Investing in People
- At Home With Didiayer
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
How Corporate Leadership and Volunteer Leadership Taught Me Different Lessons Along My Journey
When people look back over my career, they often see what appear to be very different chapters of my life. Some know me as a television host and producer. Others know me as the Chief Operating Officer of multiple RV resorts throughout California. Many know me through real estate, where I have spent the last several years building a business centered on relationships, service, and helping people navigate life's transitions. Others have met me through mission work in Haiti, Habitat for Humanity, or volunteer leadership within Women's Council of Realtors.
At first glance, those experiences don't seem connected. One involved corporate boardrooms and business strategy. Another involved dusty construction sites and volunteers swinging hammers. One measured success through financial performance and operational excellence. The other measured success through smiles, tears, and the keys to a family's first home.
For many years, I viewed those chapters as separate. Looking back today, I realize they were teaching me two halves of the same lesson. Corporate leadership taught me how to build organizations. Volunteer leadership taught me why we build people. Those two lessons have shaped every leadership decision I make today.
My years in executive leadership were incredibly rewarding. As Chief Operating Officer, I was entrusted with leading teams across multiple RV and camping resorts, overseeing complex operations, developing future leaders, managing significant budgets, and creating systems that allowed our organizations to grow. Leadership required balancing vision with execution, making difficult decisions, and helping hundreds of employees work toward a common purpose.
It was an environment that demanded discipline, accountability, and strategic thinking.
I learned how culture influences performance. I learned that great leaders don't simply manage people; they create environments where people can succeed. I also discovered that when employees feel valued, supported, and empowered, extraordinary things begin to happen within an organization.
Those lessons have remained with me throughout my professional career. Yet while corporate leadership strengthened my mind, volunteer leadership quietly shaped my heart.
Years before I entered executive leadership, I had developed a passion for carpentry and interior design. Building things had always brought me joy, so when the opportunity arose to volunteer with Habitat for Humanity, I saw it as a chance to sharpen my construction skills while giving back to the community.
What I didn't realize was that Habitat wasn't simply teaching me how to build homes. It was teaching me how to see people. I still remember standing on those job sites surrounded by volunteers from every walk of life. Business owners worked beside college students. Skilled contractors taught first-time volunteers. Community leaders rolled up their sleeves alongside families who had simply come to help.
Nobody cared about job titles. Nobody cared what someone did for a living. For a few days, we were simply people serving people.
Then came the moments I'll never forget. Watching parents receive the keys to a home they never dreamed they would own. Seeing children race from room to room, imagining where they would sleep, study, and grow. Witnessing tears of gratitude that words could never fully capture. Those moments changed something inside me. We often say Habitat builds homes, but standing there, I realized we were building so much more than walls and roofs.
We were building hope. We were restoring dignity. We were creating stability for families who simply needed someone to believe in them.
One of the most memorable experiences came when I had the opportunity to be the 2008 Habitat For Humanity Ambassador for their Builders Blitz, were we built over 250 houses in a week. Communities from across the country came together to build homes at an incredible pace. It was inspiring to watch thousands of volunteers unite around a shared purpose, proving that extraordinary things can happen when people set aside personal agendas and work toward something greater than themselves.
That experience reinforced a lesson I have carried with me ever since. Leadership isn't about being the person holding the blueprint. It's about helping others believe they can help build the house. As the years passed, I began to see something remarkable.
The lessons I was learning on construction sites were the very same lessons that made organizations stronger.
Whether I was leading employees, mentoring Relators, producing television programs, serving on mission trips in Haiti, or helping families navigate one of life's biggest decisions through real estate, success was never really about the project itself.
It was always about the people. The organizations may have been different. The missions may have changed. But the purpose remained remarkably consistent. Every opportunity was another chance to invest in someone else.
Today, when people ask me what leadership means, my answer is very different than it would have been twenty years ago. Leadership isn't measured by the size of the budget you manage, the number of people who report to you, or the title on your business card.
Leadership is measured by what happens in the lives of others because you chose to serve.
Corporate leadership taught me how to build organizations. Volunteer leadership taught me that people are always the greatest investment we can make. Looking back, I don't believe those were two separate journeys at all. They were preparing me for the same purpose.
To build organizations by investing in people.
Because long after the budgets are balanced, the buildings are completed, and the projects are finished, what remains are the lives we touched, the leaders we encouraged, and the hope we helped someone else discover.
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