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Your Difference is Your Power

Susan Chapman-Hughes is a powerhouse of a woman, mother, and businessperson. She has sat in the top executive level of companies like American Express and Citigroup and on major corporate boards across the country. And like the action Shirley Chisholm took on her rise to power in the Democratic party to become the first woman and black person to run for a major party’s presidential nomination, Susan didn’t wait for the invitation to the table. She pulled up her folding chair (and in Susan’s case wearing chic and hip eyeglasses) and got to work. 

That tenacity and belief in herself and her abilities came from the love and support of her two parents who were staunchly in Susan’s corner. Her mother in particular taught her life lessons as a child that have become foundational to her world view today. Her mother gave her unconditional love and permission to try things even if she failed. She instilled in Susan a sense of self-confidence and the belief that she always belonged. That who she was, was good enough, and that she had a right to inhabit any space that she chose to occupy in her life. Lessons that Susan is passing onto her daughter today.

She is also using those childhood teachings to mentor young people, women, and people of color in the business world whose names still today are not usually found on the masthead of companies in the USA. She has reached down to lift people who she has had unswerving belief in, even when other executives on her teams doubted their abilities. And once those she has helped have achieved their greatness, her expectations are that they not only keep those doors opened for others to walk through, but they actively seek others to help as well. And once you get the opportunity to sit at the table or be in the C-Suite, you speak up and let people know you’re there. 

Her approach to life and business is straightforward and hopefully replicable. Your difference is your power, and you have a lot more power than you know. To meet big moments in life, you must do so with empathy. And people are always going to judge you, so navigate life in a way that works best for you.

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She was In the Room Where it Happened

In 2020, not long after graduating from Emory University, with her Poly Sci degree in hand, and after studying at the School for International Training in Geneva, Switzerland, Yissel Guerrero found herself not only with a courtside side seat to history, but she became a significant player in the epic drama that was unfolding on her home turf in Boston, MA. The city, one of America’s oldest, like all the other American cities faced the greatest health crisis of a century with Covid-19 and then the staggering social unrest that gripped the country following the George Floyd and Breonna Taylor murders. Serving in Mayor Marty Walsh’s administration she covered from Beacon Hill and Back Bay to Mission Hill and Fenway and would later serve as the administration’s Liaison to the State Government of Massachusetts at the height of the pandemic. As she says, she was there when the realization came to the State of Massachusetts of just how bad Covid-19 would be, “Hold on! Everything has shifted.” And she was there every day showing up to work as a virulent pandemic gripped the city and claimed the lives of thousands of Bostonians. Not sure if she would contract the virus, she bore the risk of infection because she felt a calling to serve. She was there until the end, when Mayor Marty Walsh was tapped by President-Elect Joe Biden to serve in his administration as the Secretary of Labor.

When I ask her about the unusual perspective she has had on history and the historic turns her life has taken and continues to do so today before she is even 30 years old, her response is humble, yet clear and pointed, “We exist in excellence, so it shouldn’t be surprising to see our level of achievement.” That “we” she is referring to are the other first-generation immigrants who make up a significant portion of the population of Boston. Kids whose parents came to America for a dream of opportunity and a belief in a better way of life, and then passed those ideals on to their children. And now those same kids are running with the baton to build a city, indeed a world, of inclusion that makes space for all their dreams, and all the dreams their parents couldn’t dream.

Yissel describes her entry into the political world as Jesus bamboozling her. She credits her church, her faith, and her mom with opening the doors that led to her unusual life. It was her pastor who told her that she was born for a time such as this. And she took him at his word. What will she do next? You mean after her MBA in Social Impact is complete this year? Like many of her generation (and Drake) will tell you – We’ll see what’s about to happen next.


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Designer. Creator. Trend-Setter. Leader.

“We over-complicate things,” Noel Asmar of Noel Asmar Group of Companies says with a genuine smile during our conversation, “and it’s sometimes… just have some respect for people.” We were discussing her eponymously named design and clothing company leading the charge in creating work uniforms for non-binary people working in the spa industry. Something quite extraordinary in the hospitality business, given that the industry is admittedly disinclined to taking controversial stances or eagerly tackling tough societal issues. 

But as we went deeper into Noel’s story, it became evident that her commonsense brand of fearlessness and straightforwardness has always been present, adheres to no overt political philosophies and is anchored in respect for all people. Like when she picked up her life at 20 years of age and moved from Canada to Beirut to open a 5 Star hotel. It was here she made her first foray into the clothing business when she designed the uniforms for the hotel’s housekeeping team. She was only supposed to be in Lebanon for one year but stayed for 10, drawn to the city by its culture, its melting pot of people and its food. Like being evacuated on a Huber craft out of Lebanon to Cypress during the war in the 1990s. Like starting her design and fashion company by just fearlessly, getting it done – no over-complicated explanations, only grit and hustle. A company which would subsequently design the uniforms for the Canadian Olympic Equestrian team in 2016. 

Her perspective and approach are both bombast-free. Her take on business success and life success is intermingled with the guiding principle of authenticity. A word that is used often today, but in Noel’s worldview she ties that authenticity to one’s ability to drown out the chatter of the world so you can hear your own voice and then do that thing which is calling to you.

Above all she believes in a respect and dignity for humanity that she learned from her global travels and brushing up against the humble and the high. She says in her sincere manner, “How can you not respect people for their beliefs… Cultural exposure gives you a different lens. More tolerant. Sit back and realize you’re not the only one with a view in the room. This is important in every room. Everybody has a view… Respecting somebody’s view is important, as you wish to be respected yourself.”

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What Are You Really Looking For?

Joe Hudson has lived the life of a modern-day Jack Kerouac, embracing a spontaneous life and ethos that mirrors the improvisational intricacies of Thelonious Monk. Coltrane. Or Miles Davis. Hudson lived in 26 places by the time he was 28 years old. Meditated in his room for 7 years. Lived in a van for a year. Studied religion and became a Hollywood director, a venture capitalist, and a philanthropist. Today, his executive coaching company The Art of Accomplishment is quietly stoking a revolution of emotions in Austin, TX, and Silicon Valley’s CEOs. His philosophy of leadership can be found in his articulated perspectives – 

“If you can show up in love for somebody who is in hate for you, that’s where change happens. That’s where the progress occurs.”

-or-

“To fully love someone, you have to have clear boundaries… That boundary is actually a facilitator of love, it’s not a diminishment of love.”

-or-

“I am not going to create any kind of true shift unless I am able to love you as I love myself… and see [the other] without judgment.”

Not the philosophies you would think could ignite change in a top C-Suite Executive of a tech company in the rolling hills of Northern California or the heat of Austin, TX. But as Hudson observes – people show up for his tutelage looking for one thing, and quickly realize that what that need and what they have come to receive are totally different than what they thought they were coming for initially – I want to run a successful business! Young Sensei, you must live an emotionally connected life first. 

In our conversation I kept asking him – “Is this what the Art of Accomplishment is? Is that what the Art of Accomplishment is?” His answer was always, “Yes, and…” highlighting his foundational view that even as we strive for an intellectual understanding of all things, it is the emotional quarrying of our souls and experiences that really tell us what we are looking for. As Joe Hudson says, “Great decisions are based on your ability to be ok with all your emotional experiences, so you make clear decisions emotionally.”

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A Golden Voice

“The ineffable gift that is gold” is how a colleague and critic once described Marnye Young’s voice and talent behind the microphone. High praise for Marnye who has grown her own narration company starting from scratch in 2018 to where she sits today having recorded well over 200 audio books, employing a team of nine and picking up fans and awards along the way. She is the Audio Sorceress indeed.

But her real wizardry isn’t only her work in the recording studio. It comes from what she has learned from becoming a businesswoman and a mother (they are linked as you will hear in our conversation). She had to answer the question many of face when we step into the unknown as Marnye did when her high-risk pregnancy with twins made her pivot from a solely-focused acting career to the world of audiobooks and narration – “What if I fail?” In the midst of her angst, Marnye turned the question around for herself and asked, “What if I succeed?” What Marnye discovered along the way, is that both questions don’t get it quite right. Her journey hasn’t been a zero-sum game, it has been an exploration of life’s lessons and the interiors of her soul that have led her to the awareness that, “I realize there’s more to me. There’s just more there.”

As she honestly reveals to us, this process of growing into a business owner showed her just how much she doubted her own strengths and gifts, and at the same time afforded her the opportunity to step into her own greatness. As she eloquently and almost heartbreakingly says, “I’ve come into my own.” She had to push open the doors to make people listen to her and see all that she has to offer. And it became abundantly clear to Marnye that she has a self-contained power which is now expressed in her work, her life, and her mothering. 

She’s lived a lesson of strength and kindness that she passes on to her twin girls. Here, she embraces the calling of student and teacher for her kids. As she guides and nurtures them through their developmental challenges, they have taught her valuable lessons – we must live with compassion for all people and that there are no deficits in people, only differences. 

Marnye has literally dropped the mic on a big and unexpected life. Her parting thought? I don’t know how helpful the word success is. I want to do my thing and be the best at it I can be: Mother. Wife. Audio Sorceress. 

“The ineffable gift that is gold” is how a colleague and critic once described Marnye Young’s voice and talent behind the microphone. Known as the Audio Sorceress, she has leant her voice to narrating over 200 audiobooks and become the owner of a well-established and respected audio publishing company. But her real wizardry isn’t only her work in the recording studio. It comes from what she has learned from becoming a businesswoman, wife, and a mother of beautiful twin girls: owning her greatness, living with compassion and kindness for those who are different from her, and pushing open the doors so people can see and hear her.

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Ghosts and Wedding Dresses.

Miss Havisham is one of Charles Dickens most complex and unforgettable characters in all of literature. When we meet her in his novel Great Expectations, she has literally become mummified in her tattered wedding dress and in her love for the man who left her jilted at the marriage altar. The clocks in her decaying mansion stopped to the exact moment when she received the news of her groom-to-be’s betrayal. The wedding cake still on the table, uneaten, no doubt decaying with rot like her skin, which has not felt the warmth of the sun in many years. Her suffering is operatic. It is one of the anchors of the book’s angst-filled love story between Pip and Estella. Miss Havisham is both ghoul and tragic angel, heroine and antagonist, ultimately consumed in the flames of her lost love. 

It’s the New Year. And we are all being inundated with memes, quotes, and advice on how we are supposed to step into 2023 with a new mojo. How we are supposed to embrace a new perspective on how we are supposed to live old lives. How this year is going to be different from all the other new years past. How our best lives are ahead of us if only we could… What? Step out of the past hurts and disappointments (I wanted to say failures, but they are making a comeback as things we should experience)? Forgive that person who we’ve been harboring a grudge against for years (a missing father, a cheating lover, an untrue friend)? Chase the dreams we’ve sacrificed for convenience and comfort sakes (write that novel, leave that soul-numbing corporate job, take salsa dancing lessons)? 

Marsha-Ann Donaldson-Brown breaks it down in this one phrase. “At the end of the day, know this, all you have is this one life. And you are deserving of living it fully, with intention, with peace, love, and joy unspeakable. And nothing or no one is worth it for you to be dragging through life broken.” She gives us two stark choices. We can either have a life of joy unspeakable (which somehow feels more potent than unspeakable joy when she says it), or we can drag through life broken, like Miss Havisham, our wedding finery turned into widows’ weeds.  And we better make a choice because it isn’t about living our best lives. What we are walking through, either asleep or awake, is our only life, and time unmercifully marches on. 

Marsha-Ann’s call is not a placid, genteel nudge into mindfulness and self-acceptance. She disruptively advocates for acts of radical self-interest, radical self-love, and radical self-awareness. The alternative she paints is too difficult to contemplate. “If we’re not careful, we’ll live life in a time-capsule, trapped in the dogma of what society says, or what has been said to us. I’m on a mission now to embrace that within this season we occupy that we’re living it fully.”

Ultimately, Marsha-Ann invites us to a life of liberation and a different kind of “wokeness.” Where we shed the imprisoning decay of expectations, self-doubt, and things past that hold us back. Deliverance. Freedom. So that we can soar like an eagle with the delicacy of a butterfly. 

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Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep

Millions of little children have said this prayer on their knees at bedtime. Eyes closed. Fingers and palms gently intertwined under their chins. Parents lovingly watching from a slight distance. Perhaps allowing the child her first taste of intellectual and spiritual freedom. A melancholic freedom. A lamentation, because you are talking to the Lord about your death and the care of your soul, after all.  

But what is death? In Hamlet, Shakespeare describes it as a prison house with tales that freeze the blood and can make your hair stand on end. An undiscovered country filled with will-puzzling terrors from which no traveler returns. The Psalmists in Psalms 23 describe it as the journey through a valley in the Judean Desert Wilderness on the road to Jericho. The Valley of the Shadow of Death. Metaphorically walking through a troubled and dark time, but having no fear because God is with you, fighting the slings and arrows that come your way. Carl Jung’s view of death is that of a destination for the second half of life; an instinctual, inevitable goal, not a state to be feared or denied. 

Oceana Swayer has a unique and highly developed view of what death and dying is. As she says of her role as an End-of-Life Doula and author of the unexpected book Life, Death, Grief & the Possibility of Pleasure, “The work I do… is essentially a role that is associated with the person who is actually dying, no one else, just the person who’s dying. And the job in that role is to make sure that they are having the kind of death that they want to have and that’s it. That’s all there is… and that’s a lot.” Having been witness to so many souls at they transition from life into death, her view of death isn’t tied up in the culture wars of religion or the haggling of heirs over who gets what China sets. Missing from her work are platitudes and uncomfortable sympathies. She talks in surprising terms about the sensuality and the pleasure of death as the portal opens, time suspends, and the dying becomes the dead.

In her final analysis, death is a moment for the dying to be seen. It is their moment of truth. A truth that allows for the generation of more creativity and yes life. For how we live is a harbinger of how we will surely die. What is on the other side of that remains the domain of the poets and the saints.

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The Open Road Sings a Lullaby

Zelda is a woman on the precipice of the next chapter of her life. When we sat down to speak in the twilight of the Summer of 2022 – the summer of student loan forgiveness (kind of), the summer of Mar Lago, the summer of soaring record temperatures in the Unites States – Zelda was in a reflective state as she was preparing to head off to start her freshman year at Columbia University. For Zelda and her parents John and Toby, like so many other thousands of students and their parents, the late summer season is an especially poignant time, marking the passage of life with the start of a new academic year. New clothes are bought. Marks ticked off on doorframes to record growth spurts. New dreams emerge.

When I asked Zelda what her parents have given her this far into her life she said, “A great friendship. They treated us like equals. Straight from the beginning, especially in the film making process, they’ve allowed me and Lulu to have equal input in the storyline and what kind of film we want to make. Which has taught me that my opinion matters. It really sculpted me into the person I am now.” 

That great friendship with her parents and sister Lulu was forged on the vast system of roads and highways that connect the nation like arteries of a heart; eating in the tasty diners along the open road; and camping along the coastal shores of Oregon. The landscape of America. For the last 12 years of her life, Zelda and her family have explored those highways and byways in an RV, making films along the way. Suspenseful films. Horror Films. Cinematically beautiful and award-winning films that have become cult classics and caught the attention of the New York Times and Vogue, Rotten Tomatoes, and Shudder Films. Hellbender, The Deeper You Dig, and Halfway to Zen to name a few.  Zelda and her family began this unusual journey, when Zelda was six years old. When dreams of creation, agency and plain old fun and adventure led them to those beckoning roads. Her notches on the doorframe are preserved in celluloid where you see a young, tiny child become the person she is now.

Who is that person now? She is 18. She is a writer and a critically acclaimed actress. She is a musician. And like so many of her generation, Zelda is keenly aware of the dynamics of social and political change she is inheriting. 

She is also that woman on the precipice. When I ask her what her biggest leap of faith in a life has been. A life that has been a mixture of saying yes and defying convention and boundaries she says simply, “My biggest leap of faith is right now. I’m about to go off to school in six days and I am feeling excited, nervous, scared. It’s a whirlwind of feelings. I think I’m just going through a really big transition right now. Going to school and not making films with my parents anymore and not having their friendship instantly, physically right by my side is going to be really really different. So, it’s a big leap right now, and I’m excited for it.”

We are too, Zelda. 

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His Mother’s Eyes

In the production notes for his play The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams describes the play as a “memory play… presented with unusual freedom from convention.”  He goes into further detail, “Because of its considerably delicate or tenuous material, atmospheric touches and subtleties of direction play a particularly important part. Expressionism and all other unconventional techniques in drama have only one valid aim, and this is a closer approach to truth. When a play employs unconventional techniques, it is not, or certainly shouldn’t be, trying to escape its responsibility of dealing with reality, or interpreting experience, but is actually or should be attempting to find a closer approach, a more penetrating and vivid expression of things as they are.”

July 20, 1998 is the day that three-year-old Kevin’s life changed forever. It is the day that his father killed his mother, sister, and brother. Kevin was three at the time, but he remembers the day vividly. The memories are graphic and visceral. His sister’s freshly curled hair and the smell of the hairs slightly singed with the curling iron filling his nostrils. His father’s ominous words, “I am going to kill you all today.” His mother’s terror-filled eyes, as a young Kevin peered through the kitchen door to see his mom before her life was brutally ended. Her body covered in blood. He recalls his dad closing the door to the kitchen so Kevin would not see the final act. Perhaps an incongruous act of mercy? He still has nightmares about his mother’s eyes. He remembers they were so piercing. 

The resulting truth of that day in 1998 for Kevin was that his father’s crime left him orphaned. His mother murdered by his own dad who was unresponsive in a prison cell in Texas for years, not replying to Kevin’s letters to him. Kevin was set on a course that led him from Texas to Louisiana and back again, and ultimately into the life of an escort. As Kevin describes it himself, “What I was looking for in these men was parts of my dad that I didn’t have.” He did what he had to do to survive. And even though he survived that day in 1998, Kevin describes a part of his life as taken away from him like his mom and siblings were, “You know, I don’t know if my dad really realizes this, but he shaped me because he taught me how to live without him. And you know, he killed a part of me as well, and there is a part of me missing, that I think I will never have.”

When he finally visited his dad in prison, it showed him what he was capable of. How strong he was. He was able to close the door on some of those dark things when he was able to see his dad face-to-face. “Being able to look across the table at somebody and seeing someone that is so like me, it was groundbreaking… When I was able to walk out of that establishment, I felt like the baddest bitch in the world. For overcoming my biggest fear. My biggest fear in life was to see him in person and not know what to do. To let it hurt me.”

I know we want there to be a happy ending here. And there is. Kevin is now studying Public Health in college in Texas, he is an advocate for PrEP and HIV education in the gay community and a voice for the rights and safety of sex workers. But Kevin’s reality is what it is. Each day he wakes up and draws breath is a triumph of the human soul, and the remembrance of his mother’s eyes. 

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Pinocchio. The Blue Fairy. And the Yellow Motorcycle.

Pinocchio had only one wish. To be a real boy. And the Blue Fairy who brings him to life will grant him that wish if he can prove to be a brave, truthful, and selfless person. As with all things in life, our goals often come with conditions, and they can easily get entangled in the twists and jumbles of our circumstances and our choices. And thus, the movie of Pinocchio unfolds. The wooden puppet Pinocchio, cobbled together by his father Geppetto, breathed to life by a Blue Fairy, embarks on a complex life of drinking, smoking, and gambling. As circumstances escalate, he narrowly escapes being sold into slavery. It isn’t until he is forced to save the life of Geppetto that Pinocchio redeems himself. In saving his father he finally proves that he is brave, truthful, and selfless, all the things that would make him a real boy. But the price for Geppetto’s life is Pinocchio’s death. Staying true to her word, however, the Blue Fairy reawakens Pinocchio to life as a real boy. The wish is fulfilled.

In his book and TV series The Kindness Diaries, Leon Logothetis is granting wishes. Not for large acts of heroism, but for everyday people who have demonstrated simple acts of kindness to a stranger. His well-documented journey around the world on a yellow motorcycle borne on the kindness of strangers wasn’t about him getting stuff for himself; it was about him getting entrée to people whose lives he could change. What Leon describes as the kindness of small gestures. The whispers of kindness that can really transform a person. As he says, “How you show up moment to moment is far more important than doing something huge.” The Emperor Shah Jahan of India built the Taj Mahal for his dead love. Leon buys a plan ticket for a man and his wife living in the Midwest of America, to attend their son’s wedding in London. The small kindnesses.

Leon’s story is not that of Willy Wonka or even the Blue Fairy. His journey to kindness was built from his own sense of aloneness and brokenness. Those childhood pains were a springboard to his life today – leading a global kindness revolution.  

Unlike Pinocchio, Leon isn’t looking for the fast, risky life. Real danger from Leon’s perspective is the risk of living a vulnerable life. Of living a life from your heart. And like the story of Pinocchio, Leon reminds us: don’t quit before the miracle happens.

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