Yes, and

There are moments in life where there’s nowhere to hide. Something has happened in your life or your child’s life and you can’t quite put yourself back together just yet. You don’t have the energy to present a polished version of yourself that the world expects. Heck, you don’t even have the energy to hide your emotions. The best you can muster is to slump over and say, “I got nothing left.”

What a gift to have a safe space, a friend who sits across from you when you show up completely undone. Where the worst version of yourself isn’t a deal-breaker—it’s just another Tuesday. I am blessed by two or three of these friendships, but one has been present at the critical junctures of my life and in hers. She arrived at my mother’s funeral before I did.  I took her to the courthouse to secure the death certificate after her husband died. She took me to the Penguin Encounter after the judge declared me divorced. Wait. That was an odd choice we made. Penguins mate for life. Don’t they?

Anyway, you get it, with Anne Chen I don’t need to be anything other than exactly who I am, soaking wet and all. I don’t even have to apologize when our first walk failed to record. We got a do-over. 

Liz: I did a sit-down coffee with my therapist who explained to me why the walking part of this is so important because you don’t look at each other and your eyes dart. And that has a lot to do with revisiting emotional traditional places and unlocking them in a different way. And when you talk about it, you allow somebody to be a witness, and it makes it less triggering. I wish I understood it better. 

Anne: That’s interesting. I mean, I just feel like I can talk to you.

Liz: You can sit and look at me and talk to me.

Anne: I can sit and look at you and talk to you, and it would really be helpful for me.

Liz: You know, after I walked with Gregg Behr and I was completely soaked, we met for dinner. I dried off, and then I got completely soaked by my spilled water. There are probably – maybe just two – two people in this world that I would have been okay with all that happening in front of, and you’re one of them. When I feel like, okay, it can’t get much worse than this moment. There are only certain people you’re willing to just slump over and go, “Okay, pay for it. I got nothing left.”

But here’s the thing about that “I got nothing left” moment—it’s not actually the end. It’s this weird paradox where you think you’ve hit bottom, where every reserve has been tapped out, and then somehow, sitting there with someone who truly sees you, you find another gear you didn’t know existed. Maybe it’s because you’re not carrying the weight alone anymore, or maybe it’s because being witnessed in your lowest moment reminds you that you’re still here, still breathing, still worth fighting for. That determination doesn’t come from pretending I’m fine; for me it comes from being completely vulnerable. 

Anne: You started to say, When you say something to someone else, it makes it… I don’t remember what exactly…

Liz: That somebody bears witness?

Anne: Someone bears witness. Yes. I was thinking about manifesting the things you say… it’s one of the reasons people don’t like to talk about death and preparation for dying, because there’s a fear that if you speak it, you manifest it. But on the other hand, if you’re aspiring to something, you want to talk about it, at least I do, because then it makes me accountable. Like someone else has heard it, so now I have to f..king do it. So I guess two sides of the same coin.

Liz: There are things you and I talk about that I feel like, okay, I said it. Now I got to go do it.

Anne: Yeah. I mean, I think that’s actually important. I think it’s important to have that. It’s important to acknowledge it. It’s important to acknowledge that when you make a choice to say something to someone meaningful, or maybe even not that meaningful, it means that there’s part of you that needs to hold yourself accountable.

She holds me accountable. She also holds me up. As I do for her. Two sides of the same coin. We have been that way since we met on the fifth floor of Witherspoon on the Princeton campus in the late summer of 1985. At 58, our beliefs and values remain very similar, but the life experiences that got us here vary widely. What is interesting is how we find ourselves on similar professional paths now – not just bearing witness but adding to each other’s experiences as we boldly reimagine what comes next – building on a foundation of What if? by adding floors of Yes And.

Let me explain. Not only did she witness my grief and pain, she had a front row seat to bear witness to my big swing – translating a tutoring program to a virtual platform to serve students in Boys & Girls Clubs while incubating a math software to further support learning. She showed up. For every presentation I did in Pittsburgh, she arrived early. She made introductions to friends that led to foundation meetings. She joined zoom calls to offer a distinctive outside voice. She supported me, but she made me accountable to keep moving the idea forward.

Now it’s her turn. She has a vision of something new.

Anne: So I wanted to talk about… Can I talk about something that is making me so excited? So I think that the last time I talked to you, I mentioned this business that I’m pursuing with a partner with manufactured housing. So we have launched the business.

They started with a question.

Anne: How can we bring the housing units to market really quickly, affordably?

Anne is an architect. Perhaps you’ve seen the Hillman Library at the University of Pittsburgh or passed by Steel City Squash. If you have been to my house, you’ve seen her work. She has a lens on the world that I don’t even have the vocabulary for. As she discussed the solution that she and her partner have envisioned, I asked sophomoric questions.

Liz: What’s the difference?

Anne: Manufactured housing is the descendent of mobile homes.

Liz: And what’s modular?

Anne: Modular is similar, but manufactured housing is almost fully built in a factory. They will then truck it over to a site and install it.

Liz: Assemble it? so paint by numbers?

Anne: And there’s very little that is done on site. The foundation is done on site. You bring in utilities. There might be a little bit of finish work that’s done on site. So when we think about modular or manufactured housing, mobile homes, we think about single wides, which are the least expensive way. That’s the least expensive housing unit. So they are limited in size, and right now, they’re very limited in size. When I started looking at this, it was like, “Oh, my God, this is the answer.” This is the thing that no one has done. Because I started looking… Is there manufactured housing in urban areas? Nope, nothing. You see them in suburban areas, you’ve seen them in the rural areas. Manufactured housing has now evolved so that there are multi-sections, so it doesn’t look like a… It’s not a single wide anymore.

They are good quality homes, two bedroom, maybe two baths or one and a half baths with sustainable features so that there are going to be low energy costs and require no subsidy. The reason that no subsidy is so impactful is not just because you can deliver it faster. It’s that when you sell to the owner, they get all the equity. So oftentimes, when you have a subsidy, the owner is limited when they sell it. They can only sell to low-income buyers, so they don’t realize the equity. And so they don’t have the power of upward mobility… and that’s huge.

This was not anywhere on my agenda or strategic plan, although I was thinking about it. When I quit GBBN, I had been telling them for three years,  I’m not really happy here. Then after you’ve been saying it for so long, you just got to do it. It’s that accountability piece. 

There’s a profound liberation that comes with stepping away from the endless cycle of doing what’s expected—the corporate ladder, the predetermined milestones, the status quo. It’s like finally exhaling after holding your breath for years. 

But the real rush isn’t walking off the well-trodden path—it’s in the pivot toward creation. There’s a fundamental difference between thinking outside the box as an intellectual exercise and actually laying the groundwork for something that didn’t exist before. One is theoretical; the other is transformational. When you move from “what if” to “what now,” you shift from being a consumer of other people’s visions to an architect of your own.

What amplifies this excitement exponentially is when your bold leap serves something bigger than yourself. There’s an alchemy that happens when personal fulfillment meets community need—suddenly your work isn’t just about you anymore, it’s about the ripple effect you can create. You’re not just building a business or pursuing a passion project; you’re addressing real problems that real people face every day. Your success becomes intertwined with others’ wellbeing.

This kind of purpose-driven building creates a different quality of energy.

Anne: The gap between people who own homes and who rent has just gotten bigger and bigger. Home ownership still is a means by which people build wealth. And the fact that it has been denied to the people at the lower end of the… I mean, 80 % AMI is like, $86,000. I mean, those are people who are working. They still can’t afford them. 

You know it really is this static framework that has prohibited this from being seen, from even being identified as a solution. And if we can just push to walk through all of those obstacles, which frankly, they’re not… that big. I think we can really make a difference.

Liz: So it’s trusting systems thinking that limits you from seeing opportunity. 

Anne: It is really about having someone new come in and say, wait a second, why is no one doing this? And then to have the persistence to do it and the resources.

I started some conversations with a bunch of manufacturers. The key is finding the right one. 

Liz: What else makes it the perfect manufacturing partner?

Anne: They just have to get it. I don’t know. I think they just need to be able to deliver within budget what we want. They need to be relatively close by because of the fuel charges, the freight charges can get up there. I don’t know. I think it’s just the right person. You have to have the right person with the decision making authority to be able to say, “Hey, factory, let’s do this.”

Liz: I’m pushing you on what makes the right partner. And I think you hit it when you said they have to get it. They had to have an open mind. They had to be willing to see a gap in the market and not just the formulaic, which is what we’re talking about when we talk about health care and government and everything else. You have to see beyond the formula. It’s just got to be for those people…

Anne: …people who are willing to be creative. 

Liz: Like finding the right partner. Yes, and. 

Anne: Not everyone is going to be willing to do it. You have to accept that. 

Liz: And not everyone should.

Trust me, there’s something electric about that moment when you realize you’ve stumbled onto something real—a genuine gap in the market that’s been hiding in plain sight. 

Anne: He (her partner) was like, “I’ve never been the first to do something”. And I said, “Really? This is really this big of an opportunity?”

It’s a “baited breath” feeling where every conversation, every brainstorm session, every “yes” and even “no” seems to build momentum.

What makes it even more powerful is finding the right partner to explore it with. There’s this beautiful “yes, and” energy that emerges—where one person’s idea sparks another’s, and suddenly you’re not just adding thoughts together, you’re multiplying them. The accountability keeps you grounded while the brainstorming lifts you up.

It’s that rare combination of complementary skills meeting untapped opportunity. You know you could probably tackle it alone, but together there’s this amplification effect—you’re both better versions of yourselves when you’re building something that feels genuinely needed in the world. I could just as easily be describing my partnership with Luke Hladek as I am the interactions between Anne and Jeremy. Quickly, my own breath is once again bated. I am reliving those early days of recognizing what’s possible. It is electric and contagious.

Anne knows complexity will creep in…but there’s something intoxicating about being in that sweet spot where market need meets personal passion meets partnership chemistry. It’s like catching lightning in a bottle. 

Liz: The baited breath of, “I think this can work” …it starts to feel like a snowball, doesn’t it? It does.

Anne: And it is so important. He was saying, I work better with a partner, and I do, too, because there is this accountability.

Liz: But the brainstorming, the bopping of… I’m going to say it again. Yes, and.

Anne: Yes, right. I mean, the things that I bring to it… they’re really complementary. And I know we’re in the honeymoon phase. And at some point, if this gets going, and it will…it’ll get more complicated. But really to get this… I could do this by myself, but I wouldn’t do it as well.

Liz: I believe we’re right back to stepping through the door, being prepared when the opportunity presents itself.

Anne: I mean, that really was it. I was telling Xing recently, you have to set goals for yourself. And then when you achieve that goal, you don’t just say, oh, great, I did that. You set your bar a little higher.

Liz: Set a new goal. Or maybe it’s a tangential path. 

Anne: Exactly. Maybe it’s taught you something that tells you, yeah, it’s a tangent. It’s this other goal that you’re going to try..

Liz: And you can follow the path too long, and that’s not bad either. 

Anne: Well, it’ll teach you something. As long as you are willing to pay attention to what you have experienced, what that journey has taught you.

Looking back on this journey—from those raw moments of showing up alone on a college campus to witnessing the electric spark of new possibility—I’m struck by how much this friendship has taught us about the architecture of becoming.

What strikes me most is how vulnerability and vision aren’t opposites—they’re dance partners. Those “I got nothing left” moments didn’t diminish our capacity for dreaming; they deepened it…  we have to be the person who can’t stop dreaming….there’s too much fear and too little dreaming. Especially now when America is afraid of its own shadow.

But perhaps the most valuable lesson is this: the path rarely looks like what we expected when we started walking it. From Princeton dorm rooms to divorce penguins to manufactured housing breakthroughs—the beauty isn’t in the predictability of the journey, but in our willingness to keep setting new goals, to pivot when we learn something that changes everything, and to trust that sometimes the most important step is simply being prepared when opportunity presents itself.

For all of it—the mess, the manifestation, the moments of pure possibility—I am deeply, endlessly grateful.

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