If you ask Wells Fargo executive vice president Monica Cole about her life, she’ll say it consists of “The Four Fs: Faith, Family, Food and Finance.” “My grandparents had 12 children and they also raised me, and they always told us there’s nothing more important in your life than faith and family,” states Cole.
“And my grandmother was an incredible cook. We used to laugh about the fact that she could make dirt taste good,” she laughs. “So having that understanding of faith and family around food was critically important, as it is in a lot of Black families.”
Faith and Family
And like a lot of Black families, Cole’s family was part of the Great Migration from the South to the North from 1910 to 1970. That’s how she came to be born in Chicago but was raised by her grandparents in the small town of Grenada, Mississippi.
Family was so important to her that when it was time for college, she chose Christian Brothers University in Memphis, Tennessee, because it was only an hour from home and allowed her to go to church with her grandmother on Sundays.
“It was a predominantly White school and coming of age in the late 70s, early 80s in the South, where we were still having challenges amongst the races…it was important for me to be able to go home and stay grounded and be given that confidence that I could compete and that I belonged,” Cole admits.
However, her graduate school experience changed for the better when she attended the Historically Black College of Clark Atlanta University (CAU) in Atlanta, Georgia. That’s where her career path changed, as well.
As an undergraduate, Cole majored in mechanical engineering with a minor in math, but at CAU she was challenged to take a different path. “My teacher’s assistant convinced me to interview for a summer internship at Norwest Bank, which was the predecessor to Wells Fargo, where I am now,” remembers Cole. “And I actually went into that interview to blow it. I basically said, ‘I’m not the person you want. I don’t even balance my checkbook,’” she laughs.
“And when she called to offer me the internship, I said, ‘You have the wrong person.’ And she said, ‘No, I’m sure we have the right person!’ So 27 years later, here I am.”
Cole’s faith gave her the courage to leave the comfort of family in the South to work for Wells Fargo in Minneapolis, where she had no family. “The people were incredibly nice, and at the bank, everyone was so welcoming to me coming from the South and trying to fit in,” Cole remembers.
“And it was during the OJ Simpson trial, so it was such a divisive time in our country,” she continues. “But to be in a space where my colleagues were willing to talk about that with me was the first time I realized how important it was to have representation in the room so you can start to tell the true story of Black America vs. what the media [reports],” she emphasizes.
Continue reading over at Cuisine Noir.
Cuisine Noir Magazine is the country’s first Black food publication, launched in 2009 and dedicated to connecting the African diaspora through food, drink and travel. To read the rest of this article and more, visit www.cuisinenoirmag.com.
