Every winter, my daughter and I do some kind of creative activity. This year, we decided to partake in jewelry art. A long (very long) time ago, I made a jewelry tree – costume jewelry from my grandmother, my mother, and me glued to a felt background and framed by a lovely, discarded wood frame. It hangs each holiday season during the month of December. Paris often remarked how much she liked the jewelry tree, and how much she would like one for herself, to hang for future holidays. So, after...

In one of my advanced leadership courses, I ask students to create a photovoice: several written paragraphs describing a concept or idea, along with a single image relating to the words on the page. Students begin thinking about the project, and taking pictures, about a month before it’s due. I ask them to look at situations from a leadership perspective and focus on images which might help tell that story. The concept of photovoice is based on the idea that images along with words can...

I am a recovering perfectionist. For most of my life I strived for the impossible goal of perfect. I’m not quite sure where this obsession began. However, I remember specifically that it intensified as my career started to develop. It was a time when my work, my appearance -- my brand -- felt like it needed to be perfect; everything in its place. I now know, “perfection” does not exist. Learning this lesson hit me hard in my mid-20s, right when everything in my career was coming together. I...