My Leadership journey was a rough, but necessary process of self reflection, action, painful pause, joy, questioning, delegation, mentorship, praise, and growth. I started with some very necessary forms of self reflection about my health & wellness, needs for new coaching/mentorship, and a pathway to get unstuck. I found that I really needed to invest in my own healing as my emotional personal world needed just as much attention as my vocational world. Knowing that I had all the leadership skills, networks, and strategy needed I had to address my energy, my chosen next steps for elevation, and also decide what and who was not serve me and my larger goals for transformation. I had to take what felt like a painful pause and find joy. In that painful pause I grew my team of support, learned to delegate more, invested in building new partnerships to support the transformation I desired to see in myself and the world. I also got to utilize retreat and travel as a way to learn more about myself, my capacity, and different ways of leading and supporting underserved and neglected communities across the globe. I think the most powerful forms of accountability throughout this process came from my business strategist, my therapist, my coach, and my healer. Many of whom were different people at different times. My business strategist help me think about and move to actionable business growth and delegation. My therapist helped me get clear and in my body. My coach helped me get clear about my goals, develop new strategies, and helped me develop a blueprint. Lastly, my healer helped me move from head to my heart and then to my soul and for that I am forever grateful. One of the most important lessons these supports provided me was a grounded and tangible framework for boundary setting. I can now lean into my own discernment with clarity and confidence that makes my vision and pathway to immense impact much clearer. I have a present strategy that feeds into my future goals, which aims to ensure that in the end I’m not the only one holding the work but that the work can live and grow beyond me. I believe that the main pillar of true leadership is your ability to grow and support other leaders who are inspired to take your model or philosophy and incorporate it into their daily practices for change. I have truly begun to see my model being adopted and taught in a way that gives me hope that the work is not only supporting those communities that need it the most, but that it’s teaching folks how to create lasting policy and practice change that repairs harmful relationships. I think that the only thing I wish I knew when I started this process is that despite what felt unclear in the beginning about not truly knowing how I would get here that I would get here and be completely transformed in the process. Lastly, I’m not sure it was a surprise but I found some unlikely ally’s that I am glad I now have the honor of knowing.