BL A C K
2021
Vice President, Performance Management and Coaching
LEADERS Worth Watching
TM
AWARD
Cam H. Walker
Education: MA, Columbia University; BA, State University of New York at Albany; Certified Executive and Leadership Development Coach, The Academies Company Name: Heartbeat Industry: Healthcare Marketing Company CEO: Nadine Leonard & James Talerico Company Headquarters Location: New York, New York Number of Employees: 265 Words you live by: If I can help someone along my way, then my living will not be in vain. Who is your personal hero? My Parents What book are you reading? Be Anxious for Nothing by Joyce Meyer; The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom by Don Miguel Ruiz What was your first job? Marketing clerk at a publishing company Favorite charity: Covenant House Interests: Volunteering at soup kitchens, community work with at-risk young women, traveling with my love, John, to off-the-beaten-path historic towns and museums. Family: John (the one God kept for me), Perry and Pansie (my parents), and Pierre, Kadi, Nellie, and Court (Siblings)
Doing Soul Work in Corporate America John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, advised each of us to ask: “What is the best use of me?” My answer: The best use of me, Cam H. Walker, is what I am doing right now. I am a certified executive and leadership development coach. AND, I am the first of my kind—a full-time in-house performance coach at an ad agency. I’ve always been, in some way or fashion, on a path to professionally guide others in finding the best use of themselves. This divine gift—to see the hidden superpowers in others, and lend light and courage when needed—has been leveraged in every chapter of my life, as far as I can remember: from the young age of ten as the class mentor in elementary school, to the age of sixteen as a group leader in my church, and now here,
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2021 Fourth Quarter
flourishing in my forties. Full transparency, when I arrived at Heartbeat, I had had a relatively successful (although jaded) career in advertising production. All I had seen and been through had brought me to terms with the fact that corporate America would simply be a place to earn a living. I would have to look elsewhere, using the work I do in my private coaching practice, church, and community, to feed my soul. I had come to the full belief that doing soul work, at work, was an impossible dream. So, I settled for a double-lane journey to retirement. But Heartbeat is a place where all can dream new dreams—or in my case, revive old ones. So, as part of an annual performance review when I was asked what I wanted my future brand to be, I took another chance to bet on myself. It was a risk I was willing to take
because I knew at Heartbeat an audacious dream could come true. For the first time in my professional career, I felt safe in a working environment. The kind of safety most BIPOC understand innately. Not just a physical safety, but more important, the safety to be brilliant, bold, and Black. Heartbeat lives for getting the best from its family members, and I am best at coaching others. Coaching is intimate work—to be in partnership with people on their journey, realizing that all the “badass-ness” they need to maximize their full potential already resides within them—and I love it! It is what ignites the passion I have for one of the most sacred ways to make a living. Work that I am most privileged to show up and excitedly to do every single day. My two-lanes are now one. My cup runneth over. I am truly blessed.
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