Syama Bunten: Women don’t talk about money the way we should. Not honestly, not openly, and not with each other. But that’s changing. I’m Syama Bunten, founder of Wealth Catalyst. And Getting Rich Together is where the conversation lives. Every week, a different woman, a different path, and a conversation that will change how you think about your own financial power. This community is growing and you belong in it.

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I am here today with the beautiful and brilliant Anita Battle. Anita, you are a human-centered leadership expert, board director, gifted storyteller, and your work sits at the intersection of equity, governance, and real human connection. Something we need more of these days, human connection, accessing who we are. You have spent your career helping leaders build trust, navigate complexity, and create environments where people and ideas can actually thrive. What a gift to be able to have you on the show today. Thank you for being here on Getting Rich Together.

Anita Battle: Thank you so much for this opportunity. I’m really excited to be here.

Syama Bunten: Fantastic. All right, Anita, before we jump into all of the incredible things you’ve done with your adult self, all of your brilliant accomplishments, I’d love to start with the little girl. So, Anita, bring me back to a little girl somewhere between the ages of seven and twelve years old. Where were you on this beautiful planet of ours? What was life like around you? And what was money like?

Anita Battle: I am born and reared in Oakland. I am the middle child of two brothers, an older brother, two years older, and a younger brother, eight years younger. And honestly, I was a nerd. I was a bookworm. I was a goody two shoes. I always had my head in a book. That’s what my dad would always say. You always have your head in some kind of book. And I just loved learning and I just had a curiosity, and I was, I still am, an introvert, but I really blossomed a little bit once I got into high school. I got into high school and I became more people centered. Still a nerd, but people centered.

Syama Bunten: What were some of the books that you remember from being a little girl?

Anita Battle: My favorite all time books as a really youngster were Where the Wild Things Are and The Wizard of Oz. Those are my two favorites. And as I got older, I leaned into Maya Angelou. I think I’ve read every book that she has. And I had the honor and privilege to meet her on several occasions and had time to actually sit and chat with her.

Syama Bunten: Wow, that is incredible. I mean, now I’m like I want to jump to this part, but okay, let’s say we’ll stay back in the high school days. Okay, so something happens in high school and you start to get more social, but still an active, high achieving student, I presume. What did you think you were going to be when you were that age? Did you have any ideas of what was coming up for you?

Anita Battle: I wanted to be a lawyer. I got involved in student politics. I was, I think, a freshman VP, and ended up as a senior being the student body vice president, salutatorian, and I really thought I was going to be an attorney. I had an attorney uncle. I had a few other attorneys in our family and judges, and I just thought that was the best thing ever.

Syama Bunten: I love that. That’s a what a noble thing. And when you were in high school, did you ever have any part time jobs? Were you ever doing anything athletic? Was it like hanging out with friends and then, you know, making sure you get straight A’s? What was that life like for you?

Anita Battle: I was the one who wanted to do straight A’s. I did not participate in sports. I tried, but I love sports, I grew up around them, but I was not athletically inclined. But what I did is I kept the stats. So I kept the stats for the basketball team, the football team, and we had really great athletic organizations. And then I would call into our local newspaper and I would give them a play by play and I’d give them the stats. And so that was, you know, really, really exciting for me to be able to talk to our local newspapers and give them the stats on our high school.

Syama Bunten: I mean, that seems really cool. I could totally, I mean, what a powerful thing to have a direct line to the newspaper, you know, and be like, here’s the, you know, I mean, what an awesome entryway. So then as you were getting ready to think about, you know, university and college and your desire to be in law, how did you sort of decide next steps? Was it a family decision? Did you weigh all the options? Did you have your heart set on something? What happened next?

Anita Battle: Because I love sports, I wanted to go to a school that had big football games and basketball games. I wanted to do that. So I applied to some of those types of schools. But in the meantime, I went to a Catholic high school, and you know, you had counselors and they’re like, why don’t you try this school, why don’t you try that school. So my other alternative was I wanted to go to a historically black college. And I had my heart set on one of the schools, and lo and behold, Loyola Marymount University came to me with an offer I could not refuse. They gave me a four year full ride scholarship, academic scholarship. So again, I was a nerd. So to me it was a no brainer. I really thought that Loyola is a fantastic school.

I did not come from a family of wealth, and I just thought that would be the right thing to do for my family, that they would not have to bear the burden of paying for tuition for four years. And honestly, it was the best decision ever. I’m still connected to the school. I sit on one of their advisory boards. I go out and do presentations for them. So it was really a tremendous experience for me to go away and to grow up and to see how the world moved around me.

Syama Bunten: What was it like to relocate? It’s a different vibe. So what was it like for you?

Anita Battle: You have no idea. So Loyola Marymount, for those who don’t know, it’s in the Los Angeles area, but it’s right near the beach. So you’re near Playa del Rey, Venice Beach. And at the time they had no dorms available for me, so they put me up at an apartment, a little studio apartment in Playa del Rey. I literally could walk to the beach.

Syama Bunten: Get out of here. My God, Anita, that’s amazing.

Anita Battle: It was like a dream come true. You know, you’re away, but you’re really away. You have your own place. I had a roommate and all, but it was just really cool to be out on my own and be by the beach in Southern California.

Syama Bunten: I’m sure when your family visited they were like, they put you up where? Like what?

Anita Battle: I know. We’re driving there, driving me down to, you know, drop me off, and we kept driving and we’re like, this is where we’re going? Wow, this is pretty cool. Right. So it was really a great experience, and honestly, now I want to go back a little bit, because you asked me a question about did I work. I did not work in high school. This is where a little bit of privilege comes into play. I didn’t have to work. My mom didn’t work. My dad worked. He was a longshoreman for the Port of Oakland. And we did pretty well. My mom did little odd jobs periodically. She would work at the library at a local school. But I got a little bit of allowance here and there, maybe for a birthday or whatever. So I was always very frugal, practical with my money. I always had money. I always had a dollar. I always had five dollars. I always had some kind of cash with me. That’s one thing that my mom always taught me, is to have, I’m going to date myself, you have a dime to make a phone call and you have bus fare if you need to get home.

Syama Bunten: Yes.

Anita Battle: For facing that. And the interesting thing, one of the reasons I did not work, my mother didn’t drive. We lived up in the Oakland Hills and there was no bus. So for me to work, it would have been an exercise in hours of transportation, walking down a hill, catching the bus, going to work, walking, you know, catching a bus, and then walking back up the hill. So it just wasn’t practical for me, and as much as I wanted to, I always wanted to go work at Baskin Robbins, you know, because my friends were working. But I didn’t work.

Syama Bunten: It wasn’t in the stars. So then, luckily you got this incredible opportunity for university, I mean, what a gift, Anita. But you didn’t end up becoming a lawyer. What happened in university? How did you decide, and what was some of the outcomes of that work?

Anita Battle: During the time I was getting close to graduating from university, I had some friends who were a year or two ahead of me. And at the time there was a glut of attorneys in California. Many of them were not working, or not doing the work that they thought they would be doing. And so my two really good friends who graduated before me were miserable. They were not happy. One was a defense attorney, worked in a defense attorney’s office. Another did something very similar. And I just said, hmm, do I want to be miserable? Do I want to be unhappy after all of this? So interesting enough, when I was in high school, I used to always say, if anything goes wrong, I can always go into education. I can be a teacher. And so in college, I worked in the Los Angeles Unified School District as an aide or a teacher’s assistant or something of that nature. So I ended up coming back to Northern California and I taught school. I finished in Los Angeles teaching special ed, and then I came to Northern California and I taught second grade.

Syama Bunten: Wow. And, you know, graduating from university and getting a job out of college, no one ever makes any money, but you certainly don’t ever hear teachers making any money coming out of university. So how did you start paying for things and launching yourself into the world? Like what sort of strategy were you masterminding to be able to do that?

Anita Battle: At home.

Syama Bunten: Okay. That’s helpful.

Anita Battle: And I, okay, again, I’m going to date myself. I was reading the newspaper and at the time they were doing some type of median income. This is, you know, this is wealthy, this is poor, this is below poverty. And I thought that I was below poverty with two degrees, and I said, this doesn’t work out, I will be living at home for the rest of my life.

Syama Bunten: No, that is not good.

Anita Battle: Not good. I talked to a friend about it, and he was like, okay, let’s see what we can do. You know, long story short, he saw an ad in a newspaper for a training advisor for a telecom company. And he says, you can do this. And I’m like, I don’t even know what telecom is. He goes, don’t worry about it, you can do this. Because, you know, most people don’t know how to teach and create curriculum. You can do all that.

Lo and behold, I applied for the job, went through the interviews, and in the last interview I had with the gentleman, he said, I can teach you everything, we can teach you that piece. But I can’t teach you how to get up in front of people and talk. I can’t teach you how to create curriculum. I can’t teach you how to see when someone is confused or someone is brilliant. I can’t do that.

And I got the job. And lo and behold, that company was called GTE. They were the predecessors to what we now know as Verizon. So I spent my career at GTE and Verizon for the most part. I literally took early retirement from them. And that is when I learned how the world works, money, control, power, and who owns that.

Syama Bunten: Wow. Okay, so starting off, now you’re making a hard pivot, right? You’re like, all right, this teaching thing, I’m moving into industry, I’m at the forefront of industry. So you’re getting access to all these new technologies, trainings, you’re literally seeing how the world is being shaped. It’s such an interesting vantage point, I think, as a young person, to be so involved with shaping the world and seeing how it operates.

Anita Battle: So I got, literally, because my boss was in Chicago, sometime in February, I had to buy a coat, boots, a scarf, flew to Chicago, and he sat down and talked to me and said, this job requires traveling around the country, do you remember that? And so, to your point, to be able to see how cultures are different, whether you’re in New York or the Midwest or down south, how we learn, how we adjust our biases, how we eat. So it was really a learning experience about life, not just about telecom and the industry. It was really, in my twenties, a great opportunity to sit and just be a sponge, having a growth mindset, truly.

Syama Bunten: Yeah. How powerful. So, you know, I feel like in the beginning stages of one’s career, there’s a sense of gratitude for the work we get to do until we realize how good we are. And then we’re like, wait a second, I need more money. I’m really good at this. Wait, what seemed to be a favor for me is now a favor for you. So things start to shift. What was it like for you? Was it asking for raises? Was it starting to get promotions? How did you look at self advocacy as a young woman who was starting to realize her potential in the room?

Anita Battle: I was very naive. I’m first gen with a degree, first gen working in corporate America. So I didn’t have, you know, my parents weren’t able to do a lot of coaching for me. So I literally had to watch, observe, find folks that were maybe friendly and open enough to have some of the hard conversations.

But for the most part, I was really isolated a lot. Back in this time, there were very few women in telecom, and there were almost no people of color in telecom. So I didn’t have that sense of comfort, even though for the most part I grew up in a very diverse, very open community. That was California, everyone else did not have that. So there were biases. To your point, she’s really good, she’s really good, here’s a, you know, you get your raise and you think it’s a good raise. You don’t know what you don’t know. And as I traversed moving around, I started to feel a little bit more empowered and ask folks, you know, what’s normal, what’s the trend, what does it look like. I had a colleague that helped me understand money in terms of a 401k. I didn’t know what a 401k was when they hand you all the onboarding papers. I literally went up to her and said, I don’t know what this is. And she was very kind and said, I can tell you what I did. And literally I copied what she did. I didn’t know enough to know that what she did was good or bad, but I literally checked the boxes that she had done. And fortunately she was a smart woman and I was able to maneuver through the system, matching the funds. I didn’t understand what that was. She’s like, you want to max out, you need to do this. So really she became my encyclopedia. I could literally go talk to her about money and confidence, and she never made me feel inferior, or that she was giving me wrong information. I really trusted her.

Syama Bunten: You trusted her.

Anita Battle: I did, I trusted her, to this day. I always think of how she gave me the footing to understand.

Syama Bunten: She expanded you.

Anita Battle: Uh huh, uh huh.

Syama Bunten: Where do you think she got this? I mean, what makes it, where do you think she got the information from? Just from what you know of her now, where did that transference of understanding come from?

Anita Battle: I think, and I’m going to make a statement, and it’s only because it’s the fact, that many people of color don’t come from money. And money doesn’t, I’m not saying wealth or what have you, but she lived a comfortable life growing up. So they had those table conversations at dinner, or on the drive across country when they were taking vacations. As opposed to my lived experience, and a lot of the folks in my circle growing up, in hindsight, we were living to have family, to have faith, and what have you. They weren’t living to invest money into a fund or some type of money market, to think about the future. We generally came from a lifestyle of, you work for a good company and you get a good pension. Almost all of my adult aunts, great aunts, great uncles, and what have you, worked for the post office, they worked for the shipyard, they worked for the Port of Oakland, they worked for General Motors. So they had those really good jobs, and they knew they had a pension on the back end.

Syama Bunten: Mm. You know, that’s really, you bring up a really interesting point. Our families and the people around us can only help us as much as they feel their own agency to do something, or they have the information. And it’s so incredible that you had a mentor and someone in your life who was willing to share, and who also felt so comfortable about it, you know, it’s definitely not an easy thing. So walk me through, Anita, how did you start to move through this corporate model, and what was it that started to unlock inside of you as you were building your financial base? What were some of those key moments of, maybe, security, when you were like, all right, I feel like I can breathe now. What did those moments start to look like?

Anita Battle: Well, the first moment was probably five years after starting, I was able to buy a house.

Syama Bunten: Wow. That’s huge. How old were you? Huge.

Anita Battle: I think it was about twenty seven. But a house. Yeah, but a house. And I was like, okay, this is good. And again, now you’re an adult, because you got to pay property taxes, and things break, and what have you. So again, trying to be very mindful about saving and being proactive and prepared for things. But the really turning point was, I accidentally moved into sales, and the income jumped exponentially because I was good at what I did. I got a base and commission. And those were the good old days when money was just flowing in telecom.

And I knew that this would not be the be all end all, because you can’t have successful years after successful years after successful years. So I pocketed a lot of my commission checks, and made a point to be able to, when I needed to step away, I would not be in debt. So while a lot of my friends, I was the first woman of color in national sales for GTE, I was surrounded by men. And they would, you know, kind of poo poo me around, when we’d have a big conference they’d say, Anita, you go to this spa, and they were out on the golf course. I finally figured it out, I needed to learn how to play golf, because that’s where all the deals were made, right? So I learned how to play golf. But while they were buying boats and taking all these extravagant vacations and what have you, I was saving my cash.

Syama Bunten: Wow. What were you doing with it? Was it savings accounts, or was it in the money market?

Anita Battle: I started with savings accounts, and then moved up a little bit to the money markets and what have you, and then over time learned a little bit more about the money, because in addition to being in sales, I relocated a couple of times. So I had big accounts. And when you have big accounts, they can go away very quickly. And again, trying to be mindful that at any given time they’ll say, okay, we’re done with you, we’re going to go with another company. So learning more about my money, investing more, you know, you have stocks, but then GTE eventually became Verizon. And even in this last company that I worked for, making sure that I’m investing properly, talking to friends. That’s another thing, once you get in a circle of a certain socioeconomic perspective, people talk about investing, they talk about the stock market, it’s just everyday conversation. So really listening and paying attention and doing basic research, trying to make sure I was probably overly conservative for a while, because I didn’t want to lose money. I work too hard, I don’t want to lose any money, right? But you have to lose a little bit of money.

Syama Bunten: Makes sense.

Anita Battle: I’m still that way. I was talking to my financial guy this week, and I said something about I’m losing money. He’s like, look, stop, it’s okay, you’re doing fine.

Syama Bunten: When did you get, did you have a financial manager or advisor at that time, or were you sort of directing everything on your own, or were you getting information from friends?

Anita Battle: Most of the time, I had my company investor, which is usually Fidelity, and then I moved money over to another company, and they claimed that they were very proactive, but I didn’t think that they were as proactive as they should have been. So this gentleman reached out to me, from where I did some other financial banking, and convinced me that he could do better. And I moved a little bit of money over. And he walked me through, I learned so much about money and investing and capital gains, and 529s and all of these things that I didn’t even know how to spell. What’s a 529? So over time I eventually moved all my money with him. Literally he walks me through everything that I need, on a dime. I can send an email or call or text. Yesterday I got a call from him on something, and I know we’re meeting this week, but he wanted me to put this in my head because we need to talk about this and that.

Syama Bunten: I love that. It’s very proactive.

Anita Battle: Very, very, very proactive. And probably, I don’t know, maybe fifteen years with him, I’m no longer scared of money. I’m no longer afraid of losing money. We have this thing that I’ve worked so hard for this money, I don’t want to lose it. But you have to risk enough to gain enough. But not so much that you can’t afford to lose that money. You only risk what you’re willing to lose and walk away from. And that’s kind of where I am now, if I’m going to lose it, this is how much I’m going to invest, and I’m willing to suffer the consequences. But he’s so good, he sees when the money is moving, and he’ll say, okay, I’m going to move your money over here, or this we only want to keep here for five years, or this we want to keep for two years. So it’s one of these, it’s a blessing that I have, because I went so much of my working life not having that. So in the last half of my professional work environment, to get that, it allowed me to retire when I wanted to retire. It allowed me to, I’ll go back, I retired from Verizon early, took an early retirement, and it allowed me to choose the kind of work I wanted to do on the next go round. Everyone’s like, go back to this, go to the next.

Syama Bunten: What’s an early type of, what age was that?

Anita Battle: Me, was fifty.

Syama Bunten: Wow. That’s amazing.

Anita Battle: Yeah. But you’re too young, you can’t take your money without penalties, so you’ve still got to work. But I knew I had a pension sitting out there. I knew I had healthcare sitting out there. And I decided my second chapter would be doing what I wanted to do, not what people wanted me to do. And again, such a blessing to be able to do that. And I did contract work. I was like, yeah, let me do this for a few months. Let me do this for a few months. And I got to figure out what I wanted to do.

And then, on a side note, I know we haven’t talked about it, and this really isn’t tied to it, but it is, my mother took ill, and my dad was caring for her. Lo and behold, as we’re planning for my mom to go into hospice, my dad had a massive heart attack and died. So I became the caregiver of my mother.

So it was perfect that I was doing contract work, because I could go in at six, whatever time I wanted, leave at three, get my eight hours, coordinate the caregivers, coordinate all of the things that went into caring for her. And she lived an additional two and a half years.

Syama Bunten: Anita, that is really a powerful transition point that I don’t think, you know, women are often put in these positions, and we also don’t often talk about what the financial costs of this look like, the time, the energy, what a blessing it is to be able to be in a position financially to be able to support and care for someone you love, let alone then also sustaining the loss of someone else so dear to you, which then can also feel very isolating. Were your siblings sort of in cahoots together on all of it? Did you take on some burden here around the management of things? How did you guys talk about the family finances, I guess, when all of this was going down so quickly?

Anita Battle: I had a hundred percent of the responsibility for the care and the financial. My dad was very lucky. He worked as a longshoreman, so we had wonderful benefits. My dad was also a veteran, and there were caregiver benefits that I was able to secure to help get the benefits, to help offset some of the money.

So I was, again, remember, I was a nerd, so I was very meticulous. I kept monthly spreadsheets, what went in, what went out, the doctor visits, I coordinated to make sure I was the advisor, to be able to speak on behalf of my mother. And it was, in hindsight, the biggest joy of my life, the biggest honor of my life, to be able to, for my mother, when she didn’t know who I was but she knew I was somebody, to be her through the transition, to get her where she needed to be with what she needed, what she wanted. And to this day, nothing bothers me. There’s nothing that anyone can say or do, because I have seen my father die suddenly, unexpectedly, and then my mother have a long term illness and then die. So to be, all of this, the world of corporate America, working how I worked, I was able to bring some of that back into this, to get things organized, to manage staff, to understand how to speak to doctors, to understand when we have to call 911, how do you talk to the fire department or to EMS, and even the doctors when they were saying, they’ve done all that they can do for either my father or my mother at the time. And again, that prepared me for my own long term illness, or when I get old.

Because I saw how much it costs to have a caregiver, I called my financial planner and said, okay, I need this much money every year for care, because I’m not a veteran, I’m a single woman, I don’t have anybody that’s going to be able to augment my caregiving when I get older. So we’ve set up systems for that, to make sure that I am able to care and have financial, I have a trust. Many people do not have a trust, especially people of color, women of color. They’ll have a will. No, you need a trust. Especially in California, if you own a home in California, you’ve got to have a trust. Because anything over five hundred thousand dollars, I think, you have to have a trust. And every home in California is basically five hundred thousand dollars.

So really having those conversations with friends, and when I do coaching and mentoring, or speaking at certain events, like for Dress for Success, where I’m a board member, trying to start women early in their career thinking forward. You know, signing up for a 401k, I don’t make enough money to do that. Yes you do, if it’s only one percent, put one percent away. You’ve got to care at some point, whether you go into hospice, whether you go into a caregiving facility, or you have somebody, start thinking about putting little change here, a little more change over there. We don’t talk about money enough. We just don’t, and as we age, we go in and we get hit with surprises.

Syama Bunten: Yes.

Anita Battle: And the financial surprises. We can’t always live through it. And everyone’s situation is a little different. Full disclosure, I just turned sixty five, and everyone will be saying, this is going to happen, this is going to happen, that’s going to happen. And it’s not because we don’t talk about how much money we make. Sally over here may have worked for the government, and you’ve got someone over here that worked in the education system, and then someone working in corporate America, we’re not going to have the same kinds of benefits. So when we’re having conversations, most of the conversations are very broad, way up here in the sky. You’re not going to have to pay as much for Social Security and your Medicare, but then no one ever says, but I was making three hundred thousand dollars a year, or I was making a hundred thousand, or I was making sixty thousand. All of that changes, it’s not the same.

Syama Bunten: Yeah. You know, it’s so interesting because as you’re talking, Anita, I’m struck with this, you’re calling out just a major gaping hole in how we look at retirement, this concept of paying your dues and then everyone gets to retire in Florida, and live in Palm Beach. But life is drastically different. And one of the things that comes to my mind is, these days, young people don’t have pension like opportunities at bigger corporations, and they are also constantly moving to different companies. So are they setting up the 401k? Also, many young people are now striving for entrepreneurial endeavors, which means you’re not paying into Social Security, you’re not paying into the future, you’re taking massive bets on the right now. It makes me wonder what’s going to happen when all these young people start to age into retirement, and the infrastructure isn’t quite set up for that.

Anita Battle: Great point. That is such a great point, that even the system is set up, if most of the companies don’t have pensions anymore, right, but you might get stock, where your stock has to vest. And ninety percent of the time you’re leaving money on the table when you leave the company, because your stock hasn’t vested. So the company just gets to pocket that money right back.

And so those are hard lessons to learn. When I called and said, okay, I want to cash out, they’re like, but you know you forfeited this amount of stock, and I’m like, yes, I understand, but I knew that. Oftentimes people don’t realize, they think they look at their statement and see I have a hundred thousand, when I leave I’ll get that. No, you might only get fifty. So to your point, you’re going to be paying for healthcare, you’re not paying into Social Security anymore, they’re jumping for joy for that, but it’s like, no, no, no. But the one thing that I love, for students in California, it’s not going to go into effect for another couple of years, but they’re adding financial literacy into the high schools as a required course. That’s such an imperative, to understand, if you go to college, go to university, you take out a loan, this is how much is going to accrue over time, and you’re going to pay that money back. Maybe I’ll just go become an apprentice, become a plumber, and have my own business. We just don’t talk about money. We talk about the K shape right now, where the economy looks, that upward arrow, that segment of the population, they know about money, they’ve been talking about it for generations, so they understand it. They have property, they have real estate. Oftentimes when you’re moving from class to class, from the lower class, middle class, middle upper class, you didn’t have that generational wealth that someone could teach you. And these youngsters, it’s a whole different life, of what they’ve learned and what they did not learn.

Syama Bunten: It’s wild. And so today, I feel like we started with this conversation around, you mentioned women are living such long lives, we are living longer lives than ever before. And I swear to you, by the end of this conversation, a new study is going to come out and now we’re going to live till a hundred and twenty. So when it comes to thinking about, let’s say another seventy years on the planet, Anita, how do you sort of think about both this context, that there’s a lot more living to do, which means there’s a lot more that you can express yourself on this planet, but then also there’s a lot more to pay for. How are you triangulating at this juncture in your life between your passion, your purpose, and then also this financial longevity that’s really going to take us to who knows where?

Anita Battle: Well, you know, medicine and technology is making us live so much longer. But taking care of ourselves is so important. I mean, I go to a spin class every day, I get my ten thousand steps in. It’s very important for me to be healthy, because it’s one thing to live to a hundred, but if you aren’t healthy, poof, your quality of life is just, so it’s not just the physical, it’s the mental. How do we say no? Not right now, maybe later. Women, we take on a lot. I’m generalizing, of course, because there are men out there who do the same. And how do we say, this doesn’t work for me today, this doesn’t work for me right now, maybe another time. We can’t fill someone else’s cup if our cup is empty, right? We have to make sure we’re thinking ahead.

In the same token, we’re thinking ahead, but how do we get back? I make a point, I am a woman of privilege. I want to make sure that women, especially women of color, don’t have to endure what I had to endure. You should not have to go through what I went through in the eighties and the nineties, begging for promotions, being told, not right now, maybe later, you’re not quite ready yet. All of those things, but men, he’s got the potential. Women, you’ve had to do it, you have to be successful at it, and you have to have metrics to prove it. So being prepared for all of those rejections, all of that pushing harder, at the same time caring for ourselves and talking to people that you trust who are doing well with their money.

And truly doing well, not just driving around in Lexus and Mercedes and shopping at Louis Vuitton. Not that those are bad companies, but how many more bags do we need?

Syama Bunten: Well.

Anita Battle: So take that money, that hundred dollars, three hundred dollars, and invest it in something. And it gets compounded by the time you’re sixty five. That hundred dollars could be fantastic, it could be your income. So now you give yourself an annuity, you just go to the bank and say, pay me this amount of dollars every month and that’s what I live off of. So as a board member for Dress for Success, that’s where I give a lot of my time. We have a financial literacy program, we have a digital literacy program, we have an AI program. And it’s so important for me to be there, as a woman of color, a black woman in particular, to show up as a successful career woman that they can aspire to. Because you don’t know what you don’t know, you don’t see it. If all you’re seeing is no one that looks like you, or no one that has a common denominator, some type of thing that’s relatable, the connection, then the bridge is broken. The bridge is broken. So that’s why I tell many women in my circles, do something, give back. We have to give back.

Syama Bunten: Yeah.

Anita Battle: That’s our purpose in life, to give. We’re service oriented. Why don’t we give back? It could be in sports, it could be in academics. We need to be there and be seen, and I just firmly believe we need to talk about money more often.

Syama Bunten: Yes we do, Anita. We spent most of our time today talking about money in a lot of serious ways, saving it, investing it, all the serious things that we do with it. But you and I both know that money can also be really fun, and you can do a lot of great things with it and enjoy it and have a fabulous time. So spill the tea, Anita, what is something most recently that you have spent your money on?

Anita Battle: A big theater buff. I love the arts and I love to travel. So I will pick up a destination every year. Kind of got messed up during COVID. And I will travel, I’ve gone to Portugal, I’ve gone to Spain, I’ve gone to Paris, New York. You have to travel, because I think traveling is the best thing next to reading, because you learn so much. And I love to travel alone, because one, I don’t have to acquiesce, I don’t have to negotiate, but people are more willing to talk to you, because they’re like, you’re here by yourself, are you doing this? And I’ve gotten invited into so many wonderful things because I was by myself. And those are the things that I love to do.

Syama Bunten: Yeah.

Anita Battle: Is to travel, and partake in some type of performing arts, whether it’s music, theater, plays, musicals. My favorite is opera.

Syama Bunten: That’s fabulous. That’s a fun way to spend your money. I love that, Anita. As our time here sort of comes to an end, I’d love to end with a question for you around how us, the audience, can support you. You are up to some really big things. You have a big vision of the world. I have no doubt that the next seventy years are going to be quite incredible in the life of Anita Battle. But tell us, what are you calling in right now and how can we support you? What do you need?

Anita Battle: Bring me in to talk. I love facilitating conversations, talking about me, the world, how we function. I do workshops. I’m heading out of town this end of the month to do a workshop on transformational leadership. I’m very proficient in the equity space. So I love to be part of an organization, even if you just need someone to help curate some content, look at things from an equity perspective, or come and have a chat with you, your team, or if you just need a mentor, someone to help guide you. Because I did a lot of this on my own without having a mentor. So reach out, I’m a keynote speaker, public facilitator, workshop facilitator, coach. But I love just having conversations with people to bring the best out of them. Sometimes they don’t even know what they have within them. And using a sense of cultural humility is what I bring.

Syama Bunten: I love it, it’s so beautiful. Your spirit of generosity and your vision of the world and who you are is a real gift. And my hope is that, you know, all of the hundreds and thousands of people who’ve downloaded this show will have an opportunity to connect with you and amplify your vision and amplify your gifts. You are truly one of a kind. Thank you for being here today.

Anita Battle: It is my pleasure. Thank you so much, and continued success to you and your work.

Syama Bunten: Thank you for listening. This is the conversation we come back to every single week. Real women, real wealth, and what becomes possible when we stop being silent about money. If today’s episode moved you, don’t let it stop here. Wealth Catalyst is where women go to take it further. Our Freedom Tour salons are gathering women in 32 cities this year. Intimate evenings in homes and private spaces where women talk honestly about money, risk, and what they’re building.

And if you’re ready to go even bigger, join us at the Wealth Catalyst Summit, a full day event in San Francisco this October. Find your city and claim your seat at wealthcatalyst.com. We’ll see you there.