I am deeply honored to be featured on the January cover of Career Ahead. While I have participated in many interviews and profiles over the years, this cover story is unlike any I’ve done before. Rather than focusing on a single leadership model, industry perspective, or entrepreneurial milestone, the article—titled A Thousand Lifetimes in One—steps back to examine the full arc of my life and the experiences that have shaped not only my career, but who I am as a leader and a human being.
We often tell professional stories in neat chapters: roles held, organizations built, strategies executed. Yet life rarely unfolds so cleanly. My journey has moved across public service, military life, global work, entrepreneurship, and personal reinvention. It has included moments of profound uncertainty, the pain of divorce, and the quiet loneliness that can accompany major transitions. But it has also held deep purpose, unexpected growth, and the enduring joy that comes from meaningful impact.
This story is, at its core, about what lives between the lines of a résumé. The unseen chapters—the risks taken, the setbacks endured, the courage summoned when no other option exists—are often the very experiences that shape how we lead, decide, and build. Experience is rarely just confidence gained; more often, it is courage discovered. We do not always recognize our own strength until circumstances demand it.
In A Thousand Lifetimes in One, I reflect on leadership under pressure, the necessity of choosing purpose over comfort, and why disruption—whether personal or professional—always requires courage. It also speaks to the discipline of presence: the decision to engage fully with life rather than retreat into self-pity or stagnation. Growth does not come from avoiding difficulty; it comes from moving through it with intention.
One belief anchors everything I do, and it is a message I hope resonates with anyone standing at a crossroads: you are allowed to change. You are allowed to start over. Reinvention is not failure—it is evolution. And it is available to us at any age, in any circumstance, and at any stage of our careers or lives.
I am profoundly grateful to the Career Ahead team for making space for a story that looks beyond traditional measures of business success and into the life that informs it. Leadership is never built on achievement alone; it is forged in the complexity of lived experience.
The January issue is now available, and I am honored to share this chapter of my journey with you.