I have a confession
I love AIDS love their symmetry their
validation their pronouncement to the
world that I am good and I was almost
always an A student with the exception
of a few years in high school when I
being in love with boys at the expense
of C’s and Salinger and derivatives once
I graduated from college with honors I
set my sights on acing the curriculum of
life get married have kids buy a house
start a business we all know that
narrative and I thought I was getting
AIDS my life report card looked a little
like this managing chaos A plus plus I
have two boys one is on the spectrum the
other started doing front flips off my
headboard about the time he turned two I
had started one business was helping my
husband launch a virtual reality startup
while writing a novel and volunteering
at my kids school I had a master’s
degree in chaos surviving trauma a-plus
my father was diagnosed with stage 4
non-hodgkins lymphoma when I was 18 my
house burned down in a wild fire when I
was nearly eight months pregnant and
half my face has been paralyzed
eventually leading to a diagnosis of
Lyme disease every time I felt my life
was finally on track something traumatic
fixing others a when my bachelor father
was diagnosed with cancer I moved in
with him became his primary caregiver
found and enrolled him in the clinical
trial that would save his life
I sent my husband to college tried to
teach him algebra and edited nearly
every paper before he dropped out I
wasn’t just trying to take the final
exam in my own life I was trying to take
every
one else’s to guilt anxiety suppressing
feelings
ay-ay-ay and I undoubtedly would have
continued on that path lined with a’s
forever
unfulfilled a life of chaos knowing that
something was missing but never quite
sure what and then March 3rd 2015 that
morning I was scrolling through Facebook
looking for a few minutes of distraction
instead of pictures of friends on
vacation and envy able Eggs Benedict
though my newsfeed was full of gasps and
sorrows the small women’s college I’d
attended my freshman and sophomore years
had announced it was closing that summer
I stared at the screen unable to believe
the news Sweet Briar College sits on
3,000 acres at the base of the Blue
Ridge Mountains in central Virginia its
entrance is one of the most beautiful I
have ever driven full of Oaks and lush
green opening to brick buildings that
have educated women for more than 100
years before women were a part of NASA
they were educated at Sweet Briar before
women held office in Congress they were
educated at Sweet Briar before women
could vote they were educated at Sweet
Briar and like my own life sweeper art
didn’t look like it was failing not to
the outside land resources 70 million
dollar-plus endowment reputation demand
for single sex education had been
declining but I thought that maybe one
day it would go co-ed like so many
others before it had never did I imagine
that this middle place between
adolescence and adulthood would close
especially so abruptly at first I
thought I had to be out of the loop
others had to have known it was in such
bad shape but as the hours passed it
became increasingly clear that everyone
everyone had been taken by surprise the
college organized a call that afternoon
for the Alumni which I joined listening
to the then president discussed the
college’s financial troubles the school
would need to raise 20
million dollars in three months he said
impossible two million dollars a year
had been a stretch goal I got off the
call a little confused and joined a
Facebook group that had been organized
to help pool our collective talents to
see if there was something anything we
could do to save the school I thought
maybe there was something small I could
contribute I have an A in fixing
remember after an hour or so of
conversation I announced I was just
gonna go build a website which I did
launching later that night was several
hundred hits the next day and I
mentioned in the Washington Post
over the next week we discussed how to
accept pledges managed communications
and formed a board of directors for a
nonprofit that would handle the legal
and fundraising efforts we named the
nonprofit after the website saving
Sweetbriar saving Sweetbriar became my
full-time job alumni from around the
country sent me in my family food so I
could focus on the tasks at hand
I majored in chaos I was in my element I
can’t raise $25 for Jump Rope for Heart
it’s a true story
and yet I found myself leading the
charge to raise millions of dollars to
save a school whose mission I still
believed in traumatic circumstances
fixing even some anxiety saving
Sweetbriar was an opportunity for me to
get an A and some of my very best skills
the lawyers that we retained developed a
brilliant strategy around trust law and
I asked for money and more money and
even more than that as a web developer
and digital strategist I had studied
crowdfunding over the previous few years
noting what seemed to work I didn’t have
PowerPoint or a case for support as I
would eventually learn as typical and
most fundraising asks but what I did
have was passion in Photoshop and a
healthy dose of humor
when the president stated that the
reason why high school students didn’t
want to come to Sweetbriar was because
they were too far from a Starbucks I
asked our base to donate the cost of a
latte
we raised tens of thousands of dollars
in small donations as a result when the
finance director told some students that
they couldn’t use their class project to
raise money to save their school
well I added a line on the donation form
to send him a notification for every
donation made in his name and when the
board chair of saving Sweetbriar
testified on the stand that had she
known that the school is in such bad
shape she would have donated all of her
family’s cow money I developed a
campaign and memes around cows which was
wildly successful given the college’s
history as a working dairy for decades
saving Sweetbriar became my job I spent
nearly every day running the campaign
matching up donations on a spreadsheet
creating Facebook posts maintaining
momentum while the legal system churned
and doing everything I could to make the
impossible happen overcoming obstacles a
a little over a month after we started
the campaign we had our first hearing we
want a small but notable victory halting
the sale of some assets but we didn’t
win our case so we appealed to the
Virginia Supreme Court who ruled that
the college could be a trust which was a
crucial distinction and critical for our
legal argument the case was remanded to
the lower court two days before that new
hearing with the previously declared
impossible 20 million dollars in pledges
we reached a settlement agreement to
keep the college open saving sweet where
would be required to deliver 12 million
dollars in cash in 60 days
we delivered if this was just a story
about Sweetbriar the legal victory would
be the climax with the freshman class
from that closure year graduating this
next we
and in May 2000 18 the resolution but
this isn’t just a story about Sweetbriar
after we delivered the money and turned
the keys over to a new board I rejoined
my husband startup as a CEO I took our
small team from Boise Idaho to
TechCrunch Disrupt to Innovation Awards
the Consumer Electronics Show to Samsung
and Disney and Google chaos managing
doing fixing A’s and on top of trying to
raise venture capital for our startup I
also agreed to help the new team at
Sweet Briar continue to raise money
online over-commitment
a plus plus and then a year after the
closure announcement the Idaho Business
Review named me as a Woman of the Year
honoree I had much to be proud of and
yet as I stood on that stage listening
to my achievements I felt like a
complete failure the places in my life
that I was acing allowed me to help save
the school run a high tech startup but I
was getting F everywhere else boundaries
F self-care F joy F support system F if
I didn’t make some institutional changes
in my own life I was gonna find myself
on the same path as Sweetbriar I didn’t
want to close my doors shut ur my heart
announced to the world that I had failed
I had spent so much energy
managing everyone else’s chaos fixing
everyone else’s problems that I had no
time no space for me perhaps I could
learn a few things from Sweetbriar save
myself like I had helped save the school
one belonging I have struggled with the
concept of belonging since I was in
Middle School I didn’t fit in here or
there or even over there if friendship
meant truly being vulnerable and risking
rejection well I’d rather be alone
as it turned out it wasn’t that I didn’t
belong it was that belonging felt too
risky
I had fooled myself into believing that
I was safe alone but the reality was
that without belonging without
friendship I found myself with no actual
safety net in the same way that
Sweetbriar found itself cut off from the
people who supported it and could help
save it if I was going to save myself I
was gonna have to start believing that I
belonged I was gonna have to trust that
the hundreds of alumni who told me that
they supported me and would be there for
me we’re telling the truth I was
Sweetbriar and Sweetbriar women invited
me in to believe we believed rational or
not we believe that not only could
Sweetbriar be saved
but that we could save it internally I
didn’t believe in myself for years I had
carried around my negative internal
committee self-doubt the super critic
who wondered what in the hell I ever did
to deserve any of this and anxiety that
hammered my heart and shook my nerves I
had spent the better part of three
decades tearing myself down I believed
that sweet Breyers problems weren’t just
that they had lost faith in their
support system its leaders had lost
faith in the institution nothing nothing
can survive if its leaders no longer
believed in it so I became the board
chair of my own life I may not have been
ready to add more positive members to my
committee but I was ready to let go of
the negative internal voices that no
longer served me or my institution
three brave Sweetbriar makes a choice to
be brave every single day the new board
new administration faculty staff
students alumni all commit each and
every day to ensuring the school’s
survival and that sometimes means making
hard choices like cutting some beloved
programs but with those choices
come new ideas new growth new
opportunities for leadership it takes
courage to commit to change in my own
life I had started to set the foundation
for a new support system I was beginning
to believe that I had Worth but I was
still afraid after years of doing fixing
managing helping trying everything I
could to save my marriage I finally
found the courage to ask for a divorce I
could have looked at it as failure or I
could see it for what it was
finding boundaries calming self-doubt
mastering bravery it was the single most
important decision I made on the journey
to save myself for balanced Sweetbriar
has to balance its need for
sustainability with its identity it is
first and foremost a small Women’s
College it will never be a large
University or cater to the students
whose dream school includes a Saturday
tailgate at the stadium across the
street and that’s ok trying to be
everything to everyone as it turns out
is a losing battle for years I had
friends tell me that I was the busiest
person they knew I thought it was a
compliment in the nearly 2 years since I
began this journey of rediscovery I’ve
learned that I don’t actually love being
busy it was a coping mechanism so that I
didn’t have to feel anything or actually
show up in my life
week by week though that life has become
a space that I can fill I make choices
and do things that bring me joy because
as it turns out I deserve joy 5 bold
after the closure announcement the SP
downgraded sweeper’s financial rating to
a C after a year of stability efforts
they upgraded their rating to a B in
this past year with increased efforts to
restructure the debt and the curriculum
they once again upgraded their rating to
a B+ with an Outlook of stable there’s
still room for improvement sure it takes
time vision being bold to come back from
rock-bottom in the years since I stood
on that stage accepting the woman of the
Year honor my life has changed I’ve
learned to say no learned that it’s not
necessarily my responsibility to fix
everyone else’s problems I’ve learned to
sit with discomfort like standing on a
TEDx stage despite the fact that it
makes me very uncomfortable and I’ve
learned to find joy even in some of the
most difficult moments raising twelve
million dollars didn’t just teach me
about fundraising though it did do that
raising twelve million dollars taught me
the value of myself I still love AIDS
but I’m not ready to give myself an A in
life just yet
the B+ though yeah I’ll take it
besides B is for badass thank you [Applause]
I love AIDS love their symmetry their
validation their pronouncement to the
world that I am good and I was almost
always an A student with the exception
of a few years in high school when I
being in love with boys at the expense
of C’s and Salinger and derivatives once
I graduated from college with honors I
set my sights on acing the curriculum of
life get married have kids buy a house
start a business we all know that
narrative and I thought I was getting
AIDS my life report card looked a little
like this managing chaos A plus plus I
have two boys one is on the spectrum the
other started doing front flips off my
headboard about the time he turned two I
had started one business was helping my
husband launch a virtual reality startup
while writing a novel and volunteering
at my kids school I had a master’s
degree in chaos surviving trauma a-plus
my father was diagnosed with stage 4
non-hodgkins lymphoma when I was 18 my
house burned down in a wild fire when I
was nearly eight months pregnant and
half my face has been paralyzed
eventually leading to a diagnosis of
Lyme disease every time I felt my life
was finally on track something traumatic
fixing others a when my bachelor father
was diagnosed with cancer I moved in
with him became his primary caregiver
found and enrolled him in the clinical
trial that would save his life
I sent my husband to college tried to
teach him algebra and edited nearly
every paper before he dropped out I
wasn’t just trying to take the final
exam in my own life I was trying to take
every
one else’s to guilt anxiety suppressing
feelings
ay-ay-ay and I undoubtedly would have
continued on that path lined with a’s
forever
unfulfilled a life of chaos knowing that
something was missing but never quite
sure what and then March 3rd 2015 that
morning I was scrolling through Facebook
looking for a few minutes of distraction
instead of pictures of friends on
vacation and envy able Eggs Benedict
though my newsfeed was full of gasps and
sorrows the small women’s college I’d
attended my freshman and sophomore years
had announced it was closing that summer
I stared at the screen unable to believe
the news Sweet Briar College sits on
3,000 acres at the base of the Blue
Ridge Mountains in central Virginia its
entrance is one of the most beautiful I
have ever driven full of Oaks and lush
green opening to brick buildings that
have educated women for more than 100
years before women were a part of NASA
they were educated at Sweet Briar before
women held office in Congress they were
educated at Sweet Briar before women
could vote they were educated at Sweet
Briar and like my own life sweeper art
didn’t look like it was failing not to
the outside land resources 70 million
dollar-plus endowment reputation demand
for single sex education had been
declining but I thought that maybe one
day it would go co-ed like so many
others before it had never did I imagine
that this middle place between
adolescence and adulthood would close
especially so abruptly at first I
thought I had to be out of the loop
others had to have known it was in such
bad shape but as the hours passed it
became increasingly clear that everyone
everyone had been taken by surprise the
college organized a call that afternoon
for the Alumni which I joined listening
to the then president discussed the
college’s financial troubles the school
would need to raise 20
million dollars in three months he said
impossible two million dollars a year
had been a stretch goal I got off the
call a little confused and joined a
Facebook group that had been organized
to help pool our collective talents to
see if there was something anything we
could do to save the school I thought
maybe there was something small I could
contribute I have an A in fixing
remember after an hour or so of
conversation I announced I was just
gonna go build a website which I did
launching later that night was several
hundred hits the next day and I
mentioned in the Washington Post
over the next week we discussed how to
accept pledges managed communications
and formed a board of directors for a
nonprofit that would handle the legal
and fundraising efforts we named the
nonprofit after the website saving
Sweetbriar saving Sweetbriar became my
full-time job alumni from around the
country sent me in my family food so I
could focus on the tasks at hand
I majored in chaos I was in my element I
can’t raise $25 for Jump Rope for Heart
it’s a true story
and yet I found myself leading the
charge to raise millions of dollars to
save a school whose mission I still
believed in traumatic circumstances
fixing even some anxiety saving
Sweetbriar was an opportunity for me to
get an A and some of my very best skills
the lawyers that we retained developed a
brilliant strategy around trust law and
I asked for money and more money and
even more than that as a web developer
and digital strategist I had studied
crowdfunding over the previous few years
noting what seemed to work I didn’t have
PowerPoint or a case for support as I
would eventually learn as typical and
most fundraising asks but what I did
have was passion in Photoshop and a
healthy dose of humor
when the president stated that the
reason why high school students didn’t
want to come to Sweetbriar was because
they were too far from a Starbucks I
asked our base to donate the cost of a
latte
we raised tens of thousands of dollars
in small donations as a result when the
finance director told some students that
they couldn’t use their class project to
raise money to save their school
well I added a line on the donation form
to send him a notification for every
donation made in his name and when the
board chair of saving Sweetbriar
testified on the stand that had she
known that the school is in such bad
shape she would have donated all of her
family’s cow money I developed a
campaign and memes around cows which was
wildly successful given the college’s
history as a working dairy for decades
saving Sweetbriar became my job I spent
nearly every day running the campaign
matching up donations on a spreadsheet
creating Facebook posts maintaining
momentum while the legal system churned
and doing everything I could to make the
impossible happen overcoming obstacles a
a little over a month after we started
the campaign we had our first hearing we
want a small but notable victory halting
the sale of some assets but we didn’t
win our case so we appealed to the
Virginia Supreme Court who ruled that
the college could be a trust which was a
crucial distinction and critical for our
legal argument the case was remanded to
the lower court two days before that new
hearing with the previously declared
impossible 20 million dollars in pledges
we reached a settlement agreement to
keep the college open saving sweet where
would be required to deliver 12 million
dollars in cash in 60 days
we delivered if this was just a story
about Sweetbriar the legal victory would
be the climax with the freshman class
from that closure year graduating this
next we
and in May 2000 18 the resolution but
this isn’t just a story about Sweetbriar
after we delivered the money and turned
the keys over to a new board I rejoined
my husband startup as a CEO I took our
small team from Boise Idaho to
TechCrunch Disrupt to Innovation Awards
the Consumer Electronics Show to Samsung
and Disney and Google chaos managing
doing fixing A’s and on top of trying to
raise venture capital for our startup I
also agreed to help the new team at
Sweet Briar continue to raise money
online over-commitment
a plus plus and then a year after the
closure announcement the Idaho Business
Review named me as a Woman of the Year
honoree I had much to be proud of and
yet as I stood on that stage listening
to my achievements I felt like a
complete failure the places in my life
that I was acing allowed me to help save
the school run a high tech startup but I
was getting F everywhere else boundaries
F self-care F joy F support system F if
I didn’t make some institutional changes
in my own life I was gonna find myself
on the same path as Sweetbriar I didn’t
want to close my doors shut ur my heart
announced to the world that I had failed
I had spent so much energy
managing everyone else’s chaos fixing
everyone else’s problems that I had no
time no space for me perhaps I could
learn a few things from Sweetbriar save
myself like I had helped save the school
one belonging I have struggled with the
concept of belonging since I was in
Middle School I didn’t fit in here or
there or even over there if friendship
meant truly being vulnerable and risking
rejection well I’d rather be alone
as it turned out it wasn’t that I didn’t
belong it was that belonging felt too
risky
I had fooled myself into believing that
I was safe alone but the reality was
that without belonging without
friendship I found myself with no actual
safety net in the same way that
Sweetbriar found itself cut off from the
people who supported it and could help
save it if I was going to save myself I
was gonna have to start believing that I
belonged I was gonna have to trust that
the hundreds of alumni who told me that
they supported me and would be there for
me we’re telling the truth I was
Sweetbriar and Sweetbriar women invited
me in to believe we believed rational or
not we believe that not only could
Sweetbriar be saved
but that we could save it internally I
didn’t believe in myself for years I had
carried around my negative internal
committee self-doubt the super critic
who wondered what in the hell I ever did
to deserve any of this and anxiety that
hammered my heart and shook my nerves I
had spent the better part of three
decades tearing myself down I believed
that sweet Breyers problems weren’t just
that they had lost faith in their
support system its leaders had lost
faith in the institution nothing nothing
can survive if its leaders no longer
believed in it so I became the board
chair of my own life I may not have been
ready to add more positive members to my
committee but I was ready to let go of
the negative internal voices that no
longer served me or my institution
three brave Sweetbriar makes a choice to
be brave every single day the new board
new administration faculty staff
students alumni all commit each and
every day to ensuring the school’s
survival and that sometimes means making
hard choices like cutting some beloved
programs but with those choices
come new ideas new growth new
opportunities for leadership it takes
courage to commit to change in my own
life I had started to set the foundation
for a new support system I was beginning
to believe that I had Worth but I was
still afraid after years of doing fixing
managing helping trying everything I
could to save my marriage I finally
found the courage to ask for a divorce I
could have looked at it as failure or I
could see it for what it was
finding boundaries calming self-doubt
mastering bravery it was the single most
important decision I made on the journey
to save myself for balanced Sweetbriar
has to balance its need for
sustainability with its identity it is
first and foremost a small Women’s
College it will never be a large
University or cater to the students
whose dream school includes a Saturday
tailgate at the stadium across the
street and that’s ok trying to be
everything to everyone as it turns out
is a losing battle for years I had
friends tell me that I was the busiest
person they knew I thought it was a
compliment in the nearly 2 years since I
began this journey of rediscovery I’ve
learned that I don’t actually love being
busy it was a coping mechanism so that I
didn’t have to feel anything or actually
show up in my life
week by week though that life has become
a space that I can fill I make choices
and do things that bring me joy because
as it turns out I deserve joy 5 bold
after the closure announcement the SP
downgraded sweeper’s financial rating to
a C after a year of stability efforts
they upgraded their rating to a B in
this past year with increased efforts to
restructure the debt and the curriculum
they once again upgraded their rating to
a B+ with an Outlook of stable there’s
still room for improvement sure it takes
time vision being bold to come back from
rock-bottom in the years since I stood
on that stage accepting the woman of the
Year honor my life has changed I’ve
learned to say no learned that it’s not
necessarily my responsibility to fix
everyone else’s problems I’ve learned to
sit with discomfort like standing on a
TEDx stage despite the fact that it
makes me very uncomfortable and I’ve
learned to find joy even in some of the
most difficult moments raising twelve
million dollars didn’t just teach me
about fundraising though it did do that
raising twelve million dollars taught me
the value of myself I still love AIDS
but I’m not ready to give myself an A in
life just yet
the B+ though yeah I’ll take it
besides B is for badass thank you [Applause]
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