Growing up in Detroit, KimArie Yowell couldn’t wait to get out of the city. Her grandmother instilled in her the importance of education, which she said would be the keys to unlock the world. Now, with numerous degrees earned and as chief learning officer at Rocket Central, education and a commitment to lifelong learning have paved the way for Yowell’s success so far — as well as the road ahead.
Ella Mae Smith and Roosevelt Smith, Yowell’s grandparents, took her in and nurtured that learning mindset from an early age. “My grandmother was about opening doors,” Yowell says, also often feeding friends after church on Sundays.
Yowell worked hard at her studies, graduating from Cass Technical High School, then Wayne State University, earning a bachelor of science in business administration and becoming the first in her family to graduate college.
She faced hard times during her senior year at Wayne State when her grandfather died. Yowell later became pregnant with her son and her grandmother didn’t think Yowell would graduate. She recalls, “the look in her eyes when she found that out and the thought that I wasn’t going to graduate, and everything that she invested in me and taught me was for naught.”
But Yowell persisted and earned her diploma. Six months later, her grandmother passed away. Yowell is proud that she was able to show her grandmother the impact she had on Yowell’s life.
For her grandmother’s funeral, Yowell says the church was standing room only, with people even lined up outside: “What that says to me is that it’s about what you do with the time that you have on this earth. How are you doing good with what’s been given to you?” This guides Yowell through her work and life.
Shortly after graduating, Yowell moved to Dallas to work for University of Phoenix for more than eight years, where she was responsible for enrolling and advising students, leading the corporate education team, identifying skills gaps at organizations and providing learning solutions. “I didn’t know at the time that it would change the trajectory of my life,” she says.
“…It’s about what you do with the time that you have on this earth. How are you doing good with what’s been given to you?
”
While at University of Phoenix, Yowell met many adult learners who were also working parents, aiming to further their education for future job prospects. “I gained a newfound respect for the working adult learner,” she says.
These students also pushed her to further her own education. Yowell earned a Master of Arts in adult education and training, and a Master of Business Administration from University of Phoenix, as well as a Master of Management and Administrative Sciences from the University of Texas at Dallas. She credits her support system and the people holding her accountable to her goals helped her immensely in her earning these degrees.
While in Dallas, Yowell volunteered with Dallas Resource Center for United Black Ellument, providing HIV and AIDS outreach for the LGBTQIA community. Yowell figured that if she could do this work with a city that didn’t raise her, maybe she could return to Detroit and give back to her hometown. “I should go back and help and be a part of the solution and not a part of the problem,” she says.
At this time, Yowell had decided she wanted to help people on a broader scale, and she thought the best way to do that is to become a leadership coach when she retired. So, when her friend and vendor partner of Rocket told her about a leadership coaching position with Quicken Loans (a Rocket Companies organization), touting the values of the organization and how they align with Yowell’s, she went for it.
Yowell interviewed for the leadership coaching position, and the rest is history.
Rocket Companies and Yowell’s rocket to the top
Yowell quickly rose through the ranks at Quicken Loans and Rocket Companies, from leadership coach to director of coaching, senior director of training and development, senior director of talent development and then vice president of talent and organizational development.
For nearly nine years, Julie Edwards and Yowell have worked alongside each other at the organization, originally meeting as peers in learning and development. Edwards is vice president of L&D at Rocket Central, and she has seen Yowell through the trajectory at Rocket.
Edwards says Yowell is an extremely thoughtful leader who has committed herself to higher education, and her dedication to lifelong learning reaches the people around her. That, along with her ability to listen and collaborate with peers, has led the learning function through successful transformation.
For nearly 40 years, the L&D function at Rocket Companies was decentralized and mostly in person. But when COVID-19 pushed U.S. office workers to remote settings, Rocket also had to adapt on a short timeline.
The transformation was, “unlike any other time that I’ve seen,” Yowell says. “It was a great thing to be a part of.”
And it was successful. In fact, within a week of stay-at-home orders, the L&D team onboarded thousands of team members. Further, as of the end of 2021, 41 percent of Rocket Central’s team was hired during the pandemic, with remote onboarding and training successfully assisting.
Yowell says she’ll forever be indebted to University of Phoenix in setting the groundwork for this transition away from in-person education and showing her the power of online learning. “When you think of online learning today, they are the playbook that every other university has used,” she says.
Edwards says that the connection between the senior L&D leaders, and the collaboration they demonstrated during the flip to virtual training is why they’re centralized today. In December 2020, the L&D team became DevCore, a centralized learning function headed by Yowell, who became chief learning officer in September 2020.
Edwards says that Yowell is an expert at patience and listening, even amid difficult decisions and hard deadlines. Yowell can get to the root of a problem in order to find the right solution for the team. “Her intentionality and patience even in the midst of what some could consider chaos is very admirable,” Edwards says.
Collaboration in Rocket programming
Yowell connects with Rocket Central in a variety of ways, from coordinating various programs to leading team member resource networks. Rocket Central has more than 7,000 team members active in its TMRNs dedicated to Black workers, women, veterans and LGBTQIA staff.
“Her intentionality and patience even in the midst of what some could consider chaos is very admirable.
”
As a leader of the TMRNs, Yowell is fascinated by the intersectionality of the groups, even speaking in a partnered event between the Black and women’s networks. She spoke on bringing one’s whole self to work, contemplating what it means to be authentic and navigate a career as a woman and person of color. “And I happen to be both of those things!” she adds.
Before stay-at-home orders and the high stress of 2020 made mental health an imperative, Rocket Companies was already focused on the issue. Nicole Brown, program manager on the talent development team, came to Yowell’s office with a proposal to have mental health training. Yowell agreed that the topic was important and leadership should be trained to have important conversations, so they got to work.
Partnering with the benefits team and researching mental health training, they created the Inside Out curriculum, to educate leaders on mental health, mental illness, substance abuse and more, knowing when to point employees to the EAP resources and also when to engage and support team members in real time.
“No one saw the pandemic coming. I’m so grateful for Nicole Brown and her vision and her desire,” Yowell said.
Developing the whole person
Another program with rave reviews is Leader-to-Leader, which not only dives into leadership tools, “but it’s more about digging into the individual and doing the deep self-work,” Yowell said. Since its creation in 2016, leaders in the program dive into their origins stories and stop and do inner work, so leaders can create sustainable behavior change.
With 2,500 leaders and 27,000 team members benefiting from these programs — directly or indirectly — creates a ripple effect, Yowell says.
“The work that we do in people development, it doesn’t just impact those people,” she says. “It impacts their families. It impacts their communities. It impacts our clients. So I don’t take that responsibility lightly to ensure that we’re setting people up for success.”
The Voyager program also helps with the business side of work, helping employees to understand business strategy, financials and leading change at a large scale. The integration of those hard skills with the aforementioned soft skills helps round out training. “We try to ensure we’re touching on all of those pieces in an intentional and meaningful way,” Yowell says.
And the development doesn’t end there. “In our organization, we believe in the potential of people,” Yowell says.
“How do you really lean in to understand them [marginalized people] and their experiences without being cliche or disingenuine?
”
One of her favorite programs at Rocket Central is Rock Academy, which is partnered with Guild Education and provides 100 percent tuition assistance to team members, even recently expanding into HBCUs, including Spelman College and Morehouse College.
Yowell learned that some workers previously had been taking out student loans to cover the costs of rising tuition rates and in some instances payday loans to cover additional school expenses, but now they don’t have to worry about facing these monetary barriers to education.
“Depending on where you grow up could determine where you end up,” Yowell says. “For us to be able to say, ‘that doesn’t matter and we’re going to support you and invest in you this way’ is tremendous.”
When the organization announced Rock Academy, she received an email from a team member who thanked her, saying that it will help both the employee and his son. She’s proud of the organization for helping its workers and the generations after them.
Lighting the way
As she spends her career developing learners, Yowell also continues to invest in herself, furthering her education. She earned a master’s degree in education in 2021, and she’s currently working toward a doctorate in leadership education and learning, both with University of Pennsylvania.
Her dissertation research is around authenticity for Black women in Fortune 500 companies. With certain levels of authenticity, organizations see higher retention, engagement and innovation, but Yowell questions if workers can truly be their authentic selves at work.
Marginalized communities often navigate code-switching, stereotypes, shifting identities, cultural differences and more in the corporate world.
“If I’m combating the stereotype of what it means to be a Black woman, and so now I change my demeanor so that I can fit in so that I can counter a stereotype, that’s a lot of work that I’m doing before I even get into the office,” she says.
Yowell hopes her research creates greater awareness for leaders in organizations of marginalized people, helping them better lead diverse teams.
“How do you really lean in to understand them and their experiences without being cliche or disingenuine or wait until there’s ‘something that’s happening within their community’ to show interest?” she asks with air quotes.
Yowell’s commitment to lifelong learning is contagious. “Her commitment to herself to overcome those adversities of things she’s been dealt is inspirational,” Edwards says.
Edwards admits that after finishing college, she never wanted to go to another class again, but Yowell reminded her that learning is a secret weapon in life, helping people keep up with the speed of life and the world. Edwards says she wouldn’t be where she is today without that perspective from Yowell.
And that’s what Yowell’s aim is — to help people grow to their full potential. “We’re all on journeys,” she says. “If I can just be a light on your journey to help you get to your destination, that’s enough for me.
