First female African-American major general shares inspiring message
By Tom Ganser
Correspondent
Major General Marcia Anderson concluded the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater “Women in Higher Education Leadership” event Aug. 27 with her speech titled, “My Personal Journey of Service and Patriotism,” in Timmerman Auditorium.
Anderson is the Army’s first female African-American major general, currently on leave from the United States Courts, where she serves as the Clerk of Bankruptcy Court for the Western District of Wisconsin.
Since October 2011, Anderson has served as the senior adviser to the chief of Army Reserve on policies and programs, including force structure, congressional budget and appropriations, development of manpower and personnel policies, as well as Department of The Army and Department of Defense matters.
In introducing Anderson, Lieutenant Colonel Carl Meredith, professor of military science at UWW, noted that she has commanded every level from company to general officer and has been “instrumental in shaping policy, influencing collective training efforts across our army.”
At the beginning of her talk, Anderson drew attention to a photo of a female army soldier surrounded by Afghan women.
“I like that picture because of the things it represents about your military,” Anderson said. “We tend to think of our military going around flying airplanes and blowing things up, but a lot of what we do falls in the humanitarian lane, and it’s one of the things that has truly not just attracted me to what I do but has made me want to stay.”
Born in Beloit, Anderson moved to East St. Louis, MO before starting second grade where about 70 percent of the population received some form of public assistance and where the high school graduation rate was extremely low.
“You can’t let where you started every define you,” Anderson said, noting that her life growing up in East St. Louis was the kind of experience that makes someone stronger.
“It makes you more determined to take that stereotype and turn it on its head, and say, not everything that comes out of here is bad. There’s potential there that’s been untapped. It merely needs a strong community. It needs support from internal and external sources to provide those individuals with a hope and the support network they need,” she said.
Anderson recalled the importance of education and on reading by her mother, including Saturday visits to libraries and a house filled with magazines like “Newsweek” and “Time.” She said her mother wanted her and her brother to think outside the box of East St. Louis to the possibilities showcased in magazines like “Ebony” and Jet” and in a performance by the African-American classical pianist Andre Watts with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra.
Schoolteachers also were an important influence on her development. “I wouldn’t be here without some of those great teachers that knew how to turn that light bulb on,” Anderson said, adding with a laugh “although they could never turn on the math light bulb. It still flickers.”
Graduating from high school early, Anderson entered college but without much of a plan.
“When I got to college I simply wanted to make my family proud and to do well,” she said.
Getting into ROTC was one of the best decisions she ever made, Anderson admitted, but it happened by accident when she enrolled in a military science course because she needed a science credit and there was no one in the line to sign up for the course.
After meeting a state representative and lawyer who was mom to five children, Anderson decided to go to law school following her graduation with a degree in political science.
After graduation in 1979, Anderson decided to defer entering law school for a year to get some real world experience by participating in a supervisory training program at a Kellogg plant in Omaha, NE. It was there, she said, that she learned one of her first lessons as a leader.
“Just because somebody doesn’t have a PhD or a GED or a high school diploma, and you have a college degree, doesn’t mean that they’re not smart, that they may not know some things that you can benefit from,” she explained.
After a quick check of the women in the audience at UW-W to determine the large number of them who have been criticized for being too assertive, Anderson said, “There should never be a time that anybody who’s trying to do the right thing is told that they are being too assertive.” Assertiveness, she said, is encouraged in the military “because in some cases if you’re not, somebody could get hurt.”
At the same time, Anderson cautioned, “Don’t let your head get big. Always recognize that you didn’t get her by yourself.”
When it comes to being a leader, Anderson said even for those who don’t know anything else about management “just remember the simple standard to treat people the way you would like to be treated. When all else fails – and all the great ‘Harvard Business’ and ‘Forbes’ magazine articles you haven’t had a chance to read yet – and you don’t know what else to do, treat people the way that you would like to be treated in that situation and also follow your instincts.
“Have integrity, be honest and know when to say, ‘I’m sorry. I apologize.’ That’s also important as a leader. You’re not always going to be right,” Anderson said.
When it comes to women in leadership role in the military; in leading private or public institutions; and in local, state and federal government she said, “I personally feel we’ve got a long way to go. I think things are getting better but certainly in the military we still have a lower percentage of women that the overall American population would suggest.”
Anderson encouraged her audience to “think about how you’re going to change that culture, what you can personally do, because we can’t have a country that continues to lead the way for the rest of the world if we don’t leverage every ounce of brainpower that we have, and that means being inclusive and being diverse, and having everybody at the table.”
“If you are not at the table (where decisions are being made and things are being discussed), then you are on the menu… so in order for that not to happen, consider yourself empowered to get in there, participate and do what you can,” she said.
Anderson said the best and brightest are needed everywhere, “not just in our private corporations or in our military. We need them in our state, local and federal governments as well, because that’s the juice that keeps us going and makes us as effective as we are.”
During her talk at UW-W, Anderson offered two pieces of advice for students in the audience who, like her, are the first person in their family to attend college.
“Stop putting so much pressure on yourself. Take a deep breath. Exhale. You can do this. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t have the right stuff,” she advised.
“Don’t wait until the last minute to take advantage of counseling and tutoring. Just go get it. There’s nothing wrong with asking for help. They want you to be successful. That’s why they have those tools available for you to utilize,” Anderson said.
In response to the first of several questions asked after the conclusion of her prepared speech, Anderson, who serves on a committee addressing women in leadership roles, said, “Nobody wants the standards lowered, but what we also want are rational standards… We’re taking a very measured and deliberate approach to this because we don’t want to have someone there who’s not capable of doing the job, because then you put other people’s lives at risk.”
Asked what she considers to me the most important leadership skill, Anderson said, “to be empathetic… you have to be able to put yourself in the shoes of other people… and try as much as you possibly can to think the way that they do to help them improve themselves.”
On her 35-year military career Anderson told the audience that serving as a drill sergeant was the “best fun in the military” and looking ahead to retirement in a few years she would like to work with young women on leadership training and projects.
Noting that women in leadership roles are “sometimes harder on each other than we need to be,” Anderson said, “I think we should be sisters, treat each other as sisters and support each other. All of us will succeed and excel if we help each other, and that’s what it should really all be about… and about celebrating successes.”
Considering her transition into military service, Anderson said, “I like the orderliness of it. I like the fact that when you’re doing something in the military they explain it to you, they give you an opportunity to practice it, you do it for real, and then you get feedback – we call it ‘after action review.’”
With a touch of humor that characterized much of her presentation, Anderson confessed that she had planned her own wedding like a military project, but doing so resulted in “a stress free wedding.”
