You know how it is. When you see something important–something that just clicks because it's so obvious you can't believe you didn't see it before–you can never unsee it. Suddenly, it's everywhere.

That's what happened to me. I was a young woman in a room full of imposing men with impressive titles from impressive organizations, attending an all-day U.S. policy meeting. I walked in feeling totally out of my depth, but as the day wore on, it became clear: they were all people. Under the suits and titles, there were people with hopes, doubts, frustrations, boredom, ego...so much that's the same with people everywhere. But in that case, these were people who didn't know how to meet their way out of a paper bag.

To get to that room, I'd learned how to meet well. I'd seen that every high-performing team adopted an intentional meeting practice. Great teams embraced rituals and structures that brought out the best in people. I'd also seen teams struggle through awful meetings. That day, when the terrible meeting dragged on and I watched a senior VP fall asleep in his chair, was an epiphany for me. Change the meeting, you change everything.

Within a year, my partners and I founded Lucid Meetings to make it easier for more teams to achieve the kind of meeting excellence common in high-performing teams, and that was so sadly lacking that day.

My mom and I raced to be the first to earn a college degree. She beat me by 3 months, earning her nursing degree in April. I finished my theatre degree in June. While my degree cost more, it certainly didn't lead to higher-paying job prospects. When my children arrived, I decided to transfer my love of the creative process and my knack for seeing possibilities to the more lucrative tech sector.
A career in tech brought more reliable pay and new challenges. As a young mother with a theatre degree on a team comprised mostly of male engineers, I had barriers to bust through.
Barriers, but also gifts. I found that my background in the arts gave me an appreciation for the inherent complexity and power of human interaction that my colleagues lacked. I was trained to see that the way people interact shapes what's possible, and I became fascinated by how the best leaders design those interactions (aka, meetings) to achieve their business goals.
Now, after 15+ years of focused research and practice, I help other leaders see what I saw, so they too can design the way people interact in their businesses.