My 6 Year Amaversary! — Pt. 1

It’s my Amazon anniversary!

On Twitter people are posting “How it started/How it’s going” stories about love, careers, and more — and I’m loving it! I wanted to post one for my 6th Amazon anniversary, but I realized that I have way too many memories.

So instead I’m sharing my top six moments at Amazon to honor my six years at the company: three of my all-time favorite & three of my top “learning” moments, in a two-part posts.

Here are my top 3 all-time favorite moments:

#3 — Recruiting trip to Stockholm, Sweden

In my first role at Amazon, I was a Recruiting Coordinator (RC) where I spent my days scheduling interviews for tech and designer roles. Yep, it was as fun as it sounds. I got the opportunity to coordinate an international event in Stockholm. The Sweden trip was my first work-related travel experience and I decided to stay a few days after the recruiting event by myself and explore the city.

The RC role taught me organizational skills, the importance of doing the simple stuff right (thank you, Kobe), and the trip taught me a lot about myself. I quickly learned how to make decisions for myself and to trust my instincts.

Stockholm, Sweden

#2 — Joining the Black Employee Network (BEN) Corporate Board

I had been an Amazonian for 2 months and I didn’t have many work friends or Black co-workers when I was on my lunch break walking down Westlake Ave. in Seattle and passed a Chipotle when out of the restaurant came a Black woman, Sharon Chism, running towards me. Sharon quickly introduced herself, asked me for my email, and said she was the President of Amazon’s Black Employee Network (BEN). She invited me to BEN’s next meeting and this small yet sincere gesture changed my life.

I attended the meeting she invited me to and I immediately saw opportunities to serve and get involved. My first “official” volunteer leadership role with BEN was updating our internal communication page weekly. The role wasn’t flashy or visible, but it was needed. From there I went on to serve on the Board in various leadership roles such as co-leading our Community Relations committee to launching our first celebration of Black History Month to launching a storefront! 6 years later and I’m helping build out BEN in Amazon Logistics — we are building a great community across the country in our delivery stations.

I have met some of my best friends, mentors, sponsors, and countless allies through BEN. We started off as colleagues and ended up family. Building the organization with my BEN family has brought on many proud moments as we’ve made history, partnered with community organizations, created spaces for employees to feel safe and seen, hosted events for employees to network and launched business initiatives. I’ve had the time of my life at Amazon, all thanks to BEN.

Amazonians attending AfroTech 2018

If you’re new at your company, school, church, or neighborhood and looking to get plugged in — serve in a volunteer leadership role. Don’t just attend the events, but actually serve and I guarantee you that you will develop the close relationships with others that you’re looking for.

Without further ado, coming in at the top:

#1 — Winning the “Just Do It” award from Jeff Bezos!

I mean, it would be hard to top this one. For context, Amazon awards employees with the “Just Do It” Award who exemplify two core values: Innovation and Bias for Action. The Nike shoe that you see Jeff handing me, is a nod to simply “Just Do It”.

Just Do It Award — Amazon All Hands, March 2018

My co-founder Rovina Valashiya and I won the award for creating the Textures & Hues storefront, a one-stop shop for all your textured hair care essentials. What started off as an idea that I shared with others became a reality months later — we pitched the idea to senior leadership and were blessed to be able to bring the idea to life! We created a new customer shopping experience for Amazon based on hair texture — from relaxed to coily — including tutorials, product combinations, and accessories, all in a single place.

When we presented the idea, I was an account manager in the retail marketplace. Once we received the green light to build and launch Textures & Hues, I left my role to go lead the marketing for the storefront. I was scared, intimidated by the challenge, and inexperienced with launching a storefront, but my conviction that we were doing the necessary thing for the customer was stronger than my doubts.

Textures & Hues featured in Essence Magazine

A few months prior to us pitching the idea, I had just finishing reading Shonda Rhimes book, The Year of Yes (a must read), and decided that I would say yes over and over to the things that scared me.

There are a few lessons in this story:

1. Sometimes you have to do the job before you get it.

2. Remember to think about your customers through a holistic and inclusive lens.

3. Take it upon yourself to find the gaps in your operations or product offerings and then create a solution to close those gaps.

4. There is power in numbers and you don’t have to tackle big ideas alone — find your co-founder, build a team or get allies and sponsors who believe what you’re doing, and then work your a** off to bring the idea to life.

5. In hindsight, I wish I had taken better care of my mental health. There’s a season for everything — a season to pace yourself, to grind it out (pre-launch) and a season to grind harder (post-launch), but you have to take it upon yourself to look ahead and plan properly. I wish I had the foresight to see how busy we would be and had implemented small ways (taking breathing breaks, bullet journaling, short yoga sessions, etc.) to handle the fast pace and stress.

I’ve grown tremendously over the years and the experiences listed above are a reminder that it is possible for you to build your own career. I went from being a Coordinator to Business Development. It is possible for you to be a Black woman who leads with authenticity and bravery. It is possible to be a leader who prioritizes listening to and serving others.

For every peak in my Amazon career, there’s been an equal valley that’s produced my biggest learning lessons. One of my close friends often says to me, “there are only wins and learns. And when you learn, you’re winning. So all you do is win.” — I’ll be sharing my lessons learned in part 2!

Interviewing Colson Whitehead, author of The Underground Railroad at an Amazon ‘Fishbowl’ event

Until then remember to focus on doing the simple stuff right and saying yes to the things that scare you, over and over again.

-Kimberly Hill

Starting Over

Earlier this year I got the opportunity to participate in a powerful event for women of color. I’m forever grateful for my friend, a person I admire who asked me to speak. We were given 5 minutes to share our hearts, a story, something to leave an impact on others…so I decided to share about starting over because at multiple points in our life we will be required to do so.

Here’s what I’ve learned so far in 30 years on earth about starting over…

I’m convinced that life is all about starting over.

I’m going to dare & say — We live in a world of second chances. We live in a world of grace and mercy. We live in a world where we get to make choices.

But above all else, we live in a world that requires us to start over.

They say that the only thing constant is change — and change requires us to start over.

We graduate from Kindergarten to go to 1st grade and start over.

We go from jr. high to high school to college — each time to start the education process over. And each time just like in grade school we’re building on parts of the past to create the future we want.

When you get the dream job that you thought you wanted & 8 months in and you realize this ain’t it. What do you start to do? Look for a new job to start over.

40 years of working & it’s time to retire. What does retirement look like? You don’t know but you — start over

You’re in the relationship you hoped for and you realize it requires a different you that used to be. What do you start to do? Look for the exit sign and eventually… start over.

Your boss says your project needs tweaking so you — start over

Your hair has been colored one too many times leaving it damaged and dry so you have to cut it off and — start over

You don’t get accepted in your dream college or don’t find a sponsor for your Ph.D. studies so you — start over

You get interrupted one too many times in a meeting. You reassess the situation and — start over

The past 12 months required a lot of starting over:

• My trainer when I quit mid-crunch — Kim start over

• I’ve watched others start over:

○ 4 good friends leave the company I work over — they are starting over

○ Another 4 amazing women each over 35 with kids just deliver babies — they are starting start over

○ 4 friends had their divorce finalized recently — they are starting over.

• In May I ended a relationship with someone I was convinced I would marry. I cut him off, dyed my hair and — I’m starting over

• In January I left a team and business that was birthed from my idea — I started over

• In 2018 my family lost my aunt and her son (my closest cousin) within 4 months of each other — we are starting over

So I have to repeat it — I’m convinced that life is about starting over. There are second chances. We live in a world of grace and mercy. We live in a world where we get to make choices. We live in a world that will always require us to start over.

But this time I will add — there is no end date to this cycle. We will be starting over for the rest of our lives.

It’s hard. It’s exhausting. It’s not for the faint at heart. And existing in a world where Black women are constantly overlooked, underestimated & marginalized — at times it can be just plain painful.

BUT

Starting over is a tad bit easier with each other.

We are not powerless when it comes to starting over. We get the chance to say I’m starting over — this time differently. This time with my crew behind & beside me.

So the next time it’s time for you to start over realize that you have options:

1. To let others determine how we start over

○ OR

2. To start over with lessons learned, healed wounds & new perspectives.

○ We have the choice to take the pen out “their” hands and write how we choose how we will start over…again and again and again

Grappling with Grief. Part 1.

I’ve previously shared that I lost my cousin and aunt (mother and son) within a 4-month span. It’s been extremely difficult for my family and me to manage and continue functioning, but we are progressing.

To say I’m tired of hospitals, hearing heart monitor machines and would be a huge understatement. The doctors and nurses were wonderful. They were attentive, alert and readily available for our questions. The hospice staff was gentle, yet firm in their communication to us and walked us through all of the decision-making processes. But, there’s no warm fuzzy feeling that can replace the reminder of why you’re even speaking to them in the first place.

What I haven’t been so readily ready for? Functioning with grief. The kind of grief that you have to learn to live with as you go about your day. The kind of grief that is debilitating. One of the biggest challenges was adjusting to working and grieving — I buried my grief into work and used it to fuel me, unfortunately, this means that I was delaying the grieving process and acted in denial. I had coworkers who checked in on me consistently and some days I insisted that I go home, which helped tremendously. If you work with someone who is grieving a loss in the family, please please check in on them and urge them to take care of themselves.

After my aunt passed I started researching various books and articles about grief to help make sense of what had just happened, again. I’m read C.S. Lewis ‘A Grief Observed’ — and it helped me to walk with C.S. Lewis as he grieved his wife and all of the emotions and thoughts he battled during that time.

Here are a few other articles about what to expect when grieving (a few more favorite articles: here, about how to cope — here and here) that helped me understand the process, people go through when dying. I read about the process of grief and the impact of seeing someone take their last breath. I share these in hopes that they help you.

“Grieving is one of the hardest things we will do in this life. Death shakes us to the very core of our being. It impacts every aspect of our functioning. The order and rhythm of our lives have changed. While knowing what we can expect in grief does not take away the pain of our loss, it can provide us with the reassurance that others have experienced something similar and the hope that we, too, will be able to reintegrate back into life.”

I know this isn’t an easy topic for anyone to read, let alone discuss but I’ve found that the more I talk about death, the afterlife and the lives of my cousin and aunt the more it helps. I’ve observed in other cultures (as opposed to the US) take time to grieve as a community. They publicly acknowledge the deceased and then grant time for family and friends to grieve. this process seems a bit rushed or skipped in the U.S. and I wonder about the damaging impact it has on us as a society that we don’t address death and grief, openly.

I watched Coco — yes the Pixar cartoon story about Dia De Los Muertos. First of all, it is an AWESOME movie that has the power to make any grown adult cry.

Secondly, I love how it depicts honoring the legend of deceased loved ones. It reminded me to celebrate the life of my family and reflect on the positive times we had together. I still miss them terribly. I still cry almost instantly any time memory of them comes to mind. But I’m learning and leaning in the belief that “to live is Christ, and to die is gain,” (Phil 1:21). Meaning, they are in peace and in a much better, healthier and happier place and that is a win.

If you recently lost a loved one or you are going through a period of grief remember to be kind to yourself, daily. Every day try to think of a way you can show kindness to yourself and then do it. For me, it was taking luxurious baths, reading, watching my favorite shows, getting my nails done, choosing to take some time off work, journaling, going to a friends house for a wine night and most of all — finding time to be still. It will take daily effort to show kindness, but please be gentle with yourself.

Bonus Material! If you know someone who’s grieving there are a few helpful tips in this article!

Your grieving process should not be rushed for anyone or anything — take your time. Try going to a therapist. Read books and articles. Pray. Meditate. Journal. Talk about the good memories you had with them. Most of all, don’t put pressure on yourself to rush the process.

My cousin, who was like my big brother, passed in August 2018 and I’m still grieving. My aunt, who was like a second mother to me, passed on New Year’s Eve 2018 and I cry every single time I think about her. I’m’ slowly accepting that they’re gone every day, but I’m not rushing the process at all. I miss them terribly. I don’t anticipate that feeling to go away soon, but I do anticipate the small and big reminders (random memories, birthdays and holidays) that bring back a wave of emotions to rush over me momentarily.

I do anticipate that the day will come when I can think of them and tell the funny moments we had together without tears, but that day is not today. Nor tomorrow. And one thing I’ve learned about functioning with grief is that, that is ok. Storytelling time will come in its own time.

Until we chat again,

Kim

AfroTech 2018

My second year attending AfroTech. Second-year being surround by black excellence. Second-year being in a zone surrounded by like-minded folks focused on driving change for our community.

Second-year discussing ownership and owning our own narrative as young, black professionals. Second-year flying down with my coworkers from Amazon and Seattleite peers. Second-year meeting up with friends I made from AfroTech 2017. My second-year being around hundreds of individuals who challenge and encourage me to raise my bar of excellence.

My first-year speaking on stage at a conference. And I LOVED every second of it.

AfroTech is where I always feel refreshed, renewed and reminded that there are literally thousands of people like me out here who are breaking barriers, living their best lives and finding ways to advocate for our community in their day jobs, second jobs, and third jobs. We are hustlers on a mission to positively impact our communities. There was a common theme throughout the conference: “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for” — and it reigned true throughout the conference in conversations, company booths and interviews with candidates and in keynote speeches.

My colleague, Rovina Broomfield, and I spoke about Intrapreneurship: Building Textures & Hues. All the way from crafting an idea, taking in lots of customer feedback to building out a framework, prioritizing tech and product features to launching it into the market.

What is intrapreneurship? As defined by Investopedia — “Intrapreneurship is acting like an entrepreneur within a larger organization…” (more of my thoughts on this topic…coming soon!).

One of the main takeaways from our presentation was the importance of paying attention to customer feedback. When you’re building a product it’s vital that you take in customer feedback before you start building, as you build the product and once it’s launched — > double down on taking in customer feedback.

You should always be iterating to meet the customer's needs and constantly be aware of how they are using your product or how they are not using your product.

I close this article with the same homework we gave attendees at the conference: Think about something you do (in your everyday life, routine, something you do every day at work, etc.) — > What is one way that you could improve the process, customer experience, product, etc.?

Write the idea down and conduct research on it to see if there is a true need for it with your customer base. If there is a need, then start to layout a formal paper (you could call it a business plan) that identifies the problem and your solution (be clear and concise!) and start working on bringing it to reality.

Speaking at AfroTech is a place that reminded me that we all have something special that we want to give the world. Textures & Hues is one of the many special things inside me that I released to the world. I hope that we each take the time to release that something special to the world.

Now get to thinking and writing about ways you can build!

Views from 2018

My plan for the past few months has to been to write a summary about 2018. A summary that would list out bulleted points and numbered top lessons of the year. But here we are a few weeks into 2019 and all I can think about is how this year has started so differently than any previous years. It’s brought swift change and great opportunities while simultaneously bringing a lesson in slowing down to be present and learning to be ok with grief and sadness.

So what about 2018? 2018 taught me that consistency in the small things breeds excellence in the big things. It’s the small habits we form, or don’t form, that are fed in the day to day choices we make. For me, that is choosing to sleep in a few minutes excessively that turned into me being a slow riser getting out of the bed. On the flip side, it was also choosing to take an extra 5 minutes in my morning and nighttime skincare routines so that I would wake up with hydrated, glowing skin. Stay moisturized folks!

There are still many great lessons that 2018 taught me such as:

1)When in doubt trust your gut.

Trust that little voice in the back of your head that’s giving you the answer you don’t want to hear.

2) Time is of the essence.

I LOVE Oprah’s opening quote on Soul Sessions, “I believe that one of the most valuable gifts you can give yourself is time — taking time to be more fully present. Your journey to become more inspired and connected to the deeper world around us starts right now." (2019 goals in summary!).

She hits on three major themes: time, present and now. They require us to be awake to what’s happening in our lives, intentional on how our time is spent and present in life.

I lost both my cousin and aunt within the span of 4 months of each other — they both died from the same disease and I’m going through the same grieving process for both. While I am currently burnt out on hospital visits and have zero desire to step foot in a hospital anytime soon, more importantly, I have zero desire to spend time not living a life that aligns with my purpose and passions. I have zero desire to not live my life on purpose. Perhaps this impatient lack of tolerance for nonchalant living pushes me to move a bit too hastily and keeps my plate full, but it also pushes me to have laser vision on my north star, my Faith.

3) While we’re on the topic of time: Dedicated time spent recharging is non-negotiable.

If my family, friends, and job want my best — better yet, if I want my best for myself then I must have “turn off” time alone or in a quiet place where I can recharge. Even if only for 1 hour a week. It has to happen.

Quick tip! Schedule one dedicated day each week that you do the same thing to recharge: take a bubble bath, read, go on a walk, have a brainstorm with a friend(s), go to pottery class, journal, etc.

4) Be your own advocate.

This is an entire post itself so I will circle back around on this subject later. But for now - get clear on what you want (in your career, current job role, the business you want to start, love, etc.) and then advocate for the support you need to get there. → Seek help from others!

5) Acknowledge, Accept and Embrace your ambition.

I mean every single ounce of ambition that is within you. This is probably the most important lesson I learned in 2018. I’ve spent a lot of time over the years being timid and playing coy with my ambition only for it to produce inner turmoil and resentment in my relationships. Why resentment to others? Because I was making myself small to fit into who I needed to be for others at any given time. Let me say it more clearly: I was making myself smaller so other people could feel more comfortable around me.

One more time for the people in the back: I’ve spent a lot of unnecessary time making myself small in rooms and conversations because I was afraid of my own ambition and who I could become if I accepted that part of me. Speaking from experience — don’t do that! ‘Reconsider. Read some literature on the subject’ (here and here).

There’s a scene in Madame Secretary where the VP says the Secretary of State that she’s spent a lot of time seeing women be afraid and play coy with their own ambition. Granted she was telling the Secretary to own up to wanting to make a run for President, but nevertheless, this scene gave me chills because she basically read my entire life to me in 2 minutes! 2 minutes, yall.

I know I started off anti-numbered points, but the type-A in me could not resist a structured post so here we are. Each of these 5 points begins with consistency in the (seemingly) smaller areas of our lives.

I’d like to encourage each of us to not play coy with our lives— be present, we’re in this game so let’s play to win! Our time is now — it’s not going anywhere, but away. I hope we all grasp 2019 with gusto, grit, love and with the intent of living our lives on purpose.

Until we chat again,

-Kim