October 24, 2025
Dear Leaders (yes- I believe each one of you is a leader whether you like it or not),
Every week, I’ll meet you here — in reflection and imagination.
This letter isn’t about trends or tactics. It’s about truth — the kind that reminds us who we are, and what we’re here to do.
This is something new we’re trying — a weekly letter from BREAKTHRU to our growing community of leaders, changemakers, and collaborators we’ve connected with over the years. You’re receiving it because, in some way, our paths have crossed — through work, conversation, or shared purpose.
If weekly reflections on leadership and possibility aren’t for you, feel free to unsubscribe — no hard feelings. But I hope you’ll stay. I hope you’ll take a few minutes each week to pause, reflect, and maybe learn something new about what leadership can look like — through the lens of history, identity, and imagination.
I’m writing these letters as part of my own creative practice — a way to slow down, meet the moment, and make sense of the world as it unfolds around us. Inspired by Heather Cox Richardson’s model of writing daily reflections that connect history to our present, I’ll be doing something similar — but weekly — sharing the stories that have shaped BREAKTHRU and the framework behind it.
Each week, I’ll explore how history, identity, and courage come together to inform who we are as leaders and who we’re still becoming.
Each letter will center on one truth that anchors our philosophy at BREAKTHRU:
We are the leaders we’ve been waiting for.
— Grace Lee Boggs
That idea has never felt more urgent. Around us, it can feel like the world is cracking open — institutions losing trust, systems collapsing under the weight of inequity, truth bending under noise. But within that collapse is also a creative call: to reimagine, to rebuild, and to lead in ways that center humanity over hierarchy.
When the old world begins to crumble, creation — not control — becomes the most radical form of leadership.
This Week’s Reflection: Acknowledging Angela (Tilton) Heywood
For me, that truth begins with my great-great-grandmother, Angela Tilton Heywood.
She was a writer, activist, and radical feminist who co-published a 19th-century newspaper called The Word alongside her husband, Ezra Heywood. The paper challenged Victorian norms — discussing women’s rights, sexuality, and social justice long before it was acceptable to do so. It was considered so dangerous that Ezra was arrested multiple times for publishing it.
But Angela’s name never appeared on the masthead. Her words lived in the margins, attributed to her husband or hidden behind anonymity. For over a century, she remained a quiet figure in both history and my own family story — unseen, uncredited, but always there.
When I learned more about her, my whole world opened up.
Here was a woman who had been erased from the record, yet whose courage to speak truth still rippled forward through generations — eventually landing in me. Her story became a mirror, showing me that what I thought was my own drive to create change was, in fact, inheritance.
Angela believed, as she once wrote,
“It is the ignorance, the silence, the false shame that poisons the soul of the people.”
Her courage to speak what was forbidden became the foundation for BREAKTHRU — the belief that leadership begins with reclaiming what has been hidden — our stories, our voices, our creative power — and using them to build what comes next.
She reminds me that leadership isn’t just about visibility. It’s about vision: daring to see possibility even when the world refuses to see you.
From Reflection to Action
- Who in your lineage — by blood, by choice, or by influence — showed you what courage looks like, even if the world didn’t see them?
- What truth have you been holding quietly that deserves to be named?
- How might creativity and collective action become your way of leading in this moment of change?
Because leadership isn’t about forgetting who came before. It’s about remembering so fully that you can’t help but take action.
Until Next Week
We’ll be here — building this conversation together, one story and one reflection at a time.
Next week, we’ll look at what happens when quiet leadership transforms the world — in The Guide’s Way, featuring Jane Goodall, whose life reminds us that listening is its own kind of courage.
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