If wisdom comes from experience, and experience comes from making mistakes, then 2024 has been a masterclass. Between career pivots, unexpected joys, and moments of startling clarity that arrived without warning, I’ve collected a handful of truths that feel too valuable to keep to myself.
So before we raise our glasses to 2025, let me share what this year has taught me – not as someone who has it all figured out, but as a fellow traveler walking through life. Some of these lessons came gently, others arrived with the subtlety of a freight train. All of them have left their mark.




24 lessons of 2024 in no particular order.
- Every story matters.
- Let your face light up – children need to know you love them just as they are – so do adults.
- Challenges faced as a parent make us better school leaders.
- Be present to build a better future.
- LISTEN
- …like you might be wrong.
- Be explicit.
- No one parents any two children the same.
- The best two lines of parenting, “That sucks” and “I get it.” Memorize them.
- Show up.
- Listen to your gut and use your voice until someone listens to you.
- What a waste to want to be the smartest person in the room.
- Be authentic.
- If kids like you, you are doing something right.
- Take advantage of the time you are given.
- Pause and use curiosity in moments that take you out at your knees.
- Park the snowplow – get out of our children’s way for their own growth.
- Offer GRACE…first to yourself …then others.
- You are building an interconnected network every day. You will need it someday.
- Create WITH not FOR others.
- Laugh. Make it fun.
- Look up.
- Tell them*
- Take the next step.

Of all 2024’s unexpected joys, one stands brightest: Tell them. Let me explain why.
Walking, listening, transcribing – this has become my ritual of witnessing lives beyond my own. As I write, my audience remains intentionally small: the storyteller and my daughters. As I have learned, every story matters.
Each time I hand these stories back to their owners for approval, their gratitude catches me off guard. What started as my personal exploration has crystallized into something more profound: each piece becomes a mirror, reflecting back the light and worth I see in them. I tell them.
These walking companions have given me an invaluable gift: their friendship and their trust. They’ve opened their lives, allowing me to share these blogs with you. In return, I offer them the gift of being truly seen. That exchange has brought me immeasurable joy and it seems to have done the same for them. arvind called it “a shot of B12”.


As 2025 approaches, I will venture on a slightly different path – still walking beside leaders shaping our future, but also walking with children who instinctively understand what our world needs, and unsung heroes like Mark Kowcheck, whose quiet acts of kindness create ripples he will never witness.
Happy New Year.