I’ve probably bought 200 volumes in the genre, all promising to offer up the keys to eternal happiness, flawless skin, heaps of money or somesuch. On my desk this moment, I’ve got “The Checklist Manifesto: How To Get Things Right,” “The Generosity Network: New Transformational Tools for Successful Fund-raising” and “52 Ways to Live a Kick-Ass Life: BS-Free Wisdom to Ignite Your Inner Badass and Live the Life You Deserve.” Continue reading “How-To Books: You’re Reading Them Wrong”
I’ve probably bought 200 volumes in the genre, all promising to offer up the keys to eternal happiness, flawless skin, heaps of money or somesuch. On my desk this moment, I’ve got “The Checklist Manifesto: How To Get Things Right,” “The Generosity Network: New Transformational Tools for Successful Fund-raising” and “52 Ways to Live a Kick-Ass Life: BS-Free Wisdom to Ignite Your Inner Badass and Live the Life You Deserve.” Continue reading “How-To Books: You’re Reading Them Wrong”
A not-quite-midlife crisis sent me back to school last year–VMFA Studio School. There I tried to shed my business journalist skin by enrolling in a riot of short story, poetry and photography classes. The highlights: the heartfelt tutelage of writing instructor Susan Hankla, quirky new friends like fellow over-enroller Kim Drew Wright, and a glut of writing that made up in fun what it lacked in skill.
I love Kim’s deeply imagined and affecting stories and so I jumped at the chance to participate in this writing process blog tour with her. You can check out her writing process post here and see my answers below. Continue reading “My Writing Process”
A not-quite-midlife crisis sent me back to school last year–VMFA Studio School. There I tried to shed my business journalist skin by enrolling in a riot of short story, poetry and photography classes. The highlights: the heartfelt tutelage of writing instructor Susan Hankla, quirky new friends like fellow over-enroller Kim Drew Wright, and a glut of writing that made up in fun what it lacked in skill.
I love Kim’s deeply imagined and affecting stories and so I jumped at the chance to participate in this writing process blog tour with her. You can check out her writing process post here and see my answers below. Continue reading “My Writing Process”
As “Scandal” careens toward its season finale Thursday, I can’t help wondering along with Olivia Pope what her life would be if she’d hopped on the plane to oblivion that Papa Pope offered. What would the gladiator who has so much to lose–a fierce wardrobe, challenging career and the leader of the free world–have done if she went on the lam?
Well… read, of course! Surely, she could have used some book therapy after rigging elections, taming assassins and wearing the white (now grayish black) hat. I know Liv likes her wine, but only a strong cocktail of self-help with a splash of fiction could fix this. Continue reading “Recommended Reading for Olivia Pope”
As “Scandal” careens toward its season finale Thursday, I can’t help wondering along with Olivia Pope what her life would be if she’d hopped on the plane to oblivion that Papa Pope offered. What would the gladiator who has so much to lose–a fierce wardrobe, challenging career and the leader of the free world–have done if she went on the lam?
Well… read, of course! Surely, she could have used some book therapy after rigging elections, taming assassins and wearing the white (now grayish black) hat. I know Liv likes her wine, but only a strong cocktail of self-help with a splash of fiction could fix this. Continue reading “Recommended Reading for Olivia Pope”
Jenny Holmgrain is a college student who is busy mounting her first camp, as the founder and co-director of Camp Kesem VCU. While other students are studying, partying or loafing, Holmgrain is raising funds, recruiting staff and creating a safe haven for kids.
The student-run chapter of a national organization hopes to host 30 campers—all children affected by a parent’s cancer—at a free weeklong residential camp at Camp Horizons, in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains. It’s a cause close to my heart—both Holmgrain and I lost our fathers to cancer.
Continue reading “How Jenny Holmgrain (Founder Camp Kesem VCU) Makes Things Happen”
Jenny Holmgrain is a college student who is busy mounting her first camp, as the founder and co-director of Camp Kesem VCU. While other students are studying, partying or loafing, Holmgrain is raising funds, recruiting staff and creating a safe haven for kids.
The student-run chapter of a national organization hopes to host 30 campers—all children affected by a parent’s cancer—at a free weeklong residential camp at Camp Horizons, in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains. It’s a cause close to my heart—both Holmgrain and I lost our fathers to cancer.
Continue reading “How Jenny Holmgrain (Founder Camp Kesem VCU) Makes Things Happen”
Lupita Nyong’o is gorgeous. People magazine got that right when handing her the 2014 “World’s Most Beautiful” title. However, her greatest allure isn’t her aesthetic, it’s her signature mix of confidence, humility and wisdom. She understands that the positive attention she garners for her looks, ultimately, isn’t about her at all.
Rather it’s about all of the little brown girls who will see their beauty affirmed along with hers. Tellingly, when asked how she felt about being named “World’s Most Beautiful,” Nyong’o spoke of them, not herself. “I was happy for all the girls who would see me on the cover and feel a little more seen,” she said. Continue reading “The Most Beautiful Thing about Lupita Nyong’o”
Lupita Nyong’o is gorgeous. People magazine got that right when handing her the 2014 “World’s Most Beautiful” title. However, her greatest allure isn’t her aesthetic, it’s her signature mix of confidence, humility and wisdom. She understands that the positive attention she garners for her looks, ultimately, isn’t about her at all.
Rather it’s about all of the little brown girls who will see their beauty affirmed along with hers. Tellingly, when asked how she felt about being named “World’s Most Beautiful,” Nyong’o spoke of them, not herself. “I was happy for all the girls who would see me on the cover and feel a little more seen,” she said. Continue reading “The Most Beautiful Thing about Lupita Nyong’o”
As I watch the #weneeddiversebooks hashtag fly on Twitter, I’m reminded that seeing some element of yourself reflected in the books you read can affirm you in meaningful, life-altering ways.
I’m so thankful to my parents for making it easy for me to fall in love with books. From Day One when they named me after Maya Angelou, they set me up for a grand reading life.
Ironically, I don’t have any memories of my parents reading to me, even though I know they did. (My dad said I learned to read at 3 and insisted from then on that I do it myself.) What I do recall is the excitement of tangling with books at our neighborhood library. My mom and I always parted ways just inside the front doors of the Ayres Branch Library, where I hung a sharp right into the colorful juvenile section. It was the ‘80s and the library (the renovated home of a deceased doctor) was small enough and the librarians familiar enough (one lived on my block) that kids roamed freely.
Continue reading “We Need Diverse Books to Build Character through Characters”
As I watch the #weneeddiversebooks hashtag fly on Twitter, I’m reminded that seeing some element of yourself reflected in the books you read can affirm you in meaningful, life-altering ways.
I’m so thankful to my parents for making it easy for me to fall in love with books. From Day One when they named me after Maya Angelou, they set me up for a grand reading life.
Ironically, I don’t have any memories of my parents reading to me, even though I know they did. (My dad said I learned to read at 3 and insisted from then on that I do it myself.) What I do recall is the excitement of tangling with books at our neighborhood library. My mom and I always parted ways just inside the front doors of the Ayres Branch Library, where I hung a sharp right into the colorful juvenile section. It was the ‘80s and the library (the renovated home of a deceased doctor) was small enough and the librarians familiar enough (one lived on my block) that kids roamed freely.
Continue reading “We Need Diverse Books to Build Character through Characters”
Leadership and service. When I started blogging, I imagined these two topics—and their intersection and interaction—would inspire the bulk of my posts, spurring me and my readers to action.
There would be inspirational accounts of women who sacrificed for others and musings on my own (albeit halting) efforts to lift as I climb, as well as stories of women business leaders. After all, nothing motivates women (me included) more than women forging successful paths and reporting back on their adventures. (They did it; so can we!)
Funny enough, I’ve since discovered that the two topics aren’t as distinct as I had imagined. Instead, they feel like mirror images. The greatest leadership I’ve chronicled looks a lot like service, and the greatest service like leadership.
Take my interview subject Katherine Wintsch. Her mission to help moms led her to launch a marketing firm with global impact. Or Sarah Rinaldi. Her drive to tell other people’s stories pushed her to the helm of a documentary production company.
A recent project got me thinking about this interconnectedness of service and leadership. It was an interview I gave about my idol Lucy Goode Brooks for an online video series. The series, called “Finding Tomorrow: Experiences in Black Leadership,” is produced by the Cheats Movement and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. The project explores challenges facing the black community today and the leadership required to move forward. For my contribution, I chose to examine the past, and Brooks in particular, to illuminate what we need to drive progress now.
As I note in the video, you don’t have to be someone special to lead. You don’t need a title, money, a certification or a degree to lead. All that’s required is the awareness to see an issue and the energy to take a step in the right direction. We always have our enthusiasm and our voice to bring to the table.
That’s what Brooks did In 1871. She lead and served when she rallied the support of her sewing circle and the broader community to found the Friends Asylum for Colored Orphans, a home for black children separated from their families by slavery and war. The organization (now called FRIENDS Association for Children) still exists 143 years later and continues to serve Richmond’s most vulnerable children.
Her story exemplifies that fuzziness between leadership–which we think of as defined by strategic, decisive action–and service, which connotes something softer and more intimate. Her life and action reveal that the highest acts of service require the fortitude and strength we associate with leaders, and the greatest leadership originates from the simplest of human connections and the most genuine impulses to aid one another.
Perhaps service is best seen as the gateway to leadership: See a need, lend a hand, rally others, make a difference.
When Emily Elliott’s oldest child Charlie was ready for kindergarten, she followed him to school, literally, taking a job as a fifth-grade teacher at his campus, St. Edward-Epiphany Catholic School. “It was as close to homeschool as you can get without going insane,” she jokes.
Taking the job was a way for Elliott to earn needed income and be close to her children. Today, she’s the school’s principal, and still treasures the connection with her kids. I talked with her about leadership and the trade-offs she’s made to do her best as a full-time mother and full-time educator.
When Emily Elliott’s oldest child Charlie was ready for kindergarten, she followed him to school, literally, taking a job as a fifth-grade teacher at his campus, St. Edward-Epiphany Catholic School. “It was as close to homeschool as you can get without going insane,” she jokes.
Taking the job was a way for Elliott to earn needed income and be close to her children. Today, she’s the school’s principal, and still treasures the connection with her kids. I talked with her about leadership and the trade-offs she’s made to do her best as a full-time mother and full-time educator.
I gave the Senior Convocation Address for Richmond Public Schools this year and I count the experience among the great privileges of my life. I accepted the challenge of addressing 2,000 (2,000!) people—graduating seniors from eight city high schools and their friends, family and teachers—because of a William James quote that sits on my desk: “Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.”
Dressed in regalia from robe to mortarboard and flanked by school and city officials, I took in the contrast between the girth of the Richmond Coliseum and the elegance of the ceremony. Somehow the interplay between the pomp (Mendelssohn’s “War March of the Priests”) and the circumstance (a hulking sports arena) felt appropriate. It mirrored my charge as a speaker—to say something lofty enough to suit the occasion yet concrete enough to make a real-world impact. I was addressing a diverse body of students headed for the rigors of college, the military and the workforce.
I gave the Senior Convocation Address for Richmond Public Schools this year and I count the experience among the great privileges of my life. I accepted the challenge of addressing 2,000 (2,000!) people—graduating seniors from eight city high schools and their friends, family and teachers—because of a William James quote that sits on my desk: “Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.”
Dressed in regalia from robe to mortarboard and flanked by school and city officials, I took in the contrast between the girth of the Richmond Coliseum and the elegance of the ceremony. Somehow the interplay between the pomp (Mendelssohn’s “War March of the Priests”) and the circumstance (a hulking sports arena) felt appropriate. It mirrored my charge as a speaker—to say something lofty enough to suit the occasion yet concrete enough to make a real-world impact. I was addressing a diverse body of students headed for the rigors of college, the military and the workforce.
A less-is-better ethic is taking hold of my life. Influenced by an eclectic mix of productivity gurus, leadership coaches, spiritual guides and environmentalists whose teachings are surprisingly similar, I’m getting increasingly choosy. Refusing invitations. Declining requests. Limiting commitments. Editing my closet. And generally whittling away the excesses of my life to focus on the few things that really matter to me.
Depending upon your advisor, this focus on pursuing fewer activities of higher quality apparently can help us fulfill our potential, save the planet, find God. As a recovering overscheduled-overcommitted-overwhelmed person, I’m all in with the trend…except for one area: my books.
A less-is-better ethic is taking hold of my life. Influenced by an eclectic mix of productivity gurus, leadership coaches, spiritual guides and environmentalists whose teachings are surprisingly similar, I’m getting increasingly choosy. Refusing invitations. Declining requests. Limiting commitments. Editing my closet. And generally whittling away the excesses of my life to focus on the few things that really matter to me.
Depending upon your advisor, this focus on pursuing fewer activities of higher quality apparently can help us fulfill our potential, save the planet, find God. As a recovering overscheduled-overcommitted-overwhelmed person, I’m all in with the trend…except for one area: my books.
