None of These Rooms Look Alike. That Is the Point.

My community keeps asking me the same question. Where are you now?

I have been a busy bee, and for the month of June that meant living the work more than writing about it. The year has been so full and it is hard to believe we are at the end of June. Mid-year has a way of filling faster than you can narrate it, and I would rather show you what filled it than explain why I went quiet.

So, where am I now?

I am in rooms I choose to be in, doing work that does not fit neatly into one job title. Some weeks that means sitting inside an institution large enough to call itself the voice of an entire business community, reporting on a year's worth of activity and decisions to the people who trusted us with them, then trading the formality of that room for a terrace and a relaxed conversation a few hours later. Other weeks it means standing inside a policy milestone that took years to arrive, watching it land in real time. Other weeks it means sitting in a room built entirely around one uncomfortable question: whether having a seat at the table is the same as having a voice at it. It rarely is. And some weeks, the most grounding ones, it means walking into a room back home, where business resources and economic development matter just as much as they do in Brussels, just with a different accent.

None of these rooms look alike. That is the point.

"This is not the time to be dictated to when you have the opportunity to design. So design." Carla Harris, on The Mel Robbins Podcast, "The Best Career Advice for Right Now," June 11, 2026

I heard that and sat with it for a minute. Design is exactly what this has been.

I have purposely designed work that is not a collection of side projects. It is not a hedge against uncertainty, or a polite way of saying I have not settled yet. What I am building looks more like this: several distinct forms of contribution, each one real, each one demanding its own kind of attention, none of them subordinate to the others. Board work. Advisory work. Advocacy. Community infrastructure that nobody applauds but everybody needs. They do not compete for my time so much as they each ask a different version of me to show up.

This is harder to explain than a job title. It is also, I am increasingly convinced, the more honest shape for the work I actually do.

Mid-year is not a finish line. It is a checkpoint, and checkpoints are only useful if they tell you something about what comes next.

What this one tells me is that designing this way is not theoretical anymore. It is operational. It has weight, motion, and its own logic, even when that logic is not always visible from the outside.

The second half of the year is already taking shape. More on that soon.

For now, thank you for keeping up with me. No matter which room you are standing in today, the question made me think about how to best include you in my journey. Summer is hot, and I am just getting warmed up.

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