There’s a kid inside all of us, but what if that kid is actually our authentic self? Joining Tony Martignetti is Darrin Tulley, founder and Chief of Possibilities of Ignite Happy an author of Live Your Possible: Ignite Your Happy, Authentic Self and Live a Fulfilling Life Rooted in Joy, Inclusion, Love and Possibilities! In this episode, Darrin shares his philosophy on living with an open, inclusive mind can lead you to embodying your authentic self. Darrin left his career in corporate America to spark positive change and unleash the untapped potential in others. He also shares personal stories from childhood to how that led him to this path. Tune in to learn more about how living in curiosity and wonder can open doors to innovation and inclusion.

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Live Your Possible: Ignite Your Happy, Authentic Self And Live A Fulfilling Life With Darrin Tulley

It is my honor to introduce you to my guest, Darrin Tulley. He is the CEO and Chief of Possibilities at Ignite Happy. He is also an author, executive coach, board advisor, keynote speaker, and leader of experiential learning workshops for his original platform, Live Your Possible. Darrin strives to help both individuals and businesses feel the power of possibilities.

He is a business executive with years of leadership and coaching experience in Corporate America. Darrin is known for activating business units into leading top-producing, innovative, and joyful workplaces by building and leading high-performing teams with a unique, rare blend, pragmatic, data-informed, and empathetic servant leadership style.

Darrin internationally focuses intentionally focuses his energy to spark positive change in humans to unleash their untapped potential residing within all of them. He lives in Connecticut with his psychotherapist wife, his teenage kids, and his guide dog, which I know we are going to have to find out more about that.

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Darrin, I want to welcome you to the show.

Tony, it is great to be here. Thanks for having me around the campfire. It is a pleasure to meet you here.

I am thrilled to have you by the campfire. The fire is now kindled, so we can start to get into your stories and understand how you became the Chief of Possibilities. Before we do that, I need to ask about this guide dog business that you have.

She is quite special. She is Edna, our third guide dog that we have had in our family. She is part of the Guiding Eyes for the Blind community. She is a brood. We have her get impregnated, she goes back to the program, and she delivers puppies. It goes back to folks that are in need. It is a wonderful program. It is Guiding Eyes for the Blind and she shows us how to love. She is present every day when times are tough. She is always wagging her tail.

Darrin, what we do on the show is we share your story through what is called flashpoints. These are points in your journey that have ignited your gifts into the world. As you are sharing your story, we want you to stop along the way and we will pause and see what is showing up. You can share what you are called to share. You can start wherever you like, but I am going to turn it over to you and get you started up.

There is a pivotal point in my life that opened my eyes. I had an awakening. I had a light-up moment that followed after that when I went through these moments. That made me reflect back to the beginning when I was very young. In fact, I was born a premature baby. I was born over six weeks old. I was excited to get into the world, I suppose. I was quite eager. Being premature, I was quite behind for several years. I walked around the neighborhood, rocking back and forth. You could say blissfully or joyfully, but I would walk around rocking my head and singing. You are glad you did not hear that.

Our happy and authentic self is the kid that’s inside all of us just waiting to come out and play.

I got picked on when I was little. I was given a goal like, “We hope you can be average one day.” Could you imagine being given that goal, albeit I understand? My family and the people that took care of me were wonderful and helped me get through various components. In fact, they helped me get through learning my ABCs when I was six. That is late to learn your ABCs. I remember sitting there with my mom and my grandmother when I was six years old in the back of a car with a bag of apples, and we twisted the stem one after another, singing the ABCs.

You are probably glad you did not hear me sing those ABCs. It was a special moment back then that I started to breakthrough. I started to grow and learn. It is a reminder that it is something that I have always had to do. I had to work hard. I am a continuous learner that I have had to read. I have had to catch up. I have had to do many things.

At that point, I was ten years old when I had my first job. I was a paperboy. Why this is a critical flashpoint is that I started to recognize things. I could see things that were different from what other people could see. What I did notice is that my neighbors looked quite disheveled when they came to get the paper on the weekends. They were sitting there between the door and me waiting for their paper half-dressed. Some are not even dressed at all, practically. Imagine that sight, Tony.

I started to wonder, “What made these people tick? What got them excited? What brought them joy?” I came back to my friends and asked them what we should do about this. My friends, JK and Bugger, two of my friends on the street, came up with the idea like, “Let’s create the Sylvan Paper.” We still live on Sylvan Avenue. We created a local paper and we went back out to my customers and asked them, “What do you get excited about? What makes you tick?” 2 or 3 of us would go out at a time as innocent little reporters. We were genuine about our ask and it was surprising. It was delightful to know that everybody wanted to participate.

People would share stories about their kids' accomplishments, recipes, vacations, pets, and maybe guide dogs. They would talk about things that were important to them. I got to tell you, Tony, one of the biggest points is people lit up. People shared stories. People wanted to hear them on the street when we would sell the paper. People were waving people down because they wanted to learn more from each other. Not to just do that half-hearted, “Ho-hey.” It was, “I want to talk to you.” It was a good point. Fast forward, I had my awakening, and we could talk about that in a second in case you have any questions on these earlier years.

I want to pause and recognize that this is a powerful and beautiful story, seeing the connection that you create. I am sure some of these neighbors did not know anything about their neighbors. It is just the little things, but you can see the openings that you created, maybe things that they learned about their neighbors that they have commonalities or things that they have common interests and did not realize. It is cool.

When I think about your Live Your Possible, this is something that gives me hope that people who come from beginnings that seem like, “There is no way that they will amount to anything.” Not to say that that is what I am saying about you, but oftentimes, people have that concept of like, “This is not going to pan out,” and then you see the possibilities that can happen from that. You cannot give up on people. You have to believe.

I do think we have so much potential within all of us. It is a matter of believing that and taking intentional steps to realize them and see them come through. I have gotten to this place where there is this beautiful light inside all of us, which I term “our happy, authentic self,” which is what I believe as a kid that is inside all of us, waiting to come out and play.

We, oftentimes, do not allow that to happen. As adults, we have been told to get a real job, go out and make money, but not play. Play is something that we need to do more of as we get older. Tell me more about your journey. As you move along, you got this newspaper, which you created. What did you do next in the journey that was more of a flashpoint for you?

Building on that theme for a second, I go back to when I was in those young years. We had a wonderful neighborhood, and I recall when it would rain, we would go out and play in the rain. It is looking at the positive and what you can do when things are not so great. We created games all the time. We were our best, most creative, joyful, loving selves when we were young. We created this game that was all about toothpick racing. Each would have a colored toothpick and drop it in the little river that formed on the side of our street. We had a blast. We were stomping up and down the street, and we had a lot of fun.

As we think about the intersection of playful and possible, it is something that we had when we were younger. As I started to get older, I recognized that I started to get more serious, get more responsibilities, not laugh as much, and make sure I had all the answers. I also started to form as what I was being told to be in our society, who I would hang out with, what role I needed to have, who I should involve in conversations or not, or should I have answers or not? This was when I came to this moment where I had an awakening. It was a diversity and inclusion event and I was with 24 other people. There were four other guys like me. I am a White male that happens to be in Corporate America.

We were going there because it was an immersion event. It was a four-day event where we were working together to learn about each other, where we are coming from and our interests. We, over a couple of days, became friendly and got to know people well. We got to know people’s families, and what got people excited like I was back to being that paperboy. I genuinely understood what was going on. By the end of the second day, we started to talk about the struggles of the world, how people may not be treated equally or not being treated equally, and how there is injustice in the world like there are senseless killings we heard about in Buffalo, which are awful and terrifying.

Together, there’s a sense of calmness, a sense of belief, and enough joy for everybody.

People are pulled over because of the way they look. They are mistreated because of where they come from, their orientation, or pronoun someone might use them. People were sharing these components and being vulnerable. I recognized where I was at that point in time. I have always been a kind, fun, loving, and positive person feeling like I was helping the world. At that point, I went into that event with the purpose of bringing out the best in people. What I realized is people were walking through that. I was ignorant to know what was going on in my surroundings at that level. I did not understand that people were taking 100 steps to get to where I was during the day because of how society treated me, where I was in Corporate America at that time.

To the point where I was starting to recognize I was helping people, but it was people like me. They were similar to me. I was terrified. I approached the group with 25 people and apologized and owned that I was not fully honest and transparent. I became real vulnerable. I started crying. I broke down and was not looking for support to support my tears because I was breaking down. I was terrified about how I was pushing possibilities and other people away, almost treating people unfairly. I had this moment where I was looking across the room. I recognized that the very people that I was pushing down picked me up in tears. I had tears and they had tears. They looked at me with anger but with hope and love too.

That was the moment where I changed and committed to say, “I am going to change every day. I am going to have an accountability reminder,” which is the pink pen that I use to a different tool that is different and to be different every day. I needed to look at the world differently and welcome differences. I needed to invite people in and live with wonder and change. I need to change my way and I had to be intentional about it. That was my awakening to open up my world. There was a moment where that bubble that I was in at first, I thought I was exploding. I thought the air that I was breathing was gone. I was found out that I was a fraud. What I realized was that no one was expanding. That is when my world blew open. I blew it wide open instead of me breaking it into pieces.

Sometimes, our environments shape us in many ways, and then, all of a sudden, we come to this realization that the environment cannot be true. It can insulate us from the reality of what the world is. As soon as you can break free from that environment that shaped you or that is around you and realize that there is so much more that is happening, you can be part of that change. It is expansive, as you say. That is the truth of that moment. It sounds like, to me, is that you were able to wake up in that moment and see, “There is more possible and more that I could do.”

I love the way you described that. I did come alive with intention, and I could have denied it and self-preserving. I would have done that in the past. Those are natural things, especially what we are taught here in the United States. You have to be wrong or right. There is not much in between 0 and 1. It is very binary. We teach our kids about having the right answer, not thinking about all the possibilities in between. That is the type of thinking that at least I have come to recognize that I need to change. That is why the name of my book is called Live Your Possible because there are endless possibilities when we get to this place, we are open-minded and curious, and we sink that to a higher purpose and higher meaning.

There was this moment too where I recognized that I started to see differences around me. I started to embrace differences. I would go to networking events at the University of Connecticut and I would say, “I am only going to go talk to people that I would not have in the past.” It was amazing what would happen, the conversations that I would have, the discomfort I went into, and the comfort that I left with. It was outstanding and incredible. I could not believe it. These are the type of events that are happening day-in and day-out. I had this special moment with my daughter, which is the watermelon ice that is on the cover of my book. That is a one-eyed smile.

Authentic Self: We’re taught here that you have to be wrong or right. There’s not much in between zero and one. We teach our kids about having the right answers and not about all the possibilities in between.

I had this moment with my daughter where she was doing her homework. I was on my smartphone doing my work well, but I was not taking care of her or paying attention. She finished her homework and said, “I love a dessert.” We went back and forth. We agreed on watermelon ice because that sounded healthier than Italian ice. When she took the lid off, she put it in the corner. When she finished the Italian ice, she gave me a big smile. I put my phone down, I looked at her, and said, “You are so happy.” To the corner of my eye was the back of this Italian ice lid. It was a one-eyed smile. I was being a little silly. I was allowing my kid to come out and play. I was welcoming differences because it was a one-eyed smile. It is very unique. It was upside down. I turned it over and said to my daughter says, “Look at this smile.”

She lit up with joy like we saw Minnie Mouse at Disney World for the first time. I lit up because she lit up. For me, it was that moment when I recognized where my joy comes from. It starts from my heart to hers. To see her light up, I recognized that I get joy from helping people light up. She is my daughter, but I am seeing people around the world light up. That is what gives me joy. When I give to people and share the platform where people are standing out, their voice is heard, not mine. It is amazing what is happening. I am learning from them as much as they are learning from me. My daughter lit up and shared that moment. I looked at this one-eyed smile and I recognized that was not upside down. I was.

That was my light-up moment to say, “I need to write this down. I need to write out a business plan.” It turned into this book. It turned into this how-to guide on how to ignite your happy, authentic self and live a fulfilling life that is truly rooted in joy, inclusion, love, and possibilities. That was the moment that I started to challenge myself by looking for happiness in the world to welcoming differences. I did some challenges with some close friends that we went back and forth to say, “How do we get to this place where we can change our ways and rewire our habits to see happiness around every corner?”

There is something about this Ignite Happy. It is almost like the antithesis of what most people would think when they come to this awakening moment where the first reaction might be to live with this dooming guilt of like, “Because of my privilege and the way that I have been brought up, I have to live with the burden of my guilt.” Instead of living with guilt, dragging you down, and feeling like, “What now?” Instead, you turn it around and look at the flip side of what that possibility is. Get curious, ignite happiness, and find ways to make it a positive thing instead of miring yourself in the burden of that. Would you agree?

I agree 1,000%. I still have those moments of doubt and guilt. That is what fires me up to continue learning. I continue to go to different events. I speak about these stories well and to let people know that we might need a pause ourselves, take a stop at our hippocampus, and see what we are being told in our heads about what is happening. Are we inviting people in? Are we hiring people like us? Are we allowing people to share our platform? Are we self-preserving? What are these things going on in our heads? I am always challenging that. I agree with you. I was not living my life honorably to the point where I have the privilege and still have not learned how I could share it and help people be noticed and be seen in a different way.

Those are the learnings that I cannot say enough for folks that you get more. It is expensive. If you bust through this bubble, you see the world more clearly. Things slow down. This level of happiness and inclusion is what this whole platform is built upon. Together, there is a sense of calmness, a sense of belief, and enough joy for everybody. It is like a competition. There is enough for everybody. "Nobody is going to steal it from me. No one is going to take it from me.” I say that, and I am thinking of Senator Cory Booker. He said, “Nobody is going to steal my joy,” when Judge Jackson was appointed to the Supreme Court. He said that, and that was so beautiful.

We have uncertainty all around us. These are the moments that we can step out of and be expansive. We can look for the joy. We can spark joy ourselves and in others.

No one should. Nobody should take joy that is going to harm someone else either. The joy has to be in a way that is done in a way that is for a higher purpose, where it is helping the world get better, where we can see people rise up onto an equal playing field, where they can shine, and where they can create endless possibilities too.

Something about what you are sharing has me thinking about how there are people who come from that competitive mindset of like, “There has got to be winners and losers. In order for me to win, you have to lose.” When you think about expanding the pie and creating together that allows for everyone to win or at least feel like they are not less off, it gets that equality that we are looking for, which is, “How can we all find something that moves us all forward together?” That is what is expansive in showing up. It allows us to have the happiness that we all want for each other. It is important to think that way and be in that abundance mindset that is a lot more fulfilling.

It is fulfilling the level of abundance and connection that we can have when we settle back and say, “What is our highest purpose? What are my beliefs? Are they getting in the way or are they allowing me to embrace?” When I think about my beliefs, I had to change my beliefs because of this awakening where when I look at people, I say they have a beautiful light inside. It is meant to break the barrier that things have gotten in the way. I know you have something special inside you, Tony. You are amazing. Your show is incredible. I do not need to find the light in you yet. I want to bring more out of it because you continue to light up the world.

This show has given us warmth and light in the dark days that we have. We have had the pandemic and a war going on. We have uncertainty all around us. These are the moments that we can step out of and be expansive. We can look for joy. We can spark joy in ourselves and others. I can promise you, if we do this with good intention to help somebody else with empathy with heart and mind, with love and minds, you are going to feel better. I promise you. You are going to feel stronger, slow down, and let some of the little stuff fall away to the side. You are going to have a little bit more gratitude.

I know we have heard about these things, but it is being intentional every single day. We get up, reflecting, looking at ourselves in the mirror, and say, “Hi, possible.” Saying it to yourself, which is the acronym throughout my book, to get to a place of endless possibilities and then tell yourself what you are grateful for at that moment. There is only an upside from that moment. If you do not have a great day or do something off, learn from it. Do not beat yourself up. To your point earlier, Tony, it is not about beating ourselves up. It is about what we can do better and different tomorrow.

I love that you bring concepts from the book because your book is something that everyone should get out there and read. There are so many great insights from it that we should all be out trying to connect with those things that are going to ignite happiness and bring possibilities to people. Tell us more about one of the things that you want people to connect with from the book and truly understand?

Authentic Self: No one should take joy that’s going to harm someone else. The joy has to be done in a way that’s for a higher purpose where it’s helping the world get better, where we can actually see people rise up onto an equal plane field where they can shine and create endless possibilities too.

It is a life guide where it is not about just, “Go be happy and inclusive.” A lot of times, we hear the message. This is a way of how you can do it. If you are into wanting to become what you are possible or to become back into your authentic self, to me, it is about changing back into who we were when we were younger, which is our greatest self. We are the most joyous and creative. There are a lot of studies around that. We are our most loving for most of us, but maybe not all of us.

That is the biggest thing is learning by trying things out and being intentional about this. As we give to others, there is so much growth and learning for ourselves. A lot of people get stuck there that if they are going to help someone else or they are going to try something out, they are going to have to be a little vulnerable and recognize. It is expansive if you allow yourself to grow. It is about having this growth mindset instilled and you are going to have this popcorn popper instilled in your head that is filled with positive possibilities that are going to start popping up all over the place.

The other P word that comes to mind is Playfulness, which we need to tap into, which is to become that child again. A word that I cannot help but say is non-judgment too. When we were children, we did not judge people as much. We saw people as just, “Is this someone I can play with?” That is what we want. We want to tap into that playful nature of, “Everyone is a potential play partner that I can create with.” That is a great way to be thinking.

Wonder is throughout this book. Wonder is thinking in awe. It is being able to be open to curiosity. That means that we are open to new ideas and concepts, and that is where innovation and inclusion happen. To me, inclusion is about sharing your platform and learning even more. Being a child again, there is a couple of things. Pablo Picasso used to say his best work was dominant when he was five. He tried to paint like a five-year-old for the rest of his life. I do not know if you have ever heard that. 

There are also studies around creativity where NASA uses this and some other businesses might use this because of the nature of the importance of creativity in the workplace, which is everywhere. Some focus on it and some people get better results, but as a child, on average, a group of five-year-olds was tested on their creativity skills. About 98% of them had the skills. The same task was given to adults 35 to 40-year-olds. What do you think the result was to that, Tony? What do you think they were?

Most of them were not creative.

It’s not about beating ourselves up. It's about what can we do better and differently tomorrow. 

Two percent. Think about what happened. Someone pulled the dimmer switch behind the scenes of our ability to be creative and to think about the divergent thinking between right or wrong and what is possible in between. That is what we have to open up. The child within us is the light that allows us to see that.

You have shared a lot of insights about who you are and what you have learned along the way, but I would love to dig a little more into what you have learned about yourself that you want to share with others beyond what you have shared already, some life lessons that you have not already shared.

I will expand on the sense of being vulnerable. The more vulnerable I have been and being genuine about it and authentic, the more people have been there. People want to step in. People hit me in the arm to say, “That is the way I feel,” or they will start crying and saying, “There is hope.” That is what gets me going. I have chills talking about it. As much as I have my own barriers of self-doubt, “Who am I to do this work?” People will say, “You have to do this work because you are showing people that we can change back into who we were when we were born.”

We did not judge each other back to that world when we were born. We did not see each other. We did not know what we looked like, who we were, our orientation, and our pronouns. Nobody judged when we were little and when we were born. It is getting back to our happy, authentic selves. That is that vulnerability aspect that I have learned quite a bit about. The more I have shared, the more people will pick me up, even though I do have self-doubt every time I do it.

It is a feature. The self-doubt is meant to be there so that it allows you to feel some sense of excitement. It is nervous-cited, as the word might sound like. If it is just excitement, then it goes away eventually, but the nervousness keeps it in front and center because it could fail. There is uncertainty around the other side where you could mess up. You want that uncertainty keeping you alive.

We are going to mess up. I am glad you said that too. If we are trying to be perfect, I have tried to be perfect throughout my whole life. I still struggle with that at times because I was trying to overcome being average. I broke through that. I make mistakes and I learn from my mistakes. If people know that I come from a good place and my heart is out there, people will pick me up. That has been huge. That is a special thing where we can be authentic. People say to me like, “This is a lot of change.” I will debate a little bit to say that if we truly understand who we are, our authentic self, then we are being who we are every day. It should be less work overtime.

Authentic Self: Wonder is thinking in awe. It's being able to be open to curiosity and that really means that we're actually open to new ideas and concepts and that's where innovation happens. That's where inclusion happens.

That is the key with that authenticity. It is being yourself and doing it takes practice. It takes practice to be yourself because it is vulnerable to show up as yourself. I have loved everything you shared so far, but what I want to know is what scares you most as you move into the next stage of your career and in the work that you do? What are the things that are top of mind when it comes to the things that are on your edge?

What scares me the most is how people may perceive me or others that are trying to help make a difference. As we go through life, there are so many challenges. Injustice has become more frequent and become more transparent. There are plenty of people like you, Tony and myself, and others that are trying to ignite the best and all of us. We believe in the top potential of humankind. It is beyond being an ally and sponsor. It is about being human-to-human. It is about truly rising each other up onto an equal playing field and giving each other a chance to thrive at the intersection of playful and impossible.

What I fear is that we do not slow down as a human race and it keeps getting worse. We doubt the opportunities that can help us. We doubt each other to the point where we do not believe in each other anymore. If we do not do that, that is hard because we need more joy in our days. More joy leads to more happiness. Even though not every day is perfect and going to be all joyful, we know we can rebound quickly and it is always present. It is always around it because it is from within.

I loved the way you described it because I asked you a question about the fear, but you turned that into something that is a masterpiece of an optimistic view of how we can all do differently, be together, human to human. I am taking that to heart so I thank you for that. It would not be my show if it did not end with my classic ending question, which is, what are 1 or 2 books that had an impact on you and why? I cannot wait to hear.

I enjoy reading. I have had a lot of books in my day, partially because I have tried to overcome being average or less than. I would connect with a book and then go to the next and so on. One of the ones that we have covered is Mindset with Carol Dweck. It is about having a great mindset and learning around every corner. It is less about judgment and more about possibilities in general. The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor showed me that you can have happiness as a platform for change. Richard Sheridan, who wrote the forward of my book, is a great friend and mentor. He wrote Joy, Inc. and Chief Joy Officer. He talks about the fact that you can have joy and love in the workplace and do that with people you care about. You can talk about those words at work, and believe me I have had conversations where you cannot different places.

Another author helped me put all that together, Franz Johansson, who wrote The Medici Effect, where you are looking at two different pieces of thinking or opportunities. You found the best at the intersection. The intersection is where inclusion comes to mind, where you are welcoming from different perspectives. That is where innovation happens. It shows that you can take concepts from something that is so random, and you will find an unexpected outcome or result that you would add to something that is unrelated. To me, that is at the intersection of anything that is in your mind. For me, it is playful and possible that it will ignite happy humans and workplaces all around. Those are the authors that come to mind. One other is Michael Welp wrote Four Days to Change.

If we are truly understanding who we are, our authentic self, then we're just actually being who we are every day. It should be less work over time. 

It was an example of D&I event that I went to. It is a raw book. It kicked me in the stomach five times while reading the book, where I recognized that I was not living out my privilege where I needed to immediately. I have direct conversations and apologized to some other humans. My psychotherapist's wife was one of them. I had to get on the couch for a little bit and go through that.

I love what you shared because of some of those books I have read. Some of them I have not. I am intrigued. My list got a little longer, and thanks for the homework.

You are welcome.

I want to close by saying, first of all, thank you for coming to the show and sharing all that you have shared. It is truly a blessing to have you on. I want to thank you for all that you have shared. Before I let you go, I want to ask where people can find you? What is the best place to get in touch?

I have a website www.IgniteHappy.com. It is a great place to learn more about what we have going on there. You can definitely contact me there. My email address is WG@IgniteHappy.com. I am also on Twitter and Instagram at the handle @IgniteHappy, along with Facebook and LinkedIn pages, Ignite Happy. Follow along because I will have daily pockets of inspiration and quotes. I will be dropping videos and other components to hopefully excite your day to show that you can move forward and discover the endless possibilities that are within you too.

You sell a good story. We have to go sign up and go make this happen. Who does not need more of that in their life?

Tony, thanks for having me. This has been wonderful and thanks for lighting our world on fire with positivity and goodness.

Thank you so much. It is such a pleasure. Thanks, readers, for coming on the journey truly. I hope you are leaving with some great insights and I know you are leaving fully on fire with some happiness and ignite and ready to take on the world.

Important Links

• Ignite Happy
• Guiding Eyes for the Blind
• Live Your Possible
• Mindset
• The Happiness Advantage
• Joy, Inc.
• Chief Joy Officer
• The Medici Effect
• Four Days to Change
• WG@ignitehappy.com
• @IgniteHappy – Twitter
• Ignite Happy - Facebook
• Instagram - @IgniteHappy
• LinkedIn – Ignite Happy

About Darrin Tulley

I am an accomplished Financial Services Executive, transforming business performance through positive change across organizations by building and leading high-performing teams with a blend of pragmatic, data-informed / empathic, servant leadership style.

My financial expertise and schooling are complemented by “right brain” agility and creativity engaging leaders wherever they are. Chief executives seek me out as an “opportunity solver” because they know I turn business units into lean, top-producing, innovative workplaces – that are joyful, too. I grasp the importance of organizational connectedness and leverage my multifaceted talents to drive significant value and unprecedented results.