This year I had the rare gift of learning inside communities built for exactly that: showing up as you are and being met by people who have your back.

Between Career Pathways, the Green Communities Leadership Institute cohort, and the Emerging Leaders Initiative, I’ve spent stretches of the last three years, since my Career Pathways cohort in 2023, in rooms where leadership wasn’t measured by title. Some of the people I learned alongside lead departments, others lead entire organizations, and others lead a single tree planting crew, a small community garden, or a single walk through their own neighborhood. All of us were leading something. That distinction mattered more than I expected it to.

I came back from a recent Career Pathways alumni retreat in Santa Fe and Taos, still thinking about ponderosa pine and juniper grove sunsets and how much of my own growth has happened at ground level, not from above. Like light moving through a canopy, it rarely arrives all at once. It finds its way in through gaps you didn’t plan for, at moments you didn’t expect, and it changes what’s able to grow underneath. Loving what you do and learning to love the people you do it alongside turned out to be the same root system, not two separate skills. None of that shows up on a certificate, but it is where most of my learning has happened.

This year I’m serving as a Peer Circle Lead for the Council on Foundations’ 2026-27 Career Pathways cohort, which has been its own kind of learning. Holding space for someone else’s growth teaches you things a training slide never could.

If any of that resonates, I’d love to keep the conversation going in person. I’ve now been to three Technology Association of Grantmakers (TAG) conferences and two of their mini-events, and as well connected as we are virtually, there is still nothing quite like being in the room together. TAG has become more than a networking space for me. It’s grown into something closer to a professional home, a place where grantmakers and grantees alike work through data strategy, strategic partnerships, policy, ethics, and what responsible AI adoption actually looks like in practice, whether you came to tech leadership on purpose, ended up there by accident, or don’t think of yourself as a “tech person” at all. We all learn differently, so hearing more than one use case in the room matters. Some land as a lesson learned, others as a brilliant idea worth building.

This November, TAG is celebrating its 20th Anniversary conference here in Chicago, and I’ll be giving a seven-minute lightning talk called “Light Through Leaves: Before We Lead With Technology,” plus co-leading a breakout session with Hugo Castro, founder of The Accidental Techie. Tom Dreixler is leading a panel on disability in tech, and Liz Kane, Carrie Shield, and Jake Gedy are presenting a breakout session on the Philanthropy Data Commons called “From Fragmentation to Flow: Seeing the PDC in Action.” Jim Fruchterman will be among our keynote speakers. Registration is now open at https://bit.ly/tag2026-registration, and I’d genuinely love to see familiar faces in the room.

Come find me if trees, tech, or intentional leadership are your thing. I promise good conversation, and probably a tree fact or two.