Faces in the Crowd: Amara McClusky

This is part two of Door of Clubs Faces in the Crowd series that highlights the unique and often overlooked career and job stories of diverse students entering the workforce, as well as, mid-to-senior level executives from minority backgrounds. If you missed part one you can find our conversation with Jala Morrow here.

Door of Clubs: Amara thanks for joining us on “Faces in the Crowd”. Can you tell us little about where you are in your career now and how you got there?

Amara: I am a senior account executive at a healthcare tech company and I sell technology services to hospitals and practitioners. I received my Master’s degree in communications directly after undergrad and I thought I wanted to be a professor of communications. I then realized I was teaching all of these students about how to communicate in the real world and I hadn’t actually worked in the real world.

So I put PhD on hold, and worked for a couple of political campaigns and as an executive assistant at a nonprofit. A year later, I met someone who asked me if I wanted to try out sales. My family members always said that everyone should at least experience sales once. It’s a good skill to have and I ended up just really liking it. I took my first sales job, and a second sales position right after.

I wanted experience with a slightly larger company, that’s how I ended up where I am now, and I really enjoy it. I’ve been in sales for the past four and a half years.

Career transitions are always interesting. Do you feel your education background in communications and ability to clearly articulate the differentiation of your product and services has helped you with selling?

Absolutely. I’ve learned that whatever your degree is in, you can draw from it in any area of business. For instance, in graduate school, I taught public speaking courses so when I’m presenting to clients, that’s always a good skill to have.

In terms of going a step further back, what drove that interest in communications and made you think you wanted to be a teacher?

Well, I always knew I wanted to get a Master’s degree. I kind of made up this thing in my head that whatever education your parents held, you should at least have that as well. I just made that up when I was in high school and decided that was my thing.

My mother has a Master’s degree and that’s what I wanted as well. I was on the speech team in undergrad and there was a speech team at my graduate school as well. I ended up coaching the students there in addition to teaching. So when I was coaching and teaching I was like, “Oh wow, I really like working with students. I think I could actually do this as a career.”

You mention the speech team and Door of Clubs is a big believer in students getting involved in clubs and extracurricular activities for building soft skills and opening eyes to other career paths. Did that experience with the speech team help you along your career path?

Yeah, I think that in working or being a part of any team during college you gain better communication and relationship skills.

On the speech team that also meant building better relationships with professors who were leading the team. I think that was really important in addition to just having a regular college experience.

Was that speech team more diverse than the people you would typically see in class or less diverse?

It was definitely more diverse. In addition to giving formal persuasive speeches, we were also doing performances that were similar to acting.

In the arts in general, you end up having people who are really curious and want to learn from other people’s backgrounds. It draws a diverse crowd because everybody can appreciate the performance. Then you add in and getting to travel and compete with different teams, I was exposed to more diversity than just on my college campus.

There are historically black colleges that compete or just colleges from different parts of the country that might have a more diverse population than the school that I was at or vice versa. So you got exposed to different types of people from California, New York, Texas, other parts of Illinois, and all over the country.

Shifting to the workforce — diversity and inclusion have become hot-button issues over the last few years. Just curious when you graduated, being a young minority woman. Was that something where you felt like you might not be getting a fair shake with interviews based on your ethnicity or gender?

As a black woman, you’re never unaware that you are a black woman, even when you are around people who look just like you.

When you’re interviewing, there’s a benefit to having a connection to the person who’s interviewing you. Because so few recruiters and HR personnel look like me, I was aware that I had to dig deeper to find commonality.

As opposed to just a cultural instant click of someone having that empathy of like, “Oh, I remember when I was just like you.” People don’t necessarily see me as just like them. I was aware of that, but I wasn’t discouraged by it.

In terms of once you were in the door working at these companies. Did you feel like you were still seeking out folks within the organization that were like you? Did any of the companies that you worked within go out of the way to try to incorporate you into their culture or find mentors that might be from a similar background?

I think, very recently, diversity has come up a lot or inclusion has come up a lot. But at least in my experience, when I was first starting out, it’s not something that I saw a lot of action around within organizations.

A lot of organizations have an overarching mission to accept people from all cultures. More overarching philosophy than action internally.

You mentioned earlier the arts and that got us wondering if any of the verticals that you’ve worked in were more focused on inclusion than others?

Education for sure. There’s a big emphasis on critical thinking and so people are supposed to be questioning beliefs and why people are doing whatever they’re doing.

The first thing you’re taught in school is to raise your hand and ask a question. That is the foundation of an educational setting — ask questions. Once you get into the corporate world, you figure out you’re there to do your job. However, there are always circumstances where feedback is welcome and solicited.

In education, you can usually find someone who is of a certain culture or studying that culture, and so they want to know about your personal experience. That’s not always appropriate or top of mind in the corporate setting.

Any specific examples you have?

When I started teaching public speaking in Minnesota, I was teaching in a smaller town. There were a lot of students that had little exposure to African-American teachers. That was a culture shock for some students to see a black woman telling them what to do.

Luckily, there were white and nonwhite professors that I could go to and say, “Okay, this class is not receiving me well. I have to figure how to be able to communicate with these students so that they get the education that they came for.” I had people who instantly knew what I was talking about and acknowledged my experiences. That doesn’t always happen outside of education where sometimes people say, “Are you sure that’s not in your head?”

Speaking of getting good advice. If you were a young black woman trying to get her foot into an industry today what advice would you give yourself?

I would say that students just coming out of college should realize that, specifically if you’re a minority, you are different. You may have to work harder, but don’t come in guarded. Be open to the fact that it might actually turn out a lot better than you think that it will.

I think when people talk about a lack of diversity or a lack of inclusion people get discouraged. That’s an energy that you put off. So if you’re excited, if you’re determined, someone will see that and they will want to be around you because that’s a lot of how you get a job. You have to convince someone that they want to be around you every day. It’s really about communicating how much of a contribution you can make.

For me, my mindset is, “I’m delightful, and you just haven’t figured it out yet. So, let me help you.” And that attitude is different from, “Oh, this might not work out or this person doesn’t look like me.” Try to approach it like the best thing that can happen, will happen, and people will sense that about you.

Has that positive mindset helped you advance in your career?

Yes, but it’s also important to find a skill and to become an expert at whatever you want to try out, even if it’s not what you want to do forever. People are attracted to people who commit to whatever they’re doing. If you start out being an executive assistant, try to be the best executive assistant that you can.

People will hear that about you and will say, “Oh, well you did such a great job with this. The next thing that you’re passionate about, you’ll probably do a good job at that, too.”

Even if you’re starting out exactly where you want to be, commit to it because commitment is just as important as whatever you studied in college.

From the employer’s side, any thoughts on how to be more open and accepting? I guess, too, any thoughts on how they can really start creating more inclusive workplaces?

The best thing employers can do is educate themselves. Truly understand the value of inclusivity so it’s not just a number’s game. There are real benefits of inclusion and diversity.

There’s value in having people of different cultures, different backgrounds. It does improve the workplace. And when you genuinely believe that, that comes out in the culture of a workplace.How you speak to people and how you look at people for advancing them. You’ll just have a different view of the importance of that.

Do you think they also need to learn to look beyond the cover of the book?

For me, as a black woman — who looks younger than I am — it wasn’t a pleasant experience to buy my first car. No one was eager to try to sell me this car because they didn’t think I was a real buyer.

That experience has influenced how I treat all sorts of people. I don’t assume anything about them. I give the receptionist the same respect as the owner. The way that people have seen me actually makes me better at what I do because how I treat people is how I want to be treated.

Knowing the different ways that you can even unconsciously treat someone differently based on who they are, that makes me successful in my workplace because I’m aware of those things and I avoid them more than someone who’s never really experienced them.

Be humble enough to say, “Oh, I don’t have this experience. Maybe that’s the perspective that’s going to help me” Or “maybe that’s an eye that I can use in my business.” If you don’t truly believe that, it’s going to be inauthentic. The people you’re trying to include can see it instantly when it’s not genuine.

There doesn’t seem to be any silver bullet for solving this inclusivity issue. But if there’s kind of one thought from looking at this is that you have to figure it out together, right?

Yes. Educate the people minorities are going to have to work under. I think that’s so important because your relationship with your manager will shape your experience at an organization.

Just because someone is really delightful or enjoyable to you, as a CEO or as an owner,, that’s your experience with that person. But, you still have to assume that everyone should be trained on dealing with different types of people because you can’t tell how people are going to interact with someone that’s different from them. You have to ensure that everyone is trained on what to keep an eye out for.

You also need to be able to hit potential issues head on in a non-aggressive manner. For instance, “Hey, you might have this preconceived notion that you don’t even know is there and it doesn’t mean you’re a bad person, it just means that you may have different experiences and not even realize that you’ve got this unconscious bias.”

I think everyone across the board should be educated on that. You shouldn’t assume that anybody knows.

Made me think of the Ernst and Young program they kicked off in their London office where they’re basically doing reverse mentoring and pairing senior executives with either young women to address gender diversity or people of color and minority backgrounds to address racial diversity.

Instead of telling executives “Hey, you need to follow these rules, it’s more, just ‘have a conversation with someone from a different background and see where the conversation goes” type of a thing.

Yes and it doesn’t have to be intense. It doesn’t have to be this thing where someone is wrong and someone else is right. It can just be a “We all have more to learn. We’re all living life for the first time. Let’s talk about how we can make this the best environment for everyone.”

That’s it. How we can make this the best environment for everyone who works here? Not the majority of people who work here, but everyone who works here.

Thanks so much for you insight Amara and great to have you on Faces in the Crowd!

Thanks for having me!