Friends and fellow members of the employee ownership community, I have an important and personal update for you: Today is my final day working for the National Center for Employee Ownership after more than ten years with this wonderful organization.

I want to say up front that this is not a “good-bye” to the employee ownership community. I promise you that. Instead, I would like to express that I am very excited to see you later. I imagine that I am not alone in having been transformed by our collective and shared experience with COVID-19. Over the past year, I began to follow and listen to the feelings these transformations stirred within me.

For most of my adult life, I’ve been led by a personal and professional vision to do two things: cultivate positive and nurturing community with those around me, and meaningfully improve the lives of working people everywhere. The NCEO and my friends on staff have put me in a position to do both, and I will be forever grateful to them for this. To all of my NCEO colleagues, I want to say thank you for playing a critical role in my own growth and for being such a positive influence in my own life—gratitude is honestly hard to put into words. I also want to thank every single employee-owner and company that has granted me their trust over this time and played just as big a role in my learning these past ten years.

What happens next for me professionally has not yet been determined. When I make that decision, I will be sure to let my friends in the employee ownership community know. I spoke earlier this year at the NCEO’s annual conference on the importance of rest in the process of prioritizing employee wellbeing, and for the next month or so, I will be prioritizing just that: some much needed time off for myself and with my friends and family. 

What I will say now is this: I am eager to continue my growth and be in service to workers and the employee ownership community wherever I go. I will open myself up to pursue exciting new opportunities that speak to my heart much like I have always done. Your own thoughts and curiosities about my journey and what might lie ahead are more than welcome! I would be grateful to hear from you. If you would like to stay in touch or reach out to me, you can contact me via LinkedIn or at [email protected].

For now, I’ll leave you with the words of one of my favorite jazz crooners: “I’ll be seeing you.”