Oct 16, 2020What a season of comedy has taught me about braveryRight before I am about to do something new for the first time, a little voice in my head tells me I will mess it up. That I don’t have it. My heart starts beating faster and I feel a toxic sludge spreading through my body. I was recently at…Comedy6 min readComedy6 min read
Sep 21, 2020We all need Yeah-Yeah energy to break out of creative rutsEven with the sugared margarita numbing my body, I could feel the sting on the shin of my right leg. My friend had just kicked me under the table of the restaurant where we were hanging out. Hard. Our husbands sat with us, mute and munching on chips and salsa…Journalism7 min readJournalism7 min read
Sep 10, 2020The awkward path to serendipityEveryone is beautiful. They are beautiful in a way I can’t understand. I’m on a Zoom call with aspiring and working entertainment professionals from around North America, but most are clustered in Los Angeles. …Improv7 min readImprov7 min read
Published in Pollinate Magazine·Apr 14, 2020To my fellow parents …To my fellow parents: Every time they slurp up your soup, Climb into your lap while you are ordering some groceries, Collapse face-down on the floor because “screen time is over for the day,” Believe me when I say: You are crushing it. Think about it. You are doing the…Parenting3 min readParenting3 min read
Apr 6, 2020Unleashing community knowledge when school districts close their doorsThis article was written as a result of conversations between Lisa Rossi and Tim Regan-Porter. Family School started as a happy accident. It’s a project I launched to match family volunteers to children living in social isolation. It started with my family. Adult family members were given a simple ask…Design Thinking5 min readDesign Thinking5 min read
Jan 10, 20205 nightmare meeting scenarios and how to fix themMeetings should be magical. Hear me out. Seventy-one percent of senior managers said meetings are unproductive and inefficient, according to Harvard Business Review. Sixty-four percent said meetings come at the expense of deep thinking. But it doesn’t have to be that way. I was troubled by all the problems with…Meetings6 min readMeetings6 min read
Dec 12, 2019If people want to change your life, let themI recently attended a storytelling dinner. The rules were simple: Come to the dinner table with a story of someone who has changed your life. When you are moved to tell it, do so. Do not clap for other stories. Instead, respond with respectful silence. Stories trickled out about teachers…Gratitude6 min readGratitude6 min read
Sep 26, 2019The truth about being a first-time female entrepreneurSitting in a Starbucks table in downtown Des Moines, a woman asked me what it was like to be an entrepreneur. She was thinking of taking the plunge herself. I sputtered out a fake answer while this story flew through my head. …Entrepreneurship7 min readEntrepreneurship7 min read
May 31, 2019Why I left journalism to start a company that teaches listeningExactly one year ago, I was laying in the grass of the iconic oval at Stanford University. The sky was perfectly blue. (It was most days.) The temperature: A delicious 75. (Again, not uncommon.) And the grass was so thick and decadent. And oddly without bugs. My friends and I…Journalism8 min readJournalism8 min read
Published in JSK Class of 2018·Jun 5, 201813 lessons for journalists to build high-quality conversations (Part 2)I wrote earlier about why building better conversations is an important building block to a healthy local news eco-system. For those who want to try it themselves, here are some of the lessons I’ve learned this year as a John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford. Chatpool: An app inspired by marriage counseling and a Buddhist monk: I joined a team…Journalism7 min readJournalism7 min read
