Natalie Fikes was born in Kingston, Jamaica on June 6, 1980 during a time when government troops were called out to restore order after riots broke out due to political violence to. At nine days old, in the wee hours of the morning, Natalie’s cry awakened her young parents who noticed someone was in the home, causing them to avoid a fatal home invasion. A few weeks later, she moved to Queens, NY. It wasn’t long before her parents split and Natalie was raised as an only child by her single mother. As a latch key kid, Natalie had to brave the streets of NY on her own. As a habitual new kid, Natalie never seemed to fit in with her peers. She excelled academically but was constantly reprimanded for talking too much. Overwhelmed by environments filled with verbal and physical abuse, Natalie found solace in the arts. After gaining some stability at school, becoming the captain and MVP of the girls track team, Natalie’s home life became unbearable. At 16 years old, she decided to leave home. After gaining employment through her school’s DECA program, Natalie interviewed and was selected to enter corporate America as a customer service presentative for the launch of Geico’s Emergency Road Service. Two years after graduating high school, Natalie attended a job fair where she was hired as a sales and service representative at the Verizon call center. While she found peace in the stability that her job provided, she started to feel a profound emptiness inside. Realizing that she had no standard by which to measure success, Natalie started on a self-development journey.
In 2003, Natalie became the youngest, African American female in management for Verizon’s Southeast Region. She is most noted for leading a team of underperforming sales and service associates to the top of the sales district in six short months. As office sales champion, Natalie helped her peers excel, moving the office from 5th to 3rd place.
Despite leaving home at 16 years old, Natalie’s resilience to keep going was because she believed deeply in her ability to overcome her circumstances. Following her desire to do meaningful work, Natalie started Code Next Generation (now Teen Vocal), a youth organization that successfully transitions youth to adulthood. In 2015, she was named one of John Maxwell’s Top 100 Leaders, with participants of her program receiving White House recognition from President Barack Obama for exceptional community service.
In 2016, Natalie became the Central Regional Manager for The International Association of Women (IAW) where she was responsible for training and developing chapter leaders and membership retention. In three short months, Natalie increased member engagement by 63% and increased that number to 81% within one year. In collaboration with Star Jones, Natalie is responsible for contributing to the successful implementation of IAW’s largest online chapter serving more than 20,000 members.
In 2018, seven months after winning a speaker’s competition, Natalie was named “Best Speaker of Today” by Northstar Meetings Group. In 2019, she received the ACHI Magazine’s Orator of the Year award.
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Natalie is the CEO of Breakthrough to Millions LLC, a training and development firm that creates entrepreneurial opportunities that facilitate an improved quality of life. In 2020, when the world as we know it changed, Natalie launched The Greater Purpose Society (GPS) to help individuals resolve their own problems by building mental tenacity to overcome obstacles and achieve higher goals.
In 2021, Natalie was inducted into the Marquis Who’s Who of America. She has served as the COO for The African American Association of USA, and the Central Regional Director of Training and Development for Black Wallstreet USA. Her greatest accomplishment to date is overcoming an unstable childhood of verbal and physical abuse to become a committed mother to her two hilarious son’s Elijah and Jayden. She was recently named the 73rd Georgia Mother of the Year by AmericanMothers.org
