2025 was a year of reckoning for me both personally and professionally. I got to experience the joy that is perimenopause, continue navigating my ADHD, and I got to witness women standing up to weaponized incompetence at home and systemic bias at work. My Top 5 from 2025 are the themes I couldn’t stop thinking […]
Amy Poehler’s podcast Good Hang makes me ridiculously happy. Go listen to every single episode. I’ll wait. In every episode, she talks about the Enneagram; there is always another reference to types and wings and integration paths. So I dropped $20 bucks and took the “official” test, and honestly, everything now makes sense. Type 8: […]
The New York Times published a piece asking if women ruined the workplace. In a time when misogyny, sexism, racism, and discrimination are running rampant because men have been in charge, that question is more than insulting—it’s delusional. The workplace was already broken long before women had the chance to step into it. Men built […]
8THIRTYFOUR is hosting the Community Capital Conversation on November 19th, because enough is enough. Bring your stories. This isn’t the story about the quarter of a million embezzlement that almost destroyed my business in 2023; it isn’t about who was responsible or about all the creative ways institutions failed to prevent, detect, or react to […]
I have the phrase “find comfort in the uncomfortable” tattooed on my arm; it’s a reminder that growth happens in the uncomfortable, and while this is true, it’s also my trauma response. I sought out hard things, not to grow, but to punish myself. My comfort came from the chaos; if it didn’t exist, I […]
I am the most unathletic person you will ever meet. If you don’t believe me, watch the video of me rollerblading—it’s on my Instagram. I’m not giving you the link, you gotta work for it. Ironically, or not ironically, I am ridiculously competitive, which directly challenges my athleticism, often with disastrous consequences. Case in point: […]
She purchased it off of Amazon, in hopes he would finally “get” it, see she was drowning and step up. The Fair Play Deck is sold as a game, but it’s really meant to hit men over the head and drive home the point they don’t even do half of the emotional, physical and mental […]
“Bode, you seem angry. You should take a break.” I’m not angry, I’m f*cking nuclear. I’ve spent my career fighting for small businesses, standing up for vulnerable populations, and building a community where people look out for each other. Now, I spend my days talking with business owners who are shuttering their doors, laying off […]
(If I hear this one more time, I’m gonna throat punch someone.) If I had a dollar for every time a technical or contracting company said, “We don’t do marketing*,” I could fund my own tradeshow booth next to Lockheed Martin at AUSA. With lighting. And carpet padding (and actual comfy chairs). Every time, I […]
“Can a person live on iced, shaken espressos only?” I texted my best friend, Sue. “Yes,” she responded. That, right there, is why Sue is my best friend. The past two+ years have been the hardest of my life. I was diagnosed with ADHD (at 45). I faced a situation that tested everything I had […]
