Our Founder’s Story (Part 1: The Letter)

I step into the executive director’s office, sit down, take a deep breath and slide a single, folded sheet of paper across her desk.

I can see the question in her eyes as she opens it. I wait as she reads it, and then sighs as she leans back in her chair.

It’s the end of the spring semester in 2013, and we’d just spent the previous 3 years building an endowed school for high-ability, gifted kids at one of the most prestigious public universities in the US.

The paper?
My letter of resignation. 

I can feel her surprise. 

The decision to resign didn’t come easily, I tell her.
I’d been hand-picked for the position.
It was a great honor and profound responsibility to carry forward my own mentors’ psychological work to attend to the social, emotional, and career needs of the gifted kids.

The spotlight had been on us since the beginning.
I’d grown weary of the university politics and (if I’m being honest) the few, but intense, over-controlling parents that seemed to want to run the school themselves. As the psychologist on staff, I’d developed an innovative positive psychology program that focused on leadership development for talented young people. 

My credo was simple: fall in love with an idea, find and follow your flow, cultivate your strengths, envision your future, and say “yes” to new experiences. It was easy to teach because it’s how I lived my own life. 

But lately I’d found myself compromising my aspirations, quelling my heart’s desires - as gifted women are known to do.

I’d been pressuring myself to be realistic, to wait until the timing was just right before making the leap. I even went so far as to consider staying for “just one more year” until the first cohort of students graduated.
But then I realized something important, something that would make leaving simple - and the right thing to do for my own soul.

About a week prior, I met my mentor Barb on the shore of Lake Michigan. For years, every May we - a group of college professors who loved teaching - gathered there to celebrate the end of the school year, and to recover, re-energize and restore ourselves beside the clear cold water and squeaky white sand dunes.

That year, I felt reflective.
I’d been on the other side of my PhD program for 5 years at that point.

Before helping to start the academy, in my previous work at the same university, I’d founded WiSE, a leadership program for women in STEM that received university-wide recognition and funding.

I felt like I’d reached a point where I’d done everything I’d intended as an early-career psychologist. As I shared my thinking with Barb, I came to a sudden realization.

”I think I’m done.”

Barb was quiet for a moment as she took a long drag on her cigarette before nodding.
And then, in her graceful, yet pragmatic, tone she responded, “I think you’re done, too.”

I wasn’t looking for permission or approval, I don’t think.
Just an acknowledgment that I’d accomplished so much in such a short time.
Just an acknowledgment that I’d seen it through and that it was time to go do something different.

Later in a quiet moment, I finally got it, the thing that sealed it for me.
How dare I teach the young people at the academy to follow their dreams, if I weren’t willing to follow my own?

A week later, I returned from Lake Michigan, refreshed and focused, to the university. There, in my little office with its single window that overlooked nothing but an orange bird of paradise desert bush and an air conditioning unit, I wrote my letter of resignation, printed it, stepped into the Executive Director’s office and slid that folded single sheet across her desk.

And the moment I did, is the same moment I began what’s become a nearly 10 year journey into entrepreneurship,