Melissa Viviane Jefferson, aka Lizzo, has a sweet, joyful, tenacious disposition. Thanks to an inordinate amount of musical talent and the popularity of her self-affirming songs, she also has power and influence … a lot of power and influence. And she’s using it. Last month, Lizzo pledged $500,000 from her upcoming “Special” tour to a...
As a keynote speaker on the topic of courageous leadership, every news day is full of delicious speech fodder for me. Leaders, leadership (and the lack thereof) are all over the news. The Brits have their royals, we have endless hours of suspense-filled dramas brought to us by people in leadership positions, both large and...
Which female recording artist has 46 Grammy nominations, a nearly billion-dollar entrepreneurial empire, has donated over 100 million books to children, and celebrated her 76th birthday earlier this year? Admit it, if you hadn’t seen my headline, you might have guessed Beyoncé, JLo, Taylor or Gaga (minus the age part), but the lady in question...
Hah, you say. What can an unapologetic, 39-year-old soccer superstar teach me about kicking bootie in the business world? A lot, actually. Carli wasn’t a child soccer prodigy. She had to work for everything she achieved. Hard. She said her first Olympics training camp in 2004 was a “big wake-up call.” Instead of backing down,...
The other day I got an impassioned email from one of my colleagues about a new trend in customer behavior. While I can’t say I was shocked by what she has endured as a frontline essential worker over the last 20 months, I can say I was disappointed. Listen, I’m all for customers telling us...
Can you imagine being one of the people at Google charged with tracking trends? “Whoa! Hey Sally! Check this out … 4.6 billion people just searched ‘How to write a resignation letter.’ OK, I made that figure up, but seriously. People are mic dropping all over the workforce. Boom. They’re out. Some aren’t even bothering...
If a firecracker went off near me right now, I think I would explode. At least it would be colorful. Right? We’re all so anxious and out of sorts right now. Everything is off kilter, topsy turvy. Uncertainty lingers. The Delta variant lurks. Stocks are up. Economists are wary. But we don’t have to worry....
Recently, I lost my electricity for about 20 hours. You would think that by now I’d know how to be an adult about these things. But no, I was completely disoriented. After a healthy amount of first-world-problem whining, I managed to get ahold of myself. I actually found a working flashlight. And lit a fire...
I returned to the office … and it didn’t go so well. The cats had taken up residence on my desk. There was a territorial dispute. We’re still in negotiations, but I’m happy with the progress we’ve made so far. At one point, when tensions were escalating and I needed to step away for a...
Pshaw, you say. That girl doesn’t need courage, she can sing. She can move. But Beyoncé wasn’t always Beyoncé. She used to have two names, just like you and me. Courage is what allowed her to push through the crowd of less remarkable artists, to leap over the hurdles the industry and bias and life...
