Essays on Leadership & Governance

It's your story. Write it well and often.

There's a moment in every leader's life when the question shifts. It stops being Am I good enough? and becomes Is this really my story? Because your story isn't a title. It isn't a rating. It isn't a brand. And it certainly isn't something that someone else hands you.

Your story is the script that drives your life, and you need to have the courage to rewrite it when it no longer fits.

For a long time, I didn't understand that. I thought my story was driven by what other people recognized: my grades, my billable hours, my leadership roles. I thought my story was just external — earned by achievement and confirmed by applause. But that kind of story is brittle. It bends itself into shapes that please other people, but snaps when it tries to fit you.

It stays small in familiar but troubling ways. It's a mirage. It's not you.

Because real stories don't operate that way. Real stories are authored. They're claimed, named, practiced, lived.

And if I could tell you one foundational truth, it's this: you become the talent the moment you stop letting someone else's story run your life.

My third-grade teacher once told me that I'd be president of IBM someday. At the time, I thought, What's IBM? Why president? Why me? It wasn't a prediction. It was a story — her story about what I, a certain kind of high-achieving Black girl, would grow up to be.

And for years, I collected stories like that. Stories about intelligence. Stories about safety. Stories about how to belong. Stories about staying grateful, staying pleasant, staying quiet — all to remain chosen.

Some of those stories helped me. They helped me navigate the world. But most of them were too small.

It took me decades — and a wife who refused to let me shrink — to notice which stories were guiding my choices long after I'd outgrown them. It didn't happen after a promotion or a praise-filled performance review. It happened in quieter moments with Hilary, my wife.

She named my talent more clearly than I ever had: my divergent and convergent thinking, my ability to see the forest and the trees, my instinct for emotional stakes and structural coherence, my capacity to hold complexity without collapsing into performance.

She didn't inflate me. She didn't flatter me. But she did tell me the truth. And once the truth is spoken, it's very hard to go back to the small story that you were using to protect yourself.

That was the moment I understood: your story doesn't unfold. It's authored. And authorship is an act of leadership.

Whose stories have you been carrying? Whose stories have you been performing? Whose stories have you been protecting? Whose stories get silenced in the rooms that you lead? And whose stories get amplified?

These aren't soft questions. They're strategic ones. Because the stories running your life, your teams, your organizations — these are the stories that will determine your outcomes.

I'm not someone who grew up asking for help. I grew up being the helper — the dependable one, the one who stayed calm when everyone else was panicked, the one who could write the crisis email and the love letter with equal steadiness. But leadership isn't solitary, and talent isn't self-contained.

My first coach taught me that. He wasn't an executive coach. He wasn't a manager. He was my father — the man who asks endless questions, who believes in rigor, curiosity, and telling the truth even when it costs you something.

He coached me before I knew coaching existed. And he taught me something that I've been circling all these years: you become the talent when you stop trying to be someone else's answer. You become the talent when you start answering the questions that only you can ask.

Here's a secret that leaders will rarely admit: most of us are scared. Most of us are improvising. And most of us are carrying stories that don't fit anymore.

But here's another truth. You don't need a louder voice. You don't need a different personality. You don't need a shinier resume. You don't need permission. You don't need recognition.

You need clarity. You need ownership. You need authorship. You need to recognize the quiet authority already present in your life — the patterns, the partners, the systems, the sentences you keep returning to. You need to claim the story that has always been yours.

Rewrite the story. Not the one you inherited. Not the one you were rewarded for. Not the one you built for safety. Rewrite the story that is finally, fully yours.

Because when you don't write your own story, someone else will tell it for you. Someone else will shape the opportunities around you. Someone else will misread your quiet. Someone else will decide your potential. Someone else will benefit from your uncertainty.

But when your story is truly yours, you stop shrinking. You stop apologizing. You stop performing. You stop waiting for belonging. You stop mistaking safety for alignment. You stop confusing silence with neutrality. And you stop outsourcing your narrative to people who have never lived your life.

When your story is truly yours, you are impossible to mistake and impossible to replace.

You're the talent.

When most people hear the word design, they think aesthetics.

Beauty. Art. Color stories. Typography. Texture. And they're not wrong.

I've spent a lot of my life focused on aesthetics. I'm a photographer and a video documentarian. Through the lens of a camera, I learned that framing is power. What you include. What you crop out. Through video, I learned that sequence can shape meaning. The entrance that makes us shriek. The gaze that cuts deeper than words.

I buy books based on their cover design. I flip through periodicals to study their layouts. I format my manuscript drafts with "just the right font." Through print, I learned that hierarchy is never neutral. Font weights signal importance. Margins signal breathing room. White space is not empty. It's intention.

Design is not decoration. It's decision. And decisions inform systems.

Long before I studied corporate governance, I was studying composition. Long before I had language for institutional design, I was noticing what was centered and what was marginal.

I looked to Richard Scarry's Busytown and David Macaulay's architectural cross-sections — animals showing me the order of things; buildings split open to reveal beams, scaffolding, pulleys. Both of these authors taught me that the visible layer is rarely the most important one.

You know how when something is coherent, streamlined, and sturdy, we assume it was designed? But when something feels chaotic, unfair, or fragile, we're more comfortable assuming that maybe it was accidental. And look, sometimes that is true. But more often, there is also a design behind that, even if no one will admit it.

I grew up immersed in branding, marketing, and communications. I grew up around conversations about audience, not just reach. Debates about whether something felt authentic or just attractive. Events where brand was not simply messaging, but meaning-making. Work and life were part of the same sentence.

I began to understand that design determined participation. Who showed up. Who felt seen. Who felt invited. Who felt peripheral. That imprint remains with me.

So when I hear "brand," I don't just see visuals, campaigns, slogans, or logos. I see composition, hierarchy, framing. I see load-bearing decisions. And that is governance.

Later, studying corporate governance, I recognized the same truth in a different language. Board composition shapes the space for dissent. Incentives shape how much risk you tolerate. Structure determines what becomes possible.

In leadership roles focused on Diversity and Inclusion, I saw organizations trying to fix individuals while preserving the systems that produced the problems. More training. More coaching. More performance language. Meanwhile, the same people received the same plum assignments. The same borderline toxic behaviors were excused and rewarded. The same definitions of "potential" prevailed.

I began asking a different question: What story is the system telling us about who will succeed here? Because if the outcomes repeat, that's not coincidence. That is design.

At a certain point, I realized I didn't want to hold the emotional or professional labor of inequity any longer. I wanted to redesign the room. And that shift clarified everything.

Aesthetic design declares values. Structural design enforces them.

You can publish a snappy mission about belonging. But who gets the stretch assignment? You can create a rainbow-infused Pride campaign. But whose spouse can be named without hesitation? You can design a beautiful showroom. But who feels surveilled inside it? You can say you value innovation. But what happens to the person who challenges consensus?

Aesthetics tell me what you want people to feel. Governance tells me what you are willing to protect.

Brand is not what you say. Brand is the story your structures repeat. Culture is not a slogan. It is signal, repeated over time. And those signals are not accidental. They're designed. Even when no one claims authorship.

If certain voices consistently advance, your design is working. If certain identities consistently contort themselves to survive, your design is working. If success depends on proximity rather than contribution, your design is working.

The question is not whether you have a culture. You do. The question is whether you built it on purpose. Whether you are willing to dismantle what no longer serves. Whether you care about the long run.

Design is governance. And governance determines who thrives.