Remote work has unlocked flexibility, autonomy, and access to talent across time zones, but it’s also quietly ushered in a new workplace challenge: loneliness.

Imagine a workplace where connection isn't a perk—it’s the core. A place less like a collection of desks and more like a tribe. Not in a primal sense, but in a relational one: mutual support, shared purpose, and emotional safety as the cultural default.

Running, for me, is a kind of moving meditation. A practice of presence that, over time, has become less about performance and more about awareness.

AI is reshaping how organizations communicate. From crafting messages to analyzing engagement, its impact on internal communications is undeniable. But for all its innovation, meaningful connection still begins—and ends—with human intent.

Somewhere between my earliest drafts of brand values and late-night rewrites of About pages, I noticed a pattern: what stuck with people wasn’t the headline or the claim, it was the story beneath it.

For years, communications professionals have been translators of meaning, bridging clarity and nuance, culture and leadership, headlines and human stories. We've evolved through print memos, polished press kits, intranets, town halls, Slack channels, and Zoom fatigue.

From the curve of a molded plywood seat to the arc of a stylized checkmark, design has always spoken to something deep in me. As a kid, it was the Eames chair that first pulled me into the world of form and function (made even more popular by the sitcom Frasier in the 1990s).

I’ve decided to crack open a door most people keep locked. And already, I can sense the emotional gravity in what I’m about to write. This is a personal message to myself.

We’ve heard the saying a thousand times: when life gives you lemons… But what if the focus wasn’t just on making lemonade? What if it was on the lemon itself, the small, golden fruit that takes time, care, and the right climate to thrive?

I didn’t sit down to write this for anyone in particular. Not at first. I just needed to put something down and to make a shape out of the ache. But as I was halfway through, I wasn’t sure who I was talking to anymore. Is it you? Or is it the version of me I hope someone else will understand?

There’s a kind of change that doesn’t ask permission. It arrives unannounced, slowly at first, then unmistakably. A slightly longer pause before recalling a name. A meeting that exhausts more than it energizes.

Watching Frasier again, I’m amazed I didn’t fully appreciate it back in the 1990s. I never realized how quietly powerful the relationship between Frasier and Niles was.

I’m not just grieving. I’m running mental diagnostics on every conversation, every silence, every what if, as if clarity were hidden in the mess. Turns out, my grief isn’t just sorrow.

Losing someone, or something, changes everything. It cracks open the way I see the world, shifts what matters, and forces me to rethink where I stand.

It’s 2:17 a.m. A cup of espresso on the ottoman, too cold to drink, and, while I believe in second chances for many things, reheating espresso is not one of them.

In a world where employees expect transparency and authenticity, internal communication can’t afford to be one-sided. Organizations are discovering the power of bottom-up storytelling…

I have spent most of my life measuring my worth by what I can do for others—by the work I produce, the relationships I maintain, and the way I make people feel.

Some days, it feels real, a weight pressing against my ribs. Other times, I catch myself wondering if I’m manufacturing it, pulling it forward like a magician performing a trick only for myself.