Rodney L. Fields, Ph.D.: Member Spotlight (July 2017)
June 30, 2017Amy-Alexis Udom: Member Spotlight (September 2017)
September 3, 2017“No experience is a bad experience. It’s all about what you take away from it.”
-Stephanie Hudson, Project Management Officer & Founding Partner, H3C, LLC
Members and friends, meet Stephanie Hudson. You may be familiar with that name as NAAAHR Atlanta’s Vice President of Finance. You may also be familiar with the face as it is one of the first faces to greet you at the registration desk when you attend an NAAAHR event.
Stephanie recently celebrated her 27th anniversary of living in Atlanta although she is originally from Columbus, Ohio. If you have been keeping up with past Member Spotlights, you may remember another featured member from Ohio: our own Sr. Vice President and COO Sheree Knowles! The two have known each other since college and have come full circle again now working together in Atlanta.
While Stephanie’s formal education focused on Finance, she has a wide range of experience focused around overall business operations and considers herself to be more of an Administrative Professional, with an interest in Diversity & Inclusion. She has facilitated workshops on gender equity and diversity, Emotional Intelligence, and has designed training curricula focused on Diversity & Inclusion. She has served as the Director of Human Resources Operations at C.A.R.E. USA where she has done work in Organizational Development helping to devise their management practices. She has also served as the Operations Manager at Welcoming America where she managed the administrative support functions such as Information Technology, Human Resources, Telecommunications, and Risk Management.
I first heard about NAAAHR while I was at CARE but I didn’t become a member immediately. When I later accepted the HR position at Welcoming America I wanted to make sure that I was up to speed on what was going on in the field and Sheree Knowles suggested that I join NAAAHR to build my knowledge and relationships in the field of HR. Shortly after I joined, the organization happened to be looking for a VP of Finance so I not only became a member but then accepted a board position and began serving as the VP of Finance.
When Stephanie is not helping to get an organization’s Operations up and running, she can be found teaching cycling classes.
I got into cycling back in 2012. I had taken a certification class through the League of American Cyclists and wanted to take another class to improve my skills beyond the intermediate level. At the time, I only found a class to become an instructor. Since I had been an instructor/trainer at C.A.R.E., I figured I’d give the class a try. There have been a large amount of women learning how to cycle over the past few years so a lot of my trainings have been mostly but not limited to women. I enjoy that because of where I was a several years back as an adult female learning how to cycle.
Fast-forward to today, Stephanie recently became the Project Management Officer and one of three founding partners of the consulting firm Human Capital Consultants Consortium (or H3C for short), LLC. If you have had the opportunity to check out NAAAHR’s Consultants Coalition group, you may have seen the partners of H3C present on some of the competencies for consulting success. Stephanie reflects on some of the benefits of her NAAAHR membership…
As I continue to work and learn in the field of Human Resources, my NAAAHR membership has been beneficial to me in terms of meeting and networking with people in different areas. I’ve also been intrigued by the various topics selected, especially the session about the 5 Generations in the Workplace because the organization that I most recently worked with is operated by Millennials. To hear that and go through it, I’ve been able to take the information that I get from the meetings and directly apply it to my work. I use one set of lenses to view information from my own perspective and then I reframe it through the lenses of other generations in the organization. As a matter of fact, right now I’m working with that same organization to build their operational infrastructure.
It’s been a windy road full of great learning opportunities, and to summarize it all Stephanie says…
I’ve embraced a constant attitude of learning. No experience is a bad experience. It’s all about what you take away from it. If it’s good, repeat. If it’s bad, don’t repeat.
Have you met Stephanie in person yet? Maybe you can strike up a convo about the 5 Gens and workplace diversity. Maybe you can swap cycling tips or even speak with her about learning how to cycle. Whatever you do, come out and say hello to Stephanie and other professionals on Wednesday, August 9th, at NAAAHR Atlanta’s August Chapter Meeting or the next Consultants Coalition meeting on September 9th (save the date). Click here for more information on these and future events.