by Emily Olson
Shameka Howell has been on her own since she was 15. But that rough start didn’t keep her down. Instead, it served as a springboard that launched her into an impressive career. “The hardships I had when I was young prepared me, gave me thick skin and made me do something with myself,” she says.
When Howell left the US Army in November 2012, she headed down to the labor department to begin her transition back to the civilian world. Howell was sent to an interview at Brumark Total Flooring Solutions, and she landed a job as a customer service project manager. She quickly moved up the ranks—just a few months after being hired, she became a project management team lead. In that role, she began to assess Brumark’s onboarding process and consider ways to make it better. “At that time, they gave you a phone and a desk and told you to get to it,” she explains. “But I don’t think it’s fair to measure someone’s performance in 90 days on something you didn’t train them on.” So Howell developed a training manual and training process for new hires. She was so devoted to giving new Brumark employees a warm welcome that just days after giving birth to her son, she went to the office. “I was only there for a half day,” she jokes. “But I was the only one who could meet them and help them fill out their paperwork because our HR department hadn’t been developed yet.” After that experience, Howell was promoted to client services manager, but in addition to her new title, she gained an important lesson.
“For a large part of my life, if I don’t do it it’s not gonna get done. But I’ve been working on changing that attitude in my professional life. To not do everything, to delegate and to hold people accountable. Women have this superwoman drive to take care of everything and everybody without taking care of ourselves. But you cannot pour from an empty cup. Work is important, but it’s just one of your roles.”
For Howell, it’s a role she performs with expertise and creativity. By September 2015, she was promoted to director of account management. At the same time, Matt Kelly came on as COO and noticed that Howell’s department was the only one with an effective training process in place. As a result, he asked every new hire at Brumark to spend their first two weeks with Howell. “I love that because I can meet everybody. It’s really good for me to spend time with every employee because I learn how they best work and how I need to approach them to help them meet their full potential.”
That knowledge became imperative when she soon after, in July 2017, was promoted to director of operations. “In that role, everything crossed my desk,” she says. She knew she wanted to put new processes and procedures in place, but first wanted to learn how things were being done. So she spent the first three weeks in her new role doing every job in that facility, from cutting carpet to driving lift trucks. “I can’t tell you how to change the process if I don’t know how the process operates,” she explains.
By putting new processes in place, she changed the entire culture of the organization. Most projects were high-stress rush jobs. Employees routinely spent their nights and weekends at work. But Howell created a written inventory, set pace times and developed a production schedule. Her efforts not only improved life for the people who worked for her, but earned her the title of employee of the year for Exploring, Brumark’s parent company.
Howell believes that there’s a striking difference between being a boss and being a leader. “A leader says to her team, I know the way, so I’ll show you. You can’t lead from the back. I like being part of a team and jumping in when they need me.”
That approach to leadership earned her yet another promotion. Howell recently took on the role of director of systems and operations for Exploring, where she’ll develop workflow, customer service and training processes for Brumark’s parent company.
“I never knew anything about flooring or tradeshows and totally fell in love with the industry and company,” says Howell. “I’m a structure and organization person, and being given the opportunity to come into something and bring order to it has been phenomenal.”
