A globetrotting career pays off for girls from Atlanta to Africa!
Valarie Mackey has always traveled for business. When she was an Atlanta- based management consultant for Ernst & Young after graduating from North Carolina A&T State University, she spent four days a week visiting clients from West Palm Beach to Ogden, Utah.
As a global technology leader for The Coca-Cola Company, she built and trained teams in the Philippines, Ukraine, Brazil and other countries.
The Buckhead resident left Coke nine years ago to found training firm WrightNow Solutions and deliver corporate lessons across six continents, including “the value of bringing together talent that is different and universal.”
For five years, Mackey’s company has volunteered with Atlanta nonprofit HYPE, which provides free tech training in yearlong cohorts of 12 to 15 high school girls. Wright- Now team members teach them about leadership, communication and workplace etiquette.
“How you present yourself, how you stand, how you speak, all of those things are important,” says Mackey, 50, the mother of twin 19-year-old college sophomores. She talks about the impact of being “the only,” someone who stands out in a room based on sex, race, age or nationality.
Like Mackey, HYPE embraces the value of travel. Its students serve as teachers during a cultural immersion trip each summer; Mackey joined them for the first time in June on a 10-day trip to Ghana.
She joined nine HYPE alumnae ages 17 to 22 in Kokrobite, Ghana. “This is everything I’ve done, all the work with different demographics, different cultures, different companies,” says Mackey, who taught leadership skills. “This is why we do it.”
The HYPE scholars taught tech to 50 girls ages 10 to 14. “It helps them really take ownership and become leaders,” Mackey says, “and the girls that they’re teaching, the younger girls, have a deeper connection.”
But cultural confusion arose from the start. “We would say stuff like, ‘OK, hit shift,’ or ‘hit space bar,’ or ‘at-sign.’ Some of the girls had no idea what we were talking about,” Mackey says.
But the Ghanaians were fast and committed learners, she says. “They will sit from 9 to 5 because they are that interested in their education.”
Tasked with researching community problems, the girls chose issues such as sanitation, teen pregnancy and clean water. By the third day, they were building web pages. Within 30 minutes of learning the basics of artificial intelligence from Mackey, they used advanced prompts to create images and songs. By week’s end, they made presentations applying Mackey’s lessons on presence, confidence and credibility.
The Ghanaian students were left with new knowledge and laptops. Now Mackey receives midday text and video messages from Ghanaian tweens excited about the latest TikTok dance.
The HYPE scholars came home with custom African outfits and leadership lessons in adaptability and flexibility.
The next global leaders could be the girls who sat in that classroom halfway around the world or the young Atlanta women who taught them, Mackey says. “To see that and be a part of that is very profound.”
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gethype.org
@gethype_inc
PHOTO: Erik Meadows
