How do you recognize a champion

A high school counselor once told a young Verná Cherry-Goatley that she would not amount to much. She never argued the point. She spent the next several decades answering it.

She grew up in a military family, the daughter of a twenty-year Army veteran. The travel showed her early what education could open up and what it meant to give something back. When the family settled in Louisville’s Newburg neighborhood, she carried both lessons with her through Thomas Jefferson High School, Jefferson Community College, Bellarmine University, and eventually a master’s degree from Webster University.

Her career began at a bank, where she rose to Assistant Vice President. But she kept noticing the people the lending process left behind: the entrepreneurs with a good idea, a hard-working family, and no one to help them turn a dream into a business plan. So she left to build the help herself, directing small business development centers in Southern Indiana and at Bellarmine, then spending more than two decades in Louisville Metro Government’s economic development office.

Nobody wrote headlines about those years. They were made of long evenings, borrowed hours, and her own resources spent on other people’s dreams. She sat with business owners who had been told no, and she showed them how to get to yes. She worked through the details of financing, certification, and contracts, because she understood that fairness lives in the details: who gets the contract, who gets certified, who gets a fair shot at growth.

She never asked for anything in return except respect.

That is not to say it came easy. Doing the right thing sometimes meant standing across the table from the most powerful people in the city. Those who know her say she walked into those rooms a little scared, as any sensible person would, and walked out intact. She did not need to win the room. She needed to be right, and to be steady, whether anyone stood beside her or against her.

In the middle of a pandemic and a season of deep unrest, she took the helm of the Louisville Metro Human Relations Commission, the office created in 1962 to protect residents from discrimination. Her staff now handles complaints involving fair housing, employment, hate crimes, and public accommodations. Under her leadership, the Commission’s certification work earned national recognition in 2022.

But the awards were never the point. Since 1989 she has volunteered with the Black Achievers Program at the Chestnut Street YMCA, mentoring young people the way someone once should have mentored her.

Her motto comes from Maya Angelou: when you learn, teach; when you get, give.

Ask Verná about her own story, and she will likely change the subject to yours. Ask her to explain her career, and she will say what she has said all along: the work speaks for itself. I've heard it said that a real champion only looks down at you to help you up, not to step over you. If this is true, then I know what a real champion looks like - they look like Verná Goatley.