Mikayla R. Vincent | 39
Client services manager, strategic business development for the Midwest, CORE Construction
Mikayla Vincent is a business strategist at CORE, one of the largest builders of schools and municipal buildings in the United States. Among her accomplishments, she is most proud of her “CORE for Kids” initiative, which has the company giving back, educating and engaging with schools and their other support networks.
Previously, Mikayla was executive director for the Peoria Heights Chamber of Commerce. She was active in the community’s Economic Development Council, as well as its Fine Arts Committee.
Her community service ranges from being vice president of the HOI Big Brothers/Big Sisters Board to volunteering for the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Peoria. She also is an Autism Collective Community Council board member. During COVID, she busied herself delivering relief supplies to nonprofits, schools, first responders, etc.
Mikayla “is making Peoria and the surrounding communities kinder places to be,” said her nominator. “While she juggles a busy home life as a hard-working single mother of three, she is also out every day building relationships with everyone from community members to school districts to those she comes across in the grocery store. She is not building ‘transactional’ relationships, she is building ‘real’ relationships.
“Better than anyone, Mikayla Vincent invests in people as humans.”
Childhood ambition: “I always imagined myself as a wife, mother, homemaker … I think that ‘job’ is sorely under-valued and too often denounced. My children are my reasons for being … The content of their hearts and sculpted character defines my truest success.”
Advice to 20-year-old self: “The advice I would give … is to have confidence in the knowledge that I was never alone. God was laying the steppingstones beneath my feet … I’d tell myself to be true to my heart. To live gently, but also boldly. To yield to my purpose. To believe in myself the way I believed in others. With no education past the 11th grade and a life rife with trauma … it took me many years, decades actually, to heal and love who I am.”
Best shared wisdom: “Great and small. Everything and nothing. That is what we’re called to be. Find and walk that balance, with grace. Also, life is a series of mitigating risks, so plan accordingly and conduct your life in that manner.”
Inspirational local figure: “There are a select handful of mentors I hold in highest regard and respect, but I believe it more important to spotlight the ‘shadow servants’ among us, the men and women not as fortunate to be granted this platform. The ones who work to the bone … and go without spotlight … As top-tier business professionals, I pray we’re ever mindful to avoid becoming too wrapped up in our titles, status, salary increases that we forget to … show genuine appreciation to the ‘servants in the shadows.’”
