“There was no money,” said my mother in response to a question I’d asked her last week about my grandfather. “He was pre-med at St. Bonaventure‘s,” she said. My grandfather was a 1st generation American whose Italian immigrant family had settled in upstate New York close to the turn of the 20th century. His father died when he was very young leaving a family of 6 children. His mother remarried. Tony – as my grandfather was lovingly known – never went on to med school. Continue reading…
Is there a choice you need to make?
“Make the right choices now. Don’t choose out of negativity,” said Marion Jones, former five-time Olympic medalist and the morning’s keynote speaker at the Massachusetts Conference for Women on December 8, 2011. Continue reading…
MA Conference for Women: Treat Yourself!
Are you local to Boston? Planning a personal day over the next few weeks for holiday shopping? Consider skipping whatever you’d planned to attend the 8th Annual MA Conference for Women on December 8th. Continue reading…
Her Place at the Table and Thanksgiving Treats
I’ve had Deborah Kolb on the brain since last spring. I registered to attend a day long event last June that she was hosting at Simmons College. It fell during one of the those weeks when I got three days notice for an end-of-year event from my children’s school. It still amazes me that such short notice exists. The summary is that I missed the Kolb event… and missed her book on my summer book tour. Not sure I can cite the school alone for being disorganized!
Kolb is a noted lecturer and educator on the topic of negotiating – particularly women & negotiation. This week – I jumped on a pre-Thanksgiving TABLE twist and finally read her 2004 missive, “Her Place at the Table.” Continue reading…
Transition Triumphs?
“I’ve been reading your blog and thinking ‘ugh’ all this transition stuff,” said Victoria Taylor, CEO and founder of Victoria Gourmet, lamenting that transition would be ahead of her again sometime. Victoria’s remarks made me wonder, ‘Can we ever triumph over transition?’ Continue reading…
Analogy: a powerful transition tool
Last weekend I attended a training session for volunteers for a local youth group. A wide cross-section of folks attended. One gentleman, a youth minister from a local church named Sal, spoke at length. Sal shared — as only you can share on folding chairs in the basement of a school on a Sunday morning — a story that I found surprisingly powerful. Continue reading…
Miracle waiting to happen?
This summer I remember sitting outside my neighbor’s house having coffee and waffles one morning and being totally struck by one of their visitors. She was a woman who was probably in her early- to mid-sixties visiting with her husband of roughly the same age. We’d been invited to join our neighbors and their guests for breakfast outside their cottage under a beautiful shade tree – in a pretty garden a few hundred feet from the sea. What could be nicer with a coffee in hand (ok, decaf) and someone else worrying about my children’s breakfast? Continue reading…
Must we all be entrepreneurs?
This week I was thinking about how to define “transition.” It brought to mind one of my favorite movie scenes of all time, a scene from the Dead Poets Society. In it Robin Williams plays a high school English teacher, Professor Keating. At one point he has each child walk to the front of the classroom and stand on top of his desk – looking out at the class. It is a powerful moment that allows the kids to see that one can get great energy by taking the time to use another lens to look at something familiar. Continue reading…
What’s your Agenda?
” I wasted a lot of time,” confided a long-time friend as she described the years that she had not worked outside the home. She and I were having a conversation about her decision to return to work. At the time she had three high school aged children. The dialogue stayed with me.
A recent conversation got me thinking about this ‘wasted time’ exchange. A friend was out and about with a visible kick to her step. Continue reading…
The Baseline: An elusive tool
Last Sunday my family and I participated in the Boston Marathon Jimmy Fund Walk. For those who aren’t Bostonians, the Jimmy Fund is the fund-raising arm of the Dana Farber Cancer Institute dedicated to supporting research on childhood cancers. My daughter and I were walking a pace or two behind our team. We happened to be interspersed with a group called Jessica’s Twinkling Stars. There were maybe 30 of them including 8 or 10 little girls about my daughter’s age. Each of the girls had a light purple crocheted hat; some hats were adorned with white flowers. My eight year old daughter was captivated by the hats. Continue reading…