My singular mission is to help you improve your organization.
In the difficult work to reconcile tensions, ease unrest, and evolve workplace cultures, I find it satisfying to infect my clients with the same hopefulness and possibility thinking that helped me transcend my difficult early years and painful experiences growing up in the Third World.
I am truly motivated to help you unlearn and relearn so you can be the leader your organization needs today.
My Story
Growing up in Guyana I was an early change agent. In hindsight I recognize a purposeful youthful compass I wasn’t going to compromise, that morphed into clear convictions about how we engage with people and have access to their best efforts. I’ve come to realize that people crave support, especially when they make missteps. They also hunger for validation.
12-year-old Wendy wasn’t going along with a scheme by Myles and Lexy (names changed in consideration of the guilty) to smoke cigarettes behind the rickety chicken coop in our back yard.
I saw it and our dilapidated cottage going up in smoke in my mind. And was terrified.
So I used my fear to persuade them to change their minds (I’ll spare you the threats I leveraged). And as their knees buckled at the realization I could out them to our mothers leading to sure purgatory, I offered support in the form of a confidentiality promise. Said I wouldn’t rat them out. And heaped praise on them for changing their minds.
Truth is I wanted them to quit bellyaching, to resume our carefree play, and to feel good about themselves.
Busy leaders don’t always slow down to compute this and realize that moments of missteps or failure are when people are most likely to benefit from grace. And they invariably reward grace-giving with changed behavior.
Overlooking this creates space for frustration and tension. My life is full of examples of the budding young strategist that I was, helping people see reason, make different choices, etc.
Poverty and deprivation were no match for my active mind and as I matured so did my mastery. Fed up with hardship and limited opportunities I immigrated to the United States from Guyana, both tired of living at the fringes and excited about my prospects.
I sat down with a headhunter looking for my first job in corporate America.
Because I was an easy and natural communicator, people-geek, and systems thinker, he felt strongly that the world of HR was my rightful place.
And so I was launched like a scud missile. An early Unicorn, I bucked the traditionalist, gatekeeper standard of practice – I believed HR could offer more value as a true strategic partner facilitating the fruitful exchange of solid contribution for rewards, vs watching for which rules got broken, and reinforcing them.
In time I would study brain and behavioral science and complete an executive MBA that took me to Prague for the international residency portion.
Positions of increasing responsibility came my way. As did layoffs, mistreatment by cruel prospective employers and near destitute living. I would cry tears of relief when an offer of employment materialized.
Surely I hadn’t survived Third World hardship and impoverishment to languish, dreams deferred, in one of the world’s superpowers?
In the difficult work to reconcile tensions, ease unrest, and evolve workplace cultures, I find it satisfying to infect my clients with the same hopefulness and possibility thinking that helped me transcend difficult early years.
