Continual improvement
Yvette McGee Brown stretches herself, encouraging others to follow suit
Fresh out of law school, Yvette McGee Brown got her first taste of community service — and has never looked back.
Several months into her first job, working for the Ohio Attorney General’s office, Janet E. Jackson, who was section chief for workers’ compensation at the time, asked her how much she was involved in the community.
McGee Brown says she replied, “Well, not much.”
“And she said, ‘Well, it’s not acceptable that you just go to work and go home. You’ve got a responsibility to get involved in the community, so find something you’re passionate about and go do it.’
“And I was like, ‘Wow, who is this woman?’” McGee Brown says with a laugh.
McGee Brown started serving on her first board, the Friends of the Homeless, a small organization that ran a homeless shelter, while volunteering with United Way, because her childhood gave her reason to care about people with housing vulnerabilities.
Today, she continues to volunteer for women’s and children’s causes, now taking on the mantle of mentor.
Developing a business voice
Although she started in law — serving as a judge and justice with the Franklin County Common Pleas Court and the Ohio Supreme Court — and is now a partner at Jones Day, McGee Brown began to develop the business side of her brain in 2002.
She was asked to help build a child abuse center at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, which became the Center for Family Safety and Healing.
A facility with budgets and hundreds of employees allowed McGee Brown to find her business voice.
“When you’re a lawyer or a judge, you’re not really dealing with balance sheets,” she says. “And while you may supervise employees, you have to think a lot more about it (in business).
“When I was with Children’s, I had to think about the productivity of my social workers and physicians, and I had to, every year, look at my budget.”
Even today, she serves on numerous boards of directors that engage with business strategy.
Find the right tools
As someone who has filled a variety of legal, business and nonprofit roles, McGee Brown says it’s important to prepare for any position.
“If you want to be in business, the best thing to do is find out how to build your skill set, whether that’s getting increased education, whether that’s going in and learning a new job from the ground-up, or making sure that you can read a profit and loss statement,” she says.
When McGee Brown advises midlevel people who want to move up, she always says: “Be honest about those skills that you possess and those skills that you need to acquire, and then be intentional about going out and acquiring those skills so that you can move up.
“It’s all about doing great work, and you can’t do really great work if you’re not equipped with the right tools.”
For example, McGee Brown recently completed an eight-hour audit committee boot camp course from the New York Stock Exchange on data risks and protections for companies that hold a lot of financial information.
“You’ve got to keep improving yourself, and keep getting continuing education, no matter where you are in your career,” she says.
McGee Brown also mentors women about community leadership, moving up in their companies or how to be successful in the legal field, which includes both practical and family advice.
She believes mentorship and entrepreneurship go hand in hand.
“One of the things I hope to see before I leave the professional ranks is really seeing an opportunity for young people, particularly people of color and women, to see the power they have to go out and start a business or to go to that C-suite level,” McGee Brown says.
“Building that confidence comes through mentorship and quite honestly sponsorship, where you can get somebody who really invests in you, believes in your potential and is willing to help you get to that next level.”
How to reach: Jones Day, Columbus, (614) 469-3939 or www.jonesday.com
