I'm an experienced journalist, marketing & communications manager, corporate storyteller, editor and author. I specialize in powerful storytelling and building editorial and communications programs.
Inside the hidden $30 million cost of today’s meeting culture
This is the story of how one company analyzed meeting data to uncover the true cost of one weekly Executive Committee meeting. The results showed how quickly things can spiral out of control.
Special series: Home / Work
In this blog series, we share real-time learnings as we measure the impact of the recent, unprecedented shift on how people work, connect, and balance their lives. We hope these insights will teach us something about how work is changing and how we can respond to get through this—together. Series editor.
Uncovering resilience: Measuring organizational networks during crisis
Resilient organizations weather crises and emerge stronger. But it can be hard to identify and measure factors such as stability and churn that drive resilience. Enter organizational network analysis.
Video: Running on ritual to reinvent work
For more than a decade, Microsoft Netherlands had been a pioneer in experimenting with new ways of working to empower employees. But when the market shifted, digital distractions mounted, and their internal and external relationships needed more attention, the innovative team found itself asking how it should reinvent work next.
Running on ritual
How Microsoft Netherlands used data and relentless experimentation to reinvent the way it works.
Case study: Transforming global commercial sales with data
A sales organization turns to behavioral analytics to accelerate digital transformation and improve sales.
Below the Surface: behavioral data solves a work-life balance problem before it impacts a key hardware business - Workplace Analytics
Business was booming in one major technology company's hardware division, except for one thing: reports of poor work-life balance among engineers. See how leaders harnessed powerful data to solve the mystery and improve wellbeing.
Workspace planning: the next frontier
How do you save time, money, and sanity while seating thousands of employees who all want the best desks? Play this interactive story to find out.
When employees all want the best desks, data wins
Workspace planning is a hot topic, and where people sit at their jobs matters significantly to both workers and companies. So what happens when there's competition for the best desk? Data wins.
Why unplugging from work is more work than we think
Why do most of us have such a hard time unplugging from work, even on weekends and holidays? One reason: we're anxious about what's ahead.
The beauty that comes from nuance: to help their daughter, a Microsoft employee and a filmmaker became transgender allies
Chadd and Vlada Knowlton will never forget the day they most feared for their youngest child.
They were driving to school and from the back ...
‘There are great things out there for you’: Q Johnson went from having to hide parts of herself to helping others embrace who they are
Q Johnson knows what it’s like to not be fully accepted for who you are. She felt the tension as a teenager, growing up in a family that didn’t tolerate the idea of same-sex love. After she graduated high school, her mother found out she was gay. “She told me, ‘That’s not allowed in my house. If you’re going do that, you need to leave,’” Johnson sai...
The great giving machine: driven to make an impact, employees turn giving into a way of life
Until La Shanda Hurst took the mic, the conference room full of new Microsoft employees was quiet enough to hear a PowerPoint slide click. On a recent early morning at the company’s Redmond, Washington, headquarters, several hundred people sat silently sipping coffee and juggling the nerves and excitement of a first day at a new job.
Then Hurst, Microsoft Philanthropies program manager, moved to the front. “Good morning everyone!” she called as a giant photo of a little girl in a red T-shirt ...
‘I’ll do it’: how a former spacecraft engineer said ‘yes’ and launched great things
While working on the Mars Pathfinder mission at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, I came to a fork in the road. It was a moment when I had to decide whether to move out of my comfort zone and take a risk.
NASA was putting together a 25-person launch team that would temporarily move from California to Florida n...
The workspace of the future
A community plaza where employees can gather, learn, and play. Car-free zones and a cross-campus bridge just for pedestrians and bicyclists. Energy-optimized smart buildings; spaces to spark creativity with teammates; trees, trails, and transit close at hand.
A major redevelopment is coming to the Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, one that will rocket forward a modern vision of workspace that has already started, in recent years, to lift off across the campus and the globe.