For most of my career, I was the person sitting across the table listening to the story. I was the HR executive designing people strategy, guiding employees through difficult conversations, advising leaders, and making decisions that affected thousands of people. I spent more than 30 years learning business, HR, and employment law.
Then, in February 2024, I received a diagnosis that changed my understanding of all of it: metastatic breast cancer. Suddenly, I was the employee sitting across the table. I had to tell an employer that I had received a life-changing diagnosis.
Nanci Churchill, one of my closest colleagues and now our COO, called it “the other side of the table.” The phrase stayed with me because I understood immediately how different the conversation felt when I was the person sharing my own story. My connection to HR began when I was 16. I watched my grandmother lose her job after she was injured at work.
I saw what that loss did to her and our family, and I carried that experience into my career. It became one of the reasons I cared so deeply about the human side of work. Over the next three decades, I built the career I once believed would define success.
I worked in major organizations and executive HR roles, handling mergers, complex organizational legal issues, global compensation, and thousands of decisions involving people. Becoming a chief human resources officer (CHRO) and reaching other senior leadership positions mattered to me. Financial security mattered.
I was climbing toward a definition of success I understood. I had launched ConsortHR, and we moved into our first office. Twenty-six days later, my husband died unexpectedly at the age of 50.
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