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My name is Carmen Ellington, and I was born February 25th, 1964. A lot of my inspiration was because of my mom. My mom was a teenage mother. I was born one week to the day after her 16th birthday. And back in the 60s, that was not socially acceptable. Just the journey that my mother took, and she and my dad and the work that they put in, especially my mom, she said she did everything backwards. She had me first, then she got married, then she got a job, then she went to school but managed to carve out a really good life and a good career. I was an only child. I was also a latchkey kid, and if you don’t know what that means, that’s a kid who has a key to the house and comes and lets themselves in after school and is responsible for themselves until their parents come home. And so, from the time I was about 8 years old until I graduated from high school, I was home by myself every day. There were times when it was lonely, but it helped me develop a love for reading. My mom’s sister would call and check on me after I got home from school and asked me what I was doing, and I think I told her “Nothing” one too many times, and so she said literally “OK, I’m going to give you something to do,” and she started bringing me books, and so, I learned to love to read. I spent a lot of time with my mom and dad and especially my mom. To this day, she and I are best friends.
But my childhood was quiet. I was kind of a shy kid. I didn’t have a lot of friends. I spent a lot of time in the house either watching television or reading books. Until I was eight, we lived in the Hill. What’s really interesting for me is I live in Penn Hills now, but I work in the Hill, and so ,driving in every morning, I literally drive past my parents’ first little apartment on Center Ave. That whole stretch just looks different now. I wish that I could really, vividly see what it looked like when my mom was a teenager. Because when my mom and my dad were teenagers the New Granada Theater was still open, and that whole block of Center Ave. was very lively, and it’s interesting for me, being someone who spent my childhood in the Hill, moved away for a bit, and now I’m back as an adult and working, and seeing the changes, the shopping center across the street from where I work. But there are also some things that have stayed the same. There are some homes here and some people here that you have that sense of normalcy. There’s still that sense of community.
I went to college. I started out as a pre Med major, and by the middle of my sophomore year, I realized that I didn’t see that I had the discipline that it takes to single mindedly focus on a career to the extent that it takes to be a doctor. You have to be really single minded about your studies and about each step of that process, undergrad, medical school, going to residency and all that, and I got to college. The shy kid discovered that I like to write. I joined the POM POM squad, so I got to college and discovered this whole other side of my personality that liked to do things. And so, I got very active in college and then I realized, “You know what? I like to write. I’m going to major in English then so I can, you know, I can continue to write,” and that’s where I was at college. When I graduated from college, I actually moved to Maryland and decided I didn’t want to be in Pittsburgh and got a job that had nothing to do with writing, or being an English major. I worked for a fuel oil company. The company I worked for was a really well known company in the DC metropolitan area, and so I worked for them for 17 years, and I did a little bit of everything. I started out in customer service, but I also did marketing. I did risk and compliance. Moved back to Pittsburgh in 2003 because I figured my parents needed to have their kid a little closer to home, and the kid needed to be closer to the family, and about six months after I moved to Pittsburgh, I got a job with the August Wilson Center for African American Culture, and I worked there for eight years, and I loved that. I was one of the first full time employees, and so I worked for the center before the building was even built. And just when we moved into that building, being in that creative space where dance companies would come to perform, and they’d be in there rehearsing, or artists would come to do concerts, and they would sing, and they’d be in that space, and we’d be in the administrative office, and you could hear drums and guitars, and you could hear the bass, and it would just, like the floors would just vibrate, and I loved every minute of that and ended up coming to the Hill house and being right here in the heart of the Hill. And so now at the Hill House, my title is Manager of Executive Affairs, which means I am the office manager for the executive suite, so kind of making sure that things in the executive offices run smoothly and that things operate the way they should. I also took some of my former life with me, my risk and compliance training, so I’m the chair of the Organization Safety Committee. We have state certification, so I make sure that we’re conducting our business in a safe manner. And making sure that people are doing their jobs in a way that’s not putting themselves and other people in jeopardy.
Read a lot. Seriously, read a lot and learn, especially about people and places that are different than you are. I know this sounds crazy and hokey, but young people are the only hope this country has. When you look at where we are now, you guys have the power to change the game, literally change the game, but you got to know what you’re working with and what you’re working against, and the way you learn what you’re working against is to read and study and learn about people and places and cultures that are different than you. Don’t be afraid to try something new. Don’t be afraid to fail, and don’t be afraid to be different. If there’s something about you that you think people wouldn’t like you if they knew about XYZ, be true to yourself and love yourself exactly the way you are, and don’t be afraid of who you are.