Pay Close Attention. Get Curious.

Coaching, Entrepreneurship, Facilitation, Leadership Development, Reimagining Racial Equity, Transformation

A sparkle. A glimmer. A sense. Follow it.
My kid and I wandered into a Lewis and Clark museum to learn about the history and specifically the locale. Alongside the Columbia River, the museum had a vast 40-foot high foyer, a set of beautiful windows with a view of the Columbia River. As we meandered through the exhibits, we began to notice how the story was being told – the suffering of those on the expedition itself, the use of weapons, the cold, the loss of life, and what they discovered on their journey, with a very small reference to the natives that helped them including Sacagawea, who was 16 years old (and had a baby on her back), and the wife of a 46-year-old man. I left the museum with a strong sense of the heroism of Lewis and Clark and a curiosity about the untold stories of the Indigenous people they encountered along the way. What are the stories we choose not to tell?

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Pay Close Attention to the Little Things

Coaching, Conscious Capitalism, Entrepreneurship, Leadership Development, Reimagining Racial Equity, Transformation

Pay close attention to the little things. Don’t look away.

I don’t live in Florida – and yet I couldn’t look away. How did Florida position itself prior to the AP African American History conflict with the College Board? After doing some research, I was struck by how methodically they were implementing changes in their state. They have rejected over 40% of math textbooks because of their new legislation about banning critical race theory and are replacing the leadership at New College to establish a Board majority that will be nominated by the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis. According to the Washington Post “…at least four more states will review the new Advanced Placement African American Studies course to see if it conflicts with their policies or laws restricting the teaching of race … Arkansas, Virginia, North Dakota, and Mississippi.”

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Meet my friend, Change.

Entrepreneurship, Reimagining Racial Equity, Transformation

Change won’t be happy that I told you this, but we’ve had a challenging relationship. Perhaps you know someone like Change, though perhaps a different name and a different experience. We used to wrestle – I wanted to decide what areas of my life Change was allowed to work on. Change was relentless and fighting Change was exhausting. One day, I found myself on a cold tile floor, overwhelmed and then I suddenly realized that every strategy I tried was insufficient to fight Change. I had to find another way to be in a relationship with Change without giving up my power.

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What Makes DEI Sustainable?

Entrepreneurship

I was recently asked why I moved into the DEI Space.The question has an assumption built in – that DEI was a different space. It was not that my focus had changed to a different space, it was that in excavating a healthy racial identity, my curiosity deepened into exploring myself and my ancestry which then broadened into equity.

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Revealed: The Polarities of Capitalism

Conscious Capitalism, Leadership Development, Teams, Transformation

In 1980, I went to China for the first time after it had just opened up to foreigners. I witnessed seeing trees the circumference of my wrist as the impoverished people had cut them down to use for firewood. I experienced family members sleeping on plywood bedframes with bamboo mats despite high levels of education. I marveled at the formal transportation of black bicycles stacked up by the hundreds, as people used them to move from place to place. Tiananmen Square was nearly empty as there seemed to be few domestic tourists. The Forbidden City was nearly empty in 1980 and was not yet open to the local people. At that time, Deng Xiao Ping had been elevated to the leader of the Communist Party and was interested in market-oriented economic reforms as “to get rich is glorious.”

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The Power of Leadership

Coaching, Leadership Development, Transformation

The confluence of politics, leadership and 8th grade history class.

I refuse to name the political candidate by his name so will call him “he who shall not be named.” To watch him rise to the ranks sends chills up my spine both for the toxicity of his leadership and the momentum he seems to have created in his rise.

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