Systems Thinking
A repeated question, a manual reminder, a workaround someone built just to survive the day, a downstream team absorbing extra work - none of those are annoyances to route around. Each one is the system telling you where it's under-built.
Storytelling
Change management, policy updates, handbooks, recruiting... these responsibilities all require storytelling. Story is the least invasive way to make sure your message gets replayed later, at the right time, along the lines you intended.
Glue person
Being the glue is a genuine strength. The most sophisticated thing you can do with it is turn it into something the company keeps after you're gone. Every scaling company has one: the person who holds up the walls and the ceiling, who makes sure the right thing
Project Management
What it takes to help an early-stage company scale in one of the most regulated corners of American healthcare - and why, underneath a thousand federal requirements, the work was always about people. Picture the least romantic project you can: a small startup, more than a thousand federal requirements, a
Psychological Safety
The places that get the most out of people are the ones that ask the most of them and make them feel safest at the same time. Pressure without safety produces fear and turnover. Safety without standards produces drift.
Inclusion
Real inclusion isn't a form you fill out in advance; it's already there when you arrive. Picture this: you're deaf, and a friend texts you at noon - she's got an extra ticket, the headliner's on at nine, come. For most
When the environment changes, the organizations that thrive aren't the ones waiting for normal to come back - they're the ones willing to learn, adapt, and build. In early 2020, the world - and our proud local Las Vegas community - faced new challenges. Life is Beautiful existed to
How I drew Revelry and the Startup of the Year community into the same rooms in 2018–2019 - and turned that overlap into stages for our people and a whole new New Orleans conference. In 2018 I was Head of Communications and Culture at Revelry, a New Orleans software company.
What a decade of building and steadying teams taught me about trust, remote work's real limits, protecting people's time, and why the systems only matter in service of the humans using them.
The most valuable thing I do usually isn't my own work - it's getting the people around me to believe theirs is worth sharing. The apology that comes with the draft An engineer sends me a blog post and apologizes for it before I've read
Molly Graham has spoken about how important it is to “give away your job” every couple of months in growing organizations. She eventually turned this into one of the most amazing and life-changing talks I’ve ever experienced at a conference. I had an absolute Hallelujah moment when Molly
As a maker, you’re constantly working to build products and solutions that help realize other people’s ideas. It’s time to take your side project past the idea stage and into the process of validation. And you can do it, too: You don’t need a team (yet)