A SEED IS PLANTED

As a political appointee in my 20s, I first understood what servant leadership looked like while working with U.S. Senator Jim Abdnor. Watching Senator Jim’s determination to balance doing the right things for his constituents and for our nation shaped me as a leader. Ultimately, it influenced my decision to leave politics and the public sector for the private, to make an impact on society through business and leadership.

GROWTH THROUGH CONNECTEDNESS

After earning an MBA from the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin, I spent over 20 years in technology. Serving in business development and marketing roles in large firms such as Deloitte, IBM, and BMC – as well as entrepreneurial organizations such as VTEL and QuickArrow – I focused on growing businesses by understanding relationships and brand trust amongst industry change. My last corporate role was VP of Marketing at Corepoint Health. In my 10-year tenure there, I helped grow the company from its startup phase to a respected leader in its space, from a few customers to 500.

I’m proud of my track record of success, though my greatest accomplishments are less tangible. The relationships I built and team members I developed. The moments I balanced bottom line with betterment as I led an organization toward innovation and growth. The decisions made that shaped the future of the company and positively impacted all stakeholders – employees, customers, community partners, and shareholders.

ELEVATING A NEW GENERATION OF LEADERS

While a leader at Corepoint, I became aware of growing negative press around the Millennial generation. I saw Gen Y differently, with inborn potential to be the great leaders business and society desperately need.

To share this perspective, in 2010 I founded Thin Difference, an online community designed to inspire the next generation of leaders – Millennials and Gen Z – and share experiences between generations.

Ranked in the top 20 of the most socially-shared leadership blogs in 2018, and now incorporated into my Perspectives, Thin Difference grew into a robust forum offering insight to strengthen future leaders to be better corporate and community citizens, solve problems actively, create richer lives, and discover common ground in the most challenging situations.

My first book, Activate Leadership: Aspen Truths to Empower Millennial Leaders, also furthered the case for developing, elevating, and celebrating this next generation of leaders.

Recognition for these efforts is humbling. In 2014 and 2015, Trust Across America–Trust Around the World named me one of the “Top 100 Thought Leaders for Trustworthy Business.” The American Management Association named me one of the “Leaders to Watch” in 2015.

ACTIVATING NEW SEEDS OF CHANGE

Building on the need for corporate activism I saw propelled by Gen Y and Z, I launched Activate World, a podcast and think tank project for business leader activism, in 2018. Through hosted conversations and well-researched analysis, Activate World brought substance, depth of thought, and a non-ideological perspective to teach business activism to leaders. Our team examined current issues and shared insights for effectively integrating activism into an organization’s culture, aligned to mission and values. 

Eager to also effect change in my immediate community, in 2019 I founded Santa Fe Innovates, a business accelerator for tech and solution-oriented startups with a vision for social good. Our current goal is to create at least five startups in New Mexico in the next ten years, each realizing $10 million in annual revenue and job creation of 25+ team members per company.

Our vision is for New Mexico to become a state known for social impact investing and scalable social enterprises – the positive ripple effect igniting social impact ventures and an ecosystem to support founders, team members, investors, and citizens. UNM Anderson is now leveraging our efforts through the creation of the UNM Anderson Center for Responsible Entrepreneurship.

To realize these goals, I also served as Advisory Board Member for the Center for Leadership and Ethics at McCombs School of Business, The University of Texas at Austin. As creator of the university’s Conscious Leader Endowment and contributor to research funding for New Mexico B Corp development through NM for Good and the Anderson School of Management, University of New Mexico, I imagine these investments to be seeds planted today that will grow into a harvest that sustains our community in the future.

THE GROWTH CYCLE CONTINUES

In 2023, I completed my Doctor of Education at Creighton University. Through my research, I created a moral courage benchmark of for-profit social enterprise leaders, and I defined a moral courage-centered decision-making process by interviewing the social enterprise leaders based on how they navigated the tensions of profit and purpose, business and society, and stability and change. An added outcome from my research was a model for building moral courage capacity.

As a guest lecturer, speaker, and current adjunct professor, I engage students, aspiring business leaders, and social entrepreneurs in deep conversations that grapple with difficult questions.

Our work supports our shared mission: enabling better business leaders, team members, collaborators, family members, and citizens. We create betterment where business, society, and the individual intersect.

We succeed not despite challenge, but because of it.