Today we’d like to introduce you to Jamie Williams.
Jamie, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
It started for me in Chicago, IL while I was working in my parent’s business. They owned a storefront on the South Side with different sections selling everything from pagers/cellphones to Cassettes/CD’s. There was even a restaurant inside. I was trained in all these departments by the time I was 12. This was before the crackdown on child labor laws. My fascination with technology began early, taking spare beepers apart and putting them back together just to see how it all worked. In the morning, I attended an all-black Catholic School, Holy Angels and at night I worked at Flame James, Telecommunications.
Observing my parents, siblings and others work together to run the family business for the first fifteen years of my life deepened my worldview and what goals I could create for myself. In contrast, moving to Albany, Georgia in the middle of high school would restart my journey with a culture shock of how life works in varying climate and speed. In college, acting, comedy, and writing exposed themselves to me. The network of amazing people that I have met over the years never ceases to amaze me. I wasn’t creative until I accepted that I could be.
After college at Georgia Southern University, I began my corporate career in Enterprise Tech. With everlasting Impostor Syndrome, I learned my tasks and continued to do the work and years later I was no longer pretending. As an Assistant Vice President, goals will make you overlook your accomplishments. I remind myself of my blessings, constantly. Although, something was missing…one day when I was having an awful day at work, sitting in Atlanta traffic, I scheduled a recording with a comedy partner, Warren Momon, to start a podcast. And just that action of planning something creative changed my day for the better.
The Audacity! is a podcast that talks about Pop Culture, Personal Lives, and Pop Culture.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Getting out of bed is sometimes an obstacle.
Not booking roles will made me rethink my headshots. Prolonged unemployment made me rethink my career path. Losing loved ones, I struggled with being vulnerable enough to enjoy passionate things. There are always going to be reasons to fail, or worse not even try. I believe not accepting the first “No” is imperative to succeeding, and that includes the first “No” from myself.
Working in tech means as soon as I learn the idea of how something works, it changes. Staying on top of innovating technology while monitoring today’s environment is always a going to be a challenge.
Impostor syndrome is when an individual doubts their accomplishments and has a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a “fraud”. As a jack of many trades, I fight the voice constantly that says “You’ll always be a master of none” and “You’re not enough.” Learning to ‘love myself enough to do the work’ has been an essential lesson for me most recently,
So, as you know, we’re impressed with The Audacity! – tell our readers more, for example what you’re most proud of and what sets you apart from others.
As a techie, I specialize in monitoring Application Performance and helping teams find the root cause of the things slowing their web apps causing a performance issues for their client’s experience. There’s a lot of moving parts that exist in providing a positive experience and finding out why it took 10 seconds to login. This requires communication with multiple teams with varying objectives, deadlines, and strategies to diagnose those pain points. The marketing team may be completely deaf and mute to the constraints of the Network team. My ability to understand these disconnects allow for efficient resolutions and a positive client experience. I love solving business problems with tech solutions. And in the ever-growing computing world, the solutions have to evolve just as fast as the problems.
I’m often disappointed in the limited amount of stories that are told from a black male’s perspective. There’s always speculation into what all black men are currently thinking, doing, or feeling yet I feel the regular black guy voice is underrepresented in mainstream. Not the gang member, athlete, or drug-affiliated rapper. To exist as a black man means to persist with unique challenges, stereotypes, and threats. That in itself is extraordinary in my opinion.
I’m most proud of when people come up and tell me they really identify with something the podcast said or how our podcast helped them make a positive change in their life. I’m glad that I can listen to one of our older episodes and find entertainment and comedic relief with a reminder of different perspectives. Storytelling is a passion of mine and I am glad every once in a while, I say something someone finds useful.
So, what’s next? Any big plans?
I’m working on an idea that can assist small businesses in creating more efficiencies in their web space. There are a lot of tech resources available to improve their processes and can help resolve a lot of pain points. In the planning stages for a personalized bike tour. It’ll be a great way to show others how seeing the city differently at the speed of bike.
And I’m rehearsing for a play coming out this December, “The Accountant and the Counselor”.
Contact Info:
- Email: TechnicallyJamie@gmail.com
- Instagram: ShutUpJme Instagram.com/ShutUpJme
Image Credit:
Jessica Rycheal, Hollywood Headshots, The Audacity! Podcast
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