Would you wait ten years to fully realize what's happening in your life?
At 26 I arrived in Detroit with a dual master's degree, a toddler on my hip, and no job. Ten years later, one week before my 36th birthday, I defended my doctoral dissertation. This is the episode where I introduce myself again, and open a new season.
I'm Dr. W.E. Da'Cruz. This show was The Digital Diplomat for four seasons. It grew up, and so did I. Welcome to At the Desk.
In this episode:
The decade in five minutes. Unemployment with a dual master's. A United Nations "no" that became a UN contract seven years later. An appointment as a U.S. embassy speaker across the continent of Africa. A food manufacturing company launched in the middle of a pandemic, and a doctorate started a few months after that.
Then the part I've been sitting with all summer. What carried that decade wasn't hustle, and it wasn't credentials. It was that somewhere in the wilderness I stopped running my life like an employee. The title I actually grew into is the one nobody hands out, and it isn't Chief Executive Officer.
It's Chief Experience Officer. The person responsible for what it feels like to be in her space. On her team. In her meetings. In her house. You're already doing that job, well or badly, and most of us were never handed the job description.
THIS SEASON: RUN IT LIKE A CEO
Eight episodes, and in each one we run one department of the company of your life. The appointment. The mandate. Operations. People. Culture. Finance. Risk and compliance. Growth and succession.
Because somebody told you to bloom where you are planted, and somewhere along the way that got preached at you like it meant be quiet and be content. Blooming isn't passive. Something has to tend the soil. Run the experience well and everything planted around you blooms, and you're still standing there at the end of the season in good enough condition to smell the flowers you grew.
Next week, episode one: You Already Have the Title.
LINKS
Desk Notes, the letters I write between episodes: https://www.linkedin.com/build-relation/newsletter-follow?entityUrn=6891138904028794881
Work with me at the desk: https://atthedeskadvisory.com/engage
Speaking and advisory inquiries: [email protected]
ABOUT
Dr. W.E. Da'Cruz is a founder led scholar practitioner. She lectures in Entrepreneurship and Strategy at the University of Michigan-Dearborn College of Business, co-founded The Mushroom Angel Company, a Detroit mushroom-first food manufacturer, and advises founders and executives through At The Desk Advisory. She is a U.S. State Department Speaker Program veteran with engagements across Africa and the Middle East, a senior international consultant to the UN Economic Commission for Africa, and a TEDxDetroit speaker. Her doctoral research is on regulatory uncertainty and nonmarket strategy in highly regulated industries.
Doing what she studied. Studying what she does.
Office hours is in session.
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