I'm back: taking breaks, AI, leadership, and the return to curiosity.

Hi there, and welcome.

I’m back in California, complete with Karl the Fog and in the tech community I love after a year off; my first ever sabbatical. I am more convinced than ever if you want to sustain a long career and keep doing meaningful work well, some time away is necessary.

I intentionally stepped back from technology for much of that time, deleting apps and social platforms for about six months. I drove cross-country (twice!) on old Route 66 with my pup, took in a lot of history and gorgeous scenery, and spent time across the southern U.S., the Mid-Atlantic and East Coast, where I parked for about a year. I reconnected with old friends, met new ones, went to a few women’s pro sports games (so pumped to see this taking off), saw a couple shows (Beyoncé remains forever fabulous), and spent time doing a different kind of work: the kind that makes you look at yourself honestly, grow purposefully, and give back to communities in ways intentionally not about business or technology.

Now I’m settled back home in NorCal and reconnecting with the fantastically talented, brilliant people I’ve met over the years in tech and on the West Coast. These relationships span the tech ecosystem, from customers and partners to OSS foundations and former colleagues, and they matter deeply to me. These friendships have truly been ‘forged through the fire’ (ie: challenges we face during intense projects, customer escalations or the fateful outages, 24-hour caffeine-driven engineering cycles, leadership wins and woes, the occasional political battle, last minute keynote changes, etc).

More than anything, this reinforced what I know to be true: the best opportunities happen when smart, grounded leaders build teams that challenge each other, trust each other, and care about doing exceptional work together.

As for what I do: I tend to operate at the intersection of technology and business impact at scale. I love looking at a new technology, solution, or service and thinking through how it gets taken to market, how it reaches companies and end users, how use cases connect to larger narratives, and how the way we work can become more customized, more productive, and more helpful to users.

AI continues to reshape both employee experience (EX) and customer experience (CX), and this work feels quite critical to get right, and more exciting than ever. Rolling up the sleeves, building, creating, leading & invigorating teams that turn big ideas into enterprise products is work I’ve been doing since the beginning of my career, and I’ve been fortunate to do it alongside some exceptional humans at Oracle, Cisco, Microsoft, IBM, and more.

That time away also gave me space to really parse my career: what I love, what I’m great at, what I no longer want to optimize for, and what makes me more effective over the long term. Sabbaticals create room for perspective. They restore curiosity, sharpen judgment, and remind you that success isn’t just about stamina, it’s about sustainability and a willingness to learn, have fun, take risks… and to be curious.

Curiosity is the engine. It’s what allows leaders to absorb new ideas, rethink old operating models, and turn change into real opportunity.

I’m coming back from this break rejuvenated and even more convinced that tech is, by far, the most fun industry to work in. When big waves of ground-breaking technology enter the market and becomes available to the masses, it’s a force multiplier for meaningful and required corporate transformations.

Yes, that kind of change is messy in the short term, and we are in the challenging part of that now, with shifting investments and layoffs, but persevere we will. It tends to get more difficult (and fearsome) if we as leaders resist changes ourselves; fear is unfortunately contagious; it kills productivity and hampers culture. I think we’ve had enough of that.

I try to liken change to surfing (which I do enjoy, though in warmer water with fewer sharks than NorCal). Think about it as a series of repeatable actions: paddle, position, commit, balance, adjust, fall, get back up, apply new lessons learned.

When you’re learning or re-learning, the most important part is getting back on the board, because the magic will only happen there, if you’re open to it and willing to put in the effort.

So that’s where I am: back in California, open to what’s next, and eager to connect.

I’m starting to explore what’s next and would love to have some conversations. If you’re building thoughtful teams, tackling hard problems, shaping strategy, or just enjoy talking about where technology is headed and how leadership needs to evolve alongside it, I’d love to chat. I’m also always happy to connect with people in tech more broadly, especially around local meetups, gatherings, and conversations that bring smart people together.

/LC