The Dithering of a District Diva

Photographer: Taiye Selasi

Four months ago, I introduced many of you  to “Happy Black Girl Day!”, a holiday created by Brooklyn diva extraordinaire and fellow blogger Sister Toldja.  This once-a-month holiday allows us to take a break from the constant media assault on Black women and to celebrate the sisterhood with showers of positivity.  The way I choose to celebrate HBGD is by highlighting an extraordinary and prototypical Black woman.

July’s Prototype: Dawn Flythe Moore, Director of Business Development, Corporate, and Foundation Philanthropy for the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, and former Chief of Staff to Maryland Lieutenant Governor Anthony Brown.

Dawn Flythe Moore has always had a heart for public service and a mind for success.  Growing up in Queens, New York with an operating engineer father and school-teacher mother, she credits her parents and their union-member background for instilling within her the importance of community and civic duty. Though she wasn’t exactly sure of how she wanted to impact the world while a student at the University of Maryland, College Park, Dawn knew she wanted to do her part in helping to bring positive change to the world.  After college, under the guidance of her mentor, former Maryland Secretary of State John Willis, her passion for politics and public service was ignited:

In college I majored in government and politics with a focus on women’s studies. I am a feminist at heart, and I could see what children and women were going through; and I could see the need for a better quality of life for our children. I wanted to get involved in public service somehow.  So I decided public service was the best way for me to get involved.

In 2002 she worked as a field coordinator for Prince George’s County on Kathleen Kennedy Townsend’s Maryland gubernatorial campaign. She worked overtime handling the day-to-day responsibilities for Prince George’s County, and recalled being lost in the campaign where “nothing else existed” and her “whole life was focused on that,” only to be met with defeat.

It was a tough loss. I really believed in her and I felt her values were in the right place. It was heartbreaking. We did really well in Prince George’s County. We actually had the highest voter turnout in history. But even still, we were unsuccessful.

But Dawn wasn’t down for long:

You have to be a resilient person to lose. You just have to move on.  I couldn’t let politics go, I kept getting pulled back into it.

I fell in love with it because being on the ground and seeing the effect that you have on people’s lives is transformational. I loved working at the state level because I was close enough to the people to see the effect you were having and why its so important to be involved becomes so clear. I became very passionate about politics after that.

She moved onward and upward to become Anthony Brown’s chief of staff during Maryland’s gubernatorial race, and then took on a second responsibility as the deputy campaign manager of the successful Martin O’Malley- Anthony Brown campaign for governor and lieutenant governor. Upon their election, Dawn transitioned into the position of Senior Adviser for Government Affairs to Lt. Governor Brown. As one of the highest positioned women in the country within a campaign at that time, Moore was ecstatic — but not totally surprised. She had a vision for her life:

You certainly have to seek the things that you want out of life.  You have to have a plan for your life and you have to say you want to achieve these goals. But, I also know I was very fortunate that when I was seeking what I wanted, I had people around me who wanted to help me achieve these goals. I had people who wanted me to achieve my potential, and I think those things can set you apart.  And obviously you have to perform. You have to over-perform.

And Dawn embodies what it means to over-perform. Upon moving to New York, Dawn sought out a fund-raising position with the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship — though she really had no fund-raising experience.  And despite her experience as a powerful state-official, she was still  informed that there were no positions available in the organization but that she could start out as a part-time consultant.  Undeterred, Dawn took the job.

I didn’t care. I knew I would do well. I love the mission of NFTE, and so that’s what was important to me. The mission is to provide children from low-income communities with an entrepreneurship education, and to help children find their own pathway to prosperity, leave high school with a plan for success, go on to college, and possibly even start a business or move on to gainful employment. This is the American Way.  And we teach them to adopt these attitudes no matter what station they are at in life, to help these children see their potential and to give them access to certain opportunities that they otherwise might not have had is exciting to me.

So, no, I didn’t care. I was already confident that I would get a director position. But until then, I was literally licking stamps and stuffing envelopes!

There was no job that was too small or too menial, because at the end of the day, my goal was to get a leadership position within this organization. So, they had to be able to say that “not only is she highly competent, she’s so committed to the organization.”  I wanted them to see me giving more than 100%.

*This might be as good a time as any to note that Dawn’s husband, Wes Moore — former White House Fellow, Afghanistan war veteran, businessman, philanthropist, and New York Times best-selling author of “The Other Wes Moore,” — has been hailed, for good reason, as “The Next Barack Obama.”  Needless to say, her husband is successful in his own right.  So, you can imagine my surprise when she said she was stuffing envelopes at a non-profit organization and trying to work her way up to a directorship after she had been involved in the administration of an entire state.  I had to ask her why she would do that, when she could’ve been sitting at home, doing yoga, making clay pots, anything other than taking a job far below her qualifications, which required her to do menial tasks. She laughed and said:

It was always important for me to be with a person where we were building something great together. Walking into a ready made situation wasn’t something that I wanted. I wanted a person I could build a legacy with. That takes two people. I’m not taking away from a woman who wants to stay home — my mother stayed home for 10 years and that made such a difference in my life. But Wes and I don’t have children, so I have to focus on what we each bring as individuals to create a force.

So, obviously that is a strong value to me. As an individual, you have to have things that fulfill you. Of course I love to have fun, I love yoga, I love to do that when I have the time for it, but even with my job, Wes and I have small development projects, and I oversee that. I also redid our condo and I loved that. To me, everything I do is contributing to whatever legacy that we, God-willing, will leave behind. I believe that [for a successful marriage] we have to be a team — and I’m a team-player.

And of course, she achieved her goal and is now the Director of Business Development. She went on to gush about NFTE and why she had to be a part of that organization:

At NFTE we are about the business of connecting academics to real-life. We also help them to tap into their own entrepreneurial spirit. The entrepreneurial mindset that the only way the business succeeds is if I succeed, and —  no matter what they’ve been told — they are in control of their destiny. We teach them to develop their entrepreneurial spirit in any space they are in. With that mindset, hopefully these kids will internalize a spirit that says “I’ve got to make it successful, because if I don’t, no one else will.”

I stay very involved in what is going on in the classrooms of the kids in our program, because as Director of Business Development, I have to know what’s going on so I can communicate it to our funders. If I don’t know what’s going on in the classroom, I can’t give feedback. I can’t speak passionately.  I’ve seen the effect that the program can have on these kids.  We set high expectations of success for them to achieve. As adults, we have so much influence on their lives, we should take advantage  by setting high expectations for them to meet and instilling confidence in them. At NFTE, we know, whether you’re in middle school or high school, if we give you the skills to create your business plan, you’re going to be able to achieve it.We don’t expect less.

NFTE now reaches over 65,000 children internationally. And it is her sense of responsibility to those children and her community that keeps her grounded, disciplined, and over-achieving:

I am so disciplined because I feel like I have a responsibility to  be that way.  [Anyone who is having difficulty staying on task should ask themselves]: What is your responsibility and who is depending on you to get those things done?

It is that responsibility to others that she hopes she and her husband Wes will leave behind as their legacy:

I hope people will look back on my and my husband’s life and hopefully see that  we tried to make other people’s lives better. [I hope they’ll see that] we understood that it was a privilege to be in this great country, to be a child of God and we never took that for granted, and that no matter how blessed we are, we really tried to help foster positive change in other people’s lives. If you go through life just being about yourself, you’ll end up very empty. It’s so important to try to make a difference in other people’s lives. I believe you need it to feel fulfilled. That’s what I want: to be fulfilled.

Poised and polished, and yet as down-to-earth and genuinely warm as a person can be, Dawn seemed so ripe both for political office herself, and as a valued asset for any political career her husband might pursue.  Though she was extremely flattered and “proud” about the Barack and Michelle comparisons floating around on the internet, Dawn has closed the door on running for office:

No, I don’t see [that for myself].”I want to continue to see where NFTE takes me. As an organization we serve 65,000 kids now, domestically and internationally. I hope to be a part of that process to see how we can get to serving more people.

I think I’ll be in some way, shape, or form in public service.I like the behind-the-scenes part of it.  But I feel there are so many other ways to affect the public than through holding public office.

As for her husband Wes?

I think we are like-minded in [how we feel about running for office].  He has so many wonderful opportunities [available to him], but  he also believes that you can serve without having to necessarily run and have to be an elected official. Sometimes you can do more as an individual, because you can focus  on how you want to make your impact.

To all the young  women who come behind Dawn, she implores you to:

Follow your passion and work from a place of  passion, because that is going to carry you further than anything else. When you have that fire inside, its hard to extinguish that. Figure out what your passion is and then, by any means necessary, get involved with it, because it is amazing, the change that you can create by doing what you love.

I hope young women will realize the importance of women helping women. That is so personal for me because I know the network of women I have had — starting with my mother who is my shero, the women in my family, and the girlfriends I’ve had since I was 14 years old — has been such a blessing to me. I think we need more of that. We have so much to offer as women to society and to this world.  It’s amazing, when we come together, what we can accomplish.

What we can learn from Dawn: See the bigger picture; know that there is no task or opportunity too small when you are executing your vision; let your work ethic speak for you; and have a fire that no one can extinguish; “work from a place of passion”; and live a life that is fulfilled.

Saving our future 65,000 children at a time, Dawn Flythe Moore is the next Dawn Flythe Moore, and she is most definitely: The Prototype.

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