Before my corporate days, before becoming an entrepreneur, before I ever stepped on a stage or uttered the acronym DEI, I watched my first example of real leadership up close. I did not know that was what I was watching at the time. I just knew that my mother walked into rooms differently from other people. That when she spoke, people listened. That she had a way of making everyone around her feel like they belonged exactly where they were. Her name is Bobbie Brooks. And long before diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging became corporate language or a PowerPoint initiative, she was already living it. Not because it was fashionable. Because it was simply the right way to move through the world. Not because it was fashionable. Because it was simply the right way to move through the world. Because it was in her DNA as a PK – preacher kid.

She Couldn’t Even Get a Credit Card

To understand my mother’s story, you have to understand the world she was navigating. In the 1970s, she was a single mom raising two kids and, in an era, when women could not open a checking account on their own or get a credit card in their name. Imagine trying to run a low-income, government-waged household under those rules and with a teenage son who could eat you out of house and home. #WomensNonRights back then was not a hashtag. It was the world in which women navigated.

She eventually did get a credit card, but the way it happened tells you everything about that era. That is, until a woman at Sears and Roebuck decided to help a sister out. Literally. My mother’s name, Bobbie, is male-dominated, and that woman knew exactly what she was doing when she signed her up. She used the system’s own assumption to get my mother through a door that was otherwise closed to her. One woman quietly dismantling a barrier for another.

A Trailblazer at Fort Carson, Colorado, Before Anyone Called It That

While the system around her was quite busy placing limits on what women could do, my mother was quietly building something entirely different without knowing. She had been working since she was twelve, and she worked her way up through the ranks at Evans Community Hospital at Fort Carson in Colorado Springs until she became the first manager of the patient appointment department. A young Black woman leading a department on a military post in Colorado in the 1970s was no small thing. Nothing about her rise was handed to her. She earned every bit of it.

Bobbie Brooks in h 30s at Fort Carson, Colorado

What stands out most when I look back is not just that she reached that position, but the way she led once she got there. Before anyone talked about diversity, equity, inclusion or belonging in the workplace, Bobbie Brooks was building teams that reflected exactly that. She hired women from their twenties to their sixties. People of color. Single mothers like herself. People living with disabilities. Candidates that other managers quietly labeled un-hirable. She called that bulls*!t (my language, not hers). Her standard was straightforward. Be fair. Be kind. Give people an opportunity and expect them to rise to it. And they did. Barbara, Vivian, Craig, Ron, and the list continues. She was respected by the hospital commander, Colonel Cochrane, other department leaders, down to the newest person on her team. Not because she demanded authority, but because she led with integrity and ran a winning department.

The Queendom She Built

Ours is a military family through and through. My dad served two tours in Vietnam as an Army soldier. My mother served in the Navy Reserve while also working in civil service. My brother, a Gulf War vet, served our country as an Airman in the Air Force. When the service years were over, my parents planted themselves in Colorado Springs and, sadly, divorced. Through the hardships post-divorce, she held on to her home. For more than fifty years, the house she built there became far more than a home. It was my mother’s queendom.

Friends came and went without knocking. Mothers who needed a place to land called it home at times. My brother Keith and I grew up knowing that our home was a place where people were welcome and taken care of. After all, our mother was born and raised in Texas, and if you know southern women, you know they do not do anything halfway. Building that life, that home, that sense of belonging for everyone around her was no exception.

When Everything Changed

Then March 17, 2023, it happened. Our lives changed when my mother had a stroke at only 85. In that moment, the woman who had spent decades taking care of everyone else suddenly needed someone to take care of her.

Today, the Queendom in Colorado Springs, the one that held fifty years of incredible memories, has been sold, and Bobbie Brooks, my amazing mother, calls Denver home, close to me. At 88, she has lived a full life. With long-term memories alive and well, her short-term memory is fading as her new reality is a walker and vascular dementia. Her life continues, albeit a bit differently; she is still the matriarch of this family, appreciating every God-given breath she takes. Still the center of gravity. Still Bobbie Brooks.

I will be honest with you. As someone child-free, I did not fully understand what it meant to show up for someone the way she always showed up for others. The way she made sure we had food on the table and a roof over our heads, through the tough times and the good. I am learning it in real time. And she is still teaching me, in ways I never expected.

What I Learned Just by Watching. And Now by Doing.

Now I stand on stages talking about the power of women’s lived experience and the value people bring to the workplace at every age and stage. I talk about inclusive leadership and recognizing talent that institutions too often miss. And then every week, it’s to my mother’s ‘new’ home to ensure she continues to live the best life we can give her today.

That is the full circle I never planned for. But it is the one that makes everything I do feel true to the woman who raised me. I am not just talking about these things. I watched someone live them. And now I am living them too.

After all, aging is a privilege. And my mother has had 88 years of it.

My Ask This Women’s History Month

Think about your first example of great leadership. Not the famous one. Not the TED Talk one. The real one, the person in your actual life who showed you what was possible before you even knew you were watching. Celebrate them. Tell their story. The world needs more Bobbie Brooks energy right now.

Happy Women’s History Month.

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