The Career Race

How to Compete for Career Success in a Rapidly Changing Workplace

Dr. Shaun McAlmont

• Publisher: Fulton Books, Inc.
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781637102008
• eBook ISBN: 9781637102015
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Professional Development

Dr. Shaun McAlmont is an education leader withexpertise in career and workforce development. The Career Race explores the reality that technological innovation continues to change the modern workplace, which also affects the preparation, skills and attitude workersneed to be successful. Companies are finding that new graduates are notwell prepared for work, and as a result, the gap between thegeneral workforce and the fastest-growing, highest-payingjobs is widening each year. These are staggering realities, which if notaddressed will have detrimental long-term effects on the U.S. economy. Dr. McAlmont shares his experience and thoughts for both institutions and individuals about how we can prepare for, and adjust to this new reality. The Career Race gives the author's personal and professional view of career preparation and the elements necessary tosucceed.

Chapter 1

We All Have the Ability to Succeed!

Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.

—Francis of Assisi

I often redefine success for myself based on where I’m standing in my career at any given moment. I love having the ability to pivot, double down, or stay the course. As I use these moments to fine-tune my career trajectory, it’s important to be thankful for the opportunities I’ve seen, especially considering the path I’ve taken in my life. I am a US citizen, raised in Canada and born in Guyana, and that’s the simplest part of my background! I was a black Catholic school valedictorian who chose to attend a predominantly white Mormon university—a student-athlete who succeeded on both ends of the spectrum between school and sports despite the divergent pressures of each through high school and college.

I’ve been in a mixed-race marriage for over thirty years and have four beautiful biracial children, who are all successful in their own right. I went back to school later in life and earned a doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania, which fulfilled my dream of an Ivy League degree. I have carried the label of pioneer, “first black,” and sometimes “only black” to accomplish many things in my life, including the position of CEO twice in my career.

It has been a difficult journey on a road riddled with potential pitfalls, doubters, antagonists, stereotypes, and statistics that predict higher chances of failure for black males. Fortunately, and despite those constantly blowing and challenging headwinds, my journey has also been filled with faith, motivation, support, lessons learned, mentors, and opportunities seized. To better understand this journey, and to know why I believe anything is possible, I will start at the beginning and describe the unique path my life has taken.

The least of us can develop and succeed

The Demerara River cuts a northeast path from a cluster of South American rainforests to the Atlantic Ocean in Guyana, a country nestled between Venezuela, Suriname, and Brazil that enjoys a deep, proud Caribbean tradition. Today, a floating toll bridge just south of the capital, Georgetown, serves as a main crossing point for both cars and pedestrians. But in 1967, if villagers from the western side of the river needed to get across to the city, they first navigated a rugged hill on foot to the riverbank and ferried across.

I was on that ferry in my parents’ arms at about a year and a half old, the spray of the Demerara pelting my face as we crossed. But my family’s destination wasn’t Georgetown. We were going much, much farther: Toronto, Canada.

Each year on my birthday, my mother calls to retell the story of the day our family’s life and trajectory changed. She recounts the travel was not easy in 1967, and even less so with an eighteen-month-old in tow. We walked with luggage down that hill, ferried across that river, and hired a car to take us to the airport. She reminds me that it was an early morning when we took our first steps as a young family toward a new life in a new country. She’ll always have that memory, she tells me each year, of the Demerara’s mist hitting her little baby’s face.

Of course, I have no memory of that day, of a predawn boat ride or the Georgetown airport. I can’t recall the plane ride or our arrival in Canada the next day. My mother’s recollection has become my own inherited memory of that day. But I can imagine myself there on the ferry, a baby under a canopy of stars, cool morning air swirling around me, my parents doing their best to protect me from the elements. What drove them to uproot their family—with an eighteen-month-old—and start a new life in Canada, especially in 1967 when headlines pouring out of Canada’s southern neighbor told of volatile, violent clashes fueled by racial tensions? Fiery riots were devastating cities like Newark and Detroit. Images of firehoses and snarling police dogs and the “Bloody Sunday” 1965 march from Selma were fresh in the minds of anyone who picked up a newspaper, even in Guyana—JFK’s assassination brought tears to my mother’s eyes, even though she knew no one in America at the time.

My parents’ decision to leave Guyana was a bold one; their hope was that Canada as a British Commonwealth nation would be less volatile than the US in terms of race relations. They had worked low-wage jobs to save money to make this trek to North America and had saved just enough to get an apartment but knew they’d have to find work more or less immediately when we landed. They carried with them the immigrant dream that life would be better in a new place: that they were setting their children up for better, more prosperous futures. The following years and decades saw those dreams come to fruition for our family, but at the time, my parents were soon to find that even in Canada, there were similar sentiments and feelings amongst a white population who, however unreasonably, felt threatened by a constant stream of immigration from foreign countries.

My parents, then, lived a life that was bookended by racial pressure. Only three generations removed in Guyana was a history of plantations and slavery through Dutch and British colonialism. And even beyond the “third world,” in a different hemisphere, the new world of race relations practically drained the hope of anyone who looked different that they could find success.

My father, however, frequently reminded us there was no such word as “can’t” in our family’s vocabulary. My parents pressed forward again and again, moving out of the comfort zones of life, striving for a better existence, knowing they were different but staying confident in their abilities.

They would pass these characteristics on to their children—I call it an inheritance of boldness. My father and mother were both highly literate and knowledgeable in math; more than that, they possessed a remarkable work ethic. A trained engineer, my father set an example for his own siblings and they soon followed—eventually seven of his nine brothers and sisters immigrated to Canada looking for new opportunities. I grew up listening to my aunts, uncles, and parents talk about racial issues around the world and always felt nervous about the discussion. I was happy to have cousins in the family that looked like me in a place where we were still considered minorities.

As a small observer, I would hear the adults recount names they were called, lament the absence of the job opportunities they had expected to find in transplanting and restarting their lives, and reiterate again and again the need to work harder than anyone else to overcome stereotypes and to achieve. At the same time, I watched them all advance their education and careers, working themselves to near exhaustion and yet still going to night school. Always a focus on acquiring knowledge, being articulate, and never letting a sense of victimhood enter the picture. They carried a chip on their collective shoulder, but it didn’t stop them from striving to be better—it fueled them.

Our Canadian beginnings were humble. We moved between small apartments and sometimes shared dwellings with my father’s siblings. My family’s first breakthrough came when my father was finally offered a job that paid a good salary, and my mother received her training certificate as a nurse aide. We were eventually able to move into a home in the suburbs.

Growing up, I loved the story of David and Goliath from the Bible. As a young boy in Catholic school, we read about it in class, and I heard various adaptations from my parents. The concept that the smallest soldier would volunteer to take on the beast, slay him, and do it on behalf of others—this was so appealing to me.

I was a quiet boy, but always felt a fire in my chest—a need to take action. Never feeling like I should talk about my plans because I was always concerned that someone might cut down my ideas and kill a dream, and so I just kept it to myself, and if it worked, no one would be the wiser. I’ve found throughout life that people will doubt, discredit, and shut ideas down for a variety of reasons that usually have more to do with their issues than my abilities. I privately set goals for myself—for grades, friendships, growth, exercise, all of the sports I played, and general successes for later in life—and gained confidence internally as I achieved them. I did all of this without ever letting anybody know externally exactly what I was working on. But I know people always saw something in me, perhaps a glimmer of my internal confidence shining out despite my quiet demeanor. I like to think that this drive, this quiet dignity, a thirst for personal growth is something I’ve inherited, and in turn, should share.

To inherit something means to receive it on behalf of the other person, or to take it and do something with it. An inheritance of work ethic, educational achievement, and personal development is an amazing gift, but not monetary, or one of property. My family’s background goes back six generations to Guyanese slavery. I’ve inherited the names of those who worked on plantations, a bloodline of people who continue to work on behalf of their families; farmers who adhered to the laws of the land, creating better situations for each subsequent generation. I’ve inherited the boldness of parents who broke out of their circumstances and chased the North American dream. A sense of human decency and respect for ourselves and our fellow human beings, cultivated in a household that did not expose us to drinking, smoking, or swearing. A Christ-centered home, where the Lord’s name was never used in vain.

All of this paved a path toward a more religious existence later in life. But before I would realize any of that—before obtaining professional success, before earning a degree from some of the nation’s most esteemed universities, before discovering I could thrive even as a minority in a predominantly white school system—I was a small Caribbean-born boy in Toronto playing with building blocks.

My parents used every extra dollar they earned to pay for private Catholic school for me, my brother, and my sister in order to propel us forward. And even at a very young age, I felt a sense of responsibility to “make good” on their investment. I worked hard at my studies and learned quickly that I enjoyed the feeling of accomplishment that came with doing something well. I had a keen ability to look at my own life through the eyes of others, and I could almost feel the congratulatory words before they were even spoken. The sense of perfectionism and premature congratulations for an accomplishment set off a euphoric chemical reaction in my brain that made me feel like I’d accomplished the biggest goal in the world.

As a child, I was neurotic about having things neat and in order. My clothes always had to be clean, and when I had a style, I owned it. You could smell bleach on my white tennis shoes because I cleaned them so often—this was my identity from an early age. I’m not sure how it developed, but I knew it was in me. My mother and father were clean, neat, and well-dressed, and although our house was not immaculate, it too was presentable. But I took it to a new level and would clean on top of my mother’s cleaning, reorganize furniture, and make sure my room was satisfying to my own critical eye. My earliest success related to the revitalization of a dead lawn at our first suburban home. Simply wanting our first home with a lawn to look like the others on our street, I asked my neighbor how he got his lawn to look so green, and quickly learned it would require work, a few tools, and setting goals to achieve the outcome. After about six weeks, with support from my parents, and some advice from the neighbor, I was able to match the best lawns in the development. Watching how each short-term achievement got me incrementally closer to the ultimate goal, and the simple actions and outcome of that dead grass getting greener each week, gave me a sense of confidence at twelve years of age, in what was my first work experience. That early success has lasted me to this day through international athletic achievement and the highest levels of professional accomplishments.

I’ve realized that I’m a success hoarder. When I do something well, I make a mental note or write it down, almost like an open portfolio that I update regularly. I believe this practice and ability separated me from others early on. I recall being able to do some things better than other kids. When I decided to play hockey or soccer or karate or video games at the mall, I always became the best on my street, on the leaderboard, or in my class, as measured by my skill level. I’d practice all the time to surpass the others within my scope. I was constantly amazed and found that this approach worked with everything I did. It was at the foundation of the bigger successes that were coming in academics, football, and track and field. When I was younger, I recognized it was a good thing, but instead of celebrating, I locked it away from others and set out to seek other successes. I never stopped to celebrate too long before deciding what the next conquest would be.

I avoided activities that wasted time or wouldn’t give me pleasure, reward, praise, or sense of achievement. But I doubled down in the areas where I could find it. My early successes came in work ethic, neatness, social skills, the care and attention of those in need, the ability to communicate, understanding those who were different from me, and somehow being able to fit in wherever I went. I learned about the importance of self-awareness, soft skills, and the degree of flexibility that would prove to be important to my career development.

I had a keen understanding of my differences. I remember multiple times in my life being called a racial slur. I found ways to block its negative effects on me. I then began to develop my next skill set—the ability to filter out negativity and keep pressing ...

Table of contents

• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• Chapter 8