I Wish My Mother Had Taken Mackenzie Scott’s Advice

Issue 215 — December 19, 2022

My mother’s Wedgewood Bone china and Tiffany crystal wine, water, and cordial glasses glisten in the hutch I bought, where they could be not just stored but seen.

Mother had kept them packed away for many years. Why? Because she was “saving them for nice,” as she put it.

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How Do I Lead When I'm Not in Charge?

puzzle-person-keyI get a little nostalgic in October remembering my late parents whose birthdays were this month. So when Bonnie McEwan, president of the public interest communications firm Make Waves, suggested I write about how people in middle management can be leaders, I chuckled to think of one of my father’s favorite sayings:

“Everybody puts their pants on one leg at a time.”

That conjures up amusing pictures that equalize people regardless of their stature in the formal organization chart.

But the question of how to be a leader whether or not you have the formal authority isn’t about cutting others down to size. That famous scene from the 1980 movie 9 to 5 where the secretaries, played to the comedic hilt by Dolly Parton, Lilly Tomlin, and Jane Fonda, tie up their boss and make him beg for mercy. It’s sweet revenge in fantasy, but in reality comes from a place of feeling powerless to influence or lead in any other way…

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She's Doing It: Barbara Strachan Gives Girls of Incarcerated Moms Hope

FBI Director Robert Mueller presents GSACPC’s Barb Strachan with the Community Leadership Award.I still have my Girl Scout badge sash and a newspaper article about the year my father chaired the cookie sale in Temple, TX. I was in junior high school and looked pretty dorky in the photo, wearing my full green regalia. Daddy–never one to do anything in a small way–bought 12 dozen boxes of cookies. The freezer was packed with Thin Mints and those butter cookies I love with tea, and my friends knew what they’d be having for snacks at my house for the next year.

But enough of that. Today’s Girl Scouts are doing much more interesting things. “She’s Doing It” this week features Barbara Strachan, the Program Director of Girl Scouts Beyond Bars (GSBB) for the Arizona Cactus-Pine Girl Scout Council

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She and He Are Doing It: Earl and Suzanne de Berge Lead Their Dreams in Guatemala, Part I

[caption id="attachment_4596" align="alignright" width="267" caption="Suzanne and Earl de Berge"]Suzanne & Earl De Berge[/caption]

This week’s “She’s Doing It” column features both a he and a she: a couple who have worked together throughout their adult lives in their Arizona-based business and now are devoting their skills to amazing community development work in rural Guatemala. First of a two-part series.

Suzanne and Earl de Berge founded the public opinion research firm Behavior Research Center in 1965, with Suzanne running the business end and Earl the research end. Politically independent, I met them when BRC began doing opinion research for Planned Parenthood in Arizona in the early 1980’s. They were usually correct in their recommendations, helping us win ballot initiatives and score some big wins in a tough political climate. Here’s Earl’s description of what they are doing now, why this is their dream, and how they are leading–not following–it.

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TAKE THE LEAD, LADY! Practical Leadership Skills

If I’m lucky, there is at least one magic moment during a speech when I see people nodding in unison. Sometimes they smile knowingly; sometimes they look pensive, even pained, as though a raw nerve has been exposed. It’s not necessarily that they are agreeing with my brilliantly persuasive arguments, but rather that something resonates…

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