The boardroom
Nineteen years helping institutional owners, developers and investors say what they mean.
President & CEO, The Smart Agency
Irvine, California · TEDx Paris · Vocalist
It’s all one voice.
I run a communications firm for commercial real estate and financial services. I also write, and sing. People often read that as three careers. Really it’s one discipline practiced three ways.
On the page
Writing
Nineteen years in communications, most of them spent explaining commercial real estate to people who would rather talk about anything else. These are the things I have learned about confidence, change, and becoming understood.
How to Get a Mentor Like a Boss
Nobody is going to appoint themselves. I found mine on the cover of an industry magazine, wrote a one-page letter, printed it on personal letterhead and put it in the mail. Here is what I said, and the three things he taught me.
Read the essay
Business and Bocce Ball
Every Easter my friend Jesse leads a rousing game of travelling bocce. One year the mark started moving and everyone groaned. That is when it became clear what good business actually looks like.
The Problem with Empathetic Leadership
Empathy became a buzzword somewhere around 2021, and buzzwords are where good ideas go to stop meaning anything. Here is what it actually costs to lead this way.
Three Strategies to Blast Through an Overactive Inner Critic
The voice telling you not to speak up in the meeting is not protecting you. Three things that work, tested on myself first.
Three Lessons From Life’s Oldest Millennial
Getting old ain’t that bad. Three pearls for Gen Z and the Boomers who are both, somehow, in the same meeting as me.
Workforce 2.0
The Great Resignation got the headlines. What came after it was more interesting, and almost nobody planned for it.
Leadership Mind Tricks
Honesty really is the best policy, and it is also the hardest one to hold when the quarter is going badly.
Three Communication Habits to Kick to the Curb
Three things capable people do every day that quietly make them harder to understand.
When Women Shrink, Society Shrinks
Written after the death of Mahsa Amini. Not American politics, and not activism. What happens to all of us when half the world loses the ability to speak.
You Are Beautiful
From my hometown of Kinston, North Carolina
Read the whole story
Empowering the next generation of confident communicators so they can achieve their hopes and dreams in life.
On the stage
Love In All Its Forms
A debut jazz album about every kind of love, recorded with my father, Dr. Dennis Michels, on piano. Ten songs. Musical direction by Jeff Babko of the Jimmy Kimmel Live band, with Sean Hurley on bass and Zach Danziger on drums.
I have sung on stages since I was a child, growing my love of storytelling through the art of music.
10Songs
2024Released
LMNLSanta Monica
LMNL Studios, Santa Monica
Out loud
Speaking
A TEDx talk in Paris on navigating change with confidence, and a standing invitation to talk with your team about communicating through uncertainty — which is, at this point, the only condition any of us work in.
I have spent nineteen years helping institutional owners, developers and investors say what they mean. This talk is about what happens when you realize you are pointed the wrong way, and how to keep going forward while you turn around.
Recent live speaking
TEDx Paris · ULI · ICSC
Panels, keynotes and moderated sessions
Built for
Commercial real estate & financial services
Nineteen years inside the industry
Formats
Keynote, workshop, panel
Twenty minutes to a half day
On air
Resiliency The Podcast
This global conversation of changemakers is one of my favorite projects. Each time I sit down with Dr. Kelly Culver I am amazed at the resilience we find in the world. A genocide survivor. A Navy captain. A chef who walked across America. My own husband on the other side of cancer. We are crossing fifty episodes and more than forty hours of conversation, each with wisdom that sticks with you.
One piece of writing, most weeks
On communication, leadership, and the occasional song. No pitches, no funnels, and I will never sell your address to anyone.
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