All Posts

“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any.”—Alice Walker, Author In 1993 I was sitting in a classroom at Carl Sandburg College. In 2010, I was sitting in the president’s chair. Same college, same building, many of the same people, completely different context. It felt surreal. I was pinching myself… I was the first female president of Carl Sandburg College. I can remember it like it was yesterday that I bursting with excitement, over

To understand where my doubts began, I have to go back to my parents’ stories—and the world they grew up in. My father was born the same year the stock market crashed. His family was poor even before the Depression, and he remembered living on rations. He was one of fifteen children, raised by a mother he admired and a father who was an alcoholic. It wasn’t long before they divorced and in the 1930s she found herself a single mother, before that was even a term that we knew,

In today's rapidly evolving world,the need for strong female leadership is more crucial than ever before.I want to empower women by sharing the leadership strategies they need to break through the barriers that often hold them back. Women today hold more leadership roles than at any time in history, yet we remain significantly underrepresented at the highest levels of leadership.1 At the same time, more than 450,000 women have left the workforce in 2025 alone.2 Besides durin