Fearless 11.13.23

Good morning, Fearless readers:

In Iowa and beyond, it has been a news-heavy week for women and girls. Don’t skip the “In the Headlines” section.

One of my favorite headlines: Osage ballerina Maria Tallchief will appear on U.S. quarters. My daughter, who is a young dancer, will definitely be finding these quarters in her Christmas stocking.

In this week’s e-newsletter, you will find:

A story about the Beacon jail diversion program in Des Moines: This fall, an effort is ramping up to help women at the other end of the criminal justice process, after they are arrested but before they spend months in jail and receive a possible prison sentence. Rather than going to jail, some women can go right to the Beacon.
A profile of Heidi Ernst, a Marshalltown woman who is finding new meaning in life after a shark attacked her while scuba diving in the Bahamas.
A story about Julia Franklin, the new executive director of Mainframe Studios.
In the headlines: For the first time in the city’s history, Des Moines’ mayor will be a woman – Connie Boesen.
A break from the news: Emily Westergaard, CEO of the By Degrees Foundation, has three ideas from working with kids that adults should employ.
Lots more!

– Nicole Grundmeier, Business Record staff writer

It’s still dark outside when women from the Beacon retrieve bicycles parked at the front of the building or set out for the bus stop, ready to pedal or ride to their jobs that morning and, hopefully, into new lives.

The staff at the Beacon sees the effects of complex trauma daily. Among its services, the nonprofit in Des Moines works with women trying to construct new lives after leaving prison – about 85% of clients come after being released from the Iowa Correctional Institution for Women in Mitchellville.

This fall, an effort is ramping up to help women at the other end of the criminal justice process, after they are arrested but before they spend months in jail and receive a possible prison sentence. Rather than going to jail, some women can go right to the Beacon.

The Beacon’s main building is located on a quiet corner in the Sherman Hill neighborhood in Des Moines. In the autumn, the neighborhood is illuminated by fall foliage. Hand-decorated pumpkins dot the path to the entrance.

For many of the women who live there, it’s the first home where they have felt safe.

New approach with diverting women to the Beacon

As a society, we are still learning about the full biological effects of severe childhood trauma.

People who have a high ACES (Adverse Childhood Experiences) score are at much greater risk of health complications down the road – heart disease, cancer, diabetes, depression, anxiety, obesity and more, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

They’re more likely to die young. They’re more likely to be victims of crimes. They’re more likely to be incarcerated.

Traumatic stress in childhood can lead to brain changes in adulthood, research has found. For many childhood abuse survivors, succeeding as adults is not as simple as pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. They need a support network. They need therapy. They need more.

The staff of the Beacon social services agency said they strive to treat every woman who comes in the door as an individual. Too much of society instead reflexively judges women who are at risk of homelessness because of domestic abuse, substance use or incarceration, Beacon employees said.

“Right now, it’s viewed as, ‘Oh, you got incarcerated: You’re a bad person,’ instead of, ‘This whole system is unfair. And you were set up to fail,’” said Alexandria Atal, lead case manager at the Beacon.

The new approach with diverting women to the Beacon could mean better outcomes for women. But another selling point the Beacon is emphasizing is that its services cost about $26 a day, versus over $100 of daily expenses at the Polk County Jail.

“Our prison system has become a mental health institution, a substance use treatment facility, and it does a really bad job of those,” said Melissa Vine, the Beacon’s executive director. “This jail diversion poses the question, what would it look like to offer support instead of punishment for people with a lifetime of complex trauma?”

The Beacon can provide a rehabilitation environment where women have jobs and are part of the community. Sometimes, they are able to parent their children, Vine said. The concept has the support of Michael Huppert, chief judge of the judicial district that includes Polk County, Vine said.

Atal said that, at this early stage, she is examining arrest records to look for candidates who might succeed with the Beacon’s services. If they move forward, the Beacon’s goal is to be able to demonstrate to a judge that the best chance for a new trajectory in life is a sentence of probation, conditioned on continuing to take advantage of the Beacon’s services.

Leaders at the Beacon said one of their long-term goals is to have an office located within the Polk County Jail. But that would require more staff and resources than they have currently.

A client’s experience: From ‘constant fear’ to helping others

Marlena Hemphill, 44, is a case manager for the Beacon. She is also a graduate of its programming – an example of a woman setting a new path.

She said both her parents were alcoholics. She watched her father abuse her mother.

“I lived in constant fear,” she said. She started drinking heavily and dropped out of school in sixth grade. Her parents divorced when Hemphill was 13; her mother died a couple of years later and her father was soon out of her life. Hemphill’s oldest child was born when she was 17.

She served time in prison twice for multiple OWI convictions. After her second sentence was over, she had nowhere to go upon her release. She was accepted to go to the Beacon.

“The minute I walked in the door, I knew I was in the right spot,” she said. “That was the first time in my life somebody asked me how I was. … ‘What happened to you?’ rather than ‘What’s wrong with you?’”

Completing the Beacon’s programming wasn’t easy, she said. It involved working on childhood trauma and developing skills that were neglected when she was in a day-to-day survival mode.

“I’m at that acceptance stage,” she said. “Yeah, all those things happened to me. But it’s OK. I can relate with my dad. He did the best that he could, given his circumstances growing up.”

Breaking generational trauma is hard, she said.

She reconnected with her son, now a Des Moines police officer, after he was sent to the Beacon to answer a call.

She started as a case manager Nov. 6 after working in other roles at the Beacon.

“The Beacon is different from everywhere else because we really do treat these women like individuals,” she said.

Jail-diversion effort recognizes trauma that leads women to incarceration

Vine and Atal said that the vision for jail diversion won’t be achieved overnight. The criminal justice system’s processes have been entrenched for decades upon decades. And, among other obstacles, the fact that people are being booked at Polk County Jail around the clock could eventually mean new around-the-clock duties for the Beacon’s staff.

“Our goal is to go in, get our feet wet, and then just change the system,” Atal said.

Vine said women at the Beacon typically have suffered trauma since childhood and expend most of their effort on such things as surviving, finding meals and protecting siblings from violence. When they become adults, they might get low-wage jobs and experience domestic violence – a tragically familiar situation. Those paths often lead to homelessness and substance addiction.

“In my mind, these women are not addicts or criminals,” Vine said. “These are women who are hurting and looking to survive. But what happens is, the United States has built a prison system that exploits people like this.”

Seventy percent of children who have one incarcerated parent will be incarcerated themselves later in life, Vine said. “So this is a compounding problem.”

“After I had been at the Beacon for about a year, I started asking the question, ‘What would it look like to offer support instead of punishment to these women?’” Vine said.

Conditions for employees, including wages, are important, too

The principle of respect extends beyond clients. Vine said the Beacon is conscious about providing good conditions for its employees.

“The old-school nonprofit model is overworked, underpaid,” Vine said. “So I don’t work more than 40 hours a week. Because if I did, that would communicate to my staff that that’s the expectation I have of them.”

Just as important are wages, Vine said.

“When I got to the Beacon, people were making $10 an hour, and I said, ‘How are we an organization that’s helping women get out of poverty while simultaneously keeping them in poverty with these wages?’ That’s what a lot of nonprofits do. Are you paying people a livable wage? Because otherwise, you’re keeping people in the system that you’re supposed to be trying to eradicate. That doesn’t make sense.”

A recent job posted by the Beacon for a full-time resident assistant who works afternoons, evenings and weekends starts at $18 per hour, plus “100% covered medical insurance, three weeks PTO and a matching 401K.”

Atal said she felt appreciated when she was promoted after six months at the Beacon in recognition of what she had been accomplishing: “Any other nonprofit would be, like, ‘Great. We have this employee that’s doing this stuff already. Let her keep doing that.’ And instead I was pulled over and, ‘OK, you’re doing extra stuff. Let’s actually make a title for that and compensate you.’”

‘Our highest value is dignity’

Vine said the Beacon’s revenue is about 35% fundraising, 45% grants and 20% rent paid by clients. The Sherman Hill facility has 34 beds, but Vine said the agency wants to move toward more single-family rooms or units instead of congregate housing, in line with current research on what is best. Other locations will offer different types of service.

Atal said giving clients autonomy and respect lets the staff insist on accountability and makes it possible to have difficult conversations with women. That leads to success stories like Hemphill’s – about 40% of the Beacon’s workers are program graduates.

“Our highest value is dignity,” Vine said. “And that’s the feedback we get from our clients the most: ‘This is the first time in my life that I was treated with dignity.’”

Heidi Ernst is a 74-year-old physical therapist who has long believed in practicing what she preaches to patients and has done powerlifting, swimming and scuba diving. After her 524th dive on June 7 in the Bahamas, a shark attacked her as she was climbing the boat ladder after completing the dive. She had to have her left leg amputated below the knee at a trauma center in Miami. She lives in Marshalltown. (This interview was conducted in late August in the midst of her recovery.)

The following story has been formatted to be entirely in her words, and has been edited and condensed for clarity.

I’ve always believed as a physical therapist, I need to set a good example for my patients. I’ve always been active. I’ve gone to the Y, lifted weights, swam. I swam competitively in Masters for a long time. I had started doing some powerlifting.

Years ago, I had wanted to get into scuba diving. I was always afraid to do that. Then I thought, you can’t go through life avoiding the things that you fear. The Y offered an “explore scuba diving” type thing. You could go in and you could try on the gear and they would help you put the regulator in your mouth, and then you could swim around in the recreation pool, which is not very deep. I think I was in there the whole entire time that they allowed us to and I was, like, “Wow, this is really cool. I’m going to have to try this.”

So then I signed up for their actual scuba class that they were going to offer, and they canceled that because they didn’t have any participants who signed up other than myself. So then I looked for other scuba instruction classes in Iowa. I found one in Cedar Rapids. And the same thing happened. Not enough participants, so they canceled the class. I thought, well, I’ll be darned, nobody is doing these classes here in Iowa. So I’m going to have to look elsewhere.

I had been going to the Bahamas a time or two a year just to do some healing with dolphins. It is thought that dolphins are able to sense where a person needs healing and they would use their sonar to assist with that. There were actually classes run by the Upledger Institute in Florida to do craniosacral therapy in the water. I signed up for those and got to know some people at this resort, out of which we would go to the different areas to work on each other in the water, and then also we would go to this dolphin sanctuary where we would do some of our coursework.

I got to talking to somebody I got to know at the resort and I was telling him that I wanted to learn how to scuba dive, and he said, “Well, why don’t you go see the folks at Grand Bahama Scuba?” He directed me to them, and I signed up for their class. That was back in 2012. I got certified while I was down there, and then I kept going back three or four times a year. I just kept diving and getting more certifications. I really was hooked right from the get-go.

The first day we go out on the boat – I was so nervous. I’m thinking I’m never gonna be able to do this. I just told myself, “Yes, you are.” The first dive of the day was at a shallow reef, 12 to 13 feet. The reason for doing the shallow reef is that if you had to pop up for air, it wouldn’t be an issue because it was less than 15 feet deep. It was really beautiful. I kept breathing in too much air and I kept floating up, and I had a hard time staying down. But the reef was just gorgeous and we swam around it.

Then the second dive of the day was going to a deeper area. We learned to go down the rope, and stop and clear our ears, and then keep going. I got down and there were several divers ahead of me. It was a really beautiful day and I remember the ocean being really blue. Then, 25 to 30 feet away from me was a barracuda. I kept watching him and I’m thinking, wow, what a beautiful fish, and yet I was somewhat intimidated by the teeth that they always show. I’m like, well, he doesn’t seem to be coming towards me, so I think I’ll be OK. I focused more on going down further. I noticed how the bubbles that the divers below me were giving off as they were exhaling were coming up. I was still in a zone where there was a lot of daylight and sunlight, and as the bubbles were coming up to the surface it just looked like diamonds glistening. I thought, wow, this is just absolutely beautiful. I completely forgot about my fear at that time and I just kept on going further down. My dive instructor was very close by, so she was always making sure I was OK.

There have been dives when I’ve had some fears come up. All of a sudden something would happen in my head and I think I’m gonna start panicking, but I just tell myself I’ll be OK.

I’ve done 524 dives. After the 524th is when the accident happened.

We had been diving in an area where there are commonly sharks. Caribbean reef sharks are naturally curious. They would come up and check us out, and our instructor would take pictures of some of us with the sharks in the background. Then pretty soon the sharks would kind of go on their own, swim away and sometimes they would circle back to check us out and then we would go on to the reef.

We had completed our dive and went up. I think I was the last one up and I got rid of my dive gear and my wetsuit, and I hopped back in the water because I needed to go to the bathroom. So I did that and I was right next to the ladder leading back up to the boat. I was hanging onto the platform and then I just scooted over to the ladder. I had both hands on the top rung and had already taken a step with my right foot on the bottom rung and started to take a step with my left foot when a shark came up from below.

It was unprovoked, meaning I didn’t do anything to attract the shark. I wasn’t feeding it, I wasn’t splashing around. I wasn’t doing any of that. I was merely trying to get back on the boat.

When I saw it with my leg in its mouth I struck it with my left fist and sustained an injury on this middle finger as I hit its teeth. And the story goes, I don’t remember this, but one of the crew members apparently kicked the shark in the head also to make it let go of my leg, and I scrambled up the ladder and got back in the boat. I never lost consciousness. I was fully aware of what was going on the entire time. Needless to say it was a bloodbath in the back of the boat.

The divemaster put the tourniquet on right away. His wife got on the phone and contacted land to get an ambulance ready and the hospital ready. We headed for shore, which was I’m guessing probably a 10-minute ride. I know we were going as fast as the boat could go. I remember feeling the vibration of the engine, which was right below where I was lying on the back on the floor of the boat. The divemaster putting the tourniquet on my leg stopped the bleeding ultimately.

There are two things I thought about. First was, I know I’m going to lose this leg, and I don’t want to die. I begged the divemaster who had the tourniquet on my leg. I said to him, “Please don’t let me die.” He just said, “No, I won’t.”

There was a young man on the boat who cradled my head, and he was very instrumental in keeping me calm. I think we prayed together. He was very encouraging the whole time letting me know that I was going to be all right. He had a strong Christian background, and I think that’s what he used to really comfort me and keep me connected to my prayers. At one point, I felt myself floating off the boat, and I was in a floating position with my arms and legs. Just as if I were floating or tumbling through the air. I had no wounds. There was no blood, there was no pain, and it was completely still and peaceful. All I could see was the blue sky with some beautiful white fluffy clouds, and it was just so beautiful and so welcoming – and then it felt like a bang and I was back on the boat in excruciating pain with blood all over the place.

What was this? I don’t know. Some people claim, well, you just fainted. Well, I don’t think that was fainting because fainting to me was not blissful like that. I could draw a picture of what I experienced if I could paint, so it was more than that. Whatever a person wants to believe, to me, it was that I was very near to death. Then I came back and I have a purpose.

When we got back to shore, the ambulance was ready for me and they lifted me out of the boat, put me in the ambulance and took me to the local hospital. There they completed the stabilization and I had my first surgery. Apparently the shark had broken the fibula in a couple of spots and so the orthopedic surgeon stabilized that. I had a lot of blood loss so they gave me blood and then the area air ambulance was contacted to airlift me to Miami. So the next day we did that. So I was at Jackson Memorial trauma and burn center for about 10 days. That’s where they ended up amputating my leg, not because of the shark bite. A lot of people ask me, “Well, did the shark have a filthy mouth or why did you have infection?” Apparently it has nothing to do with that other than I had an open, gaping wound and having been in saltwater. That’s what created the infection, caused by bacteria called Vibrio vulnificus, essentially it can be a flesh-eating bacteria.

So when I got to the trauma center in Miami, the first doctor that evaluated my leg, he already noticed that there was infection in my foot, so the decision was made to amputate. His recommendation was amputation because he said even if it would heal, and if more infection would not occur, I would probably still have a lot of pain. He could not guarantee that he could reattach the nerves and the blood vessels, so I would still have drop foot and all of the symptoms that I had before. Meanwhile, my foot had completely dropped, and I had no feeling at all. It turned black. The nerves had been severed. Arteries and veins were completely severed. I’ve been asked several times, “Well, weren’t you sad about the limb loss?” I wasn’t crazy about it, but I didn’t really shed any tears over it because I knew it was necessary for that to happen. Without that I would have probably had infection after infection and ultimately, maybe, would have lost my leg further up above the knee or even higher. So I am really grateful that I have a long stump No. 1, and first and foremost, I’m grateful that I’m still alive because it was touch and go.

I knew right away that amputation was going to be what needed to be done. That night they amputated. When I woke up, I knew what to expect. I didn’t have any qualms about seeing my leg shortened or when I saw the stump for the first time when it was unwrapped. I have seen all of that in my medical training. I kind of had an idea of what to expect in terms of how the timeline was gonna go with the healing part: shrinking the stump down to a good volume and then starting with the prosthetist building the prosthesis, learning how to walk again. Those are the steps that I knew were going to happen, so I wasn’t in the dark about it.

I’ve been a physical therapist for 36 years. I worked in a facility where we did a lot of wound care. So wounds did not scare me. Burns did not scare me. I saw a lot of pretty severe injuries. Yeah, it was my own, but I think maybe you can detach from that a little bit, just as I learned to detach from my patients’ wounds and burns, and just look at it from a clinical standpoint. My doctors were just the most amazing people. The care that I got there was just unbelievable, and all the expertise bundled in these teams was just fantastic. They all knew that I was a physical therapist and so they also explained things to me at my level of understanding.

The doctor who amputated my leg asked the nurse to have a psychologist come see me. He also said to have someone from hospital administration come to see me. This really smartly dressed, beautiful young woman walked in. I’m thinking, what are we going to talk about? She sat down, and it turned out that she was a below-knee amputee also. She had lost her leg 12 years prior to the date that we were talking and she was telling me about different things that she had since then done. She picked up running marathons. She runs two marathons a year. I thought, wow, that’s amazing.

When we finished talking, I thought, I’m gonna watch her walk out of here. I could not detect anything in her gait pattern that told me that she was an amputee. It was just amazing. I thought, wow, she is an example for me to get back to doing what I would love to do – and what I will be doing. It’s not just about sports activity, but also I live on 40 acres. I have a lot of mowing to do, and one of the pastures I mow with a tractor and I have to have my left leg able to operate the foot pedal. Right now, I can’t do that, but I figured out a way to get on my zero turn mower. I have a horse, my own horse, and then a horse that’s being boarded in my place. I need to do chores, brush them. I need to be able to get in and out of the barn without falling. I need to be able to get out of the horse’s way if they sidestep or if they happen to spook. So currently I’m not able to go in there because I just don’t think it’s safe. Fortunately, I have someone who is doing that.

Mainframe Studios has chosen Julia Franklin to serve as its next executive director. Starting Dec. 1, she will lead the thriving arts hub on downtown’s north side, which opened in 2017 and is now the biggest nonprofit art studio building in the country.

“I really want to champion artists in our community, so they feel like they’re essential,” Franklin told dsm. “I also want everyone who comes into the building to find art that interests them, that represents them and that connects them to what they’re feeling inside and with the world.”

Mainframe’s board of directors chose Franklin after a five-month search, prompted by the departure of its founding executive director Siobhan Spain, who left the role in June.

“We are fortunate to have extraordinary talent in our own backyard,” Mainframe founder Justin Mandelbaum said in a press release. “We interviewed candidates from coast to coast and culturally rich cities from around the country. Many were amazed at what we have created here, and all had impressive credentials, but it was Julia who had everything we wished for and more.”

Franklin currently works as the community investment specialist at Bravo Greater Des Moines, where she manages a $4 million annual grant program that invests in more than 85 arts and culture nonprofits in Central Iowa. She also teaches art appreciation at Des Moines Area Community College.

Over the past few years, she has launched community-based programs to promote the arts in rural Iowa. She co-wrote a successful grant application to fund public artwork about water quality and has led efforts to install artwork along bike trails and other public spaces.

Previously, she taught art at Graceland University in Lamoni, Iowa, where she helped guide the construction and operations at the Helene Center for the Visual Arts. Later she managed the Anderson Gallery at Drake University, where she created inclusive and accessible programs and exhibitions.

A Texas native, Franklin is also a practicing artist who often uses found objects – old photos, clothing, ephemera – to create sculptures and multimedia portraits that explore memory and family connections. The Iowa Arts Council named her an Iowa Artist Fellow in 2018.

Franklin has maintained a studio at Mainframe since 2018 and has gotten to know many of the other tenants, more than 200 artists in 180 studios.

“I’m always inspired by the other work that I see,” she said. “Mainframe offers artists a way to connect with each other and with patrons and guests. There’s just nothing like it.”

Oldest living woman Marine is a 1941 Grinnell College graduate: In December of 1941, Betty Printz Sims was a recent Grinnell College graduate teaching in Tripoli, Iowa. She remembers lying in bed while listening to the radio. “I was trying to keep warm because the landlady wouldn’t turn up the heat,” she described in a 2007 Veterans History Project interview. The radio show was interrupted with news of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. “Her first thought was, ‘Where the heck is Pearl Harbor?’” said Betty Printz Sims’ daughter, Rebekah Sims. The next day, Printz Sims sat with the school children, listening to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Day of Infamy” speech, which led Congress to declare war against Japan and enter World War II. “I decided I didn’t want to continue teaching music in a little town in Iowa,” Printz Sims said. “I wanted to do something constructive for the war effort.” In the summer of 1943, after completing her teaching contract, Printz Sims headed to Des Moines to enlist. She refused the options expected of her, such as the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps headquartered in Des Moines. Her goal was to join the Marines. Printz Sims celebrated her 104th birthday on Oct. 30. She is the oldest living female Marine, according to this story by Grinnell College. She was born in Sac City, Iowa, in 1919.

For the first time in the city’s history, Des Moines’ mayor will be a woman: Connie Boesen won the race over fellow city councilmember Josh Mandelbaum and two other challengers. She earned 48% of the vote, according to the unofficial tally. Mandelbaum came in at 46% in the unofficial results, while the two other candidates, Denver Foote and Christopher Von Arx, combined for nearly 6%. Boesen spoke to supporters at Chuck’s Restaurant in a neighborhood on the city’s north side that she said is an example of how the city can grow, Iowa Public Radio reported. “We need to get more economic growth, as we’re seeing here with new businesses coming in,” she said. “Coming in with new ideas, fresh approaches and excitement going on.” Boesen succeeds Frank Cownie, who ends his time as the city’s longest-serving mayor after five terms in office. A special election will be scheduled to fill Boesen’s at-large seat on the City Council.

Abortion rights advocates win major victories in Ohio, Kentucky, Virginia: Abortion rights advocates won major victories Tuesday as voters in conservative-leaning Ohio decisively passed a constitutional amendment guaranteeing access to abortion, while those in ruby-red Kentucky reelected a Democratic governor who aggressively attacked his opponent for supporting the state’s near-total ban on the procedure. In Virginia, a battleground state where Republicans pushed a proposal to outlaw most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, Democrats were projected to take control of the state Legislature after campaigning heavily on preserving access. The results sent a stark signal about enduring demands across the political spectrum to protect access to abortion more than a year after Roe v. Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court, according to the Washington Post.

Women catch up with men at more top business schools: Women now make up at least half of full-time MBA students at five top business schools, the most to reach that milestone in a given year, new data show. The rising share of female MBA candidates reflects business schools’ concerted efforts to recruit more women in recent years, according to the Wall Street Journal. Full-time MBA programs at Penn State University and the University of Oxford hit parity for the first time this academic year. They join those at George Washington University, Johns Hopkins University and the University of Pennsylvania, according to the Forté Foundation, a nonprofit focused on advancing women into leadership roles via access to business education.

Iowa Black Doula Collective is fighting for Black birthing people, taking on the predominantly white medical field one birth at a time (Black Iowa News). Sarah Booz made an Iowa Jewish-owned deli a TikTok sensation. Then, she became one, too. (Des Moines Register). The U.S. infant mortality rate increased more last year than it has in 2 decades, with significant jumps in Georgia, Iowa, Missouri and Texas (Time magazine). How the New York City Marathon is supporting new moms on race day (New York Times). Victoria’s Secret, the hypersexualized iconic millennial brand, tried to remake itself as feminist — and Gen Z saw right through it (Fortune). Underpaid child care workers seize on pandemic lesson: America needs them (Washington Post).

The Business Record hosted our annual 90 Ideas in 90 Minutes event in September. Here’s a little inspiration from one of the women who offered her insight at the event and in our publication: Emily Westergaard, CEO, By Degrees Foundation. Here are a few of the ideas she wrote in this year’s publication.

Give shoutouts!
At Findley Elementary, the students and staff start every day with a few shoutouts to celebrate hard work or acknowledge a milestone. By starting your day or a meeting by recognizing something your colleagues did, it helps remind us that we’re in this together.

Create intentional transitions
It’s more difficult to learn new things or remember information when we’re stressed. Consider a physical habit like a quick yoga stretch, a short visualization exercise, or 15 seconds of box breathing at the beginning of a meeting or important conversation to get everyone in the room into a mindset ready to process information.

Say your intentions out loud
Our young students start every day with a mantra – “Dream Big, We Believe, Better Together” – followed by a chant with their four-year college graduation year. Did you know that this year’s kindergarteners will be the future class of 2040?! By saying your goals out loud, and repeating them often, you keep your long-term outcomes in focus every single day, and you’re more likely to achieve what you want. It’s not just that speaking the words reminds you where you’re going, but that you’re more likely to do small things every day that eventually get you where you want to go.

See all her ideas
Watch her remarks

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