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.
Dear Zora,
This is how you learn to love your hair in a world that requires such lessons. First, you remember who gave you that glorious head of curls–your parents, your ancestors, your Creator. Then, you care for it like a treasured inheritance.
Loving your hair, like loving your family, your days, your life, requires two things: reverence and effort. To truly love your hair, you must hold it in high regard and you must behave like you do. As you behold it in a mirror or touch its willful strands, you must pause to consider what it does for you and to define what it means to you. Then you must treat it accordingly.
Dear Zora,
This is how you learn to love your hair in a world that requires such lessons. First, you remember who gave you that glorious head of curls–your parents, your ancestors, your Creator. Then, you care for it like a treasured inheritance.
Loving your hair, like loving your family, your days, your life, requires two things: reverence and effort. To truly love your hair, you must hold it in high regard and you must behave like you do. As you behold it in a mirror or touch its willful strands, you must pause to consider what it does for you and to define what it means to you. Then you must treat it accordingly.
I was invited to give a Welcome Week speech at VCU and the occasion provided a great opportunity for me to reflect on my college years. Ultimately, I decided to leave the incoming students with three pieces of advice (the Freshmen ABCs) that I hope will serve them well for a lifetime. Continue reading “The Freshmen ABCs”
I was invited to give a Welcome Week speech at VCU and the occasion provided a great opportunity for me to reflect on my college years. Ultimately, I decided to leave the incoming students with three pieces of advice (the Freshmen ABCs) that I hope will serve them well for a lifetime. Continue reading “The Freshmen ABCs”
Angela Patton captured the hearts and imaginations of hundreds of thousands of online viewers with a TED talk describing an unusual (and uplifting) father-daughter dance—between incarcerated dads and their young daughters. The dance was the fruit of a girl-led social-change project convened by a grassroots organization Patton began in Richmond, Va.
In every setting, Patton brings a palpable enthusiasm, a drive to connect and uplift that I wish I could bottle up and spread around. She’s not “busy,” she’s driven–and I love it. I admire her ability to be an engaged, attentive mom, even as she expands her own capacity and power to lead on a national scale as executive director of Girls for a Change. She illustrates daily that womanhood and motherhood aren’t impediments to leadership and in fact can be powerful catalysts for it.
Continue reading “How Angela Patton (CEO of Girls for a Change) Makes Things Happen”
Angela Patton captured the hearts and imaginations of hundreds of thousands of online viewers with a TED talk describing an unusual (and uplifting) father-daughter dance—between incarcerated dads and their young daughters. The dance was the fruit of a girl-led social-change project convened by a grassroots organization Patton began in Richmond, Va.
In every setting, Patton brings a palpable enthusiasm, a drive to connect and uplift that I wish I could bottle up and spread around. She’s not “busy,” she’s driven–and I love it. I admire her ability to be an engaged, attentive mom, even as she expands her own capacity and power to lead on a national scale as executive director of Girls for a Change. She illustrates daily that womanhood and motherhood aren’t impediments to leadership and in fact can be powerful catalysts for it.
Continue reading “How Angela Patton (CEO of Girls for a Change) Makes Things Happen”
When I was born on September 14, 1980 in Ravenna, Ohio my Afro was, in large part, unremarkable. It was expected. It was natural. At that stage in life, my hair was my own and was simply viewed as a threadlike outgrowth of the epidermis. No one would have termed it a political statement or seen it as a representation of racial pride. It was simply the natural curl of a baby’s hair, uncorrupted by public perceptions, deeper meaning or Johnson’s baby shampoo.
Over time, however, my hair would gain greater significance. As I aged and styles changed, it would become the subject of much scrutiny, ranging from beauty shop banter to the public discourse on race in America. It would become relevant in job interviews, determine my acceptability in certain social circles and become an external manifestation of my self-perception.
When I was born on September 14, 1980 in Ravenna, Ohio my Afro was, in large part, unremarkable. It was expected. It was natural. At that stage in life, my hair was my own and was simply viewed as a threadlike outgrowth of the epidermis. No one would have termed it a political statement or seen it as a representation of racial pride. It was simply the natural curl of a baby’s hair, uncorrupted by public perceptions, deeper meaning or Johnson’s baby shampoo.
Over time, however, my hair would gain greater significance. As I aged and styles changed, it would become the subject of much scrutiny, ranging from beauty shop banter to the public discourse on race in America. It would become relevant in job interviews, determine my acceptability in certain social circles and become an external manifestation of my self-perception.
Contaminated time is your enemy. Think of those tainted moments you spend worrying about one thing when you should be focused on something else–and more worthwhile, like your family or sleep. It’s the role overload, task density and time crunch that scatter your attention, tamp down your spirits and vaporize your impact.
One surprisingly simple solution is to literally get things off your mind, by putting them down on paper, be it print or digital. Productivity guru David Allen recommends maintaining a list of every single thing you are serious about accomplishing that requires more than one action step. In his experience, folks typically juggle 30-100 projects at a time. Sound familiar?
Continue reading “How to Clear Your Mind to Get Things Done”
Contaminated time is your enemy. Think of those tainted moments you spend worrying about one thing when you should be focused on something else–and more worthwhile, like your family or sleep. It’s the role overload, task density and time crunch that scatter your attention, tamp down your spirits and vaporize your impact.
One surprisingly simple solution is to literally get things off your mind, by putting them down on paper, be it print or digital. Productivity guru David Allen recommends maintaining a list of every single thing you are serious about accomplishing that requires more than one action step. In his experience, folks typically juggle 30-100 projects at a time. Sound familiar?
Continue reading “How to Clear Your Mind to Get Things Done”
