Life Lately

Books, podcasts, experiences and reflections

Mar 27, 2026

Hey Leaders,

Due to all of the things*cue to me gesticulating wildly in a vain attempt to capture or convey the state of the world at any given hour* it’s been a while since I did an ordinary newsletter just talking about what I’m watching, reading, observing, learning, wrestling with. So I tried it and it was egregiously long, so now it’s in two parts. Part two will arrive tomorrow!

What I’m watching

Like so many of us, The Pitt and Shrinking has become must watch TV.

But PARADISE is the show that has me talking back to the TV at the end of the show, has people in my texts and DMs as we recap and sends me straight to Threads to gather reactions and conspiracy theories!

Honorable mention: I tried to avoid the awards season because it’s annoying but got dragged in by the Oscars and was as frustrated as I expected I would be. Still, yay Ryan Coogler and Michael B Jordan!

What I’m reading

Bitter Honey by Lola Akinmade - She has this precise, intense way of writing that captures the tensions and complexities of identities and relationships for African immigrants in Europe. I resonated in some ways, felt I got a peek behind the curtain in others. LOVE HER.

Spark by Al Gordon. Full disclosure: I’ve known Al for over 20 years and he’s a friend. I got the chance to read this a few months ago and I have been itching for this book to come out because I think it has an incredibly salient message for today’s leaders.

Al asks, What if creativity wasn’t a luxury for the few—but the sacred calling of every believer? and contends that “In an age of algorithms, your creativity might just save the world.”

We desperately need new courageous, innovative, creative ideas for today’s challenges. We need our leadership imagination to soar and our bold unapologeticness (that’s not a word but stay with me) needs to match it. We need space to incubate new systems, strategies and solutions. And this book tells the stories of a community exploring some of this and encourages each of us to try it too. Buy the book.

What I’m listening to.

I couldn’t think of anything and then I listened to Amy Poehler interviews with Viola Davis and Steve Carell on her Good Hang podcast. Both were awesome.

Experiences

Me and my husband were in DC for 24 hours for my speaking engagement. . ANd then a storm walloped the Midwest so we were stuck in DC for a few days. Determined to turn lemons into lemonade we turned ourselves into tourists.

We spent four breaktaking, profound hours in the National Museum of African American History and Culture. What stood out - every inch of it :

- There was a wall that noted the numbers of people in different European countries enslaved and trafficked in ships. Inscribed by those numbers were the names of enslavement ships , the number of people they took and the number that survived . I nearly swore out loud when I saw that one of the British ships was called HAPPY.

- Painted on a glass case holding a whip, the words of writer and abolitionist Olaudah Equiano

“O Ye nominal Christians! Might not an African ask you- Learned you this from your God , who says to you, Do unto all men as you would men should do unto you?

-The faith of Harriet Tubman. Her dreams, visions and action.

While not the most shocking, some of the most disturbing pieces articulated the way land, resources, education, opportunities were taken in ways that technically were legal, but were nowhere close to moral. Sometimes the imagination is used for nefarious purposes. In a way it reminded me of the bureaucratic hell CS Lewis wrote about in the preface of The Screwtape Letters where Lewis said the greatest evil

“is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern.”

Thoroughly nasty indeed.

Then there was the beauty of the many floors highlighting athletes, artists , activists, entrepreneurs. It was stunning. I nearly wept seeing Luther Vandross’ handwritten lyrics to Dance With My Father. All in all, it was such a rich experience. If you haven’t been - get yourself there.

DITTO National Air and Space Museum which got me wishing I was a STEM queen. Who dreams up this stuff? It seems that innovation and imagination has the potential to take us anywhere.That said, I was freaked out by the OG space ships that took people into space with what looked like little more than tin foil, a metal frame and a calculator. (Again, I am not a STEM queen) I also loved checking out the planets. Is Pluto still one or not? I vote YES.

It was so incredibly inspiring, not so much about personal notions to go into space (not my thing) but about dreaming in general.