When Beverly Hamilton founded the Austin Diaper Bank in 2013, which helps provide diapers to Central Texas families, she single-handedly brought diaper-need awareness to Austin. After serving as the executive director of the Austin Diaper Bank for four years, Beverly served as the interim executive director for Con Mi MADRE and now is the Regional Manager of IMPACT Melanoma.
Beverly holds a Ph.D. in Higher Education Administration and M.Ed. in College Student Development and Organizational Development, both from The University of Texas at Austin as well as a bachelor’s degree from Texas A&M University. Her full LinkedIn profile is available here.
Tarryn Sanchez, YWA Community Service Event Chair, spoke with Beverly Hamilton this month about her past career and life experience to share her advice with our community of young women.
Tarryn: What opportunities in your past helped prepare you for your future success?
Beverly: As a student leader at Texas A&M, I learned how to run an entire organization. Starting as a freshman in college, I was a general member of the Texas A&M Film Society: Aggie Cinema. It’s essentially a campus movie theatre. At that time, it forced me to learn, “Okay, you have a great idea, but how are you going to get there?” I rose in the ranks and became the chair (President) of the Film Society during my senior year of college, where I led an organization of 150 college students with around $70,000 budget (in 1998 dollars). Through this experience, I learned a lot and gained a lot of my business knowledge without having to take any formal business classes.
Tarryn: Your early career and educational background are in Higher Education Administration. Can you talk more about your early career, initial career aspirations, and goals when you were a young professional?
Beverly: I have always been passionate about making things better. Whether that’s people individually, programs, or places – that’s what drew me to education to begin with.
Because of my experience as a student leader of the Texas A&M Film Society and working with students, I initially wanted to be an advisor for students. I wanted my student advisor’s job.
Once I started my master’s program at UT Austin, I immediately knew I wanted to earn a Ph.D. The beginning of my master’s program to completing my Ph.D. was a seven-year process that allowed me to work with deans and programs across campus. I wanted to keep learning, and I didn’t want not having a Ph.D. to keep me from doing certain things or running certain programs.
Early on, I also volunteered a lot. I served on committees and sought out leadership roles and program planning outside of my jobs. That was great for networking and learning different skills.
Tarryn: How did you decide to switch to the nonprofit space and, specifically, start a new venture with Austin Diaper Bank?
Beverly: Long story short, the reason why I ended up in the nonprofit industry was because of my son. I had my son in 2011. He came early, so I ended up staying home with him full-time. I did the whole mom thing, but I’m also kind of antsy. There’s nap time, and actually a lot of downtime once they get a bit older. I looked around to find ongoing opportunities in the community that felt meaningful to me. I came across an article that was about diaper need, written by the Executive Director of the National Diaper Bank, an organization that supports diaper banks across the country. The more I read about it, the more I thought – maybe we can do something here! Starting the Austin Diaper Bank quickly turned into a new part-time job because there was such a big need.
Tarryn: When you were establishing Austin Diaper Bank, was there ever a time where you thought this wouldn’t work or wanted to call it quits?
Beverly: No, but there were times that were really hard. I was sometimes frustrated. I didn’t have enough time. I was a new mom. Similar to a lot of moms, I felt torn between work and family. I was also working to build credibility as a new nonprofit. This inherently took a little bit of time. There are many grants that you can’t apply for and partnerships that you can’t establish until an organization is at least three years old. So, it took a little work to stay motivated and coordinated to tackle the right things at the right time and learn how to scale.
Tarryn: What advice do you have for women aiming for starting new ventures?
Beverly: Research the current environment and the why and the what. Then, assess your skills to make sure you’re the right person. If you see what’s in the community already and see what skills you have in your toolkit, that will inform you where to go. Maybe you need to build your toolbox of skills a little more before you take off. Or, perhaps you want to start a food pantry and already see four others in 10 square miles, so you start a branch of theirs. There are so many ways to help!
Tarryn: What’s one leadership lesson you’ve learned in your career?
Beverly: In my very first job, I had a great supervisor. I would always want to change things, but under the guise of improvement. He had great advice that I try to utilize every time I’m involved in a new project or with a new group of people: be patient, listen, and wait instead of going in and recommending changes. As a go-getter new professional, I was annoying everyone. Making sure you have a full picture before you recommend changes is very important. If you are going to undertake a change effort, you want to make it’s right across the board: the right way, right time, right people, etc.
Tarryn: What is your definition of success?
Beverly: For me, it’s a state where I’m always working towards something bigger and better, but not at the expense of myself — being challenged, but not overwhelmed. People say balance, but I wouldn’t call it that. It ebbs and flows over time. There are days where this job is working me. I try not to have those days. At the same time, if I’m not working or thinking or feeling challenged, that’s a bummer too. I used to be a lot more work, work, work, work, work, with a little bit of social. Now, family is much more important.
Tarryn: What are you working on currently that you’re excited about?
Beverly: It’s exciting times! I just became the Regional Manager of IMPACT Melanoma, whose goal is to fight skin cancer across the nation. As the Regional Manager, I am implementing award-winning, research-vetted programs to prevent and detect skin cancer here in Central Texas. We are woefully behind in prevention for skin cancer. I’m launching these pilot projects:
- Free sunscreen dispenser programs in different public places – like our parks and, potentially, in schools.
- Sun safety education programming called Your Skin Is In, with a particular focus on high risk groups like outdoor workers and first responders.
- Training hair stylists and beauticians through our Skinny on Skin program to look for signs of skin cancer so they can then talk to clients. Beauticians get to see a part of you that you don’t typically see – the back of your head and the back of your shoulders, which are high-risk areas for melanoma.
- Education and outreach in preschools and other schools – teaching early on about sun safety that will carry through their life. We also talk to any and all groups about cancer prevention and sun safety.
These are all programs that are relatively affordable and much needed. One in five of us will get skin cancer, and it’s more common than all the other cancers combined. For a while, people didn’t think smoking was unhealthy. It’s sort of the same with skin cancer. We are starting to grow awareness and see changes.
Tarryn: Are there any opportunities for the YWA community to get involved with IMPACT Melanoma?
Beverly: We’re looking for ambassadors — essentially, a street team who receive training and help with various events by request to educate people in the community. Once we get sunscreen dispensers installed, we’ll also need volunteers to help maintain them and fill them with sunscreen.
We’d also love to be invited to anyone’s workplace. If there is a wellness group at your company or if you know of a certain school, you can help by inviting IMPACT Melanoma to your organization.
Part of our outreach and education component is holding events with other organizations. I would love YWA’s help to co-host a Manicures & Martinis for Melanoma party. Other options include running the race of your choice on behalf of IMPACT Melanoma to fight skin cancer or outreach work to PTAs, schools, businesses and more.
There are so many fun ways to achieve this prevention work and, as we are just launching in this area, you can have a major contribution to the cause.
