Photo By Petty Officer 1st Class Ian Zagrocki | 200708-N-CE703-0008 SILVERDALE, Wash. (July 8, 2020) Fleet and Family Support Center...... read more read more
“My most vivid memory of my father isn’t necessarily of him. I don't remember any of his homecomings or any of that stuff.”
Somalia Allen, personal finance manager at Naval Base Kitsap’s Fleet and Family Support Center, was born in Guam and first came to Washington State following her dad’s permanent change of station.
“It's weird… [I remember] the smell of his clothes," she said. "When he was gone, I would take something that he had worn and I would put it over the vents, so the heat would come out and his cologne would float up.”
She continued to reminisce about growing up as a military brat.
“Fortunately for me, my father didn't want us to move around all the time,” Allen said. “My parents bought a home here and my father decided that this is where he wanted us to stay. When he got stationed in San Diego, he would come up to one see us one weekend a month. He would drive the whole way, hang out with us for a day, and go back to San Diego. He did that for about two years and got stationed back here again.”
Allen went on to say she respected her father’s decision to provide stability for her family and she's using that inspiration to help Sailors' stability through financial education, but it was not easy for her.
She said she was surprised by the volume of people she'd speak in front of. She recalled one of her first assignments with FFSC - a pre-deployment brief for approximately 200 people.
“All I had to do is get up and talk for three minutes, that's it,” Allen said. “When I got up there, I was just rambling on. I didn’t use any punctuation - no periods, no commas. I think I was done in like a minute. I just ran out of there and got in my car. I was thinking ‘I am going to quit this job. I do not want to do this. I hate this.’”
However, coming from a strong military family, Allen persisted and channeled her self-reliance and resiliency.
“When I started to get good feedback and people wanting to come to see me for one-on-one appointments, it really helped to boost my confidence,” she said. “I started to develop somewhat of an alter ego, like the person that goes and does all of the speaking is different than me. Because of the number that I had to do every week, it became routine soon after that.”
Allen knew one of her friends who'd be a perfect fit at FFSC if she could, likewise, overcome her fear of public speaking. She devised a plan.
“She kind of tricked me,” laughed friend and coworker Lauren Sims. “She knew I loved to talk and love spending quality time helping people.”
Sims was excited about counseling service members financially, and was confused when she found out she'd also be teaching. She demanded an explanation from Allen.
“Somalia told me ‘we sometimes have to do little briefs,’” Sims said. “In my mind, I'm thinking 20 to 30 people max. I came to work here and realized quickly that the 'little briefs', the little education sessions she was talking about, were general military trainings. My first one [I taught] had [about] 200 Sailors. It was just a sea of people in uniforms - very intimidating. I thought, ‘this is not talking to a little group of people’. It was a sink or swim situation. Somalia told me later ‘I knew if you knew that 50 percent of your job was public speaking, you would have said no, but I knew you could do it.’ So, I was tricked, but I'm glad she tricked me, and she was correct. I could handle it. I've gotten over that public speaking fear.”
Sims and Allen continue to work side-by-side as personal finance managers to support and assist Sailors and their families with navigating through the U.S. Navy.
Allen’s latest project, “The Financial Service Provider How-to-Guide” is a single source of information for military personal finance managers and command financial specialists. The online guide replaces distributed compact disc-based financial training. The program was approved by the Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, and Army and is being reviewed for use by the Air Force.
For her efforts with leading the endeavor, Allen was awarded the Navy Civilian Service Achievement Medal July 8, at Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor.
| Date Taken: | 07.10.2020 |
| Date Posted: | 07.14.2020 13:31 |
| Story ID: | 373773 |
| Location: | NAVAL BASE KITSAP-BREMERTON, WASHINGTON, US |
| Hometown: | GUAM, GU |
| Hometown: | NAVAL BASE KITSAP-BREMERTON, WASHINGTON, US |
| Hometown: | NAVY YARD CITY, WASHINGTON, US |
| Web Views: | 124 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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