Supporting My Heroes

After thirteen rewarding years, I moved on from the environmental health field and started looking for my next professional challenge.

While I explored what that might be, I tided myself over with projects that kept popping up. I found myself supporting activists, teams, emerging leaders, long-time executives, nonprofit organizations, small businesses, students, criminal defense attorneys, and others. Each partnership was a priceless opportunity to support people making a difference.

In one, an artisan asked me to help him make the messages on his website resonate with his audience. I heard myself respond: “Before I read what you've got, tell me about your people. Who are they? What do they get from you that they won’t get elsewhere? What need does your work fulfill for them?”

That moment clarified the connections between the varied collaborative success I’ve supported throughout my career: listening with curiosity, helping teammates distill a complicated truth into its simplest essence, and working with them to articulate and use it to propel their success.

I thought I was taking on fascinating but unrelated projects while I looked for my next thing. But this, I realized, was the next thing. And the first thing.

And really: the only thing. I’ve had many jobs in my career but only one role: to help teammates succeed. Asking questions. Listening to answers. Articulating what matters. Helping others touch their audiences.

It’s an honor to support people who are changing the world.

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