BY DAN HILDEBRAN
The Northeast Florida Economic Development Corporation’s strategic alliance business partner shared leadership insights and views on workforce development on a podcast targeting chief executive officers.
Amber Shepherd traced her professional path from a career services advisor for an Orange Park for-profit college to executive management global consulting to her current position on the Drop In CEO podcast, hosted by Deborah Coviello.
The Middleburg native described her upbringing in rural Clay County as poverty-stricken.
“I literally grew up on a dirt road out in the middle of nowhere and progressed through my career to providing global business executive management consulting,” she recalled. “My mother worked 80 hours a week at a local convenience store.”
Shepherd also credited her mother with instilling a love for lifelong learning, which she said was a life-changing attitude.
“You have to learn to read and speak and communicate because that is something that no one can take away from you, “Shepherd said, recalling her mother’s advice.
Shepherd said she could identify with the students she helped while working at the college because “they were people that were similar to me in that they didn’t have that level of support in their lives, and I had the opportunity to become that support for them.”
She added that one of her primary roles became mentoring students and instilling confidence in them.
“What I found is a lot of these individuals suffered, a lot of times, from toxicity in the home,” she said. “They didn’t have those individuals in their homes that believed in them and provided them with confidence, and that’s what they needed from me, that person who said, I’m going to help you grow and achieve your next level.”
She added that helping people overcome self-doubt and the fear of rejection was a skill she carried into her successive role in counseling the chief executive officers of global corporations.
“CEOs also fear rejection,” she said, “and I think that that has been the greatest eye-opening experience.”
Shepherd drew parallels between students engaging in mock interviews and business leaders preparing to pitch ideas to potential investors.
“What I saw was a shift,” she said, “first, in their own minds, you have to believe in yourself before you can get anybody to believe in your product.”
Informal leadership
Shepherd cited that, as one of her early career successes, her college regularly exceeded the 70% minimum placement level required by the federal government. She added that her graduate’s placement level sometimes approached 85%.
She also said her first job taught her the art of informal leadership because she had to lead staff and students at the college who were not accountable to her.
“In career service,” she said, “you are not a formal leader. You are an informal leader. You have to find a way to inspire and motivate change within these individuals so that they choose it for themselves. I couldn’t force somebody to go on a job interview. I couldn’t force them to write their resumes properly; I couldn’t force them to invest the time and energy it took to sit in front of me and let me critique you and make yourself vulnerable to me so that I can share how we can improve. I had to inspire them to receive it.
Workforce development
Shepherd said that workforce development is critical in her current role as a partner with the economic development corporation because companies looking to locate in an area increasingly focus on the quality of workers for a potential workplace.
“They’re looking at those school districts,” she said of employers. “They’re looking at the graduates.”
When Coviello asked her how individual companies could improve their workforces, Shepherd recommended a rigorous orientation program that includes having all new employees work in roles that ingrain the employer’s values and vision into the new hires. She said one example might be requiring all new employees to spend time working as a receptionist or in customer service.
She added that when educators, business owners, and community leaders invest in the lives of students and workers, they not only improve their own organizations but also lift the entire community.
“Think about that little girl that grew up on a dirt road,” she said. “The work you’re doing in your organization has the power to permanently change that person’s life and generations for hundreds of years. We can impact our community, our state, our nation for hundreds of years by investing in our employees.”
