Cierra Waller
Cierra Waller ’11 has been working in the field of Human Resources as an Executive Recruiting Specialist for KeyBank in downtown Cleveland for five months and with KeyBank for almost three years. She loves it!
She worked for a while for a mental health institution after graduating from the College of Arts & Sciences at Ohio University with her B.A. in Sociology, also working for two years on her M.A. in Sociology. Waller found she wanted to work with a different population and a career that offered the possibility for growth. That is how she ended up with KeyBank.
In her role now she coordinates the scheduling and logistics for top candidates and people pursuing a career path in an executive level role. Every day her goal is to represent her organization well by making the candidate’s experience as seamless as possible.
She says that she really enjoys working for this company and that her work there has contributed to her growth in numerous ways.
“I love that my company wants me to grow as a person, not just an employee,” Waller says. “I love that I can volunteer, and run campaigns in addition to my regular job. I love that I can mentor college kids as a College Now mentor, which I was connected with through my job. Interestingly, College Now was the same scholarship program that paid for me take my SAT and ACT tests and paid for my college applications so that I could actually apply! KeyBank gives back, to the community, its clients, and its employees.”
When people find out about her educational background, they ask how she ended up working at a bank. Her response? Life.
When she graduated, she felt she had failed herself by not working within her field and wondered if she had wasted her time. “What made me stay up all night, what made me happy, sad, cry.… I remember it all. Priceless. Emotions motivated me; emotions motivate everyone. Understanding emotions helps me understand people.
“I don’t have to like numbers to work at a bank…. I like people. I like to dissect people and processes. I am naturally inquisitive. While many people focus on the quantitative components of a problem, I am more interested in the qualitative,” she says.
Lessons Learned by a First-Generation Student
There are several things Waller says she learned about herself and life during her time at Ohio University which have helped her professionally. The first was that when you work hard there is always a way for things to work out; the second, to utilize her network.
“I was a first generation college student, alone, in college. How did I get here? I always asked myself that. I didn’t think I deserved it, didn’t think it would happen…and there I was.
“I couldn’t ask for help because I was setting the tone for my family. I quickly realized that I was surrounded with so many individuals and institutions that wanted to see me succeed.
“I apply this lesson to my everyday life.”
Connections
Part of Waller’s success at KeyBank is due to the connections she has made. She credits, in part, her solid grounding in sociology for her appreciation for everyone, from the janitor to the CEO. This is a big help in her current role because she encounters all different types of people, which she loves.
“I have shared jokes with people who I was once afraid to interact with…. We are all human.”
Never Give Up, Opportunities, Question
More advice from Waller’s student years: never give up, take advantage of opportunities, and question everything.
“When I was getting ready to graduate from undergrad, I had a 2.9 GPA. Why am I sharing that? Because the requirement to get into the graduate program I wanted was a 3.0. I was discouraged but thought, ‘What’s the worse they can say? No?’ I entered grad school on a conditional basis, satisfied the conditions in the first term and finished my graduate coursework with a 3.73.
“You just cannot give up when you’re gifted with a chance opportunity. I live by this at work. My manager has reinforced it for me. She is a ‘doer,’ and I idolize that.
“I always find myself wondering why things happen the way they do … and with that, what can I do to improve it. I’ve learned that most everything can be improved.”
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