I was going to change the world in the ’70s. Got a degree in Public Policy and went to work in Washington, DC.

I got my first taste of reporting covering congressional action on the President’s budget request as a fiscal economist President Jimmy Carter’s Office of Management and Budget. My job was to out differences in policy versus differences in underlying assumptions driving the dollar amounts the President asked for and what the House and Senate Budget Committees appropriated.

Fast forward a few years to The Boston Consulting Group’s LA office, where I spent seven years. I loved interviewing senior executives in diverse industries to understand what drove them and their industries. And I was good at getting them to open up, even though it was not in their interest to do so. At the end of each day, I typed up my notes for the team and they became our shared frame of reference as we worked to solve our clients’ problems. It was 1983 and I dreamed of doing the business equivalent of the Playboy Interview - making business and the people behind it as sexy as Hugh Hefner’s bunnies. The insight was right on, but I didn’t act on it. Instead, I stayed in consulting for over 20 years, punctuated by a few stints in multichannel retailing.

In my “reporting” experience, the most valuable part of collecting the facts is distilling them into something actionable - for a country, a company, or an individual.

This blog is a place to capture and catalog insights gleaned from the amazing and the mundane aspects of my life as I support my family of four; fulfill my role as a caring mom, wife, friend, cousin, daughter, sister and sister-in-law; maintain our home; manage our finances; and more. It gives me an outlet to express the joys, frustrations, disappointments and successes of being me, a 52 year-old woman. Feel free to chime in with your own experiences. It’s nice to know you’re there.