Season 3, Episode 9: Charleen Wheeless

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Charlene Wheeless: Oh, I’m so delighted. You know, my husband is a banker as well, so…

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Jack Hubbard: Oh, I didn’t know that! Yeah, so he is in—sorry, I’m plugging something in—he’s in commercial lending. He’s in GovCon specifically. He works for… what bank?

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Charlene Wheeless: Yeah, he’s with Truist, and so…

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Jack Hubbard: Gosh!

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Charlene Wheeless: Yeah, and he’s been in commercial lending his entire career.

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Jack Hubbard: So, was he BB&T…

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Jack Hubbard: Right, whereas BB&T was more—not community—but a smaller regional bank. Oh, it was great. I did a lot of training at BB&T. And a lot of people don’t know that BB&T stands for Branch Banking and Trust. It has nothing to do with branches. The Branch family started the bank in North Carolina.

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Charlene Wheeless: Isn’t that interesting? Yeah, I didn’t know that either. So banking is never too far away from my life.

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Charlene Wheeless: Unfortunately.

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Jack Hubbard: Yeah, I think that’s true for a lot of people.

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Jack Hubbard: So, here we go. We’ll go in 3, 2…

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Charlene Wheeless: Are you okay with me drinking my coffee?

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Jack Hubbard: Okay, thank you. Anything you want to do.

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Charlene Wheeless: Hmm.

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Jack Hubbard: So, as I mentioned in the introduction…

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Jack Hubbard: I’ve interviewed over 100 people for this program. I’ve interviewed best-selling authors and bankers and consultants. I’ve never interviewed anyone who has such a personal story to tell, and we’re going to tell that story today with my very special guest, Charlene Wheeless. Charlene, so great to have you on the program.

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Jack Hubbard:

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Charlene Wheeless: Thank you, Doc. It’s so nice to be here and to be in conversation with you.

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Jack Hubbard: Well, as we were talking before we started recording, Charlene’s life is fascinating, and you’re going to hear about it.

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Charlene Wheeless: Jack, you just froze up. Okay—sorry, you froze on me for a moment. Let me just make sure I don’t have a gazillion… no, I don’t. Okay, sorry about that.

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Jack Hubbard: Am I better? Am I better now?

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Charlene Wheeless: Yep, I’ve got you completely now.

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Jack Hubbard: So, Charlene and I were talking before we started recording—her husband is a banker.

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Jack Hubbard: Charlene has had a fascinating life, and we’re going to talk about that—including being a cheerleader for the former Washington Redskins, now the Washington Commanders, who the Bears beat recently. So we’re going to talk about all that today. But, Charlene, take us back to the early days. Born in 1964, I believe…

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Jack Hubbard: And…

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Jack Hubbard: You’ve had a fascinating life, from Oakland, California to the present. Give us a little history of Charlene Wheeless.

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Charlene Wheeless: Yeah. People often wonder how I got from there to here. As you said, I grew up in Oakland, California. I was brought up in an abusive home until I was about seven years old, and from that time on, I was raised by my mother.

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Charlene Wheeless: I have four brothers, two of whom have since passed away. I was raised by a single mother who poured into me constantly.

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Charlene Wheeless: And, you know, being honest—being a little Black girl in the ’60s and ’70s—

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Charlene Wheeless: There’s just not a lot expected of you. Maybe you graduate from high school, maybe you don’t. Certainly, going to college wasn’t on the radar. I don’t think those words were ever spoken in my household.

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Charlene Wheeless: And the funny thing—which isn’t in my book—is that the way I ended up going to college was because my best friend in high school, also raised by a single mother, was expected to go.

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Charlene Wheeless: We are one day apart in age. We both graduated from high school at 16. And for Kelly, it was expected she would go to college. I didn’t want to be without Kelly, so I said, “Well, I’m going to go to college too—whatever that means.”

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Charlene Wheeless: And to be honest, I didn’t know what that meant. I didn’t know it would mean holding down one to three jobs at a time in order to go to school and earn a degree. I didn’t know it would thrust me into a world I was completely ill-prepared for.

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Charlene Wheeless: And the story ends positively, but it was not without hardship.

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Charlene Wheeless: There were so many times where life pulled me left, and something else pulled me right.

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Charlene Wheeless: I don’t know if even a college education could have prepared me for corporate America, because that is a jungle in so many ways. And nothing prepared me for being a minority with ambition.

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Charlene Wheeless: I’ve just had to learn how to make a way. As my mother used to say, “You’re going to have to make a way out of no way.”

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Charlene Wheeless: And I think that’s why I often describe myself as a trailblazer—because for me, there wasn’t anyone before me.

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Jack Hubbard: Well, when you look at Charlene’s life—multiple awards, best-selling author, top speaker, TEDx presenter, and at age 35, one of the youngest African-American female executives in a multi-billion-dollar company—your story is phenomenal. And your book is even better. It is a true page-turner.

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Jack Hubbard: As I mentioned to Charlene, You Are Enough is the book. When this recording is completed, I’m giving it to my daughter Erin, who is a Chief People Officer at a company, and she’ll relate on many levels.

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Charlene Wheeless: Oh, I bet.

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Jack Hubbard: I want to dive into the book, but you mentioned your mother. One of the things you say in the book is that your mother is your true inspiration. Talk about that relationship and how it vaulted you to where you are today.

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Charlene Wheeless: Sure. My mother was a fantastic woman—very smart. She had a high school education and didn’t go further before she got married and had children.

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Charlene Wheeless: First, for her to have the courage to leave her husband with four kids in tow—she’s a Black woman—that took so much bravery that I didn’t appreciate at the time.

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Charlene Wheeless: She worked two jobs. I was a latchkey kid’s latchkey kid—I spent a lot of time alone because she had no choice. She ultimately died at 58 during her second heart transplant. She died on the table.

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Charlene Wheeless: It’s not lost on me that her illness had a lot to do with the stress she carried and how hard she pushed herself.

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Charlene Wheeless: I know she pushed that hard to make a better life for me. She wanted to make sure her daughter didn’t endure what she did. I truly believe, to my core, that I am her legacy.

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Charlene Wheeless: Anytime I’ve wanted to give up or phone it in, I think about what she went through so I could be who I am. I often ask myself, “How dare I not try my absolute best?”

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Charlene Wheeless: I carry that responsibility and privilege—that she will never be forgotten because I won’t let that happen.

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Charlene Wheeless: My success is hers times 20 because she gave me what I needed to hear the word “no” and think, “Oh, you just mean not yet.” Or to hear, “You don’t fit,” and think, “Fitting wasn’t my goal.”

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Charlene Wheeless: One of my greatest sadnesses is that she didn’t live long enough to see her legacy live. She never met my children, but I see her in them. She would look at me and say, “It was worth it.”

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Charlene Wheeless: That’s what we want—hardship is okay, but we want to know the work was worth it. She is every bit of my inspiration, and I don’t ever want to forget that.

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Jack Hubbard: And you talk in the book a lot about the many challenges you faced as a Black woman. But that’s not the whole story. We’re going to get into your breast cancer and other things that have happened. But I want to go back to your mom—

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Charlene Wheeless: Because when you were… you…

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Jack Hubbard: In the TED Talk you discussed, and in the book, you talk about cheerleading. And I’m curious—you did your first cheerleading… we’ll talk about Ben Davidson, the Oakland Raiders…

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Jack Hubbard: How you got interested in cheerleading, and how that followed you throughout your life, up to and through the Washington Redskins.

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Charlene Wheeless: Oh, sure, sure. One of the things that I talk about in my keynotes, keynote speeches, are moments that matter.

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Charlene Wheeless: Recognizing when you're in a moment that matters, and that you need to make a choice. One of my mantras that I talk about all the time is that it's choice, not chance, that changes your life.

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Charlene Wheeless: When my mother first left my father, we rented a house from an Oakland Raider player, Ben Davidson, and he gave us tickets one day to an Oakland Raiders game.

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Charlene Wheeless: My mother took me with her to the game. I didn't care about football, quite frankly, but she was a huge fan, and I was a huge fan of being with her. We had 50-yard seats, at the railing, totally lost on me as a little girl—until the Oakland Raiderettes came out.

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Charlene Wheeless: I saw these women, and I'd never seen anything like this in real life. They were all sparkles, shiny, and confident.

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Charlene Wheeless: And it wasn't just the sparkles, although that was pretty cool. It was the fact that they owned the field—they were unapologetic.

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Charlene Wheeless: All I knew was how to apologize for who I was.

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Charlene Wheeless: It was the first time I saw that kind of strength. I was so excited about it, and so sad at the same time. I remember actually crying because I saw something special for the first time and realized that I would never be special.

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Charlene Wheeless: But as I watched them, I thought, maybe I could be special, maybe I could do that. I don't know where that came from, but from that moment on, I said, one day,

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Charlene Wheeless: I'm going to be a cheerleader, and cheerleader is how I'm going to be seen. That is going to be my foundation

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Charlene Wheeless: to not be ignored, and to be noticed. As a little Black girl, you're invisible. No matter whether you want to be or not, you are invisible. But something amazing happens when you put that uniform on.

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Charlene Wheeless: My first cheerleading experience was in junior high school. I tried out, and if I do say so myself, I was one of the best dancers out there, but I was the fourth alternate, which is kind of a "everybody gets a trophy" kind of thing. I was never going to put on that green and white uniform.

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Charlene Wheeless: But the sponsor put me on the team. I was shy, but being curious, I asked her about it.

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Charlene Wheeless: She said, "Charlene, you are very talented, but you're Black. I thought you'd be a troublemaker, so I didn't want you on the team. But now, after seeing you, and being my homeroom teacher, I see that you're a nice little girl, and I want you on the team."

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Charlene Wheeless: That, Jack, was a moment that mattered.

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Charlene Wheeless: I had the opportunity to make a choice—to be who she said I was

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Charlene Wheeless: or to say, no, I'm going to be who I think I am inside.

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Charlene Wheeless: And I chose me.

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Charlene Wheeless: That led to being a cheerleader in high school, an All-American cheerleader in high school, a cheerleader in college at two different colleges, being on an adult cheerleading team, and cheering for the Washington Redskins at the time.

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Charlene Wheeless: People like to think that cheerleading is all fluff and pom-poms, but everything I needed to know in life, I learned from being a cheerleader. People will underestimate you, but you can shine brightly anyway. People will try to dim your light, but only if you let them. You can stand tall and in yourself. Cheerleading was my entrée into a life, a much bigger life, that I didn't even know existed. It was just incredible.

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Jack Hubbard: No, no, you… Cheerleading is…

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Jack Hubbard: A big part of your life.

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Charlene Wheeless: Yes, absolutely.

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Jack Hubbard: We are, as a public relations

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Jack Hubbard: corporate citizen, and now as an independent person who advises people, that's also a big part of your life. Where I'm going with this is…

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Charlene Wheeless: This book is a page-turner.

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Jack Hubbard: I found it… I tried to invent a word for it, and I couldn't think of it.

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Charlene Wheeless: It is autobiographical, and it's a very emotional book. I go into a lot of detail about some…

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Jack Hubbard: Very negative things that have happened health-wise in your life and in business, etc. But it's also a roadmap

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Jack Hubbard: for young women, Black women, veteran women who are already in business trying to get ahead. It's autobiographical and a roadmap. I'm curious, you wrote this book

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Jack Hubbard: as a corporate citizen, and as you're going into your own business. What was your inspiration? Why did you find it necessary to finally say, "I'm going to put this down on paper"?

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Charlene Wheeless: When I was climbing the proverbial corporate ladder, I would go to a lot of events with panels, and successful women would talk about how it really wasn't that hard—you just need to know how to get along, how to do this, or how to do that. I would leave those sessions feeling really deflated because I thought, "Oh, it's just me."

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Charlene Wheeless: I'm the problem. I knew it couldn't have been as easy as they described, so I made a promise to myself years ago that if I ever had the opportunity to write a book, I would tell the truth.

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Charlene Wheeless: I would talk about the guy who called me a Barbie doll, and that no one would take me seriously. I would tell the truth about the executive who insisted on yelling at me until I started crying in front of others. I would talk about the women who would put me down when I expected them to help me rise.

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Charlene Wheeless: That was years before I wrote the book. Then, of course, cancer hit, which was a whole other kind of experience. My seven-month treatment ended up going beyond five years.

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Charlene Wheeless: I'm one of those people who doesn't ask "Why me?" because why not me? What makes me special?

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Charlene Wheeless: As a woman of faith, I said, "God, if you bring me through this, you've got to tell me what to do with it. What am I supposed to do with this?" I believe that whatever bad happens to us, we have to turn it into something positive for others.

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Charlene Wheeless: I woke up one day and told my husband, "God told me to write a book."

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Charlene Wheeless: My husband said, "You don't know anything about writing a book." I said, "I realize that, but God told me to write the book that needs to be written."

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Charlene Wheeless: I ran into a friend I hadn't seen for two years. I asked, "What have you been up to?" He said, "I just wrote a book." We had lunch. When you're on your path, things unfold in front of you. I committed to myself that

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Charlene Wheeless: if I was going to help people by writing this book,

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Charlene Wheeless: I had to show my path,

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Charlene Wheeless: words and all, the positive and the really negative. I also had to paint a roadmap of how they could do it differently, own their power, find and use their voice,

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Charlene Wheeless: and stop performing leadership and actually be a leader. The title of my book is intentional: You Are Enough. Going through cancer, I lost my identity. I had to re-find it, figure out who I really was, instead of the facade I had created to succeed in corporate life. I realized I spent most of my adulthood trying to prove I was enough.

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Charlene Wheeless: What I discovered is that I was enough all along—I just didn't see it. And that inspired the title of the book.

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Charlene Wheeless: I said, it's about—you are enough. It's about reclaiming your career and your life with purpose, passion, and unapologetic authenticity. Because women, we apologize for taking up space. We apologize for existing. We apologize for having an opinion.

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Charlene Wheeless: We are allowed to be powerful.

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Charlene Wheeless: I get carried away, Jack, on this. I really wanted to show women that they're not alone.

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Charlene Wheeless: Because we often feel like we are doing this alone, and I wanted them to know that they are not alone, that their challenges are real, and they're valid.

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Charlene Wheeless: But you can do better. You can make it better. But the key is—rescue yourself. No one is going to rescue you.

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Charlene Wheeless: Stop waiting for the cavalry, because it's already here, and it's you.

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Jack Hubbard: Yeah, you are the cavalry. You are enough.

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Charlene Wheeless: True page-turner.

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Jack Hubbard: So let's dive into this. You talk about…

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Jack Hubbard: Humility is overrated. I think that's even a…

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Charlene Wheeless: Or a quote.

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Jack Hubbard: One of the chapters talks about, if you do something good, tell someone. Talk about that, and why more women don't do that for themselves.

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Charlene Wheeless: Well, we don't do it because we're taught that it's unattractive—we're being braggarts if we talk about what we do. That could be true for some people. A lot of it is not in what you do; it's in how you do it. But the fact of the matter is, if you do something great, if you don't tell somebody about it…

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Charlene Wheeless: How is anyone ever going to know?

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Charlene Wheeless: It's as simple as that. I'm not saying shout from the rooftops, "I'm so great," but you can tell people, "Hey, this team did a great job, and I was honored to lead them through this."

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Charlene Wheeless: We did it together. You can bring people along with you, but if you don't tell people what you've done…

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Charlene Wheeless: How do we expect our bosses to know through osmosis? Most supervisors are focused on solving problems. That's what we remember. So somebody has to tell them—and it should be you.

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Charlene Wheeless: I always find this fascinating: When you think about Michael Jackson, he was the greatest pop star in the world. Whenever he was introduced, people always said that. Do you know that was written into his rider?

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Charlene Wheeless: Nobody ever said he was the greatest pop star, but somebody wrote it into his rider that he was always to be introduced as the greatest pop star in the world.

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Charlene Wheeless: Therefore, we think it's true. As a woman, you shouldn't walk in and say, "I am the best female executive ever," because that is obnoxious. But people don't know how good you are if you don't tell them.

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Charlene Wheeless: I struggle with this still, but I see it as an entrepreneur, and I'm sure you saw it when you started out your business as well. You have your contacts, you have your network, but people don't know you're good unless you tell them.

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Charlene Wheeless: So let's stop making humility such a positive word, like, "Oh, he's so humble," or "She's so humble." To me, the people who have room to be humble are the people who've already made it.

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Charlene Wheeless: But when you're climbing the ladder, I don't know that there's much room for humility, quite honestly.

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Charlene Wheeless: Humility doesn't mean bragging. Sometimes we think about that one person we know who's a braggart that we don't like, and so we think if we're talking about ourselves, we've become that person.

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Charlene Wheeless: The fact that you're aware of it means you're not going to be that person.

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Charlene Wheeless: So, if you do something good, tell someone.

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Charlene Wheeless: And better yet, if someone else does something good, tell someone.

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Charlene Wheeless: Let's be champions for everybody.

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Jack Hubbard: Oh, champions. I am so glad you brought this up. Mentors help you learn; champions save your job. One of the chapters in the book talks about why everybody needs a champion.

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Jack Hubbard: Talk about the difference between mentors and champions, and why women especially need a champion.

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Jack Hubbard: Not versus men.

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Charlene Wheeless: But…

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Jack Hubbard: Maybe more than men.

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Charlene Wheeless: Mentors, in my experience, are people who help you learn the ropes.

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Charlene Wheeless: If you imagine going into a corporation, a mentor is the person that tells you, "This is how we do things around here. This is how you get it done. This is where the landlines are," etc.

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Charlene Wheeless: They're helping you acclimate, but they may also be helping you assimilate.

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Charlene Wheeless: And when they help you assimilate, they may take away what makes you special. So it's not that there isn't room for mentors—people can learn from mentors. A champion is someone who is in the rooms that you aren't.

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Charlene Wheeless: A champion is someone who can open a door so that your voice can be heard, not someone who speaks for you.

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Charlene Wheeless: A champion is someone, when the meeting is taking place and they're discussing high performers for a role, who says, "Did you think about Charlene?"

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Charlene Wheeless: "Why aren't we talking about Charlene? She's done a great job here, but we're talking about Joe, Mike, and Jim, who we play golf with."

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Charlene Wheeless: For women—and increasingly, younger men are identifying with my book too—we need people who will open the door so that we're not forgotten.

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Charlene Wheeless: Often, a mentor will open a door and speak for you.

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Charlene Wheeless: We need people who allow our voices to be heard. Find a mentor, because you need to know how the organization operates. But also make sure people know your potential, and the champion is invested in your potential.

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Charlene Wheeless: The cautionary tale is, if you have a champion, you better bring it. When they mention your name and posit you for something, they are putting their reputation on the line for you.

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Charlene Wheeless: It's not a freeloading situation. You have something to prove, but they've given you the opportunity that you wouldn't have otherwise.

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Charlene Wheeless: For women, often those champions are men. Thank goodness and hallelujah to all the men who make it their goal to champion women.

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Charlene Wheeless: That really matters. In 2020, during the racial reckoning, with Black Lives Matter and all these movements…

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Charlene Wheeless: I would get on webinars and talk to people who looked like you, not people who looked like me, and say, "We need your voices, not my voice." My voice won't open the door, but your voice will.

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Charlene Wheeless: Your voice will open the door. Use your power. That's the same for a champion.

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Charlene Wheeless: Find a mentor, be a mentor; find a champion, be a champion.

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Jack Hubbard: That's good advice. Let's go to the opposite side—there's a dark side.

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Jack Hubbard: You introduced me to the Workplace Bullying Institute. I didn’t know there was.

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Jack Hubbard: You probably didn’t either until you wrote the book. The opposite of a champion is an adversary.

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Charlene Wheeless: Yeah.

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Jack Hubbard: Let's talk about the fact that 80%

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Jack Hubbard: of bullying in the workplace is done by women to women. What's going on here?

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Charlene Wheeless: It's actually quite simple. When women—especially white women—started making inroads into the workplace, we all knew there was only room for one.

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Charlene Wheeless: Anyone else who came up as a woman…

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Charlene Wheeless: You were a threat, an adversary—not a pal. The second woman to come along was to be annihilated.

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Charlene Wheeless: Full stop.

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Charlene Wheeless: I expected it from men, to be belittled by men.

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Charlene Wheeless: I did not expect it from other women. I thought we had a sisterhood. No. Now, I see it changing, but we are not 100% there. Some organizations still have only one woman.

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Charlene Wheeless: There's only one woman, and no room for another.

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Charlene Wheeless: As long as that exists, women will continue to bully each other. Madeleine Albright said there’s a special place in hell for women who don’t support other women. I co-sign that through and through.

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Charlene Wheeless: I never want another woman's downfall to be because I didn’t help, or because I actively withheld support.

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Charlene Wheeless: Tried to sabotage them.

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Charlene Wheeless: And I know what that feels like.

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Charlene Wheeless: A man can sabotage you a lot easier, but when a woman sabotages you, it just cuts deeper.

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Charlene Wheeless: It just cuts deeper.

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Jack Hubbard: Yeah, and one of the things you talk about is that many times women sabotage themselves.

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Jack Hubbard: Because if there's a job available…

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Charlene Wheeless: YouTube.

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Jack Hubbard: Talk about the fact that if a man is going to apply for this job, he’ll look at the qualifications…

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Charlene Wheeless: Corrine.

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Jack Hubbard: He might say, “Well, I’m about 60% of the way there.”

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Jack Hubbard: Women will only apply for the job if they feel 100% qualified.

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Jack Hubbard: Why is that? Do you see this changing at all?

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Charlene Wheeless: It’s changing somewhat, out of frustration—because we’re just tired of it. It happens because women try to remove every reason they might not get the job.

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Charlene Wheeless: Also, it’s proven that women are punished for mistakes in the workplace more harshly than men. If a woman makes a mistake, she’s quickly seen as incompetent. If a man makes a mistake, it’s a learning opportunity. So we try to eliminate every reason not to be hired.

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Charlene Wheeless: This punishes us, and we do ourselves a massive disservice. A job description is a wish list, not a must list. If you meet everything, do you really want that job? By month two, you might be bored silly.

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Charlene Wheeless: We have to believe in our ability to learn and figure things out. Nobody knows everything. The smartest people know what they don’t know and surround themselves with those who do.

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Charlene Wheeless: I’m not great at organization. I hire people who are. If a job description says “highly organized,” that doesn’t stop me from applying.

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Charlene Wheeless: For women, we’ve long believed we must remove every barrier. Few take risks. I know women who applied when not even 60% qualified—and got the job, worked their tail off, stayed, and expanded in it.

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Charlene Wheeless: Change is happening, maybe not always for the right reasons. Men are making it easier too. You get that boss who says, “I know you don’t know everything, but I know you’re curious and will figure it out.” Women have been figuring things out for a long time—from childbirth to raising kids. We figure stuff out.

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Charlene Wheeless: So why shouldn’t we do that at work?

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Jack Hubbard: You bring up an interesting point. Your book talks about work-life balance, and you say…

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Charlene Wheeless: There isn’t any work-life balance. You can have it all, just not all at the same time. The whole premise of “work-life balance” is flawed. Life isn’t neatly segmented. Work is a component of life, not a separate half.

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Charlene Wheeless: If you’re killing it at work, your family is angry you’re not showing up. If you’re killing it at home, work is angry you’re not showing up. You decide the tension you can live with.

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Charlene Wheeless: Sometimes work has to win.

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Charlene Wheeless: I told a coaching client earlier: that 7-day family vacation might be only 3 days for her. Hard stop.

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Charlene Wheeless: Sometimes a project at work takes priority. Your team has to carry some water. You can’t always balance both.

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Charlene Wheeless: What gets me are people who beat themselves up for not achieving work-life balance. I don’t even think God had work-life balance—He only rested on Sunday. Forgive yourself for being human.

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Charlene Wheeless: I went through the phase of cutting up kids’ sandwiches into animal shapes, attending every Girl Scouts meeting… beautiful, but sometimes you just slap a piece of ham between bread and send your kid off.

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Charlene Wheeless: Even now, I don’t think about balance.

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Charlene Wheeless: I prioritize what brings me joy, what keeps me in peace, and what allows me to shop when I want.

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Jack Hubbard: I gotta ask, because in the book it’s a funny story. Your daughter wanted to go into Brownies, went through the first year, and the second time she wanted to go…

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Charlene Wheeless: When you…

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Jack Hubbard: You gotta tell the story. The second time, she may have been in the car with you, and she said…

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Charlene Wheeless: I’m gonna go into…

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Jack Hubbard: Brownie.

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Charlene Wheeless: What’s…

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Jack Hubbard: Tell her.

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Charlene Wheeless: Coming off her first year in Brownies, I met with the Brownie mother and said, I’m a working mom, I can’t attend meetings. Fast forward months later, I get the call: Janae’s the only one whose mom isn’t at meetings. I go to the next meeting, suit on, earpiece in, crawling around trying to put together stuff, greeted by the “mommy mafia”—high ponytails, Starbucks cups, Juicy Couture. Daughter says in the car, “Mommy, next time can you dress like other moms?” I said, no.

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Charlene Wheeless: Next year, driving back from dance class, she says she wants to be a Brownie again. I say, “I support you, but if you don’t want to, I’ll give you $100 cash now.” She says, “I’ll take the $100.” I gave her the money, went shopping the next day. Sometimes balance requires paying your kid off.

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Jack Hubbard: Ed, I’ve only got a couple more questions. Your time is valuable. You have two adult children, two girls, and you wrote You Are Enough, which goes in-depth on a lot of topics…

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Jack Hubbard: It’s the most emotional book I’ve ever read.

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Jack Hubbard: You wrote it in 2021. I’m curious about your girls now, in their careers.

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Jack Hubbard: Four years later, what’s changed for them, if anything? Is it getting better?

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Charlene Wheeless: I think what’s changed is they realize they have a choice.

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Charlene Wheeless: They realize the big lie—that life does not begin and end at the office.

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Charlene Wheeless: Who you become in your title is not who you are.

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Charlene Wheeless: I don’t begrudge anyone wanting to be at the top. That was my goal, but let’s not confuse ambition with chasing validation.

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Charlene Wheeless: What’s changed for them is they recognize they can have a life mostly on their terms. They can contribute, they have wonderful educations, and they’re putting that to use by choice.

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Charlene Wheeless: Every day you teach people how to treat you. You don’t have to allow poor treatment. Just because someone says you’re not enough doesn’t mean you have to believe it, own it, and become it. It’s just their opinion.

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Charlene Wheeless: That’s what’s really changed for them.

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Charlene Wheeless: They saw my climb, but only the positive parts—the things in the book.

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Charlene Wheeless: They didn’t experience…

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Charlene Wheeless: They didn’t see me, nor my husband, crying for an hour during my commute every day, cleaning myself up 5 minutes before walking in the house so no one knew how I was suffering.

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Charlene Wheeless: That’s probably my only regret.

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Charlene Wheeless: They didn’t see the fear I had—my doctor told me if I worked during my cancer treatment, I might die. I shielded them from that.

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Charlene Wheeless: That was an opportunity to show them vulnerability can be strength—and I failed at that.

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Charlene Wheeless: But now we talk about it all the time.

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Charlene Wheeless: It’s okay to cry, it’s okay to be scared—but fear doesn’t stop you. You just walk through it.

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Charlene Wheeless: That’s what’s different for them, at least my girls. For example, a few weeks ago, a picture came up on my phone—a screenshot where my daughter said…

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Charlene Wheeless: People always ask me if I could be anyone when I grow up, who would it be? Her message said, “I always say it’s you, Mom. I always say it’s you.”

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Jack Hubbard: And you can tell, Arlene’s…

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Charlene Wheeless: Sorry. I love about this?

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Jack Hubbard: It’s an emotional book.

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Jack Hubbard: Fascinating life, wonderful life—it’s a privilege to talk to you. How do people get ahold of you, Charlene?

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Charlene Wheeless: The email on the back of the book is incorrect. My correct email is [email protected].

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Charlene Wheeless: I’m fairly active on LinkedIn, but I love when people reach out via email. I tell authentic stories there that tie into leadership. My phone number is 703-447-7077. Send a text, don’t leave a voicemail.

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Charlene Wheeless: What I do as a keynote speaker and coach is both an avocation and occupation—it’s a privilege. For a book, reach out to me or visit CharleneWheelis.com. If you buy from my website, I send an autographed copy with a message, not just my name.

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Jack Hubbard: Dr. Cindy McGovern reached out and said I had to have you on the show. I’m grateful—not only for having you here but for being able to read the book and give it to my daughter. Every woman and man should read it.

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Charlene Wheeless: Good.

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Jack Hubbard: It’s a phenomenal book. Charlene, thanks for being with us today. I appreciate it.

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Charlene Wheeless: Of course. I’d say, Jack, if your daughter has questions in her high-stress role, she should reach out. I’m happy to be a listening ear—not a pitch for coaching, just support.

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Jack Hubbard: Great. Thank you so much. Incredible book, wonderful life story. Congratulations on all you’ve accomplished.

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Charlene Wheeless: Thank you. I’m trying to get to the point where I can say, “Just wait and see what I do next,” but for now, I enjoy where I am. Thanks for patience with my four-legged interns—I love it.

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Jack Hubbard: I love dogs. The show will be on November 11th. You can do whatever you want with this tape. Thank you again for being with me. I appreciate it.

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Charlene Wheeless: My pleasure, Jack. Have a great week.

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Jack Hubbard: You too. Thank you, Charlene.

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Charlene Wheeless: Bye-bye.