essie Lamb has just finished packing another box when she hops on this call. Though she’s made a lot of moves in her life, this one feels different. She’s leaving Montgomery, Texas, which is about 90 minutes north of Houston, and heading west to San Francisco. It’s not spur of the moment though; she’s accepted a role as vice president of self-storage at nodaFi. “It’s a big life change,” she says, “but I’m really excited about it.”
Although Lamb’s grandparents did their best to shelter her when she was younger and they were well, she mostly grew up in foster care, moving from one group home to another until she walked away from it all. Her story could easily be framed as one of triumph over adversity, but she gently resists that narrative. “Let’s not do that,” she says with a smile, knowing that many with her background don’t get happy endings. “It shouldn’t seem like a personal failing for those who couldn’t find their way.”
She credits much of her success to a lifelong love of learning, describing libraries as her sanctuary—quiet, safe spaces that existed in every town she landed in. She also had “teachers” who stepped in at key moments. “These are people who showed up when things could have gone one way or the other, and they made all the difference.”
One of those individuals was Cathy Zemlick, an administrator in an accelerated high school/college program Lamb signed up for at age 15 while she was living out of a truck. Because of her studious nature, Lamb was academically ahead of her peers, but she lacked two things: an address and money. “The books alone were a couple grand, which may as well have been a couple million to me,” she says.
Zemlick overlooked the gaps in Lamb’s paperwork that would’ve disqualified her and even paid for her college books. “This is why I don’t want this to come off as some hero’s journey,” Lamb says. “Not everyone has a Cathy Zemlick looking out for them.”
After she agreed to move, Lamb took a chance. “Are you hiring?” she asked as the manager was walking away. She stopped, turned, and said, “Tell you what, go clean up, come back, and we’ll talk.”
Lamb did just that—and got the job. There was one catch: She had to stay in school. “I was all about the hustle at that point, but she made me stick with school,” says Lamb. “So, I’d take one to two classes every semester, just to keep her happy.”
Between school and moving up the Starbucks ladder, Lamb and her husband had two children. Despite this joy, bills were piling up, so Lamb set her sights on an HR administrative and bookkeeping role at the grocery store Sprouts. Without a degree or Sprouts experience, however, she had to start at the bottom. “I went from a managerial role at Starbucks to bagging, corralling carts, cleaning restrooms, and mopping floors,” she says. But the hard work paid off. By the time she earned her degree, she knew Sprouts inside out, had gained HR administrative experience, and was hired as the HR manager at OB People’s Food Co-op.
“That’s when I knew my life had changed,” she says. “I got my own tiny office. It was basically a closet with my name on the door, but it was mine. I’d sit there sipping my morning coffee thinking, ‘I’ve made it.’”
Out of curiosity, she called, and it turns out someone in the corporate office had posted the listing, not realizing Craigslist wasn’t the usual place for scouting executive roles. Still, it set things in motion, and Lamb’s call led to a meeting with CEO Don Clauson. The two immediately hit it off.
“There are some people you just click with, and he was one of them,” Lamb says. “He became a friend, mentor, and advocate for me. When problems came up and I raised my hand to help, others might’ve said, ‘Go back to your cave, HR lady.’ Don didn’t do that. He said, ‘OK, Jessie, go fix it.’”
Lamb was so adept at her job that she eventually automated much of her role. “So, then I’d ask for something else to fix,” she says with a laugh.
Clauson promoted her to vice president of HR and handed her the call center. Once she’d restructured that, he gave her the Imperial Valley portfolio (four self-storage properties in the desert where temps reached 120 degrees). Still, Lamb committed to doing it right. She worked at each facility and discovered that each had a strong team and a secure market position.
“All I did was put better systems in place and worked with vendors to get things back on track,” she says modestly. She returned to Clauson with a surprising recommendation: Keep the portfolio. He did, and it became SPMI’s top performing portfolio that same year.
Clauson kept raising the bar, and Lamb kept meeting it, becoming vice president of California self-storage and then vice president of operations for self-storage in Texas.
That business was her own consulting firm, Bright Beetle, named after a brooch her Grandma Jackson always wore. “She used to say it brought her luck,” Lamb says, tapping the brooch that’s now on her own lapel.
The venture took off quickly. “I was fully booked before my last day at SPMI,” she says. “It was a fun adventure. But while some people thrive going from one thing to another, that was my life for many years. I’ve realized how deeply I value the roots that working closely with a single team establishes. I had to pick where I wanted to grow next.”
In her new role, Lamb will expand nodaFi’s industry presence, assist with product development and positioning, and lead customer success strategies. “I love the self-storage industry, and I knew I wanted to stay in it,” she says. “I’m also picky about who I work with; I like approachable, hardworking, down-to-earth people who are passionate about what they do. The nodaFi team has also made their home in the self-storage industry and they share my same values, making the decision to join their team easy.”
As the interview wraps, Lamb is all smiles, but there’s a bit of side-eye. “No hero’s journey, right? No overcoming adversity angle?”
It’s hard not to go there when the story is this inspiring, but Lamb, who also volunteers with food banks and homeless shelters, makes it clear to avoid that road. “I am where I am in spite of my circumstances, not because of them,” she says.
A recollection makes her smile. “My Grandpa Jackson—a lot of people thought he was an ass, even though he was a big old marshmallow on the inside—gave me advice I try to live by. He would say, ‘You can’t get to where you want to go standing still. Move, girl. Keep moving.’”
And with just a few more boxes left to pack, that’s exactly what she’s going to do.
Everyone in self-storage has a strange story, and Lamb doesn’t hesitate when asked about hers.
“Chickens,” she says. “Hundreds and hundreds of chickens. I was still pretty new to ops, walking a property with the assistant manager when I heard a weird noise from one of the units. I said, ‘Is that unit clucking?’”
“Oh yeah, that’s the chicken guy,” the assistant manager replied. “Probably got 500 chickens in there.”
The tenant had been importing live chickens for months, and the young manager didn’t know better.
“He was maybe 18, so I gave him a break. But he goes, ‘Wait, you can’t store chickens?’ And I said, ‘It’s 100 degrees, no ventilation … no, you cannot store chickens.’”
When she called the tenant, he was furious, thinking paying rent meant he could store anything, even chickens.
“I told him to get his chickens or I’d call the police, the ASPCA, KFC—whoever it took,” Lamb says through laughter. “He got the message and came and got his chickens.”