Sometimes it helps to look to the past and trace the steps of an executive’s success. Stephanie Todd, a business performance management executive with Bank of America in Charlotte, North Carolina, set her path ambitiously, graduating from Harbert with not just one business focus, but three: business administration, operations management and marketing.

Her administrative skills were developed in her youth, with leadership positions in school government and church as well as a keen observation of her parents as they managed rental properties. A four-summer INROADS internship at Bruno’s Supermarkets fueled her interest in operations and management. INROADS is a nonprofit that helps create career pathways for ethnically diverse students.

“I grasped how store operations were the core of the Bruno’s operating model and that the customer’s experience and products in our stores were critical to the company’s annual performance,” she said. Then came marketing, which she chose as an outlet for creativity and expression.

Next, she stepped into the professional world.

“My journey has truly been authored by my God,” said Todd, a 2004 Harbert graduate who began her career at Accenture and EY in consulting.

“It was an industry unbeknownst to me as a woman of color and girl raised on the west side of Birmingham,” she said. “My professional journey, coupled with my current role, has offered me work and personal experiences that are my ancestors’ visions.”

Todd said her years at Auburn prepared her to believe in her own voice and to advocate for herself and others. She also learned about the impact of relationships, how to be creative, how to be a disrupter, and “to get comfortable with being in a room where you are the one – or one of a few – and how incredibly important it is to have a strong circle that will keep you anchored and not let you settle.”

Her words of advice for students and recent graduates of Harbert are clear: “Operate with discipline. Don’t confuse your title with your purpose. Failures are tough, but sit in them and recover. Hire wisely.”

Todd is married to Anderson Todd IV — a fellow INROADer — and she is “mom-in-chief ” to three children, including a set of twins. She enjoys gardening, volunteering and traveling the world and she aspires to secure an overseas work assignment that will include her family.