Priestley Explains the Importance of Self-Reliance to Students
|
When she was a child in Jamaica, her father didn’t see any need for Marilyn Priestley ’74 to be in school. To him, women need only to know how to cook and clean, while education was for boys. Fortunately for Priestly, her mother would have none of it. Determined to give her daughter a good education, Priestley’s seamstress mother packed up and moved her children to New Jersey, where she could work hard to provide the basics while her children concerned themselves with learning.
Priestley, now the vice president for Diversity and Inclusion at Novartis Pharmaceuticals, wound up learning far more than she ever imagined she would – in the classroom and beyond. The Rider alumna shared her experiences with an eager Women’s History Month audience in the Bart Luedeke Center Theater on March 9.
Settling in East Orange, N.J., during the turbulent late 1960s, Priestley suddenly found herself injected into a world and a culture she scarcely knew existed. “In Jamaica, we have a saying: Out of many, one people,” she explained. “It’s a place of many different races and cultures. I never had a clue I was a different race than anyone else; it wasn’t something we ever thought of.”
Only when she enrolled at East Orange’s Clifford J. Scott High School did Priestley feel different. “It was the first time I realized I was ‘black,’” she recalled. Her family’s uniqueness in their mostly white neighborhood extended beyond the color of their skin as well. “We had the only pink house on the street, and it was No. 666 – the number of the devil,” said Priestley, chuckling at the almost absurd set of circumstances that set her apart in those days, differences that even caused her next-door neighbor to walk on the opposite side of the street rather than encounter a member of Priestley’s family on the sidewalk.
A good student but ungrounded in any sense of direction, Priestley sought a college education after high school, but was discouraged by her guidance counselors. “They asked me, ‘Why do you want to go to college? Why Rutgers?’” she said. “I told them, ‘My grades are good! Why not?’”
Priestley enrolled at Rutgers University, where she was accepted not only as an Equal Opportunity Program and Exceptional Educational Opportunities student, but independent of those programs as well. However, Priestley quickly became dissatisfied with her choice. “When I got there, I was only 17, and I had only been here for two years,” she recalled. “I was an Economics major, and I didn’t like it, but it was their only business major.”
Unhappy, Priestley was lamenting her situation one day where she worked, at Robert Hall Clothes in East Orange. “I was good at math, and I did their bookkeeping,” she said. “The owner, Mr. Pritchett, told me, ‘Go to Rider, and tell them you want to be an accountant,’ so I started here as a junior.”
As it turned out, accounting wasn’t the ticket for Priestley either – “that lasted two weeks,” she said – but she was only now seeing all her options. “I heard about Labor Relations, and that had a lot of appeal to me, so two others and I went into that program.”
The decision started Priestley on a career that would see her climb quickly up the corporate ladder over the next 30 years. As the vice president for Diversity and Inclusion at Novartis, Priestley is responsible for the development and execution of a comprehensive diversity and inclusion strategy that is focused on three aspects: talent, culture and marketplace. Under her direction, the Diversity and Inclusion department at Novartis looks to attract, develop and retain top talent, build a high-performing, inclusive culture within the organization where every employee feels respected, and valuing and leveraging the diverse perspectives of the marketplace to drive business performance.
Rather than paying lip service to such ideals, Novartis feels it can only operate at peak levels by incorporating diversity and inclusiveness into its objectives, according to Priestley. “Business has changed so much as the world has become one global marketplace,” she said. “There are so many cultures and traditions, not only across the globe, but in this country as well, and unless you earn an understanding and appreciation for them, you just aren’t maximizing your capabilities.”
Recalling her early days after graduating from Rider, Priestley remembered the relationship she formed with a woman while in search of a job. “I was looking for something in banking or utilities, and I just made this connection with a woman named Mary,” Priestley said. “She told me, ‘you call me every Monday at 10 a.m. and I will make sure you get your foot in the door when something comes up.’ It took five months, but she got me in at a Wall Street bank, and I’ll never forget the interest she took in me.”
Priestley encouraged the students in the audience to keep that in mind as they leave college and begin their professional lives in search of success. “Always be sure to network, and be a ‘Mary’ to someone else,” she said. But most of all, believe in yourself. My mother, who is 92 now, believed in me unconditionally, and that had an effect on me. And use that confidence to help others. If you’re graduating, reach out to someone still on campus and help bring them along.”
Priestley was previously the pharmaceutical giant’s vice president for Human Resources, making her the first African-American vice president at Novartis. She was named to the Top 100 Blacks in Corporate America by Black Professional Magazine in 2006 and the Top 100 Most Influential African-Americans in Corporate America by Savoy Professional in 2008. Priestley served for many years on the board of the Urban League of Morris County, N.J., and has also been honored with the organization’s Corporate Award in 2003 and the President’s Award in 2005.
