Tell us a little about yourself.

I’m a child of Minnesota teachers. It’s pretty foundational to my identity.

My dad was a coach and later the head of the teachers union for the state, so he was an activist and my mom is a feminist. They took a lot of responsibility for the quality of life around us, and insisted we pay attention to the context around us. So I grew up looking for ways to contribute, whether financially or with time or talent.

In the 70s I went to college for technical engineering but quickly realized it wasn’t for me, so I got an internship at the state capitol through the civic program where I was introduced to public policy, and it won out. I never studied communications; I studied political science and economics, so my career has been a series of opportunities to stay engaged with the community.

During the pandemic, you began a blog. What made you decide to use your platform to write about leadership, policy and change?

I was encouraged by a lot of people to make sure I was capturing some of my management and leadership philosophies.

The pandemic and social unrest all of a sudden created this need to record what we were all going through from the vantage point of someone who leads a small company.

One blog I wrote was called “Forging Steel.” I had a chance early in my career to actually go through a big steel production facility in Pennsylvania and it really stuck with me. There were huge cauldrons of melted molten iron and I considered the concept of forging steel to create something even stronger. I found myself thinking ‘what's the human version of forging steel?’

It isn't just physical strength that welds us, but it's also perseverance and resilience. So I found myself just sort of parallel between a physical process and the human journey that we're all on and coming through in these tough times, hopefully coming out much stronger and more optimistic.