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Building influence within your personal and professional life - Triston Francis & Darnell Billups
Darnell Billups of Hood’s 5th doctoral cohort cultivates organizational change through designing and leading the candidate and employee experience for over 2,000 employees. Through his participation in Hood’s doctoral program, Darnell believes he’s equipped to apply academic research to solve real-world problems.
Growing up in a Philadelphia blue-collar family, Darnell Billups understood the power and sense of belonging that comes with building. In his talk, he explores his blue-collar roots and his original academic research about employees in the manufacturing industry and how to inspire the new generation of builders. Blue-collar laborers comprise a sizable portion of the American population, but their wages and opportunities have declined for decades. Today, workers are facing an unnecessary crisis in job and income security. Darnell Billups is a senior manager at a Fortune 500 company where he cultivates organizational change by leading people, strategy, and operations. He and his team apply system-wide standardization, process improvement, and researched-backed practices to create innovative solutions for 2000+ manufacturing employees. Darnell joined the Marine Corps after graduating from the United States Naval Academy in 2009. Since leaving the Marine Corps, he has worked in director-level positions in state government. He is currently completing his Doctorate in Organizational Leadership from Hood College in Frederick, Maryland. Darnell frequently works with business leaders and serves as a Coach for Leadership Frederick, a Frederick County Chamber of Commerce program.