1. How have you been described by others?

I asked a friend this, and she said “you’re quirky.” It’s true, I am.  I am the person that has a hedgehog, her name is Mrs. Landingham.  Now that you know me, you’ll see hedgehogs EVERYWHERE and think of me.  I have watched Murder She Wrote since middle school, and sometimes live tweet about what’s happening in the show, even though it happened 30 years ago. I’m part of an escape room crew, that just did a new room last night.  I love baking, but really dislike cooking. Quirky. 

But, because I just transitioned out of a job in a place that highly values honor, I also know that people describe me as a loyal friend, self aware, a person of who lives her convictions, and faithful.  One friend said I created a safe space for her to get to know me at her own pace, which was healing to a wound she had with white women particularly.  I felt very honored by that.  I’m also known as a problem solver and spreadsheet maker. Another friend said I’m “extremely reasonable” and then we laughed at the adverb choice.  

2. How you would describe your sphere of influence?

This question made me think about my road trip home from Christmas last year.  It started in Mesa, AZ, where I grew up. As I made my way up the west coast, I stopped and had coffee and doughnuts and lunches and late night chats with people from the last 3 decades of my life  I first met them on summer staffs, or younglife clubs, or discipleship gap years, or working alongside in ministry.  Because I am a strong introvert, and often feel like I have limited relational capacity, I have been very intentional about my investment in people.  I work hard to find common ground with the people I find myself around, and think through how I want to spend my energy and investment in them.  I work to be fully present with people, and do my best to seek understanding and speak to the best possible version of them.  I continue to cheer them on long after they’ve left my ministry or program or work environment. I don’t think I’m the kind of person that people cite as saying or doing something that changed their lives, but more the person who walked along side them through all those life changes. 

3. What fuels your leadership?

Spreadsheets.  Ha. not really, but they do help me organize it.  This formula is actually a metaphor for a lot of where I find joy in leadership. I believed that it should be possible to sort our expenses by a certain category, for each month, and by different teams.  I didn’t yet know how to do this, so I started googling, and watching youtube videos, and trying different things, and then trying to figure out where I went wrong, until I got there, and now that sheet sorts all the things in all the ways!  

This is also a lot like how I lead.  Once we identify where we want to be, I start learning my team, understanding their goals and values, figuring out their strengths and barriers, and then we start trying things.  It gives me energy when we collaborate and work together with ideas and risks and failures and try-agains.  We celebrate every victory, and learn from every misstep.  I love facilitating growth in programs, and teams, and people, and hope that in each situation I am bringing stability, health, and safety as a foundation to be the best version of themselves.  I see myself as a facilitator for people and programs to function as they were meant to. The biggest fuel for my leadership is seeing people thrive. 

4. What is the pressing question that you’re asking?

How do I address broken systems while still having to work with, and within them.  I work with our unhoused neighbors, and just made a move from a hyper-local, individually funded organization to a regional and regionally funded one.  All of the systems to help people are broken. Bureaucracy and fraud prevention (both of which are necessary, but create ineffeciency and ineffectiveness) slow most things down to unusability.  These systems often offer solutions that people don’t really want, but settle for, and seem to be created without talking to people with lived experience. Systems often don’t recognize their intrinsic value as humans, or see them as individuals with individual wants and needs.  But these systems ARE  offering SOMETHING which is often better than nothing.  We collect metrics to evaluate progress that may or may not reflect what the actual problem is and if we’re solving it. And we compete for funding and space with other organizations who are doing good work so that we can do OUR good work.   What do we do with broken systems that are also necessary, or people will literally die? And what is my role in it?

5. Why Journey of Hope? And why now?

A mentor friend of mine once told me that I have a “posture of yes”.  This is true, but it is not natural, it is wholly cultivated in my life. Long before I had words for it, I have known that I have a fear of scarcity- especially of my time and my emotional energy.  My gut response to any opportunity is to say no and then evaluate if I can get to “yes”. I have known this about myself since about as long as I was making decisions- in fact my mom will tell you that as a very young child, she’d ask me to do things and I’d say “no”, but then eventually get around to it.  She was very kind to figure that out, and go along with me in it.  Sometime in my 20s, I realized I was missing out on great things, so I decided instead to say “yes” to whatever I possibly could say yes to, and figured my natural bent toward seclusion would balance me out.  I have found I have more time and emotional capacity than I believe I do.  

As for right now, as mentioned I have recently switched jobs, and for the first time in this century, I am not working for a faith based organization.  My faith, walk, and spirituality is no longer tied to my paycheck, and I am excited to explore what that looks like with more freedom than I have previously had.  I am also realizing that I will need to intentionally develop spiritual community myself, since it’s no longer created for me, in some senses, in my work.  I am excited to go on this journey.