“Today is just the beginning, it’s where you go from here that matters,” said David McCullough, Jr., a high school english teacher from Wellesley, MA and a faculty commencement speaker. His words were powerful and more sophisticated than anything I heard at 18. He went on, “I urge you to do whatever you do for no other reason than you love it and you believe in its importance.” Mr. McCullough engaged my spirit with his directives…worthwhile whether you stand at commencement or in a transition somewhere post graduation. Continue reading…
The universal barriers of transition…
“I wish for my son the exact same thing that I wish for my daughter,” I said in response to a question posed by an audience member at a WITI event that I spoke at last spring. The woman asked me ‘what I hoped for’ for my daughter. “I want them to have the confidence to follow their heart, early.” From the get go. No deferrals. Continue reading…
Transition’s detractor: ourselves?
“You kept saying that you ‘didn’t want to go’ but you kept walking backwards so I didn’t stop you,” said an affable guide during a debrief session about my performance. The event in question was rappelling down a sheer rock face during a 10-day Mountaineering Course with Colorado Outward Bound. Did I mention that I had never camped before? Continue reading…
Risk and Failure
“I finally got around to reading your interest card,” said Andrall Pearson former President and COO of Pepsi Co. and my professor during a second year course at the Harvard Business School. His quip came as he leaned on my desk with hushed tones moments before class started. The card, an arcane pre-Internet system – think index card – held a few sentences authored by students to convey our interests to professors. On my card I’d divulged my dream of running an emerging business. That day the class was scheduled to discuss a 1980’s-style emerging business, Overseas Adventure Travel (OAT). OAT was founded in 1978 by a high school anthropology teacher in her three-story house in Cambridge, Massachusetts. My little visit from Andrall was my heads up, referred to as a soft-call, that I would be leading the class’ discussion that day. I had about a minute and one-half to prepare. Continue reading…
The QUESTION
“Please pull out a piece of paper,” so started my facilitation of a career event sponsored by the Emerging Leaders Program at the University of Massachusetts Boston. I asked each participant to write down what their professional aspirations were – using a 5 year time frame. We spent the next twenty minutes discussing what folks had jotted down. What happened next amazed me. Continue reading…