for it and you can stick to it. And I remember saying to her and only a way that I can you go get you a person with the best degree that you can find and you put them up against me and assume everything else is the same and watch I finish stronger, better. And she said, yeah, that's probably true, but they still got the degree. So you might not get it. And it burned me up. It was a great conversation, but it just, and I was like, okay, I got to do this.

Nathan James:
Talk about a tremendous motivator, right? Professional motivator. Right? Um, and so you put your foot down, right? And you reinvest, right? So now you're starting the college chapter, right? Um, and we have the honor of hosting you at t ºÚÁÏÉçÇø, you know, to earn your bachelor's degree. Um, talk a little bit about Uh, what that was like, right? To start your education journey here at t ºÚÁÏÉçÇø to pick up where you had left off. Please.

Lakia Elam:
That education, my educational journey with UMGC started before I even, like, finished the enrollment application, because I would call the advisors and ask a gazillion questions. I needed to know and, you know, it was so great about those conversations. I'll tell you, It never felt gimmicky. It never felt salesy and I never felt rushed. They always gave me the time to answer the questions, to allow me to be comforted in the fact that I was making the right decision and not feel rushed or, you know, second guess. You never want buyer's remorse at any point, right? And so I never felt Remorseful or second guess my decisions because they help me to, again, I'm a planner, I'm a writer, and my thing was I can do anything for a year. And so I plan my UMGC, uh, journey in two year chunks. I was like, okay, if I do this and this and this, this will get me here. And then once I get here, I feel this sense of. And it was all written in my book, you know, like my, like, and then when I do this and this and this, and it'll get me to the next, so I saw it through to the end, master's degree, wasn't a part of it. It was just, is that right?

Nathan James:
How about that?

Lakia Elam:
Yeah, no, but it was so great that once I got through, once I was halfway through the bachelors, I was like, Oh, I might as well go all the way, baby. I'm going all the way. Yes. Yes. And so it was, it was that right. And so even throughout the program, so professors, great students, amazing. And this is one thing I got to say, I'm sorry, I got to put this in here. When people think of UMGC, they think of this online school. And so they think of Disperse. Like I don't have anyone. It's very much a community. It's very much this community feel. You feel part of something larger. You feel the support. You're not in it alone. If you come into it with that mindset and you don't engage, you don't meet people yet, you'll be alone. But if you come into it like I'm looking for my people, I'm looking for my cohort, I'm looking for my, you know, my crew, you're going to find that group of people that's going to support you throughout the process. And that's what happened. For to me and for me that allowed me to dive deeper into the community. If you will,

Nathan James:
that's tremendous. None of us can do this alone. Right? And I know that t ºÚÁÏÉçÇø and I, by the way, I was in admissions right in that time. I really was. And so it could have been. I could have been one of the people you talked to. We should go

Lakia Elam:
back and look it up.

Nathan James:
We should figure that out. Okay. Um, but that's good. We look for that family feel. I mean, we all know, especially when challenges come, you don't want to go through those alone. Right. And I know you had challenges. Unique challenges that happened at the beginning of you pursuing your bachelor's degree. I know here at t ºÚÁÏÉçÇø and then also earning your master's too. So we'll get to that soon, but on the bachelor's side, right? Um, in 2018, can you talk to us about, you know, what you had to push through there? Um, I know it was a

Lakia Elam:
lot. It was, it really was. And it was at the start and it was, you know, my grandmother was a very influential person in my life. And, you know, when, um, her, she had a, a, a resubmergent, her, her, her breast cancer came back. And we knew at stage four, we knew that we were losing her and I was very much a caretaker for her. And because my mom had me as a team, my grandma, she, she served as a surrogate mom. She was a mother to me, right? Like, and so, um, watching her and aiding her through transitioning, her transition. While I was in school, I remember I wanted to quit and she said, uh, you got to go to that schoolhouse. Can you, can you, instead of going to the schoolhouse, can you do your work here? And I was like, yeah, we online grandma. She's like, okay, just, just be here with me. And she told me that she was like, don't do it. But t ºÚÁÏÉçÇø also helped me because guess what? I could sit in the hospital with my laptop beside her and do my work. And all she wanted to know is that I was right there with her. I could take my laptop to her house. and watch her caretakers do things for her, but be there with her so that we can share in a little meal together. Um, and because I could, my laptop is all I needed. I didn't have to lug books around cause my books were online. I did not have to do certain because it was there. And then after she transitioned, I went into depression. If you had asked me, because I, I did, you know, I just take the Lincoln and keep on taking, but I had went into a depression that I didn't even realize I was in. And I took this class, um, an elective class. That dealt with death. And I promise you my professor and I wish I knew the name right now. She was the best therapist ever. Like the, the, the course, the lessons, the, um, the conversation between, uh, between the students. It guided me, it helped me to realize where I was in my life at that point. What I was going through, that it was okay to be mad, that it was okay to do these things, and it allowed me to work through those emotions and keep pushing. And my grandma words popped in my head from the time I was little. She would always tell me, you're strong as an ox. I thought she was saying that because she saw what was happening in the moment, but she gave me those words to carry on after she was no longer here. And remembering that I was strong as an ox. Going through that t ºÚÁÏÉçÇø course in 2019, going through those things after she had passed in that class with that professor and those teachers, it really pushed me beyond and it was in that moment that I was like, there's no stopping me at this point.

Nathan James:
There's no stopping me now. In another way, you weren't doing this alone, right? I mean, as you said that I just imagined hearing you hearing her voice, you know, as you work your way through your studies, even when you wanted to quit her letting you say, don't quit. Right. Don't quit, you know, man. Okay. So you get to the point, right? Where You earn your Bachelor's degree, right? You get to that finish line. That had to be a tremendous feeling. First of all. Um, did you attend your graduation, by the way? What? Yeah. You did? Yes. You know, it, uh, all the fanfare wanted to highlight that. Uh huh Uh huh. All the fanfare, all the fan fair and super well deserved, right? I mean, I just wanna say that now. I just gotta say that because. I have also seen you, you've talked about this in the past, um, struggling with a feeling of not deserving certain accomplishments, right? Or not feeling worthy enough, right? And so I just want to highlight that too, when you celebrate at the end of a finish line, right? Um, it's well deserved, right? And, um, could you describe that briefly for a feeling like this accomplishment that you didn't think you deserved before, but here you are now, right? Yes.

Lakia Elam:
It's indescribable, right? Like, not just this little person, my daughter, now an adult who had done her thing. She had her, and now I'm sitting here with my family, like, rooting me on. And do you know, that was the last year that it was UMUC. Which is so great, right? Like, I got that you and and and it was, it was right before the pandemic, which then, you know, change. And so, but it was that feeling sitting in that auditorium and watching every name being called. And in the moment I stepped on the stage, it was just like. Yeah, I deserve this. It went from being, can I do it? Do I deserve it? To being like in that, I'm telling you, it was the cr, the changing of the guards. It was like, yes, I deserve it. I'm so proud of me for doing it, right? Like I wanna scream it to the mountains to tell other people who may be second guessing, like one time, like step, do this because you deserve this feeling right here, right now too.

Nathan James:
Come on. Oh, my gosh. I'm trying to pull it back.

Lakia Elam:
I'm trying to pull it back.

Nathan James:
Don't hold back. Don't hold back. Now, uh, your daughter, was she there? You know, front and center. Front and center. That's special. Now, okay. Take us to graduate school. Now you decide you're going to get your master's degree at this point, right? So briefly, if you could talk about your decision making process there, because some might have said, I got my bachelor's degree. I'm good. Like you said, even at first, you had a 2 part vision. The master's degree wasn't even a part of it initially, right? You could have said I'm good and sailed off into the sunset, right? Why the

Lakia Elam:
masters? Why not? At that point? That was my mentality at that point. It was 1st of all, um, G. C. Once I got through, you know, the way that the programs are set up, the way that school is set up, the way that you choose your classes, again, talking to the academic advisors, understanding what it was. It's two years. It's, you know, it's like however many credits, 48 credit, whatever, but it's like, I can do this. Okay. If I, again, I had my book, my trusty book, my ink pen. And I went through and I'm like, this is how I'll get this done. Um, and it was at that, at that, I'm not stopping. I was not planning to stop. I wanted to see it through because, and you know what I told my, I told my daughter, I said, the bachelor's was, was for you. This master's it's for me. So this, let's do it. Let's do it. Let's do it. And it was like, for you, I can do anything, but can I push myself through this for me? And sure enough, at the start of my, uh, we went to, we went on vacation to celebrate. The bachelor's degree and I found myself in a hospital sick, um, for weeks. Yeah. At the start of, and I remember like, just as you're about to start, just as I was about to start my master's program here come another barrier here, come another barrier. Like what a coincidence. You know? Go ahead. What a coincidence. Come on now. Coincidence. Um, and I remember again saying, you know what? I'm gonna push this off a semester because I'm in the hospital. I'm gonna push it off a semester because I, you know, I'm not right. Da, da da. I've been in the hospital for weeks at this point. And here come my daughter again. No, no, no, you cannot. No, you got to do it. You know, she wasn't the only voice, but she was one of the loudest voices. Right. And it was her word. She said, I'll do whatever it takes. If you need me to read to you, if you need me to tell me outside, whatever you need me to do, I'm going to help you through it. Right. I was like, okay, you got to do it. Don't stop. And I remember the first time I was like, all right, I'm not feeling it tonight. And I said, um, I need some help. Can you come and help me? And whatever it was, she's like, there's nothing wrong with your eyes or your fingers here. Let me help you. And she pushed the laptop up closer to me on the hospital table and was like, there you go. You got it.

Nathan James:
You're kidding. What's what's what we got. The world needs to know what her name is. What was her name? One more time. Her name is Linnea. Laniyah, shout out to you. Shout out to you. You're watching this or listening to this. Shout out to you. I gotta say, gotta make a moment for that. But go ahead. Please look here. So you're, you're, you're on the hospital bed and you're working through this. I'm

Lakia Elam:
on the hospital

Nathan James:
bed with

Lakia Elam:
IVs in my arm. And, um, I'm working through, uh, my first, um, MBA class. And it was this little girl who, um, one of my, my, my coworkers, uh, she would come to see me and it was at the very start. I'll never forget this. And I was like, I need a book. I don't have any. So I'm in the hospital. I don't have anything. And this little, she was 10 years old, maybe. She and her mom had come to see me and I was like, I need a book and some supplies and this baby was so happy to go buy me a book. She's like, I'm, she went and she picked this book out on her own and was so happy to bring me back a book and some ink pens so that I can get my schoolwork done. Isn't that just,

Nathan James:
I mean, you're in the fire at this point and people are jumping in there.

Lakia Elam:
Yes. Don't let me

Nathan James:
stop.

Lakia Elam:
You know what I'm saying? Like it was that thing. You cannot. When it's meant to be, it's meant to be. But you know, in the people around me, but again, how about it for the classes? I'm just able to get my laptop, plug it in and keep it moving. And honestly, when I look back and think about it, it was the distraction of the distraction of class kept me positive. It kept me thinking. It kept me together. It kept me going. Um, and it allowed me to focus on something other than what could have been a downer in my life at that time.

Nathan James:
That makes sense. Like, you had a mission. You were on a mission no matter what was going on. You, you had a sense of mission, I think, right? That purpose. Yeah. Oh, my goodness. Okay. Um, look, you, you started your master's degree, and as we know, you weren't on this journey alone. Uh, I mean. And this is also because you've, you've talked about this before, uh, from the vantage point of classmates, right? Um, please talk a little bit about that, right? Um, because you had classmates with you on this too. I think, you know,

Lakia Elam:
again, the, the power of the ºÚÁÏÉçÇø community. When you're internal and then as an alum, it's, it's, it's huge. It's, it's, it's necessary to tap in. And I met someone that a classmate and we just clicked right away in this master's program. And now, you know, I call her my sis, her kids are my nieces and nephews. And my daughter is her niece. But in class, we would just after class, she had just had a baby and we would, All night we would talk about our school. Okay, you're doing this. You're doing this. Hope we get on the same project together. Hope we do this. But we helped each other out so much in class and then it transcended outside of school. It became something bigger, right? Like her with her. Her clothing, her social media piece. Me with my business. How can I help you? She would help me from a project management standpoint. We would talk about things that would help her. And then that community, it just, it, we created a bond that's, we created an unbreakable bond. She and I together again, don't, I often tell people when they approach me about t ºÚÁÏÉçÇø, I'm like, yes, it is an online institution, but it's so much bigger than that. You connect with real people and then you create these relationships that can, it's not transactional. That's what it is. It's very much relational and not transactional. That's UMGC for

Nathan James:
you. You know, um, it's true. And every student that comes to UMGC or that goes to any school we know has a very unique story. Right? And everyone's got their hopes. Everyone's got their dreams, and they're using education to get to that dream. Right? And so, um, I mean, speaking for the university, what a privilege to be able to work with you and your story beyond the education. Right? I mean, but it's to achieve the goals that you had as well. I know this is a personal goal, but this was a career goal for you too, right? It was a career goal for you. So you go on to earn your MBA. Okay. And, uh, all this time you're still, I think you're working in, you have HR career field, right? Your HR career. So tell us a little bit about how the degree or the degrees have helped and shaped your career, what it's made possible that maybe wasn't possible without.

Lakia Elam:
Honestly, from the moment that I started my degree program, I was an employee. Um, and I had taken a step back and so I had, you know, one title and then throughout the throughout my degree program, my titles, my salary, things just kept progressing, progressing, progressing and a large part of that. Yes. So, while I had, you know, 20 years of experience. Coming into it. But the program at t ºÚÁÏÉçÇø was relevant. It's timely. It's modern. It's not outdated. The professors understand it. So you can learn things at school and then apply them in real life in real time, which was which was key. Right? Um, and then by the time, though, I finished my degree, I had started my own business and, Yep. I resigned from my role. Something that was never part of the plan. This wasn't part of, um, but I started this business off of really just this thought. It was like, yep, this is the time. This is the moment. I give credit to UMGC. Um, the capstone in the N. B. A. Program was just so amazing. It's so real life because the capstone is like you simulate owning a business and running a business and what you do and how you think about it. So which is which was bizarre, you know, the way that things happen. But I credit you M. G. C. For really giving me that extra boost of confidence to know that I can do it. You know, so it's just not the school is the schooling with mhm. Everything that I had done to that point, you put it all together so you can have all of these things. But if you don't know how to mesh and mend them together and can see another vision because you've learned some other things along the way, what good is it? It was like I had all of the ingredients, but t ºÚÁÏÉçÇø helped me to figure out the recipe.

Nathan James:
That's, that's a powerful way to push it. Um, that's a, that's a great way to phrase it. Um, you talked about, you know, briefly, um, you ended up resigning. From your HR position and I, I believe you had hit a ceiling at some point professionally at that point. Right? So, um, I think getting these degrees help to kind of get past that ceiling. Right? Um, could you talk a little bit about that too? Because I, I think a lot of folks out there know how frustrating it is to keep banging your head on the same wall professionally, right? Where you have a dream of achieving this particular role or title and you can't get there because something was holding you up. You got there though. So could you talk a little bit about that too? Absolutely.

Lakia Elam:
The ceiling, I'm going to say the ceiling and the stigma, right? You know, you could fill in the blank for whatever stigma, but that it's so real because again, people sometimes they often say this piece of paper, what does this, what does it show? What does it do? But so forget what it shows, but what does it make you feel? What does it make you feel? It makes you feel unstoppable. It makes you feel like I can find a way. It gives you again the tools to help. But for me in my career, it was, yeah, it was no, I told, we talked about it, right? Like there's no, you can't get a title. You can't get the money. You can't get this. You can't get that. So where do I go? I felt stuck. So this degree, it helped me to get unstuck. How so? Because again, adding more tools to my tool belt, having these professors, having these, um, students and these classmates that talked about what they were doing. And so again, Being open to learning in all the spaces, not just when you submit in your classwork, but learning from the other people around you and engaging with people to figure out how what they're doing and what, how are they making it? And what career, what fields are they at? All of those things again, help to add to my tool belt to help me to get beyond. to get unstuck and then to overcome said stigmas.

Nathan James:
And here you are now as CEO, right? Um, of, uh, uh, CEO, magnificent, uh, uh, differences consulting, right? It's a mouthful. I'm trying to get the acronym down to MDC MDC. I love it. So here you are and talk a little bit. Now you're living the dream, uh, about. Your company does and the impact it makes.

Lakia Elam:
So we're going to first start with the name, Magnificent Differences Consulting. The rationale behind the name is a couple things, but we just want to focus on if people, people oftentimes focus on the differences as a reason why something cannot happen, but we highlight the differences as to why everything good can happen. And if we connect on differences, We understand differences. We respect differences. The outcome can absolutely be magnificent, right? Right? And that is what happened. That is a big piece of my life, both personally and professionally. When I think about my daughter and the way that she came up and it's like, it has to be different. Your life has to be different from mine and so the intentionality behind that.

Nathan James:
I want to bring it back around and end with this, okay? You have the story, this is a powerful story of perseverance. Um, everyone listening, everyone watching is persevering through something or is intimidated by the possibility of having to persevere through some challenge. What would your advice be to them?

Lakia Elam:
We are all persevering through something. My advice is this. First of all, know that you're not alone. You are not alone. Take one step back, one step back. Assess the landscape. Think about the end in the beginning. Where is it that you're trying to go? What is it that you ultimately want to accomplish? Drown out all the noise. Get a pen and a pad. Write down that ultimate goal, and write down the steps that you need to take to get there. Put it to the side. Take one step at a time. One step at a time.

Nathan James:
That's it. One step at a time, folks. Wow. Look at you. Thank you. And thank you. And thank you again for being on with me and being on with us, um, to our listeners and, uh, to those who are watching, thank you for listening. Um, if you want to see more Unstoppable Stories, you want to be inspired by more Unstoppable Stories, please remember to like and subscribe and it will happen, right? Thanks again. We'll see you next time.

Lakia Elam:
Thank you for having me.