Darnell Lee/Professional/The American Triumph Journal

Darnell Lee has been working for Verizon Wireless four years and during that time he
has had four promotions. He is currently the store manager for their Mechanicsville
branch at 7264 Mechanicsville Tpke, Mechanicsville, Va. There, he manages 24
employees pushing them to their greatest potential. Americantriumphjournal.com spoke
with Darnell Lee September 23, 2009; at the time he was 35-years-old. He has many
accomplishments he is proud of.

"Biggest accomplishment would be all the promotions that have come while I have been
in a management role, all together, I would say about 15 promotions underneath me,"
Lee said. "A lot of people who have worked under me have been promoted like say for
instance at this store, I've been here for 2 years and we have had almost 10
promotions. More than any other store in the region.”

Lee believes training is among a manager's most important roles. He gave his opinion
on other key ingredients to being a successful manager.

"Communication skills, a multi-tasker, organized, and knowing every aspect of the job,"
he said. "You may not be great at any one thing, but you have to know everything.
Everyone depends on you. We (Verizon Wireless) have a lot of different departments,
but you have to know where to find information, how to handle information, and how to
communicate the information.”

He has a lot of responsibilities. He said his job performance is based on how well the
store does in the area of inventory control, cash management, new lines of service,
churn (which has to do with Verizon Wireless customers keeping their service as
opposed to cancelling their service and going to a different carrier) and over all gross
profit of the store. He said, what makes his job challenging is that his goals, agendas
and intitiatives from upper management is always constantly changing.

"With the different initiatives and initiatives are always changing so those are obstacles,"
he said. "Cuase it's never the same initiatives. It's always something different. You got
to retool and go back and revamp our strategies on how we going to go after different
initatives now and opposed to last month it was something totally different."

Lee grew up in Williamsburg, Va. He was raised in a two parent household and both his
parents were in the army. He said, his mother was a contract specialist and he said, his
father was a warehouse foreman.

"Just work ethic," Lee said referring to what he learned from his parents.   " I was raised
in a church, you know that's the main thing, keep the lord first in everything that you do.
Communication skills, and just always keeping an open environment.”

He graduated from Bruton High School located at 185 E Rocham Beau Dr.,
Williamsburg, Va. Then he went on to earn a bachelor's degree from Old Dominion
University; majoring in architecture, minoring in criminal justice and political science.

His first job after graduating college at 22-years-old was in the court system working as a
magistrate. Now at 35-years-old he has more than tripled his income working for Verizon
Wireless. Lee said, he has a salary but the company gives bonuses based on
performance. He said, he won't make less than $80,000 but he could make more than
$90,000 a year.

"He is the most hands on manager I have ever worked with," said Raven Williams,
assistant manager for Verizon Wireless at Lee's store. "It has been nothing but an
awarding experience working with him."

Keisha Williams, 37, customer service representative, shared Williams compliment of
working with Lee.

"He is very motivational," she said. "He makes you feel comfortable at work. It is a great
work environment."

Today, Lee owns a five bedroom home in Varina, Va. He has been married for 12 years
and has three children; one boy and two girls. He goes to church at Village of Faith
Ministries located at 5741 South Laburnum Ave, Richmond, Va.

September 23, 2009

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Darnell Lee

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