• Professional
• Personal

The origin of my work motivation can be traced to my own childhood. Both grandfathers and my own father were businessmen who balanced their work lives with time for family, church, and community. The challenges of growing up through the turbulent sixties and seventies were many, and helped channel me toward finding ways of communicating that worked for all involved. As a result, I committed myself as a professional, trained in depth skills of interpersonal and organizational communication, to catalyze positive change with leaders and their organizations.

As a youth and young man, I believed that leaders were exempt from experiencing any lack of a voice. Even when I was chosen to be part of an elite Leadership Fellows’ program in college, I still imagined that “they”, those in leadership and older than myself, were being heard. What a surprise to discover when I rose into subsequent leadership responsibilities myself that it wasn’t true. We all share this disability of not having our voices truly heard. Being a leader even makes us more susceptible to others’ projections, misinterpretations, and judgments.

My failure to grasp this realization sooner may in part be do to the singular defining moment of my early life—the death of my father at age twelve which created a metaphoric black hole in my universe, drawing me closer and closer to its vortex. Failure to find out how to express my grief so family and others could walk me through it successfully further solidified the earlier experiences described.

In situations like this, I believe there are basically two choices—either fight for life, or give up and die. I chose to fight. In that fight I found a depth for understanding life, a passion for becoming all I’ve been created to be, and a vision for making meaning in the world. It has been a treacherous path, and the experiences and skills acquired have proven incredibly valuable for me as well as others.