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    Walking My Faith: A Journey of Faith, Leadership and Success
    Walking My Faith: A Journey of Faith, Leadership and Success
    Walking My Faith: A Journey of Faith, Leadership and Success
    Ebook145 pages2 hours

    Walking My Faith: A Journey of Faith, Leadership and Success

    By The Rev. Mary E. Tudela

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    About this ebook

    To some, living faithfully and succeeding in the business world may sound like an oxymoron. Yet those who want to walk their faith in all aspects of their lives know they cannot live on an isolated mountaintop or on a deserted island. In Walking My Faith, author Rev. Mary Tudela challenges the notion that personal values and faith cannot coexist with professional ambition and success in todays society .

    Rev. Tudela, an Episcopal priest and former executive at a Fortune 500 company, offers practical examples on how the values of love, forgiveness, grace, and acceptance can help anyone succeed in todays challenging and often stressful business environment. While exploring the ways that faith-full leadership can strengthen work teams and organizations, enabling individuals to live holistic and authentic lives, Reverend Tudela also shares her personal experiences, the stories of others, and eye-opening insights about what awaits those who want to live and work in accordance with their most cherished faith-based values.

    For anyone on a continual spiritual journey, Walking My Faith offers support and encouragement for living a faith-full and authentic lifeeven in corporate America.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTrafford Publishing
    Release dateMar 21, 2011
    ISBN9781426957727
    Walking My Faith: A Journey of Faith, Leadership and Success
    Author

    The Rev. Mary E. Tudela

    The Rev. Mary E. Tudela is an ordained priest in the Episcopal Church (USA). Currently, she simultaneously assists clergy at St. Michael Episcopal Church in Barrington, Ill., and serves as the executive director of the Samaritan Counseling Center of the Northwest Suburbs, a faith-based nonprofit counseling center. In addition, she provides executive leadership coaching to both corporate executives and members of the clergy. Prior to becoming a member of the clergy, Tudela worked 24 years for Ameritech Corp. becoming one of the highest-ranking female executives in the Fortune 500. Tudela has received the following recognitions: Women of Achievement Honoree by the Anti-Defamation League, Corporate Elite and the Top 100 Influential Hispanics by Hispanic Business Magazine, Corporate Achievement Award by VISTA Magazine, and Salute to Excellence Award by the Hispanic Alliance for Career Enhancement. She is a Leadership Greater Chicago Fellow and serves as a trustee for the Chicago School of Professional Psychology. Tudela has also served on the boards of the Chicago Foundation for Women, the College Summit, Leadership Illinois, Leadership Greater Chicago, WBEZ-FM (National Public Radio/Chicago Affiliate), Advocate Health Systems, Travelers & Immigrants Aid, and the Youth Services Project. The Rev. Tudela currently lives in a suburb of Chicago with her two sons.

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      Book preview

      Walking My Faith - The Rev. Mary E. Tudela

      Table of Contents

      Acknowledgments

      Introduction

      Putting it in Context:

      Faith and Finances

      Why Me? Why Now?

      Leadership,

      Vision and Values

      Love

      Faith and Career Success

      GRACE

      Acceptance

      Leadership

      and Followership

      Forgiveness

      Self-Awareness

      Authority:

      Who Are You? Whose Are You?

      Conclusion:

      My History, My Calling,

      My Faith

      Mary Tudela’s One-Pager

      About the Author

      Bibliography

      Acknowledgments

      SKU-000437633_text-low.pdf

      This work could not have been accomplished without the shared skills and large dose of agape love from my collaborator Dawne Simmons, formerly a colleague at Ameritech, presently of WordStorm Communications. Your unquestioning support and sweat equity made this output better by enormous measure. Your professional patience for my living within the Spirit in kairos time as it related to the publishing of this book will be forever treasured as a generous gift.

      Judy Greetis, my first faith-full supervisor who taught me how to ask, What’s the worst thing that could happen if…? The late Diane Shank, may she rest in peace, who taught me how courage and love came together in the workplace. These two beautiful women, both work mates in the earlier years, became family to my children and me.

      The employees of Ameritech Corporation 1984-1999. To Ameritech’s first and founding chairman William Weiss: Your magnanimous vision and professional discipline created a truly inspiring place to work. Dick Notebaert, CEO, mentor, and friend for forming and modeling a distinctively successful leadership style full of integrity and purpose. Our Breakthrough! approach to team building made all the difference. Barry Allen, my Breakthrough! mentor who ignited my executive leadership transformation. Martha Thornton, the trailblazer who took a young Latina under her wing and showed her how best to handle the executive ropes as a woman in the company of so many men. Jack Rooney, for demonstrating, as only Jack can, how passion should drive customer service. Gary Drook,

      Tom Richards, and Bob Hurst, may he rest in peace, for watching my back as I challenged the traditional network department ways. My work sisters: Sue Krasny, Francine Soliunas, Kathy Woods, and Joset Wright for all the laughter, tears, and precious memories. To all of my fabulous family of colleagues, especially the people on the front line – both supervisors and union employees – for your dedication and concern for quality customer service. Leading you was indeed my privilege.

      My colleagues in ministry, both lay and ordained, at St. Michael Episcopal Church, Barrington, Ill. for your generous and gracious support of the Samaritan Counseling Center project, and for demonstrating leadership in sustaining the mission of our church by supporting the needs of our local community.

      Grateful appreciation goes to the father of my children. Without your unselfish support for my continued participation in the corporate leadership experience after the birth of our precious boys this work would not have been possible.

      Lee, thanks for your encouragement to complete this work and for sharing your passion for the art of stage and screen, for your friendship and invitation to walk with you during difficult and trying times. Healing always comes to those who trust in God.

      Finally, to my companions in spiritual discovery: Rev. Ann Ohlrogge Johnson, Lois Richardson, and Martha Bartholomew our agape experiences will always be my most cherished gift.

      Namaste.

      Introduction

      SKU-000437633_text-low.pdf

      Momentous events often are disguised in mundane trappings. Sunday, May 10, 1998 in Chicago was a typical spring day – clear and mild with the promise of future warmth in the air. But it turned out to be a pivotal moment in my life. Like thousands of other Sundays, I attended church services at St. Michael’s Episcopal Church with my two sons, Alejandro and Nicholas, and returned home for our typical post-church Mother’s Day activities. Conversely, unlike any other Sunday, this was also the day that Ameritech Corp., the local telephone company and my corporate home for 24 years, agreed to merge with SBC Communications, Inc.

      The older women of my youth were right. God never closes a door without, at least, cracking a window. I wondered what would happen without Ameritech in my life. Fear of the unknown would certainly be an acceptable emotion, yet I wasn’t afraid. Concerned? Yes. Interested? Definitely. But afraid? No. I believed that this merger could be a blessing, not only to me, but to my co-workers and definitely the many Ameritech shareholders. And in the 1990s, the SBC/Ameritech merger was only one of nearly 10,000 that decade. Tens of thousands of employees, communities and shareholders across the country were affected by Corporate America’s merger-mania. For me, the merger ended my professional relationship with my Ameritech family. It also provided an opportunity for deep reflection. The merger presented the chance to respond to an inner voice and started me on a path that ultimately resulted in my entering the seminary in pursuit of an entirely new life direction – ordination to holy orders in the Episcopal Church.

      Some might consider this new vocation as a rejection of my former life. I disagree. My clerical vocation is simply the next logical step in my own journey of living an authentic, faith-full life – one that blends all its facets and listens to the inner yearnings of my spirit.

      I was called to write this book just as I was called to pursue a religious vocation. That calling represented simply another example of the voice of God at work in my life, because God has led me along so many paths that I would not, could not, imagine following as a young Latina growing up in the West Town neighborhood, a Puerto Rican community on Chicago’s near west side.

      From my early years until my surrender to God’s call to holy orders, I often felt a deep conflict within my being. As the only daughter behind two sons in a home of divorced parents, as the first in my immediate family to graduate college, as a young wife with a small child, and later as a corporate employee rising through the ranks, I often felt the dissonance between my traditional upbringing and my rising ambition. Through it all – from childhood to the present – the voice of God remained clear and strong in my life. That voice continues to be a source of deep knowing that tells me that, though my path may be different and unexpected, all will be well.

      This strong presence of the Spirit has guided my thoughts and actions, especially during my corporate career when courage and faith were needed to defy traditional expectations. Such conventional wisdom dictates that rising stars must check their religious beliefs and values at the receptionist’s desk when pursuing a successful career. After all, corporate success, or any career success, requires unfettered ambition, cutthroat competition, political power plays, and the frozen heart of the fairy tale’s Ice Queen. What’s more, any demonstration of caring, concern, or compassion simply represents moral manipulations in the quest of success, power, and money. Isn’t money – or success or power – the root of all evil? Haven’t the unethical, illegal and, in my mind, immoral, corporate and political wrongdoings and scandals of recent years proven the validity of that wisdom? Wrong on all accounts. My life has been a direct refutation of those myths.

      I have tried to walk an authentically faith-full life throughout my time on earth – in the business world, as a member of my church family, in my volunteer work and as a mother, wife, priest, and citizen. Sometimes I stumbled – don’t we all? Sometimes I succeeded. Always I have attempted to allow God and heartfelt prayer to guide my actions. This is my story. If it helps you to do likewise – to live authentically, to act with faith and values, to follow your God-inspired moral compass – then I have truly been successful.

      Why it’s important to walk your faith

      To do so is to experience the power and majesty of God. Throughout my life, the more wonder, the more awe, the more I reflect on my relationship with the Almighty, the more grace and serenity appear in my life. Just when I think my relationship with God can’t get any better, something miraculous and wonderful happens that uplifts my spirit even more. To live a life full of faith; to blend your work life with your personal life and your persona in the community; and to live with gratitude, serenity, and trust in God can best be described as a true blessing. More than a blessing, frankly, it’s a real rush.

      Too often, in our mad drive for profits, success, achievement, and all the other hallmarks of progress in our society, we have discarded some time-tested values and basic principles – ones that encourage us to live and work in cooperation and community. These values often mirror the tenets of the major religious traditions and faiths, such as grace, forgiveness, generosity, truth, and integrity. Even with all the faults of earlier ages, there existed, at least, the expectation that a person’s word was his or her bond; that everyone needed forgiveness and therefore should offer it; that charity and generosity were noble undertakings; and that we are our brothers’ and sisters’ keeper.

      Now, I don’t want to gloss over the social, political, and economic shortcomings of earlier times: the sexism, racism, and homophobia, fear of people with disabilities, classism, and all the other isms of the time. Yet in the 1940s, 1950s and, to some extent, even the 1960s, social graces such as courtesy, loyalty, respect, dignity, and caring were not taken for granted. Some things were more important than the almighty dollar.

      Living a life full of faith has its costs. Nothing is free in this world. To choose one path over another means that we will miss what the rejected path has to offer. Here’s the cost of living faithfully: you must relinquish control and just … let … go. When you let go and let God, you intuitively understand that whatever is of God will sustain. For many, surrendering control, or the illusion of control, is exceedingly difficult. The only thing we can control, and only to a limited degree, is how we will respond to an event or situation. That’s it. To think that we can decide what happens in life is to remain ever on guard. It means diminishing the infinite possibilities that come with trusting the Almighty. It may seem like pushing a rope: a futile exercise. And herein lies the paradox: relinquishing control is hard and maintaining control is difficult. What would you rather choose?

      At this stage in my life, the answer is easy. There is no other way for me to live. I made the decision to

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