This is the Leadership Journey series on the Choosing Leadership Podcast.

I believe we all have a lot to learn from each other’s stories – of where we started, where we are now, and our successes and struggles on the way. With this series of interviews, my attempt is to give leaders an opportunity to share their stories and for all of us to learn from their generous sharing. If you know a leader whom you would like to see celebrated on the show, please send me a message on LinkedIn with their name.

In the interview, Colleen opens up and shares about her early fascination with tech and data, and how she has continued to be an innovator. She also spoke about her health challenges and what has that taught her as a leader. We speak about the importance of having hope, facing our own fears,  and the importance of holding ourselves accountable.

You can find Colleen at the below links

In the interview, Colleen shares

  • Whether it’s the smallest thing in the world or the biggest objective, I think, Learning to have hope and being in that mindset of, I can do this, I see that this can be overcome is a really big part of it.
  • I’m so grateful, certainly not for going through difficulties with health, but I’m certainly super grateful for that silver lining of what it taught me.
  • Holding yourself accountable is so much half the battle. , Because if you continually hold yourself accountable and end up experiencing success, you’re gonna associate success with holding yourself accountable.
  • Having my ups and downs of coping and yet, still being able to go out there. And focus on achieving the overall goal. It was coming not necessarily from this place of confidence, but I  was doing confidence-building things along the way that I think, with that momentum eventually added up to something.
  • If you keep your agreement, that’s one thing. But if everybody keeps their agreements now, that’s the story. 
  • I think leadership isn’t something with a small l it’s something with a capital L and we each need to figure out what that capital L looks like for each of us. Stepping forward because leadership is not, also not something that comes with the title.