06/02/2026
At three years old, I had my first existential crisis.
Most children are worried about toys. I was lying in bed after my mother tucked me in, staring into the darkness, suddenly aware that one day I would die.
I remember thinking:
I won't be here forever.
For a three-year-old, it was a strange realization.
But it awakened a question that has followed me for as long as I can remember:
What gives a life meaning?
Looking at this little girl in the photo, she had no idea what life would ask of her.
She didn't know she would leave New York and move to Ecuador.
She didn't know she would eventually leave Ecuador and come to Canada with two children, $1,300, and enough peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to survive a three-day train ride.
She didn't know she would build businesses, lead teams, experience success, navigate failure, lose people she loved, bury her husband Kevin, and be asked to start over more than once.
She didn't know that some of life's greatest teachers would arrive disguised as uncertainty, responsibility, growth, and grief.
But somewhere deep within her, the search had already begun.
Over the years, I've come to realize that leadership is not really about leadership. Business is not really about business. At least not entirely. Both have a way of asking more of us than we thought we could give.
More courage.
More trust.
More honesty.
More responsibility.
More of who we are capable of becoming.
The challenge is that life rarely sends us the invitation when we feel ready.
It simply arrives.
And then asks us to grow into it.
The longer I do this work, the more I believe that beneath every difficult decision, every growth challenge, every leadership struggle, and every season of uncertainty is a quieter question:
What is this situation asking of me now?
Not what should I do.
But who must I become?
Life has been asking me that question since I was three years old.
And if I'm honest, I think I'm still learning how to answer it.
Jacqueline