In this episode we're joined by Natasha Durkins who is a senior executive leader with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and a soon to be author finalizing her book on how to be “ fiercely, joyful”. Despite her joyous demeanor and great career achievements, she didn’t begin her life this way. Her journey to radical self acceptance, comfort, vulnerability, and speaking her truth were tasks that took consistency, diligent work, and healthy mentorship in order to achieve.
Natasha was blessed from an early age with these great mentors, namely, her parents, who were vocal civil rights advocates in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Despite this, she found herself in a strange position of “trying to fit in” in a town where the majority of her peers were white and didn’t necessarily accept her into their social circles and her black peers teased her for “acting white”. This created a sense of isolation, and an inability to fit in that proved to be yet another obstacle she would have to overcome on her journey to Wealth down the road.
She distinctly remembers her father’s mayoral campaign and his surprise support from the one and only Muhammad Ali and even though her dad lost his bid at office she always remembers his lesson of learning from defeat and his view of the outcome as a win for all who were able to hear his message about equality.
Just as soon as Natasha began her college experience at Howard University she had to pause in order to help with her mother's illness, which later claimed her mom's life. However, she always remembers the immense outpouring of love, support, and impact that her mom had as she watched friends, family, and loved ones pour into her appreciation ceremony. This showed her that she wanted to affect people just like her mother had done. Through many more obstacles of self acceptance, overcoming limiting beliefs, and personal realizations, Natasha has made a name for herself that she is immensely proud of and shares some of her most vital lessons that she has utilized to achieve this growth.
I’m very honored to have her as a guest on the podcast and hopeful that any viewers or listeners will be able to take away some actionable steps for growth and wealth in their own life.
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