Creating a Culture of Courage: Sonia Jackson Myles of The Sister Accord Foundation On How Authenticity Benefits People and Profits in the Workplace
An Interview With Vanessa Ogle
People with different backgrounds, experiences, and ethnicities are invited to have a seat at the table. One of the things that was important to me as I was building teams during my corporate career was to ensure that I had diversity in all aspects on my team. I loved how bringing those diverse thoughts and opinions led to unprecedented results for my groups.
In today’s social media filled, fast-paced world, authenticity in the workplace and in our personal lives has become more difficult to come by. Business leaders must focus on the bottom line of profits and corporate success, but does that have to be at the expense of the authenticity of their employees? I believe it is quite the opposite. I know from my own experience that a culture of authenticity allows the hiring of a team that will bring their all to the workplace. That fosters innovation, creativity and a level of success that few companies dream of. Yet, fostering an environment where individuals feel secure enough to express their true selves remains a challenge. The importance of authenticity cannot be overstated — it is the foundation of trust, innovation, and strong relationships. However, creating such a culture requires intention, understanding, and actionable strategies. As part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Sonia Jackson Myles.
Sonia is the founder of The Sister Accord® Foundation (https://thesisteraccordfoundation.org/), a 501c3 organization whose mission is to have one billion girls and women learn to love themselves and each other by understanding their value and worth. The Foundation has three global areas of focus: educating girls and women, enlightening girls and women about the power of Sisterhood, and eradicating bullying and violence against girls and women. Sonia is also a highly sought-after advisor, working with CEOs and their teams on leadership development, DE&I, unconscious bias training, women’s initiatives, change management, employee engagement, and creating a culture where employees can thrive.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive into our discussion our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share with us the backstory about what brought you to your specific career path?
I spent over 20 years in corporate America, first at Ford Motor Company, then Gillette Company, and then at Procter & Gamble Company, where I started as the head of global media sourcing. My last role at P&G was buying all of their packaging globally, and I managed over $20 billion of spend during my corporate career.
I had a wonderful career in corporate America and would have stayed, but I knew that there was something else I needed to do. Over the years, I would frequently hear about issues women were having with each other at work. While my male mentees would come to me asking for help fleshing out an idea or finishing a project, my female mentees spent their time with me working through interpersonal issues, most often involving other women. The women did not like working together and were treating each other like competitors.
I had teams across the world and mentees from every continent (with the exception of Antarctica), so I was working with people of every socio-economic background, every religion, every race. And yet this dynamic between women was always the same.
I realized that many of us are socialized as little girls to distrust each other. It shows up as early as the age of four and continues all the way through school. Then, we take those behaviors into the workplace. I knew that if women stayed in these patterns, we’d never get to the C-Suite or the boardroom.
That was the inspiration for The Sister Accord® Foundation and our mission of having one billion girls and women learn how to love themselves and each other.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?
It’s been a long career both in corporate America and now in my role as advisor to executives and head of The Sister Accord® Foundation. It would be hard to pick just one story. I did have an incredibly moving experience recently when I went to South Africa to launch a new chapter in partnership with the Nelson Mandela Foundation. We launched at Sanctuary Mandela, which was his former home in Johannesburg.
I had the opportunity to meet Jack Swart, who was Nelson Mandela’s warden during the last 14 months of his imprisonment. Swart traveled with us to Robben Island, where Mandela was imprisoned. It was one of the most incredible experiences I’ve had in my life. I listened to stories of how the two men became very close. These two men were supposed to hate each other, but they chose love and respect. I feel like we can all learn so much from them about what it means to see the humanity in each other.
Nelson Mandela provided a model of leading with love for all of us. Even after he was released from prison, people wanted him to hate, but he chose love. We all need this right now.
You are a successful individual. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
I would say my most important character traits are three C’s: courage, consistency, and compassion.
An early career example of courage was my decision to have children when I did. I started my career in a predominantly male industry. I was very ambitious and very career-oriented, but I knew I wanted a family. I got a lot of positive feedback from my leaders, who agreed that I was doing well and had the ability to be a senior leader in the company. But everyone — my most trusted mentors and my peers alike — seemed to believe that I had to put my desire to have a family on the back burner while I worked toward that goal. They told me to wait.
That didn’t sit well with me. I never like it when someone puts limitations on what I can do, but it also seemed unfair that women were told to put the rest of their lives on hold for their careers. Men didn’t get the same warnings. I decided that I was going to have the courage to do the things that I felt were right for me, even if people were telling
me something different. I had my first baby, and then 18 months later, I had my second. And do you know what happened while I was on maternity leave with my second child? I got a call that I’d been promoted.
I think consistency is also a very important trait in a career. We’ve all had bosses or people in our lives who are inconsistent. Right? You take an issue to them on Monday, and they’re fine with it, but the same issue on Wednesday could get a totally different reaction. That happened a lot in corporate America, and it always drove us crazy. There should be consistency in who you are and what is important to you. That value system should always show up. And I think that’s true with me. I think that’s part of why I’ve had so many mentees over my career: because people knew they could come to me, and I would provide a safe space.
There’s a difference between being consistent and being predictable, by the way. Too much predictability means that you’re not thinking through options or taking intelligent risks. That’s not what I’m talking about, but I do think that consistency is important to how your values and your thought leadership shows up.
As for compassion, I think that is what’s behind The Sister Accord® Foundation. I saw women acting as adversaries, and I knew we could do better.
Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. Can you share a pivotal moment in your career or personal life when being authentic made a significant impact on your success or well being?
Honestly, I think it was leaving my corporate position. I could have easily gone on, you know, stayed there until I retired. I had a great position, but I felt like I had a calling. The behavior I saw among women in the workplace made me believe that we needed a global intervention. This, to me, is legacy work. This is about establishing a future for our children that gives them the ability to be successful in relationships with each other. If we’re not teaching it, if we’re not talking about it, what’s going to happen? It’s even more necessary now with everything that is facing our country and our world. The work of The Sister Accord® is critical.
Making this move has definitely had a significant impact on my success and my well-being. When you are operating in purpose and doing the thing that was planted inside of you as you were formed in your mother’s womb, there’s a level of joy, there’s a level of peace, there’s a level of satisfaction that is indescribable. I wake up every single day with a level of joy that amazes me, and it’s because I followed my calling and designed my destiny.
How do you navigate the challenges that come with encouraging authenticity in a diverse workplace, where different backgrounds and perspectives may sometimes lead to conflict?
In my mentoring sessions, I would often tell my story. I am actually a very private person by nature. However, when it comes to serving others through mentorship, it was important for me to open up and share what I had gone through. I wanted people to understand the challenges and adversity I’d faced as a woman in corporate America in the 1990s and how I’d overcome it. I wanted them to know that they could do the same thing. I also wanted them to know the success they saw me having later in my career was tied to my authenticity.
When we create these safe spaces for people, it gives other people permission to do the same. I believe that being authentic — sharing my stories and the lessons I learned from those stories — inspires other people to walk in their authenticity as well.
Ok super. Here is the main question of our interview. Based on your experience and research, can you please share “5 Ways to Create a Culture Where People Feel Safe to be Authentic?” What strategies have you found most effective in fostering an environment where employees or team members feel safe to express their true selves, including their ideas, concerns, and aspirations? If you can, please share a story or an example for each.
1 . People with different backgrounds, experiences, and ethnicities are invited to have a seat at the table. One of the things that was important to me as I was building teams during my corporate career was to ensure that I had diversity in all aspects on my team. I loved how bringing those diverse thoughts and opinions led to unprecedented results for my groups.
2 . Employees have safe spaces. At Ford, I’m told that I created the first Black women-focused Employee Resource Groups for the company. I thought it was important for women in the purchasing organization to have a safe space to share information and strategies for success with each other. If they had concerns or wanted to share some of the challenges they were facing in a vulnerable manner, I wanted to ensure that there was an organized and constructive way to do it.
3 . Employees are not penalized or ostracized when they speak their truth. It’s important for leaders to understand the barriers to success and high performance within their organizations. Often, people in the organization are afraid to speak up. This compromises everyone’s ability to deliver excellence. As leaders, we must be able to “handle the truth.” It’s always better as a manager to know what’s going on than to have people hiding things from you for fear of how you’ll react.
4 . Employees are encouraged to bring their full selves. We were all born with amazing and unique gifts and talents that were planted inside of us as we were formed in our mothers’ wombs. In order to create an environment of excellence, I always look for my teams’ gifts and talents and speak life into them by acknowledging their gifts and talents. In many instances, they didn’t realize that these gifts were lying dormant. When I stirred them up, it helped team members deliver a high level of performance consistently because it was connected to who they were at their core.
5 . Character traits that are valued by the organization must be rooted in integrity, collaboration, and commitment to excellence. In some cultures, people who do not operate with integrity or who bully are given senior level positions. This hurts the organization’s culture, both short-term and long-term. We must stop rewarding bad behavior.
In your opinion, how does authenticity within an organization influence its relationship with customers, clients, or the broader community?
Authenticity, or the Focus on Self-Awareness, is one of the most important aspects of one of the curricula that I developed for students in elementary, junior/high school, and college. It is a key aspect of strong Emotional Intelligence. Learning how to be authentic gives way to positive emotional and mental health and well-being within an organization that leads to being able to serve customers, clients, or the broader community consistently with excellence.
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
Starting a movement is exactly what I’m doing with The Sister Accord® Foundation and its message of loving each other and leading with compassion instead of competition. We have three global areas of focus: educating girls and women, enlightening girls and women of the power of Sisterhood, and eradicating bullying and violence against girls and women. The Foundation is focused on developing leaders through programming that inspires healthy and positive relationships. Our mission is to have 1 billion girls and women understand their value and worth that leads to living a fulfilled life.
How can our readers further follow you online?
They can go to our website: https://thesisteraccordfoundation.org/; our Instagram page: @thesisteraccord and our YouTube Channel: @thesisteraccord8963.
Thank you for the time you spent sharing these fantastic insights. We wish you only continued success in your great work!
About The Interviewer: Vanessa Ogle is a mom, entrepreneur, inventor, writer, and singer/songwriter. Vanessa’s talent in building world-class leadership teams focused on diversity, a culture of service, and innovation through inclusion allowed her to be one of the most acclaimed Latina CEO’s in the last 30 years. She collaborated with the world’s leading technology and content companies such as Netflix, Amazon, HBO, and Broadcom to bring innovative solutions to travelers and hotels around the world. Vanessa is the lead inventor on 120+ U.S. Patents. Accolades include: FAST 100,
Entrepreneur 360 Best Companies, Inc. 500 and then another six times on the Inc. 5000. Vanessa was personally honored with Inc. 100 Female Founder’s Award, Ernst and Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year Award, and Enterprising Women of the Year among others. Vanessa now spends her time sharing stories to inspire and give hope through articles, speaking engagements and music. In her spare time she writes and plays music in the Amazon best selling new band HigherHill, teaches surfing clinics, trains dogs, and cheers on her children.
Please connect with Vanessa here on linkedin and subscribe to her newsletter Unplugged as well as follow her on Substack, Instagram, Facebook, and X and of course on her website VanessaOgle.
Creating a Culture of Courage: Sonia Jackson Myles of The Sister Accord Foundation On How… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.