Speaker uses life to motivate
by Zac Evans
reporter

   A motivational speaker told her NW Campus audience last week that adversity is the best university.
   Brenda Anderson Parker, president of Mountain Movers Unlimited, Inc., addressed an audience of about 40 students and faculty on the importance of overcoming personal adversity and hardship.
   “If you think you can, you will. If you think you can’t, you most certainly will not,” she said.
   Parker shared personal struggles and obstacles she has overcome. After having a child at 16, Parker thought she would never succeed in life and was destined to be a failure. At the advice of her mother and father, she decided no one could keep her from obtaining the personal goals and success she so sincerely desired.
   After high school, Parker moved from Los Angeles to Louisiana, where she graduated from Southern University in New Orleans. Bank One in Dallas hired her immediately out of college. After several years of working in the banking industry, Parker decided that speaking to and motivating people to succeed was what she most wanted to do in life, so she started Mountain Movers.
   Parker told her audience they are capable of succeeding as long as they have the desire to do so. To help them on their way, she gave her formula for success.
   “Information, minus application, equals stagnation,” she said.
   Additionally, Parker recognized several leaders, such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, for their significant contributions to overcoming obstacles and adversity in African-Americans’ lives. She said African Americans currently face a different kind of slavery than that of 150 years ago.
   “Today,” she said, “we must overcome slavery of the mind.”
   After the speech, she was asked if she had any advice for students who, like herself, balance work, school and family.
   “Ensuring families that better times will come is most important,” she said.