Recently I had a spontaneous lunch with two girlfriends who lead their own businesses like I do. The three of us run wildly different enterprises in wildly different ways, but that day we found out that we had a lot in common: we were weary. We were tired of being 24/7 cheerleaders and were in...
For a couple dozen years now I’ve spent the majority of my professional life helping leaders strategize and create their brands’ unique playbooks — blueprints for internal and external storytelling. It’s work that I love to do as I tap into each company’s group genius and help orchestrate a more unified, simplified, and amplified brand...
For all of us in the midst of happy careers, the headlines keep taunting us with talk (and action!) of “The Great Resignation.” From the The Wall Street Journal to The Atlantic to Inc. to Medium to the The New York Times, the stories abound of the millions of people saying goodbye to jobs they presumably once loved. Jobs...
Last week my husband and I hiked one of our favorite alpine trails in one of our not-so-quiet-or-quaint-anymore Colorado mountain towns. In the summer, this meadow is full of diverse and multicolored wildflowers. The trail is appropriately called Oh-Be-Joyful, and it brings me joy just to say its name, let alone engage in its wonder...
Hammocks make me smile, whether they’re occupied or not, still or moving softly in the wind, hanging in a land-locked backyard or enticingly at a beachside resort, or simply pictured beautifully in a catalog (thank you, L.L.Bean for inspiring my purchase decades ago!). Hammocks make me smile whether they’re hung from pine trees during a...
I have a friend who detests the practice of turning nouns into verbs: summer into summering, winter into wintering. You may feel the same. But I kind of like it. For example, I’ve been partial to turtling and sabbathing these days. And now, springing. I’ve always been attracted to verbs and their action-orientedness. In fact,...
I know the pandemic has made us all a little more _____________________ these days. Fill in your blank. As an Italian-American, I have only one answer to that question: EMOTIONAL. No surprise. We Italians are an expressive sort, complete with lots of coordinating hand gestures. (I can still vividly picture the Italians in Lombardy in...
It’s a true gift to work with friends. Ellen Kresky and I have been friends since she was the creative director at Celestial Seasonings almost two decades ago. There, we worked on brand and product fit charts, re-energizing the retail store, and leveraging brand purpose throughout all touchpoints. When she became the global creative director...
I love that right after celebrating his 71st birthday and in the middle of a worldwide pandemic, Bruce Springsteen released a brand new album, Letter to You. That’s after a few other highly productive years back-to-back: Writing a 528-page autobiography, creating films, cutting other albums, playing worldwide tours, and doing a 236-show run on Broadway....
I was a born beach lover. I spent most of my childhood summers, like Springsteen did, blissfully along the shoreline of New Jersey — Ocean City, Beach Haven, Point Pleasant, Seaside, Wildwood. Then I moved to South Florida for undergraduate and graduate business degrees, where soaking up the sun while inhaling the scent of Hawaiian...
