I sat across from a CEO who had made up his mind about something.

You cannot be a great CEO and have a great life. Pick one.

He wasn't being dramatic. He had evidence.

It was 1995. I was in Chicago at the International Formalwear Association convention.

Seven hundred people in the room. Six of them women.

I was one of the six — and unlike most of the others, I wasn't there as someone's spouse or daughter. I was a hired gun.

I build safe spaces for a living.

Every month I sit with CEOs and create the conditions for honest conversation — the kind where masks come off, where the real questions get asked, where leaders can finally say the thing they've been carrying alone.

Everything I've learned that really matters was shared in a Vistage room.

Not in a book.

Three months after my second divorce, I walked into a brewery to meet a friend.

She introduced me to her boss.

That was four years ago. He's now my husband.

In August of 2014, I flew to San Diego for my first week of Vistage Chair Academy training.

I was terrified. But the good kind of terrified — the kind that means you're finally doing the thing.

And then I got in the registration line.

I grew up in a town of 800 people in Iowa.

Nobody told me I couldn't have big dreams. They didn't have to. There was simply no visual evidence that a woman could. You married. You raised a family.

My soul had been sending me memos for years.

I just kept filing them under someday.

At some point, most leaders hit a wall.

Not a market wall. Not a resource wall.

A them wall.

I have a confession.

I am a recovering procrastinator.

And I say recovering loosely — because some weeks I'm more recovered than others.

For a long time, I thought I had a turnover problem.

What I actually had was a me problem.

I just couldn't see it yet.

Here's something I know for sure after years of sitting in rooms with CEOs:

When we get stuck in our own heads, telling ourselves the same story over and over, we start to believe it.

I've been there.

Not as a CEO — but as someone who has sat across from enough of them to know exactly what 3am looks like from the inside.

I used to soften everything.

Not because I was dishonest. Because I cared. Because I didn't want to hurt anyone. Because I'd grown up learning that keeping the peace was the kind thing to do — and somewhere along the way I confused kindness with cushioning.

My first leadership role taught me a lot of things.

Most of them the hard way.

I thought I was clear. I thought the direction was obvious.

Wanting More Is Not a Character Flaw

More meaning.
More alignment.
More honesty.
More space.

There’s Always Another Mountain

The hardest climb is the one you know is next —
the one you can see clearly,
but haven’t started.

Leadership Can Be Surprisingly Quiet

From the outside, leadership looks full.

Full calendars.
Full rooms.
Full responsibility.