I would say don’t try to do everything. Do what you know you can do well and do it to the best of your ability. You don’t need to be the women who has a job, and raises children, and plays sports on the weekends, and cooks gourmet meals, can fix her own car, and you know fixes the toilet when its clogged [laughs] and do all these things. You don’t need to have to do everything. If you can do one thing well and find out how you can use that skill to help others, to help your family, to help people who don’t have access to that, then I think you’re successful. It’s all about how you feel about it and how you can use that skill to help others feel just as proud as you are. That’s how I raise my kids and think of success.
Vanessa Bumpus is an exhibition coordinator at the Worcester Historical Museum. She was born in1975 in New York City. She attended Marymount Manhattan College for her undergraduate degree and the University of Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania for graduate school. After getting married to her husband, Joseph, she had two children. Vanessa tells of life growing up in New York and her move to Massachusetts as a teenager. She also discusses how her family pushed her to succeed in life, which led her to many career opportunities including interning for David Letterman and getting into a selective graduate school program. Vanessa stressed the importance of taking care of her family and how Worcester has always been a great city for women.