‘Failing forward’

There is no such thing as failure, says Erica Thunder, ’11, ’14, in her 18:83 Speaker Series talk. There is only another lesson to be learned

Erica Thunder, ’11, ’14, spoke at the UND Memorial Union on Sept. 28 as part of UND’s 18:83 Speaker Series. The series asks speakers to time their addresses to last about 18 minutes and 83 seconds, a number that coincides with the university’s founding year.

Thunder is senior associate and tribal subject matter expert at K.L. Scott and Associates; a former cabinet member for the state of North Dakota; and 2022 North Dakota Woman of the Year, as named by USA Today. In recognition of her accomplishments, she was one of three UND graduates who were recognized by the UND Alumni Association & Foundation on Sept. 26 with the Young Alumni Achievement Award.

Thunder’s talk can be watched in full in the video below. In it, she describes her life story and career, and recognizes while doing so a few key themes:

• Early on in her career as a lawyer, Thunder found herself between jobs and at a point where “everything went backwards for me,” she says in her talk. “Everything regressed. … This was about maybe three months or so. I wasn’t working in law anymore. I didn’t exactly know what the plan was. … I went to work at a hotel; I did housekeeping. I went to work at Amazon.”

But looking back at that time, she says, “I learned a lot, and one of the key takeaways that I learned was about failing forward – that really there is no failure, it’s only lessons at the end of the day, and if you’re going to learn a lesson, you’ve got to move forward with it.

“I was, ‘I can’t stay in this place, and I know that I have more potential than this. And I want to be able to keep doing good things for other people.’

“I dreamed of being a public servant,” she continues. “So I wanted to be of service, and I just kind of started looking at life that way as well.”

• After that experience, where “where going back pushed me forward more than anything,” as she puts it, Thunder restarts her career in public service. And throughout her tenure in a series of social-services and, eventually, executive-level positions, she learns the value of active listening and careful observation as precursors to actually doing the work.

For example, as a staff attorney and project facilitator for the Department of Social Services of the Ho-Chunk Nation in Wisconsin, her primary goal “was to get everyone around the same table,” she recalls.

“So I had educators, I had medical providers, law enforcement, you name it, at every single meeting with the youth – the child themselves – and the family members.” In every instance, the group’s goal was “to just listen – listen to the child, listen to the family, listen to each other, and just work out, what is actually needed here?”

“I needed to be able to just quietly sit and observe so much of what was going on around me,” because otherwise, “I wasn’t going to be successful in this work” – meaning being able to develop solutions that are in the best interest of the child.

“It was phenomenal,” Thunder recounts. “I took pay cuts and downgraded titles, but to this day, I still look at it as probably one of my most favorite things that I’ve done in my career.”

• “At the end of the day, all I can do when I come anywhere, when I come to the table … is to just be a servant leader,” Thunder says.

And “I just want to say I’ve been very humbled in life, and I’m very glad for that, and I have nothing but just complete thanks for all of my experiences.”

• “The last thing I’ll leave you with is this: I never regretted sitting a little bit longer in meetings. I never regretted trying to figure out why someone might be quiet in a room. I never regretted saying ‘Yes’ to things when I knew that there could be something that would have a tangible change to it – and even when I didn’t know that.

“So I just want to say thank you all very much, and thank you for your time today and your patience and just your listening ears. Thank you so much!”