Special Edition

Sometimes life is the essay.

Such is the case for this “special edition” of the Third Way.

Yesterday, we (Massive) announced the first-ever Intersectional Leadership immersive. This immersive is designed specifically for women executives who want to use their influence and authority to create more equity-based transformation in their organizations, industries, and communities. It will be hosted by Virginia here in Austin on May 16 - 18. (This link has all the details)

Although interesting, that’s not why this is essay-worthy. It is essay-worthy because it combines two backstories; two long journeys fueled by conviction, overcoming struggle, and seeking truth.

I love the way Virginia expressed it on her LinkedIn post announcing the immersive …

Thinking back on the journey that's led me to this moment, I can't help but feel a deep sense of gratitude and wonder. It's been a long road to launching the very first Intersectional Leader Immersive, a journey that's not only been about my career but has touched the very core of who I am. This path started over thirty years ago, guided by my mother's wisdom and many other extraordinary women who taught me what systemic feminism really means. It's not just about fighting for women's rights; it's about changing the system to be more just for everyone, at every level.

My immersion into complexity science, alongside a passion for using communication as a force for social change, revealed to me the power of systemic leadership. It's all about embracing all kinds of diversity, decentralizing power, and understanding interconnectedness.

Finally, my training and experience as a coach deepened my understanding of neuroscience and taught me how our minds are wired to resist change, yet with the right support and guidance, we can learn to open up, adapt, and lead in new, more effective ways.

Although the paths may be different, I know there are thousands of other women leaders committed to transforming mainstream business models into a model that embraces equity and diversity, taps into collective intelligence and creativity to solve highly complex problems, and makes a significant contribution to humanity without sacrificing growth and profitability.

I won’t be front-of-stage with this immersive in any way. And I’m so happy about that. I still love to be “on stage” when appropriate but it is time for us SWAMs (straight, white, American, male) to make space for more diverse voices. My role with the development, language, planning, and marketing of the immersive has come from my new favorite place: playing the role of Rick Rubin. It’s not my voice. It’s not my music. It’s not my lyrics. But because of the role I played, I feel like my spiritual DNA is imbued in the project. We often joke that we are too old to have kids, so Massive is our “baby”. That never felt more true than this moment.

Why does this matter so much to me?

As I said, what makes this announcement essay-worthy is the backstories.

As I wrote about last month, I feel like I was born with three distinct parts of me that felt permanently separated by timing and circumstances: craft, purpose, and right work.

Craft was buried beneath survival, trauma buffering, undiagnosed ADHD, and social conditioning. It first came into the light in 1990 when I won the district championship at Toastmasters in Portland, OR. Then as a commission-only office supply sales rep. Then accidentally becoming a “branding guy” in 2007. I embraced that my craft is language and strategy - both fueled less by knowledge and more by intuition. As Rubin speaks of, I “felt” my way through to find the right words and strategies.

Purpose was stored away in a mountain cave; occasionally releasing a distant song or verse to remind me that it was still there. Through the 2000s, I prayed this question incessantly “What do you want me to do?” “Love more”, I heard. (That is tattooed on my right arm). Then the line from Mary Oliver’s Summer Day poem haunted me for years: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”. As I healed my trauma, learned (slowly) how to love myself unconditionally (including all of the hidden shadow parts), and operated much more from my heart, my purpose emerged. It has taken many iterations but can best be summarized by the Bible verse Isaiah 50:4: “You have given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to those who are weary.”

Over the years, I honed my craft and tried to honor my purpose but right work eluded me. I built a career and a successful business around my gifts and in many ways, my purpose. But 2020 revealed to me that I no longer wanted to use these gifts with people and brands that weren’t committed to advancing humanity. In the upheaval of Covid, brutal racial injustice, the election and the poisonous treason of Jan 6, I felt a need to do something else; something significant.

In December 2020, I met Virginia. The course from Cody Johnson’s song “The Painter” comes to mind:

I don't remember
Life before she came into the picture
Brought the beauty I was missin' with her
Showed me colors I ain't never seen
She took chances
With every wall I built, she saw a canvas
I thank God every day for how He made her
My life was black and white but she's the painter

We were an unlikely match: a lifelong feminist activist, highly educated, stunningly beautiful Latina matched with a hipster cowboy gringo who’d had a series of spiritual awakenings. It all unfolded as a beautiful love story. But it also became a right work story.

It first came together in late 2022, when we named and launched Massive. Through 2023, we iterated, experimented, failed, learned, adapted. In late 2023, we began to work on the idea of Intersectional Leadership. As noted above and in the announcement, it is the culmination of Virginia’s crafts, purpose, and right work.

I want this immersive to be successful more than I’ve ever wanted anything to be successful. Yes, it is because I’m proud of her and want her to be recognized for her awesomeness. But it’s more than that. It’s because if the immersive is successful, it truly will create new leadership paradigm. It will shock crusty old systems into evolving. I want it to be successful because it is dangerous, subversive, and transformative. THAT is the feeling I’ve been seeking.

So here I am in a mystical, priceless, and wilderness place: with the right person, at the right time, doing the right work. I will admit that there are many voices telling me that I might be wrong about the right work part. Building a business around the intuition that there’s a market for conscious business leaders is audacious to say the least.

But craft, purpose, and work have made their way home to me; unifying mind, soul, and heart. There’s a spiritual power found in this triad; an energy waiting to burst forth and make a dent in the universe.

Click on the image to learn more.