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I started my career, literally, as an undergraduate in college. Yep. I’ve basically been doing the exact same work since I was 18 years old. The formal starting point was when I participated in a course called the President’s Leadership Program. I was in the inaugural course and it was being facilitated by a woman named Barb, who I came to know as a preeminent facilitator, voracious learner, and way ahead of her time. Barb designed and facilitated a curriculum that covered interculturalism, leadership, and management, and in ways that connected the three topics. In the early 1990s, leadership, management, and what is now described as equity, diversity and inclusion were approached as wholly separate topics. The program included deep-dive explorations of culture and cultural identity, power and oppression, leadership philosophies, and a lot of self-assessment, role-playing, and simulations. In that year, I came to life intellectually. 

My enthusiastic participation...

Endings help us encode. They provide a conclusion and embed the gift of finality, allowing the opportunity for new ideas, relationships, and seasons to be imagined, created, renewed, or reborn. But the beauty of endings only exists when they exercise their utility in being definitive. In other words, the endings have to actually happen, which is how most people or organizations find themselves stuck in an inevitable perpetual cycle of readdressing things that should have been put to rest. With a better understanding of endings, what they are, and how to utilize them effectively, we can finally take those steps of progression, elevate to our highest potential, and birth new beginnings. 

"It is always important to know when something has reached its end. Closing circles, shutting doors, finishing chapters, it doesn't matter what we call it; what matters is to leave in the past those moments in life that are over." 

― Paulo Coelho, The Zahir 

How do...

^{My sisters, Monya (left) and Melanie (right) with Angie and me.} 

One of my favorite people on the planet is my adopted Godmother, Angie. I met her in 2011 through what I still consider to be Divine Intervention. She would say, always the pragmatist, that we just know the same people. 

Now 82 years old, she has opened up my mind to all that a woman can be, can do. She is an incredibly hands-on and loving (and loved in return) mother, grandmother, great grandmother. She has a brilliant, long-term, and loving marriage. Without needing it at the time, she pursued the highest degree in her field from Northwestern University, then went on, more than 40 years ago and with four young children, to launch a successful business. To this day her long-term clients will not let her retire; she’s the best of the best at what she does. She has a circle of friends that is bar-none and she lights up a room with positive energy every time she dawns a doorway. In addition, she’s...