Jacksonville, Florida – The Healers University will host two virtual gatherings in October 2026: Pearls & Pumpkins on October 9 and Big Love Day on October 11. The events will bring community members together for seasonal celebration, gratitude, healing, family, and connection. They will also highlight the continued development of initiatives supporting children and families through Divinity's Cove and Divinity's Children's Cove. Rooted in tradition, family, and holistic healing, The Healers University creates gatherings and community initiatives that provide opportunities for connection, reflection, education, and community support. Pearls & Pumpkins – October 9 Pearls & Pumpkins is The Healers University's annual Fall Gala, centered on harvest, family, celebration, and community. The virtual gathering will give participants a chance to connect and celebrate the season while learning more about The Healers University's work and initiatives. Event details Date: October 9, 2026 Format: Virtual Cocktail hour: 6:00 PM Dinner & program: 7:30 PM Dress: Formal attire; pearls encouraged Participation in Pearls & Pumpkins is by donation. The donation serves as the attendee's ticket and provides access to the dinner and event experience. View Pearls & Pumpkins Event Details & Access. Big Love Day – October 11 Big Love Day, The Healers University's Day of Gratitude, will bring community members together virtually to recognize family, healing, service, and the relationships that contribute to community life. “Every day is filled with love. On Big Love Day, we root ourselves in it and gather the momentum we need for the season and the year ahead.” – Kheru DeFontes Hargrove El The gathering will give participants an opportunity to connect, reflect, and celebrate the people, experiences, and community connections that help shape the season ahead. Event details Date: October 11, 2026 Format: Virtual Time: Noon View Big Love Day Event Details. Supporting the continued development of Divinity's Cove The October gatherings will also highlight the continued development of Divinity's Cove and Divinity's Children's Cove, initiatives focused on creating supportive spaces and services for children and families. Divinity's Children's Cove is being developed as an environment where children and families can learn, heal, and grow through holistic care, education, wellness, and community support. Planned offerings include holistic homeschool and unschooling support, childcare, daycare, after-school and aftercare services, overnight care, counseling and care, spiritual guidance, wellness services, education, and personalized support. Community members can learn more about the initiatives and explore ways to support their continued development. Learn More About Divinity's Cove & Children's Cove. How to participate Community members interested in attending or learning more about the October gatherings can access event information and participation details through The Healers University. About The Healers University The Healers University is a community rooted in tradition, family, and holistic healing. It hosts ceremonies, gatherings, educational experiences, and community initiatives centered on healing, connection, personal development, and support for families. Media contact Kheru DeFontes Hargrove El Holistic Therapist, Healing Ambassador & Transformational Guide The Healers University Email Website

Written by Wai CS Wong, Legal English Consultant & Textbook Writer Steven Wong is a Legal English Consultant and Textbook Writer with 15 published books. He is currently working on his novel about HK post-1997. Steven Wong retired from full-time teaching after a 30-year career across Asia and Europe. For Hong Kong lawyers, the language of law has never been simply a matter of vocabulary. It has reflected Hong Kong’s unusual position: Chinese in culture and daily life, English in much of its legal and commercial history, and, since 1997, increasingly bilingual in its formal institutions. This linguistic environment has changed considerably. This does not mean that English has become less important; it remains essential to international legal and commercial communication. What has changed is the role English plays within Hong Kong’s legal system and the linguistic background of the people using it. This matters because knowing legal English is not the same as being persuasive in English. From an English legal system to a bilingual one Before the handover in 1997, Hong Kong’s legal system operated predominantly through English, although the overwhelming majority of the population was Chinese-speaking. English was the language of legislation, judgments and much formal legal business. The transition towards bilingualism began before 1997. The Government undertook the enormous task of producing authentic Chinese versions of existing laws. Since the completion of that process, new legislation has been enacted in both Chinese and English, with both versions legally authentic. The Basic Law subsequently gave this arrangement constitutional status. Article 9 provides that, in addition to Chinese, English may be used as an official language by the executive authorities, legislature and judiciary. The change was therefore more than simply allowing lawyers to use Chinese in court. It created a legal environment in which both Chinese and English became legitimate languages of legal thought, legislation and advocacy. The Judiciary describes the present arrangement as a bilingual court system in which either or both Chinese and English may be used. For the Hong Kong lawyer, this created a new linguistic reality. The three-language professional environment The formal legal system may be bilingual, but Hong Kong’s professional environment is effectively multilingual. Cantonese remains central to everyday professional life, while Putonghua has become increasingly significant in dealings with Mainland clients, businesses and institutions. English remains essential in international business, finance, arbitration and cross-border legal work. A Hong Kong lawyer may therefore move between three linguistic worlds during a single working day: Cantonese for local communication. Chinese for much domestic legal and professional communication. English for international legal and commercial communication. This makes the question of legal English more complicated than simply asking whether a lawyer’s English is grammatically correct. The challenge is often linguistic switching. A lawyer may be comfortable discussing a case in Cantonese, capable of reading a contract in English and competent at producing written submissions in English, yet find it more difficult to negotiate spontaneously in English, challenge opposing counsel diplomatically or present a complicated argument orally before an international tribunal. These are different skills. Legal English vs. Persuasive English Consider, “It is respectfully submitted that the respondent’s interpretation is incorrect.” There is nothing grammatically wrong with this sentence. It is recognisably legal English. But it does not tell the tribunal very much. Compare, “The respondent’s interpretation cannot be reconciled with Clause 12.” The second sentence is shorter and gives the arbitrator something concrete to consider. Or, “The respondent relies on Clause 12. But Clause 12 does not say what the respondent says it says.” This is spoken advocacy. The lawyer is not merely demonstrating command of English. The lawyer is controlling the structure of the argument. This becomes particularly important in international arbitration, where the tribunal may come from different jurisdictions and English may be the common working language even when it is not the first language of any tribunal member. The Hong Kong lawyer therefore needs English that is not merely accurate, but internationally intelligible, concise and persuasive. A change in the culture of advocacy There has also been a change in the balance between written and oral advocacy. The Hong Kong Department of Justice has noted the importance of written submissions alongside increasingly limited time for oral submissions. It has emphasised the need for advocates to present compelling arguments both on paper and orally. A written argument cannot simply be converted into an oral presentation. For example, “In light of the aforementioned circumstances, and having regard to the totality of the evidence as adduced by the parties, it is respectfully submitted that the tribunal ought to conclude that the respondent was aware, or alternatively ought reasonably to have been aware, of the circumstances giving rise to the alleged delay.” When spoken, this is heavy. An advocate might instead say, “The respondent knew about the delay. The evidence establishes that. At the very least, the respondent should have known.” Three short sentences can carry greater persuasive force than one elaborate sentence. The problem of excessive indirectness Cultural and linguistic transfer can also affect advocacy. In a Chinese-speaking professional environment, indirectness may be useful. It can preserve relationships, avoid unnecessary confrontation and allow disagreement without openly humiliating the other party. These qualities can be valuable in negotiation, but they can become a weakness in arbitration if they obscure the lawyer’s actual position. For example, “It may perhaps be suggested that the claimant’s position is not entirely consistent with the evidence.” What does the lawyer actually mean? Probably, “The claimant’s position is inconsistent with the evidence.” The answer is not to abandon politeness or adopt an aggressively Western style of advocacy. The more sophisticated approach is to develop control over the degree of directness. A lawyer should be able to choose between: “We disagree.” “We do not accept that proposition.” “That interpretation is difficult to sustain.” “The evidence does not support that conclusion.” “That argument cannot be reconciled with the contractual wording.” Each expresses disagreement, but each produces a different rhetorical effect. Negotiation requires another kind of English Arbitration and negotiation should not be taught as though they require identical language. In arbitration, the lawyer wants the tribunal to reach a conclusion. In negotiation, the lawyer wants the other side to move. A lawyer might say in arbitration, “The respondent has failed to establish causation.” In negotiation, the same position might become, “Our client is not persuaded that the evidence establishes causation.” Similarly, “Your proposal is unacceptable.” could become, “We would have considerable difficulty recommending that proposal to our client.” And, “You caused the delay.” could become, “Our client’s position is that responsibility for the delay rests with your client.” The substantive position has not disappeared. It has been expressed in a form that leaves room for the conversation to continue. This is particularly important in Hong Kong, where lawyers may negotiate between Chinese-speaking clients and international counsel. The ability to adjust linguistic temperature without changing substantive meaning is a genuine professional skill. The advantage of Hong Kong’s linguistic environment The changes since 1997 should not therefore be presented simply as a loss of English dominance. Hong Kong’s bilingual legal system has produced something potentially more valuable: linguistic flexibility. The modern Hong Kong lawyer may need to move between Chinese and English, local and international clients, arbitration and litigation, and adversarial advocacy and commercial negotiation. That requires more than vocabulary. It requires awareness of tone, register, implication, cultural expectations, rhythm, directness and persuasion. A lawyer who says, “I know what I want to say, but I cannot quite find the right English,” is describing a problem that grammar books cannot solve. The solution is not necessarily more complicated English. It is often better English. From correctness to choice The central lesson for Hong Kong lawyers is therefore simple. Legal English training should not replace Chinese patterns of thought with Western ones, nor persuade lawyers to abandon the formal traditions of Hong Kong’s common-law heritage. It should give lawyers greater linguistic choice. A lawyer should know when to say, “It is respectfully submitted...” and when to say, “The evidence shows...” When to say, “We would have difficulty accepting that proposal...” and when to say, “We cannot accept that proposal.” When to use traditional language of advocacy, and when a shorter, clearer sentence will have greater impact. Hong Kong’s legal language has changed because Hong Kong itself has changed. Since 1997, Chinese and English have developed a formal coexistence within the legal system, while Hong Kong lawyers increasingly operate across local, Mainland Chinese and international professional environments. The challenge is therefore not simply to speak English correctly. It is to understand what English is doing. In arbitration, English must clarify, organise and persuade. In negotiation, it must influence without unnecessarily confronting. In both, the finest advocate understands that the most powerful sentence is not necessarily the most complicated one. It is the sentence that makes the listener see the argument exactly as the lawyer wants it to be seen. Follow me on LinkedIn and visit my website for more info! Read more from Wai CS Wong Wai CS Wong, Legal English Consultant & Textbook Writer Steven is bilingual and bicultural. Arrived in UK at aged 4, grew up working in his father's hospitality business, attended university in Scotland and also a second degree in HK. He has worked in several countries, including the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Hong Kong, China. Although retired, he continues to consult on Legal English and write Common Error textbooks for the HK, Taiwanese, and Middle Eastern markets.

Written by Rocio Sanchez, SEO-First Brand Strategist Marketing by Rocio is a multicultural and multilingual brand strategy and digital marketing agency. It helps LGBTQ-focused brands stand out and strengthen their presence within their industries. Many business owners assume they need a marketing plan when what they really need is a clearer message. They invest in websites, SEO, social media, email marketing, and advertising, hoping better promotion will solve the problem. Sometimes it does. More often, though, the issue is that they are lacking clarity in their message. If people do not immediately understand what you do, who you help, and why they should care, no amount of marketing will fully solve that problem. The symptom is rarely the real problem Why businesses often blame the wrong thing One of the most common patterns I see when working with business owners is that they identify the symptom correctly but misdiagnose the cause. They will tell me their website is not converting. Their social media engagement is low. Their offers are not gaining traction. Their marketing is not producing the results they expected. By the time they reach out for help, they are often looking for a solution to what they believe is a marketing problem. Sometimes it is. But just as often, the issue starts much earlier in the process. A confusing website, scattered offers, poor engagement, and low conversion rates can all be symptoms of a deeper problem, a lack of clarity around what the business actually does, who it serves, and why someone should choose it. No marketing tactic can fully compensate for confusion. When even the business owner struggles to explain what they do One of the fastest ways I can identify a messaging problem is by listening to how a business owner describes their own business. Sometimes the explanation changes three times in the same conversation. Sometimes the audience is so broad that it effectively becomes everyone. Sometimes there are half a dozen different services competing for attention, each presented as equally important. Occasionally, I will find offers on a website that the business does not even provide anymore. These situations are not usually the result of bad intentions. More often, they are the result of a business evolving faster than its messaging. The challenge is that if the business owner cannot clearly explain what they do, the website will not be able to do it either. If the website cannot do it, every marketing effort that follows becomes significantly harder. Before investing in more visibility, it is worth making sure the message itself is clear. What a clear message actually does The three questions every homepage should answer. When I am reviewing a website, there are three questions I want answered as quickly as possible: What do you do? Who do you help? Why should I care? I certainly did not invent these questions, and most marketers have probably encountered some variation of them before. Yet I am consistently surprised by how many websites struggle to answer them clearly. Instead, visitors are greeted with vague taglines, industry jargon, mission statements, or clever copy that sounds impressive but does not actually communicate anything meaningful. The business owner knows exactly what they do, so it can be difficult for them to see where the gaps are. The visitor, however, is encountering the business for the first time. A homepage does not need to tell the entire story. It simply needs to create enough clarity that someone understands they are in the right place and wants to learn more. How clarity builds trust One of the reasons messaging matters so much is that people make decisions quickly. When a visitor lands on a website, they are constantly evaluating whether it is relevant to them. If the message is confusing, overly complicated, or difficult to understand, most people will not stick around long enough to figure it out. They will leave and continue searching for an alternative that feels clearer. Clarity creates confidence (I talk about curious confidence in my executive interview with Brainz Magazine). When people immediately understand what a business does, who it is for, and how it might help them, they are more likely to keep reading, explore the website, and eventually take action. Why I created the Next Generation Branding Intensive The problem I kept seeing One of the reasons I eventually created my Next Generation Marketing and Brand Intensive was because I kept seeing the same pattern repeat itself. Many of the businesses I work with are values-driven, mission-driven, or queer-owned. They have a strong vision for what they want to create and a deep understanding of why their work matters. What they often struggle with is communicating that vision clearly to other people. They know what they stand for. They know the impact they want to make. Yet when it comes time to explain their business on a website, in a sales conversation, or through their marketing, the message becomes much less clear. Over time, I realized that many founders were not struggling because they lacked passion, expertise, or commitment. They were struggling because they had not yet translated those things into language that their audience could immediately understand. Values do not automatically communicate themselves One of the biggest misconceptions I encounter is the belief that good values will automatically attract the right audience. I understand where that idea comes from. As consumers, many of us want to support businesses that align with our beliefs. As founders, we want our values to be visible in the way we operate. The challenge is that values still need language. A business can be deeply committed to inclusion, accessibility, sustainability, community, or social justice, but if those ideas are not communicated clearly, visitors are left to fill in the blanks themselves. That is asking a lot from someone who may have only spent a few seconds on your website. Clear messaging helps bridge that gap. It turns values into something tangible and understandable. It helps people quickly recognize not only what you do, but why you do it and why it matters. That is why I believe messaging should come before marketing. A marketing plan can help amplify your message, but it cannot create one for you. Brand messaging vs. Brand voice vs. Visual branding Visual branding: What people see Visual branding is often the easiest element for people to identify because it is immediately visible. It includes things like colors, typography, photography, logos, and the overall design system that shapes how a business presents itself to the world. A strong visual identity can help a business appear more professional, recognizable, and trustworthy. It is also one of the reasons many businesses choose to invest in website design services early in their growth journey. The challenge is that visual branding can only communicate so much on its own. Brand voice: How you sound If visual branding is what people see, brand voice is what people hear. Your brand voice determines how you communicate with your audience. It influences whether your business feels formal or informal, playful or serious, conversational or direct. Many of the businesses I work with develop a brand voice guide to help maintain consistency across their website, social media, newsletters, and client communications. When multiple people are creating content for a business, a clear voice helps ensure the message feels cohesive no matter who is writing it. A strong voice can make content more memorable, but it still is not the same thing as messaging. Brand messaging: What you actually communicate Brand messaging is the connective tissue that brings everything together. It is the core message behind your business. It is how you communicate what you do, who you help, why it matters, and what makes your approach different. While visual branding influences perception and brand voice influences tone, messaging influences understanding. This is also where many businesses run into problems. They invest in design, content, and even SEO services, yet struggle to explain their value proposition clearly. Without messaging, great design lacks direction. Great copy lacks focus. Great marketing lacks consistency. When all three elements work together, the result is a business that not only looks good and sounds good, but is also easy to understand. My biggest messaging pet peeve Stop making promises you cannot keep My biggest messaging pet peeve is when businesses make promises they cannot actually keep. I do not mean ambitious positioning. I do not mean clearly communicating where a business is headed. I mean building an entire message around something that does not exist yet, is not ready yet, or is not actually part of the customer experience. I once worked with a client whose homepage was almost entirely focused on an app. The app was positioned as the central reason people should care. The app was the promise. The app was the hook. The app was the future of the business. The problem was that the app did not exist yet. It was still in development, and it took years before it became a real part of the offer. In the meantime, the homepage was asking visitors to buy into a promise the business could not actually deliver. That is not clarity, and that cost this client a lot more than she was willing to admit. Clarity requires honesty Good messaging is about being honest about what the business can currently do, who it can currently serve, and what people can realistically expect. This is one of the reasons I believe that SEO first web design and marketing strategy need to work together. A beautiful website cannot compensate for a message that overpromises, and no amount of traffic can fix a disconnect between what a business says and what it actually delivers. This is where messaging can become ethically messy. Fake urgency, inflated claims, exaggerated transformation promises, and statements like "I'll help you make six figures in three months" may sound compelling, but they create expectations the business may not be able to meet. Clear messaging does not need to overpromise to be effective. In fact, some of the strongest messaging comes from being specific, grounded, and honest about what is actually available right now. A business can still have a big vision. It can still talk about where it is going. But if the marketing is built around a future promise instead of a current reality, the message becomes unstable. A marketing plan can amplify a message, but it cannot create one This is probably the hardest truth for business owners to accept because marketing feels like the solution to almost every business problem. Need more leads? Marketing. Need more visibility? Marketing. Need more sales? Marketing. To be fair, a good marketing plan can absolutely help increase visibility, drive traffic, and create awareness. Those are all important outcomes. The problem is that marketing can only amplify what already exists. If the message is clear, marketing helps more people discover it. If the message is confusing, marketing helps more people become confused. I have seen business owners spend months debating platforms, algorithms, and tactics while avoiding the more difficult question, "Does the business itself make sense to a first time visitor?" That is one of the reasons I often encourage founders to think about when to redesign your website for SEO. Sometimes the issue is not traffic. Sometimes it is that the website is not communicating the right message in the first place. The same principle applies across channels. You can invest in content creation, advertising, networking, email marketing, or even building a personal brand, but none of those tactics can create clarity where none exists. They can only distribute the message that is already there. This is also why I believe businesses should focus on building strong foundations before chasing more visibility. Whether you are investing in SEO, referrals, social media, or another channel entirely, the message has to come first. Frequently asked questions What is brand messaging? Brand messaging is the collection of ideas, language, and positioning that helps people understand what your business does, who it helps, and why it matters. It is not your logo, your colors, or even your tone of voice. It is the substance behind those things. Good brand messaging creates clarity and consistency across your website, marketing materials, and client communications. What's the difference between brand messaging and brand voice? Brand messaging is what you communicate. Brand voice is how you communicate it. For example, two businesses might offer similar services and communicate a similar value proposition, but one may sound playful and conversational while the other sounds formal and authoritative. The message may be similar, but the voice is different. Both are important, but messaging usually comes first. It is difficult to establish a consistent voice if the underlying message is not clear. Can SEO fix a messaging problem? Not really. SEO can help people discover your website, but it cannot solve a messaging problem on its own. If visitors arrive on your site and still do not understand what you do, who you help, or why they should choose you, more traffic will not necessarily lead to better results. This is one of the reasons I often talk about SEO as part of a larger marketing strategy rather than a standalone solution. Visibility matters, but clarity matters too. Do I need a marketing plan or messaging first? In most cases, messaging should come first. A marketing plan helps determine how you will reach people. Messaging determines what you will say once you reach them. Without a clear message, it is difficult to build an effective website, create compelling content, run successful campaigns, or develop a long term marketing strategy. The strongest marketing plans are usually built on a foundation of clear, honest, and consistent messaging. Build the message first A clear message does not guarantee business success. You can have a great offer, a clear website, and strong messaging and still face challenges that have nothing to do with marketing. But what I have learned over the years is that unclear messaging makes every other part of marketing harder than it needs to be. Before investing in a new website, launching an advertising campaign, posting more frequently on social media, or implementing a new marketing strategy, take a step back and ask whether your message is actually clear. Can someone quickly understand what you do, who you help, and why it matters? Can they understand the value of your work without needing to dig through multiple pages or schedule a discovery call? If the answer is no, that is where I would start. Marketing works best when it amplifies something people already understand. A clear message gives every marketing effort a stronger foundation and makes it easier for the right people to recognize that they are in the right place. If you're struggling to communicate what makes your business different, or you're not sure whether your messaging is helping or hurting your marketing efforts, get in touch. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Rocio Sanchez Rocio Sanchez, SEO-First Brand Strategist Rocio Sanchez is a brand strategist and digital marketer who specializes in helping LGBT-affirming businesses take up space. With a marketing degree from the Fashion Institute of Technology, they started Marketing by Rocio to help small business owners who often feel left behind and under-resourced. Rocio grew up between New York City and the Dominican Republic, and is now based in Europe, where they've lived for almost ten years between Amsterdam and Paris. They speak three languages (English, Spanish, and French) and deeply understand the lived experience of queer folks in these cultures, giving Rocio a unique outlook on running a queer-led business.

Written by Beth Rohani, Entrepreneur, Speaker, and Creator Beth Rohani leads the No. 1 moving company serving the Houston Multi-Family Industry, and her company is considered one of the Top 3 Best Rated Moving Companies in Houston. As a first-generation Iranian-American, former TV news assignments editor, and CEO of a transportation and logistics-based business in a male-dominated industry. For a long time, I was focused on co-dependency. I leaned on others for validation, for decisions, even for my sense of worth. I relied on partners, mentors, or even my team's immediate feedback to gauge my own stability. The problem with that is simple, when your foundation depends entirely on an external source, someone else’s mood, opinion, or approval, you’ll always feel unsteady. You are essentially giving away your power and your peace. It wasn’t until I shifted my focus inward and learned to rely on my own self-dependency that I began to see my value clearly. That's when self-worth became real for me. I stopped asking, "Do they approve?" and started demanding, "Am I aligned with my own standards?" That crucial internal calibration changed everything about how I lead and how I live. The high cost of external validation The need for external approval is a thief of both time and energy. When you are codependent on validation, you introduce emotional chaos into every business operation. As a business owner, that shift was more than personal, it was foundational to my company’s efficiency. I realized that when I was constantly seeking outside validation on minor operational decisions, I was wasting valuable resources. Every time I second-guessed an internal pricing strategy until three outside advisors signed off, I was delaying action. Every time I tolerated a difficult partner because I feared confrontation, I was introducing friction into our systems. If I'm constantly seeking external validation on every minor operational decision, what message does that send to my management team? It tells them I don't trust my own judgment, which immediately gives them license to question theirs and slow down their own decision-making. True leadership requires conviction, and conviction is impossible when your self-worth is tied to the applause of others. Codependency doesn't just feel bad, it slows down the entire organization. The internal CEO: Leading from standards, not opinions Self-worth is what gives a leader the freedom to be decisive. When you operate from a place of self-dependency, your decisions are rooted in your core values and the data in front of you, not in the fear of criticism or the desire to please. As the CEO of Ameritex Movers, that conviction matters every day. It means I can't expect my staff to show up with commitment if I'm known for frequently rescheduling, delaying decisions, or relying too heavily on others to solve problems. Critically, I can't expect them to value their own time and talents if I'm consistently undermining or devaluing my own. For example, when setting our company standards, self-dependency means standing firm on a non-negotiable principle, like not compromising on safety or professionalism, even if it means losing a high-paying client. The codependent leader fears the short-term loss of income and compromises the standard. The self-dependent leader knows that compromising standards costs the company more in the long run by eroding its culture and reputation. True leadership requires conviction, and conviction is based on an internal standard. Boundaries: The ultimate act of self-dependency If self-worth is the engine, boundaries are the necessary structure and discipline that protect it. Boundaries are the clearest and most direct manifestation of self-dependency in action. You stop accepting poor treatment because you realize you are worthy of respect. This doesn't just apply to personal relationships, it applies to your business practices. Client boundaries: Saying no to clients who are disrespectful to your team or demand unrealistic terms. Tolerating abusive client behavior teaches your staff that their respect is optional. Time boundaries: Protecting your focus and energy by declining meetings that don't align with your why or core mission. Financial boundaries: Setting prices that reflect the quality and integrity of your work, rather than lowering them out of fear of losing the deal. When you enforce boundaries, you are modeling for your team exactly what is acceptable and what isn't. You are showing them that self-respect is a requirement for working in the organization. This creates a domino effect of healthy, self-respecting professionals. Your life is your biggest influence This shift from codependency to self-worth doesn't stop at business meetings or balance sheets. How we carry ourselves in the world matters. The way you treat people, strangers, employees, friends, even critics, is influential. The way you handle pressure, manage setbacks, and celebrate wins is influential. You don't always know who’s watching, but someone is: a young team member, future competitor, or client deciding if they trust your character. For me, influence comes down to this core philosophy. It is to bring value wherever you can. Share the lessons you've learned, even when they're uncomfortable or reveal a past mistake. Show people that self-dependency isn't selfish, it's the necessary fuel for authentic contribution. When you have a solid internal worth, you have the capacity to give generously without expecting anything in return. Because when you know your worth, you stop waiting for others to define it for you. You stop accepting poor treatment. You stop chasing approval. That kind of confidence doesn't just serve you, it gives others permission to stand taller and do the same. At the end of the day, codependency kept me small, anxious, and stuck in a loop of seeking permission. Self-dependency gave me freedom. With that freedom came the ability to lead, not just in my business operations, but in my life choices. So if you're searching for true influence, don't start with your network, your metrics, or your external image. Start with yourself. Find your worth, stand firmly on it, and let the way you live your life, with clarity, conviction, and self-respect, be the most powerful example you ever set. That is the legacy you leave behind. For similar content, consider following me on any of my social media platforms: TikTok X Threads YouTube Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Beth Rohani Beth Rohani, Entrepreneur Beth Rohani leads the No. 1 moving company serving the Houston Multi-Family Industry, and her company is considered one of the Top 3 Best Rated Moving Companies in Houston. As a first-generation Iranian-American, former TV news assignments editor, and CEO of a transportation and logistics-based business in a male-dominated industry, Beth embraces the stereotypes while inspiring and mentoring others to build a successful business with a balance to live their best life.

Written by Yaryna Carpenter, PCC ICF Executive, Leadership & Team Coach Yaryna Carpenter is a PCC ICF Executive, Leadership and Team Coach working with leaders and teams in high-trust, reputation-sensitive environments. She helps clients strengthen clarity, communication, cultural intelligence, and better judgment as they grow and scale globally. “We need to improve communication.” It is one of the most common diagnoses leaders give when a team is not performing as well as expected. Sometimes it is accurate. But sometimes the team is already communicating perfectly well. They have meetings, one-to-ones, and established channels. They exchange information, give updates, and may genuinely like and respect one another. Yet something still does not work. I recently worked with a cross-functional B2B team in a large technology company. The initial brief centred on improving communication and collaboration while supporting the team towards an ambitious commercial objective. At first glance, that seemed straightforward. But the individual conversations we held before beginning the team coaching revealed something more interesting. Communication was not absent. The deeper issue was that the team was not always operating as one system. Good relationships do not automatically create a high-performing team A group of capable people can respect one another and still optimise completely different outcomes. This is especially common in cross-functional teams. One part of the organisation may naturally focus on customers, commercial opportunities, speed and revenue. Another may be concerned with feasibility, delivery, resources, technical constraints and operational risk. Neither perspective is wrong. The organisation needs both. The problem begins when each function becomes successful only according to its own definition of success. People know what they are accountable for individually. They know their targets and priorities. But one question can remain surprisingly unclear: What are we collectively here to achieve? In the team I was working with, responsibility could sometimes stop at the boundary between functions: “I have completed my part. The next stage belongs to someone else.” Nobody had deliberately created a silo, but the effect was the same. The customer does not experience your organisational chart Customers rarely care where one department ends, and another begins. They experience one organisation. A promising opportunity may require commercial, technical, operational and delivery functions to work together. A brilliant sale that cannot be delivered is not a success. Excellent delivery that arrives too late is not a success either. Each function sees something the others may not. Commercial teams understand the customer relationship, competitive pressure and the work involved in creating an opportunity. Technical and operational colleagues see feasibility, capacity, risk and constraints that may be invisible from the outside. The breakthrough does not come from deciding whose perspective is more important. It comes when the team becomes capable of holding those perspectives together. From “Did I do my part?” to “Did we achieve the result?” Collective ownership does not mean that everyone becomes responsible for everything. Clear accountability still matters. Roles still matter. Expertise still matters. But there is a significant difference between asking, “Did I do my part?” and asking, “Did we achieve the result?” The first question focuses attention on the boundary of a role. The second focuses attention on the outcome. That changes conversations. Teams begin to notice where information is arriving too late, where assumptions are being made rather than discussed, and where another function needs to be involved earlier. A colleague’s constraints stop looking like an inconvenience and become part of the reality the team has to navigate together. This is where communication stops being an isolated skill. It becomes part of a wider system of trust, interdependence and shared responsibility. When “I” starts becoming “we” Over the following months, the shift became visible in relatively ordinary moments. People expressed ideas more openly. There was greater willingness to challenge one another without automatically becoming defensive. Different functions understood one another’s pressures more clearly. Team members asked for help more readily, delegated more, and showed more initiative. Something subtle began happening in the language of the team. There was more “we.” There is a meaningful difference between “That belongs to their department” and “How are we going to resolve this?” The second statement does not erase accountability. It expands responsibility for the overall result. That is where a collection of functions begins to behave more like a team. Trust has operational consequences Trust, relationships and communication are still sometimes grouped under “soft skills”. The phrase can be misleading. Poor trust slows decisions, makes people cautious about sharing concerns, allows problems to remain hidden for longer and encourages functions to protect themselves rather than challenge the wider system. The opposite is equally practical. When people trust one another more, difficult conversations happen earlier. Risks surface sooner. People ask for help before problems become crises. Opportunities are less likely to fall into the gaps between departments. These are behavioural shifts, but behaviour influences execution, and execution influences business performance. When behavioural change starts showing up in performance Over the course of the engagement, the changes were not confined to how people felt about one another. Cooperation between functions strengthened, and people developed a better understanding of what each part of the organisation needed from the others. At the same time, more B2B opportunities began progressing into successful business outcomes. It would be irresponsible to claim a simple cause-and-effect relationship and say that coaching alone created those commercial results. Businesses are complex systems, and performance is influenced by many variables. But there was a clear relationship between how the team was working and what it was becoming capable of achieving: better communication enabled earlier conversations, greater trust made challenge safer, improved understanding reduced friction, and collective ownership encouraged people to act beyond the narrow boundaries of their own role. The coaches did not produce those results. The team did. Our role was to help them see the system they had created, and the system they were capable of creating instead. Leadership is a behaviour, not only a position This work also reinforced another principle that matters increasingly in complex organisations: leadership cannot live exclusively at the top. One leader cannot coordinate every dependency, identify every emerging risk, facilitate every conversation and resolve every tension between functions. Teams need people who are willing to notice what the system requires and respond by raising a difficult issue, challenging an assumption, inviting another function into the conversation earlier, or naming the moment the team is falling back into silos. This is closely aligned with Management 3.0 thinking: organisations are complex human systems, not machines that can simply be controlled through instructions. In those systems, leadership is a behaviour, not merely a position. Maybe your team does not need to communicate more When leaders tell me their team has a communication problem, I am careful not to accept the diagnosis too quickly. Sometimes communication genuinely needs improving. But other times people already communicate frequently. The deeper problem is that they are communicating from separate realities, separate incentives, and separate definitions of success. In that situation, another communication workshop may not be enough. More powerful questions might be: Do we understand what we are collectively responsible for? Do we understand what other functions are dealing with? Where does ownership disappear between us? Are we operating as several successful departments, or as one successful system? Because ultimately, the purpose of better communication is not better communication. It is better collective performance. Follow me on Instagram and LinkedIn for more info! Read more from Yaryna Carpenter Yaryna Carpenter, PCC ICF Executive, Leadership & Team Coach Yaryna Carpenter is a PCC ICF Executive, Leadership and Team Coach working with leaders and teams in high-trust, reputation-sensitive environments. She helps clients strengthen clarity, communication, cultural intelligence, and better judgment as they grow and scale globally. With over 20 years of international experience, Yaryna brings a structured, human-centred approach to leadership, team performance, and cross-cultural growth.

Barry Gallant was born in New Hampshire on October 14, 1967, and raised in the town of Chester. He has lived in the state his whole life. That matters, because it means every job he has held, and every skill he has picked up, happened close to home, in towns and neighborhoods he already knew. Straight to work Barry didn't take the usual path through school and into a single trade. During his high school years, he went right to work. There was no extended training program, no apprenticeship that locked him into one specialty. He learned by doing, on whatever job needed doing next. That early decision shaped the rest of his career. Instead of becoming an expert in one narrow task, Barry became someone who could show up to a job site and handle whatever was in front of him. A career built on more than one trade Most people who work in construction or outdoor labor pick a lane. They become a mason, or a landscaper, or a paving crew member, and they stay there. Barry's career didn't work that way. Over the years, he has done paving, landscaping, concrete work, and masonry, along with general labor jobs that didn't fit neatly into any one category. Why versatility mattered Barry describes himself as a jack of all trades, and that description isn't incidental. Learning concrete work alongside landscaping, or masonry alongside paving, meant he was never dependent on a single kind of project being available. When the work shifted with the seasons, or with what a crew needed that month, Barry already had the skills to fit in. This is a different kind of expertise than the one usually celebrated in career profiles. It isn't about climbing a ladder inside one company or one craft. It's about staying useful across several crafts at once, which in blue-collar work is its own form of mastery. Moving into warehouse work Barry's work history eventually included warehouse labor. It's a quieter shift from paving crews and landscaping jobs, but it draws on the same habits: showing up, doing physical work reliably, and getting a job done without needing much explained twice. For someone who built a career on adapting to whatever work was in front of him, moving into a warehouse setting was simply the next version of that same approach. Life outside the job site Barry has two daughters and eight grandchildren, and he has spent his life in New Hampshire close to both. Outside of work, he has built routines that mirror the same steadiness he brought to his trades. Staying active He goes to the gym daily, or as close to daily as he can manage. He walks the local parks and hikes when the weather allows it. None of this is for a specific goal or competition. It's simply part of how he structures his time, the same way a tradesman keeps a routine on a job site. Time outdoors and on the road Barry feeds the birds and the wildlife around his home, and he enjoys taking rides to the ocean. He has a longtime interest in Harley-Davidson motorcycles, and he used to own one, a hobby that fits naturally with someone who has spent his career working outdoors and with his hands. More recently, he has added something new to his routine: weekly dance classes. It's a small detail, but it says something about how Barry approaches life even outside of work. He doesn't stay fixed in one habit any more than he stayed fixed in one trade. Family and simple pleasures Spending time with family and friends remains central for Barry, alongside simple preferences like seafood and Chinese food. None of it is complicated. It's the kind of life that fits someone who spent decades doing physical work: steady, close to home, and built around the people and places he has known the longest. Barry Gallant's career never centered on one job title or one company name. It was built trade by trade, in a state he never left, by someone willing to learn whatever the next job required.

Large-scale master-planned developments look simple from the outside. A developer buys land, draws a plan, and builds. The part that rarely makes it into the pitch deck is entitlement: the zoning approvals, utility commitments, environmental reviews, and local government sign-offs that have to happen before a single foundation gets poured. Investors who have only worked on smaller infill deals sometimes treat entitlement as a formality, a line item with a date attached. On a master-planned project spanning hundreds or thousands of acres, it is closer to the whole ballgame. Get it wrong, and a project that looked profitable on paper can lose a year, two years, or more before anything gets built. David Rocker, managing partner of NYSA Capital LLC, works across commercial real estate finance and capital markets, including the kind of large-scale development that depends on entitlement timelines lining up with capital deployment. That combination, financial structuring paired with a systems view of how projects actually move through approval, gives him a useful vantage point on where entitlement risk tends to get underestimated. Why entitlement gets waved off early Entitlement risk is easy to discount for a specific reason: it does not show up in a spreadsheet the way construction cost or interest rate risk does. There is no line for "the county council might table the vote for six months" or "the utility district needs a new capacity study before it will commit water and sewer." Those risks live in relationships, local politics, and infrastructure capacity that no financial model captures well. David Rocker's view is that this gap between what a model shows and what a jurisdiction actually requires is where master-planned projects run into trouble. A pro forma can be built with a clean entitlement date baked in. The jurisdiction does not know that date exists. The Sun Belt complication Fast-growing Sun Belt markets add a layer to this. Rapid population growth is exactly what makes large-scale development attractive there, but it is also what strains the local capacity to process approvals. Planning departments in fast-growing counties are often reviewing more projects than they were staffed to handle five years earlier. A well-prepared application can still sit in queue longer than a similar project would have in a slower-growing market. What goes wrong when entitlement slips A delayed entitlement does not just push the calendar. It changes the deal. Carrying costs accumulate. Land held without income still carries interest, taxes, and holding costs. A one-year delay on a large land position is not a rounding error. Financing assumptions age out. A capital stack built around a certain rate environment or lender appetite can look very different eighteen months later. Phasing gets disrupted. Master-planned projects often depend on early phases funding later ones. A delay in phase one entitlement can stall the whole sequence. Community and political dynamics shift. New elected officials, changed zoning boards, or a shift in local sentiment toward growth can all move the goalposts mid-process. None of these are exotic risks. They are common enough that any developer with a few large projects behind them has a story about at least one. Reducing the risk without pretending it away The instinct to eliminate entitlement risk entirely is a mistake. It cannot be eliminated. It can be planned for. Build the timeline with slack, not just a target date: A realistic entitlement schedule includes contingency time, not just the fastest plausible path. Underwriting the deal against the fast path guarantees disappointment when reality runs slower. Engage local stakeholders before the application, not after: Projects that show up at a planning hearing with no prior relationship to the community tend to face more resistance. Early conversations with local officials, neighboring property owners, and utility providers surface objections before they become formal opposition. Separate the land decision from the entitlement bet: David Rocker's perspective, shaped by years in capital markets and structured finance, is that land economics and entitlement risk should be evaluated as two different questions. The land might be well priced. The entitlement path might still be uncertain. Treating those as one number hides the risk rather than pricing it. Structure capital to survive a slower timeline: A capital stack that only works if entitlement clears on schedule is fragile by design. Building in reserves, phased capital calls, or flexible debt terms means a delay costs money and time, not the whole project. The underestimated cost The reason entitlement risk gets underestimated is not that it is unknown. It is that it is hard to quantify, and hard numbers tend to dominate soft ones in investment committee conversations. A project's IRR is a number. "The county might slow-walk this" is a sentence. For investors weighing large-scale master-planned development, the practical move is to treat entitlement as a distinct workstream with its own budget, its own timeline, and its own risk owner, rather than folding it into a general assumption that permits will come through on schedule. Projects that plan for delay tend to survive it. Projects that assume it away tend to be the ones that make the cautionary stories other developers repeat for years.

After 37 years of working with people in behavioral health, healthcare leadership, training, and coaching, Michael Sherbun has developed a simple habit: sometimes he waits. Someone finishes speaking. There is an uncomfortable pause. The natural instinct is to fill it with another question, an explanation, or an answer. Sherbun tries not to. “Five seconds can feel like forever when you're sitting across from somebody,” he says. “But I've learned that if I jump in too quickly, I may answer before they've actually told me what they wanted to say.” It is a small observation, but it says a great deal about how Sherbun's thinking has changed. After decades of seeing people communicate under pressure, he has become increasingly interested in what happens beneath the words people exchange. Why does one person become defensive while another shuts down? Why can the same sentence reassure one person and anger another? Why do people sometimes stop listening precisely when a conversation matters most? For Sherbun, those questions point to a larger idea: understanding human behavior changes how we communicate, especially under pressure. How did Michael Sherbun become interested in human behavior? Sherbun grew up on a farm outside Chicago. Work was simply part of life, but another influence was taking shape inside his home. His father was a social worker who worked with young people. “I saw the work ethic that came with growing up on a farm, but I also watched my father work with kids who were going through difficult things,” Sherbun says. “I think both stayed with me.” Sherbun went on to study nursing at Purdue University. His career soon moved toward adolescent behavioral health and eventually into senior clinical and executive leadership. Those early years exposed him to people during moments when emotions were often high. Young people might be angry or frightened. Families might be exhausted or uncertain. Professionals could have the right information but struggle to communicate it effectively. “You learn pretty quickly that having the right information doesn't mean someone is ready to hear it,” he says. “Earlier in my career, I was probably more focused on the answer. Over time, I became much more interested in timing, emotion, and what was happening with the person receiving that answer.” That distinction would eventually become central to Sherbun's thinking about communication. What did leadership teach Michael Sherbun about people? As Sherbun moved into hospital executive leadership, the situations changed, but many of the human behaviors did not. He also discovered that authority could change a conversation before it even began. “The higher you move in an organization, the more careful you have to be about assuming people are telling you everything,” he says. “If nobody challenges you anymore, you have to wonder why. Did you suddenly become right all the time? Probably not.” Employees notice how leaders respond to disagreement. People remember what happened the last time someone challenged a decision. A leader may say that honesty is welcome, but the behavior that follows an uncomfortable conversation sends a stronger message. Sherbun also became more cautious about another side effect of experience: certainty. “There have been times when I walked into a conversation thinking I knew exactly what the problem was,” he says. “Then halfway through, I realized I was solving the wrong problem. Experience helps you recognize patterns, but sometimes it also makes you too confident that you've seen this exact situation before.” For Sherbun, recognizing patterns is useful. Assuming those patterns tell you everything about another person is not. What can basketball teach us about communication under pressure? Some of Sherbun's observations about human behavior developed far away from hospitals and executive offices. He has spent time coaching basketball, where mistakes happen publicly and communication often has to happen quickly. A player turns the ball over or misses an assignment. The coach can immediately see what went wrong and may feel an equally immediate urge to correct it. But Sherbun learned to consider what the player could actually absorb in that moment. “If somebody just made a mistake and they're frustrated with themselves, I can give them ten pieces of information,” he says. “That doesn't mean they're going to hear any of them. Sometimes they need one thing. Sometimes they need a minute.” He does not see that as a lesson that belongs only to coaching. An angry spouse, an embarrassed teenager, an employee who feels they have been treated unfairly, and a frightened family member may behave very differently. Yet the same question can still be useful: What is happening with this person right now, and how is it affecting what they can hear? That does not mean excusing poor behavior or trying to diagnose every reaction. It means recognizing that communication is shaped by more than words. What is the psychology behind a conversation? Over the years, Sherbun noticed that the environment changed, but many human patterns remained surprisingly familiar. People became defensive when they felt judged. Some grew louder when they didn't feel heard, while others withdrew. Silence could be mistaken for agreement. An explanation offered at the wrong moment could sound like an excuse. Someone asking one question might actually be worried about something much deeper. Sherbun started paying more attention to what was happening underneath the words. “Two people can walk out of the same room believing they just had completely different conversations,” he says. “That's fascinating to me. The words were the same, so what happened?” For Sherbun, part of the answer is human behavior. People do not enter conversations as neutral receivers of information. They bring their emotional state, previous experiences, expectations, assumptions, relationships, and perceptions of the other person. When pressure increases, those influences can become even stronger. That idea sits at the center of what Sherbun calls The Psychology of Conversations and his broader focus on behavioral communication. Rather than beginning with What should I say?, Sherbun believes it's more useful to first ask: What is happening with the people having this conversation? “I probably have more questions now than I did earlier in my career,” he says. “I don't think that's a bad thing. When you're dealing with people, being too certain about what somebody else thinks can get you into trouble.” What have 37 years taught Michael Sherbun about human behavior? Today, Sherbun is taking those observations and giving them a more formal structure through The Navigator. His work focuses on behavioral communication, de-escalation, burnout prevention, and understanding the psychology behind difficult conversations. But he does not see these ideas as belonging only to executives, clinicians, educators, or people working in behavioral health. Conflict between coworkers may look different from an argument between family members. A coach talking with a frustrated player faces a different situation from a manager speaking with an employee. A parent trying to reach an upset teenager may have a different objective from two friends trying to repair a disagreement. The circumstances change. The underlying human behavior often does not. We become defensive when we feel judged. We struggle to process information when emotions are high. We assume other people's intentions. We get frustrated when we don't feel heard. Sometimes we react to what we believe someone means rather than what they actually said. After 37 years of working with people, Sherbun is less interested in teaching the perfect thing to say than in helping people understand what may be happening before they say it. “I probably have fewer absolute answers about people than I did when I was younger,” he says. “But I pay much more attention now. What is this person reacting to? What am I bringing into the conversation? What are we both assuming? If you understand more of that, you have a much better chance of actually communicating.” For Sherbun, that may be the most important lesson of all. Better conversations do not begin with better scripts. They begin with a better understanding of the people having them.

Written by Tanner O. Campbell, Philosopher of Stoicism Tanner Campbell is a public philosopher specialising in orthodox Stoicism. He hosts the Practical Stoicism podcast, co-authored "What Is Stoicism? A Brief and Accessible Overview", and runs a private Stoic coaching practice in Dundee, Scotland. Take away God, and most people will tell you that morality becomes a matter of taste, that whatever we call right or wrong belongs to whoever happens to be doing the calling. The Stoics disagreed, and they built their case on nothing more supernatural than what a human being is. I think their argument still holds up, and I want to walk you through the whole of it, right up to the strongest objection anyone has raised against it. Why is "good" such a slippery word? Most of us use the word "good" in at least three common ways, as a preferred experience ("it would be good to go to the beach today"), as enjoyability ("we enjoyed that movie, it was good"), and as an aesthetic ("that's good interior design"). None of these uses captures what we mean when we say "he is a good man" or "she is a good woman". The goodness of a person, or of peace, charity, kindness, or virtue, is a different sort of thing entirely, and yet common use has functionally de-specialised the word. It now has the same problem the word "theory" does. In everyday speech, a theory is little more than a guess ("we have a theory about why Beau didn't come to breakfast"), while in science, a theory is an explanation supported by evidence that is capable of accounting for a body of observed facts, which is no kind of guess at all. Good once had a specific definition too, and we have all but forgotten it. How did the Greeks measure goodness? Ancient Greek philosophy gives us a much more precise way of thinking about goodness, a thing can be judged good according to how well it fulfills the function proper to the kind of thing it is. Goodness, in this sense, is a measure of excellence against a standard. Plato runs a version of this argument with eyes and pruning knives in the Republic [352e to 354a], and the Stoics built their account of the human Good on the same foundation, using the word agathon for what is genuinely Good and ultimately identifying that Good with virtue. We say a carving knife is a good carving knife if it carves well, because carving well is what a carving knife is designed to do, and we say an eye is a good eye if it sees well, because seeing well is what an eye evolved to do. With this understanding of good in hand, there is nothing subjective about saying that a blind animal has bad eyes, or that a chipped carving knife is a bad carving knife. (This does not, of course, make the blind animal a bad animal. We have judged its eyes against the function proper to eyes, not the animal as a whole.) Now let's make the jump from organs and objects to entire animals. What makes a honeybee a good honeybee? The question feels much harder to answer, but it isn't, because we already know the answer has to relate to the natural functions of a honeybee. We ask what Nature compels a honeybee to do, and whether the honeybee in question does those things well. If it does, it's a good honeybee. If it doesn't, it's a bad one. What is a good human being? The same move works on us, but first we have to know what our natural functions are. The Stoics held that humans are rational and social animals. Reason is our distinctive governing capacity, the thing that separates us from animals governed by impressions and impulses, and our social nature matters just as much because we are creatures who reason and who live among, cooperate with, and have obligations toward other human beings. This is why the Stoics defined the goal of life as living in agreement with nature,[1] and why Marcus Aurelius kept reminding himself to do what his constitution required of him.[2] So a good human being is one whose rational and social capacities function well. But this cannot simply mean being clever, because a person can reason very effectively toward a vicious end, and history is a catalogue of exactly that. For the Stoics, reasoning well means reasoning correctly, which is to say bringing our judgements, choices, and actions into accordance with reason and with our social nature. The perfected condition of that nature is what they called virtue. In practice, this means learning to see things as they are rather than as they might seem through the filter of our bodily and emotional responses. Imagine a friend jumps out and scares you as a prank. You feel the fear before you are capable of making any judgement about what is happening, and only once your rational faculty has had a few seconds to come online do you understand that there is nothing to be scared of at all, even though the body's residue, the racing heart and the adrenaline, may hang around for a good while afterwards. A person who can see the world as it is, who is not misled by private biases, elations, assumptions, and fears, is a person functioning well as a human being. None of this means that good humans feel no emotion, only that they understand emotions to be something of a narrative medium, and that the stories the medium tells, while compelling and revealing of something real, are very rarely true. Is any of this actually objective? Consider mathematics for a moment. Plus signs, numbers, the term "quadratic equation," all of these are human inventions, and that might lead someone to call mathematics subjective. They would be only kind of right, because the phenomena those invented symbols describe, predict, and manipulate objectively exist. You can have one thing, place another of the same thing beside it, and suddenly have two of those things. The word one, the symbol 1, and the formal concept of addition are human constructs, but they describe something objective, and this is why 1 × 3 = 12 is objectively incorrect rather than merely a matter of opinion. A moral system works the same way. It does not require moral terminology to exist independently of human beings, what it requires is that it describe objective phenomena accurately and that it provide a framework against which claims can be tested. Within Stoic philosophy, a morally good choice is one that maintains fidelity with the framework, while a morally bad choice is one that betrays it, and whether a given choice does or does not maintain that fidelity is not a matter of personal opinion. It is something that can, at least in principle, be assessed objectively. But isn't the framework itself subjective? "You're just shifting the goalposts," you might say. "Something is objective if it adheres objectively to a moral framework, fine, but that leaves the morality of the framework itself. That's still subjective!" You're absolutely right. So the question becomes whether the framework corresponds with something objective, such that the framework itself can be assessed, and this is where Stoic physics comes in. The Stoics held that reality is wholly physical, and that the cosmos is matter structured and animated by an active rational principle, something we can think of today as immutable law, such as entropy, the laws of motion, or gravity. The universe, on their account, is not a collection of unrelated things but a single, causally ordered whole, and we are part of that structure. Human reason is not something separate from Nature but one expression of the same rational principle that structures the cosmos, which means we are not blank slates inventing values and imposing them on an otherwise meaningless world. We are a particular kind of thing with an objectively describable nature, rational, social, embodied animals, and that nature is where the moral framework gets its standard. Virtue, in other words, is not good because the Stoics happened to like it, nor because a god issued a command requiring it. It is good because it describes the excellent functioning of the kind of thing a human being objectively is. The structure looks like this, objective reality gives us an objective human nature, objective human nature gives us a standard of human excellence, and that standard lets us assess whether our reasoning and conduct are functioning well or poorly, and those assessments are not merely matters of taste. What about Hume's guillotine? I made a version of this argument on LinkedIn recently, and a fellow philosopher raised the objection this argument commonly meets. I want to share it here because the exchange sharpened my own thinking, and it might sharpen yours as well. The objection comes from David Hume,[3] and it says that you cannot derive an ought from an is. On this reading, my argument smuggles in a hidden value judgement, elevating one type of human behaviour as intrinsically human while denigrating the rest. And how do we determine what human nature is, other than by looking at humans? Which humans get to be the models? Without an objective answer to that question, the objection goes, we are back in the land of the subjective. My response was, and remains, that the argument does not depend on choosing model humans at all. Human nature, as I have used it here, means the objective capacities constitutive of the kind of organism a human being is, not whatever behaviours humans happen to exhibit. Rationality and sociality are constitutive human functions in the same way sight is constitutive of an eye, and just as a blind eye is still an eye (only one that is not functioning well), a human being can remain fully human while reasoning and acting badly. The word "human" is a convention, but the organism and its capacities are not, in the same way the word "oxygen" is invented while oxygen itself is not. Nor is the "should" hidden anywhere. The evaluative premise is stated openly, goodness consists in fulfilling the standard proper to the kind of thing something is. You can, of course, reject that premise (plenty of people have, and plenty more will), but then your disagreement is with Stoic naturalism itself, and simply calling the standard subjective does not establish that it is. That, after all, is the very claim we would be disputing. Where does this leave us? If being a good human means functioning well as a rational and social creature, then becoming good is a matter of training rather than of waiting for a rulebook to arrive, and nowhere does that training matter more than in people whose decisions land on other people. This is the work I do as a private philosopher to executives and leaders, building the structured moral fabric this essay has been describing, a tested standard to reason from, so that the hundred decisions a leader makes in a week are made well rather than merely made fast. If your judgment is the thing your organization runs on (and if you lead anything, it is), you can find me here or email me here. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Tanner O. Campbell Tanner O. Campbell, Philosopher of Stoicism Tanner Campbell is a public philosopher who teaches Stoicism as the ancient Stoics actually practised it, not in the way that pop culture has bastardised it. He hosts the award-winning Practical Stoicism podcast (over 10M downloads), and co-authored "What Is Stoicism? A Brief and Accessible Overview." Through his company, 134 Labs, he delivers decision-making and team workshops to businesses, mentors private clients one-on-one, and writes the Stoic Brekkie newsletter weekly. He writes the journaling curriculum at StoicJournaling.com, a year-long daily journaling programme. Tanner lives in Scotland with his wife and their son. References: [1] Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, 7.87 [2] Meditations, 7.55 [3] A Treatise of Human Nature, 1739, Book 3

Written by Kiara Pooja Chandru, Founder & CEO of KiLeela Kiara Pooja Chandru is the visionary Founder & CEO of KiLeela. A premium beauty brand built on the belief that beauty is inclusive, confidence-driven, and transformative, where she turned her pain into a brand. Nobody ever officially told us what beautiful was supposed to look like. There was no handbook. No meeting where we collectively agreed that clear skin was better than textured skin, that certain body types were more desirable than others, or that looking younger for longer should be something we all aspire to. Yet, somehow, most of us got the memo. We learned it through magazines, films, advertisements and, eventually, social media. We learned which women were called beautiful and which ones were told they were brave for simply existing in their bodies. We learned which features were praised, which ones were considered flaws and which ones we were expected to fix. The strange thing is that beauty standards are constantly changing. One decade tells us to be thin. Another tells us to have curves. One moment, fuller lips are everywhere. The next, a completely different face becomes the ideal. The rules keep changing. But women are somehow expected to keep up. That's where things get complicated. Because there is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to look good. There is nothing wrong with makeup, skincare, dressing up or enjoying the feeling of looking your best. The question is, "When did looking good become something we enjoy, and when did it become something we feel we must do?" How many of our beauty choices are genuinely ours? How many began with a message we absorbed somewhere along the way? Maybe you've changed your outfit because you were worried about what someone would think. Maybe you've avoided a photograph because you didn't like how you looked. Maybe you've looked in the mirror before a date, an interview or a party and wondered whether looking better might somehow make you more liked. That last one is perhaps the hardest to admit. Because beauty isn't just about appearance. Somewhere along the way, many of us began connecting it to acceptance. To attention. To being chosen. To being loved. When the definition of beauty becomes too narrow, we don't simply think, That's not my definition of beauty. We often think, "Something about me needs to change." So, where does KiLeela come in? For me, this conversation is personal. There was a time when I genuinely felt that I needed to fit a certain image to be loved, to look a particular way because the standards around me had quietly convinced me that this was what being desirable, accepted and worthy looked like. I know I'm not the only one. That is where KiLeela comes in. KiLeela wasn't created to tell women that they shouldn't care about beauty. In fact, beauty can be fun. It can be creative. It can be expressive. It can give us confidence and allow us to show different sides of ourselves. But somewhere between enjoying beauty and constantly trying to achieve it, something has become lost. We've become so busy trying to meet the standard that we rarely stop to question it. Who created it? Why does it exist? Why do so many of us feel like we must change ourselves to meet it? KiLeela wants to create space for those conversations. Not the polished, perfect conversations where everyone pretends they have never compared themselves to another woman. The honest ones. The ones about looking in the mirror and not feeling enough. About wanting to change something about yourself and not always knowing whether the desire came from you or from everything you've been taught to believe. About loving makeup while also questioning why we sometimes feel uncomfortable leaving the house without it. About wanting to look beautiful but not wanting our entire sense of worth to depend on whether we are. Because change doesn't necessarily begin by rejecting beauty. It begins by changing our relationship with it. That's what KiLeela hopes to be part of. A space that doesn't give women another impossible standard to live up to. A space that doesn't tell you what you need to buy, fix, change or improve before you can feel confident. But a space that encourages us to question the messages we've been given and decide for ourselves what beauty means. Maybe beauty doesn't need more rules You can love makeup and still question beauty standards. You can enjoy skincare and still reject the idea that ageing is something to fear. You can want to look beautiful without believing there is only one way to be beautiful. You can care about how you look without allowing your appearance to determine how worthy you feel. KiLeela isn't here to pretend that beauty doesn't matter. The world has made it clear that it does. But perhaps that's exactly why we need to talk about it more honestly. Because if beauty has the power to influence how we see ourselves, then surely we should have a say in how beauty is defined. The rules have been written for us for long enough. Maybe it's time we started questioning them. Maybe it's time we started rewriting them. Who made the rules of beauty, and why are we still following them? Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Kiara Pooja Chandru Kiara Pooja Chandru, Founder & CEO of KiLeela Kiara is a beauty entrepreneur building KiLeela, where her journey began not from confidence, but from pain, spending her teens and twenties battling acne and personal insecurities that deeply wounded her self-worth and left her believing beauty was something she had to earn. She measured herself against impossible beauty standards, feeling like she never quite belonged in beauty spaces. But that pain became her turning point, and through intentional self-care and deep inner work, she discovered that real glow is not something you buy, it is something you build. That revelation gave birth to KiLeela, a brand rooted in the philosophy that beauty is a form of self-mastery. Because beauty fades, but your presence lasts.

Written by Kirsten Hemmer, Certified Resilience Health Coach Kirsten Hemmer is a Resilience Health Coach who graduated from Jay Shetty's Certification School. She has experienced many different health challenges in her own life and believes her purpose is to help others who also go through health challenges. Most people don’t get taught self-love growing up. At least I didn’t. Everyone has a different definition of what self-love means to them. For a while, I thought loving yourself was selfish and that you should give all of your love to others. As I’ve gotten older, I have learned just how important self-love truly is and how loving yourself is not selfish at all. It can quite literally change your life. I was always the last one I ever thought about. I thought that as long as I was getting external validation and people liked me, I was worthy and okay. But what happens when that external validation goes away? What happens if you can’t control what is happening in your life? The saying goes, “You can’t pour from an empty cup,” and the saying is true. I have learned this the hard way. However, nothing in life has ever come easy for me, and I am grateful for the challenging moments because they give me the opportunity to learn and grow as a person. Those are the kinds of moments that you don’t forget in life, and the lesson stays with you forever. Six years ago, on September 20, 2020, I experienced exactly the kind of challenging moment that you don’t forget and whose lesson stays with you forever. My family and I decided to go to Edgewater Park. Edgewater Park is a beautiful place to visit in the fall. The scenery is gorgeous, and there are lots of places for kids to run around and play. I had a 2-year-old and an almost 8-month-old at the time, so we needed all the playtime we could get. I was starting to get sick, though, and I also had postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS). POTS is a dysfunction of the autonomic nervous system that can significantly affect heart rate and blood pressure. It can also cause symptoms such as nausea, dizziness, lightheadedness, headaches or migraines, and fainting. POTS can manifest differently for everyone. For me, POTS manifests as a high heart rate and low blood pressure. This means that doing normal, everyday things, such as changing positions from lying down to sitting or standing, or simply walking, can make my body feel like it is constantly working out. At that time, it was physically challenging for me to go anywhere, but I still really wanted to enjoy Edgewater Park with my little family, so I decided to go. It was a long walk from our car to the big grassy area where the kids could play, and we also had to go down a very steep hill to get there. I made it, though, and the kids had such a fun time playing. Eventually, it was time to go home and head back to the car, which meant I now had to go back up that very steep hill. When I got to the hill, I was not feeling good at all. My 2-year-old was also tired and wanted me to carry her, so, of course, I did. The hill now looked like a mountain to me, but I made it up. I was not feeling well, I had POTS, and I was carrying my 2-year-old. I was out of breath, but I was so proud of myself for making it up that steep hill. My husband at the time turned to me and said, “You really need to get in better shape.” My pride turned to shame in 0.2 seconds. I was expecting him to be proud of me, just like I was proud of myself. It was devastating that he chose those words to say to me in that moment. It made me realize something, though, it didn’t matter what he thought. I knew how much strength it physically took for me to make it up that hill, and I was genuinely proud of myself for doing it while feeling sick, carrying my 2-year-old, and dealing with POTS. Why would I let one person dictate how I felt about myself? I was the only person who truly knew how much strength that moment took because I was the one who lived it. After that experience, I realized how important self-love really is. No one knows what another person truly goes through except the person living that experience. So why listen to negativity from people who have no idea what you face every day? What matters most is how you feel about yourself and how you talk to yourself. That day, I felt proud of myself, and nothing was going to change that. Follow me on Instagram, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Kirsten Hemmer Kirsten Hemmer, Certified Resilience Health Coach Kirsten Hemmer is a Resilience Health Coach. She believes in sharing her own authentic story about the challenging health experiences she has gone through. She believes she has gone through these health challenges to support others who also go through health challenges. She believes we all have a light within us, sometimes we just need extra support finding it.

Sarah Batchelor is a music educator, speaker, and founder of The Neurospicy Music Teacher. Drawing on 25 years in education, her experience as an educator with autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and her perspective as a parent, Sarah explores what meaningful inclusion can look like in classrooms, workplaces, and the systems we move through every day. In this interview, she talks about belonging, universal design, autonomy, the importance of normalizing failure, and why inclusion starts with changing the way we think about human differences. Sarah Batchelor, Music Educator & Neurodiversity Speaker What first led you to create The Neurospicy Music Teacher and bring neurodiversity into your work more publicly? I have always had a passion for appropriate inclusion, not simply placing people into systems that were never designed for them and calling that support. This belief became deeply personal as I navigated the education system with my daughter, who has autism, while struggling myself. After years of being misdiagnosed, unheard, and incorrectly medicated, I was finally diagnosed with autism and ADHD. Once I began appropriate treatment, I was angry. I remember thinking, “It can’t have been this easy for everyone else.” I wasn’t just disorganized, messy, difficult, or “too much.” I mean, sometimes I absolutely am, but that wasn’t the whole story. I had spent my life trying to be a horse when I was actually a zebra. That realization gave me permission to give myself some grace and stop masking so much. I started living out loud, saying the quiet parts out loud, being unapologetically imperfect, and allowing myself to be seen as I actually am. Most importantly, I discovered that being openly imperfect gave other people permission to do the same. That became The Neurospicy Music Teacher. I wanted to become the teacher, mentor, and friend I had needed but never had, while supporting both educators and students who are neurodivergent. After more than two decades in music education, what have you learned about the conditions students need in order to feel that they genuinely belong? The short answer is this: kids need to feel safe. They need to feel valued. They need to feel like they are needed and trusted. In a nutshell, they need Maslow before Bloom. I think what you are actually asking is how we create those conditions. When I’m assessing what I need to do in the moment to create a sense of safety and belonging, I rely on two guiding principles: behaviour is communication, and the role of power and control in the situation should never be discounted. Until we understand the why behind a behaviour, we do not have enough information to meaningfully support or change it. Kids need autonomy, especially kids who are neurodivergent. They generally do not thrive in systems controlled from the top, and frankly, neither do I. I think of it as building a house together. Adults provide the floor plan, the structural walls, and the boundaries that keep everyone safe. Within that structure, students need room to make choices and have some ownership. Even offering two choices, both of which I am genuinely comfortable with, can completely change an interaction because it gives the student some power without removing the structure. Kids also do not need us to solve every problem. They need us to validate their feelings and provide guideposts. “Your feelings are valid, but that response wasn’t okay.” Most importantly, they do not need perfect adults. They need adults willing to fail in front of them, take accountability, repair mistakes, and model resilience. That is where trust and real belonging begin. How has understanding your own ADHD and autism changed the way you interpret student behaviour in the classroom? Understanding my autism and ADHD changed the lens through which I see almost everything, not just student behaviour. I grew up knowing I was different, but I didn’t know why. I knew my brain was smart, which honestly wasn’t always a gift, because if I was smart, why couldn’t I do things that seemed so simple for everybody else? I internalized the messages I was getting. I was lazy. I was disorganized. I was difficult. I was too much. I wasn’t trying hard enough. I thought I was struggling because there was something fundamentally wrong with me. That followed me into adulthood. There were misdiagnoses, hospitalizations, addiction, and years of trying to fix what I thought was wrong. Understanding my ADHD and autism didn’t magically fix my life. What it gave me was context. It gave me guideposts for understanding my brain instead of constantly fighting with it. A diagnosis didn’t change my brain. It changed the story I was telling myself about my brain. That has absolutely changed the way I see students. I am much more careful about attaching character judgments to behaviour. A diagnosis is not an excuse. It is a reason, and reasons give us information. They help us understand what is happening and what supports or strategies might help us move forward. I give students more grace and understanding now, but I still hold high expectations. Support and standards are not opposites. Why do people confuse inclusion with simply adding accommodations? There’s an image I come back to when I think about inclusion. There’s a building with stairs and a ramp, and both are covered in snow. The person clearing the snow starts with the stairs because that gets most people into the building. The person using the ramp has to wait. But if they cleared the ramp first, everyone could get in. That’s how I think we often approach inclusion in education, workplaces, and society more broadly. We keep shoveling the stairs first. We design systems around what works for the majority and then add accommodations for the people who cannot access them. Accommodations matter. Sometimes an individual adjustment is exactly what someone needs. But accommodation is not the same thing as inclusion. Inclusion asks us to look at the design itself. Is there another way to build this, teach this, communicate this, or organize this so the barrier is removed before somebody has to ask for an exception? The goal isn’t to get rid of the stairs. It’s to stop assuming that shoveling the stairs first is the only sensible way to get people through the door. What does meaningful inclusion look like when teachers are already managing limited time, resources, and capacity? I actually want to challenge the premise of that question a little because it assumes inclusion is an extra. An addition. Something we do if there is enough time, enough funding, or enough capacity left over. That assumption is part of the problem. Teachers absolutely have too much on their plates. In the 25 years I have been in classrooms, my workload has more than doubled. But when we frame inclusion as one more thing teachers are being asked to do with limited resources, we risk marginalizing the very students who need support most. That framing reinforces a message many people who are neurodivergent grow up hearing, whether anyone says it out loud or not: “You are too much work. Your needs are inconvenient. Supporting you takes resources away from everyone else.” I know that message because I lived it. It is one of the reasons I do this work. Teachers already respond to individual needs every day. We just tend not to call it inclusion when the student is neurotypical. No one asks, “What does appropriate inclusion look like for this neurotypical child?” We simply teach the child in front of us. The bigger question is why teachers are being asked to solve systemic barriers without systemic support. Inclusion cannot be sustained by teacher goodwill alone. The people who control staffing, funding, class size, time, policy, and specialist support have a responsibility here too. You’ve spoken openly about your own neurodivergence. How has understanding your own brain changed the way you teach, lead, and advocate for others? For most of my life, I genuinely thought there was something wrong with me. I knew my brain was smart, which wasn’t always a gift, because if it was smart, why couldn’t it do things that seemed so simple for everybody else? I internalized that. I thought I was lazy. I thought I wasn’t trying hard enough. I thought I was just bad at being human. That followed me into adulthood. There were misdiagnoses, hospitalizations, addiction, and years of trying to fix what I thought was wrong. Understanding my ADHD and autism didn’t magically fix my life. What it gave me was context. It gave me guideposts for understanding my brain instead of constantly fighting with it. A diagnosis didn’t change my brain. It changed the story I was telling myself about my brain. Once I stopped looking only for what was wrong with it, I started noticing what was extraordinary about it too. My synesthesia, the connections my brain makes, the patterns it notices, the way it thinks outside the box. Those are all part of the same brain. I had great teachers and supportive adults, but nobody had the information to explain this to me. Now I want to be the person I needed when I was younger. I don’t want students to simply look like they belong. I want that belonging to be authentic. I don’t want kids to spend decades trying to fix themselves or have to recover from their education before they discover who they are. What can a music classroom teach us about supporting students who process sound, movement, communication, and mistakes differently? We used to talk as if there was a “normal” and then a small group outside it, but classrooms don’t look like that. I’m not sure they ever did. The range of learners in front of us is enormous. That’s not an outlier problem; that’s the reality. Even in something like a Grade 9 English class, what we might call a normal range can span students reading several grade levels apart. Once you really look at that variability, the idea of designing for one imaginary average learner starts to fall apart. The beauty of spaces like music and physical education is that variation is already visible. We naturally have students doing different things, using different strengths, and needing different kinds of support. In music, we don’t get to pretend otherwise because learning is public. No one asks a kid to perform a math problem in front of the class. In music, you hear yourself in real time. Mistakes are audible. So we have to build safety on purpose. Students need to be able to take a risk, miss, recover, and try again without believing that the mistake says something about who they are. That’s why universal design makes so much sense to me. We don’t have to start by deciding who is normal and who needs an exception. These are the humans we have in the room. Design for the humans in the room, not an imaginary average. How do you use your “failure first” approach to help students build confidence without lowering expectations? I joke that the secret to happiness is lowered expectations. I do mean it as a joke, but there’s something real underneath it. For me, lowering expectations doesn’t mean lowering standards. I want the standard to be high. But expectations have to be responsive to what’s actually happening in the room. I start with high standards, and as I get real information, I adjust my expectations. That’s not lowering the bar; that’s being realistic. If the standard was high to start with, even an adjusted expectation is probably going to land higher than if I’d set the standard low. That’s where failure first comes in. A mistake is just data. It tells us where we are. That doesn’t mean we stay there; it means now we know something. I think about behaviour the same way. Behaviour is communication. Not an excuse, but information that helps us move forward. Because band is such a space directed by the teacher, I have to be conscious of those power and control dynamics. I joke that it’s a benevolent dictatorship. There is a conductor, there’s a score, and ultimately I have the final say on the artistic decisions in the room. I’m not pretending that structure doesn’t exist or that it isn’t part of my responsibility. But because it exists, I have to be intentional about how students experience it. I’m watching for moments where a demand becomes the problem instead of the learning, and for places where I can build in meaningful autonomy without removing the structure the ensemble needs. I’m not trying to remove every demand. I’m trying to make sure the demands are purposeful, that students understand the why, and that there are places inside the structure where they still have ownership. That matters to me personally too, because I understand that tension around autonomy from the inside. Pattern recognition is fundamental to music. Music is patterns, and being wired to notice them is one of the strengths I lean on. But I don’t just want to notice patterns for students. I want to teach students to recognize them too: What happened? What usually happens before that? What worked last time? What changed? What can we try next? That’s metacognition. We’re teaching students to understand themselves. Through all of this, there’s one core philosophy for me: I don’t teach kids to play instruments. I teach them to figure out how to play instruments. That means naming from the beginning that learning takes work and that they share responsibility for their success. I can support them. I can model, troubleshoot, adjust the environment, give them strategies, and make sure they’re never alone in the process. But I cannot do the learning for them. That’s empowering, because when they succeed, it’s theirs. They noticed something. They adjusted. They practised. They failed. They tried again. They figured it out. My job is to empower them with strategies so they can continue learning when I’m not in the room. So failure first doesn’t lower expectations, and it definitely doesn’t lower standards. It teaches students that failure gives us information, that adjustment is part of learning, and that ultimately they have ownership over what they do next. In your videos and sessions, you often speak about your mantra, “Practice makes progress.” What does that mean to you beyond music? “Practice makes progress” doesn’t mean we’re lowering our standards or expectations. It means we stop equating our best work with perfection. Perfect is awesome when it happens, but it’s not realistic as the only measure of success. Honestly, perfect means something different to every person anyway. Progress means we set a goal, work toward it, and recognize when we’ve moved forward. Then the target can move. It isn’t fixed. We’re constantly asking ourselves: Am I improving? What have I learned? How far have I come? What do I want to work on next? I think that’s much more powerful than looking at life as a series of finite destinations where eventually you arrive at perfection, and you’re done. Real life doesn’t work that way. Life is messy. Growth isn’t always linear. Sometimes we move forward, sometimes we plateau, sometimes we have to go back and work on something again, and sometimes the destination changes completely as we learn more about ourselves and what we actually want. So for me, “practice makes progress” is about giving ourselves grace while we grow without giving up on growth. We can be proud of where we are and how far we’ve come while still knowing there’s somewhere else we want to go. What is one change educators can make that would help more students feel they belong without creating an unsustainable workload? I think the first change is to shift the way we look at support. Instead of looking at students with diagnosed or identified needs as the group that requires something extra, we need to recognize that all students have additional needs. A diagnosis can be incredibly helpful because it gives us language, possible strategies, and a starting point for understanding behaviour. But there are also plenty of students sitting in our classrooms without a diagnosis who benefit from many of the same supports. Rather than building a lesson for an imaginary average student and adding accommodations afterward, I try to design the lesson and environment with the students who need the most support in mind from the beginning. When you do that well, you often meet the needs of a lot of other students at the same time. I also do not want to pretend there is one simple change that fixes everything. There isn’t. Many educators are working in overcrowded, underfunded systems with complex needs and very little support. Universal design can make teaching more sustainable, but it is not a substitute for adequate staffing, resources, time, or systemic support. The shift is not a magic strategy. It is recognizing that support is part of good design, not something we add afterward for a few students. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Sarah Batchelor