Celebrating Deborah! (Interview #61)
Wow. Let’s just start there. Wow.
Deborah’s interview is a celebration of Deborah, of women & of life itself.
Some highlights;
Deborah has written 14 books on building diverse teams with story-based communication, emotional intelligence and smart decision-making; founded/edits an online magazine that gives people from all over the world a voice; lectured at universities about Women’s Rights; and ran a Women GroundBreakers Storytelling event for many years.
When Deborah was a young girl she wanted to be a choreographer and describes her life to date as;
“Unbelievably creative and impactful“
There’s no doubt that she has choreographed a most beautiful dance…her extraordinary life.
I am grateful to capture a glimpse of her recollections, candidly shared to inspire and encourage us;
“I grew up on the 24 square miles of British Bermuda in the only Jewish family to have lived on the island for 4 generations. They treasured education and my mother attended Radcliffe College where she was a pioneer is special education and met my father, a first generation American-born scholar who became a US military intelligence officer assigned to interrogate Nazi prisoners of war. I also attended a generation later when it merged with Harvard. I am a product of that merger as well as a blend of my parents. You would think that it would be easy for me to be successful in life, but health issues and a lack of an immune system meant that I crashed and burned every couple of years. I had to reinvent myself constantly. There were painful times when I was tempted to give up. But nothing is lost and at this point in my life, I am more creative, well-known, and successful than I could ever imagine when I lay in one of many hospital beds. I started writing from one of those beds and kept writing whenever I was too sick to hold down a job. I thought of myself as a loser rather than a writer, but as I got better with practice, I became an award-winning author, determined to make the world a better place. I didn’t think I would be long on this planet and wanted to leave something meaningful behind. I’m grateful to be alive and to be featured as a trailblazer in Forbes Magazine is surreal. It turns out that the passion to leave a legacy when you think your life is soon over is motivation to be driven, determined and fearless. But why wait for that particular motivation? Dream big and work to achieve great things now, knowing that life is short for all of us.”
#Celebrate
