A Moment of Truth
This article is part of Finding the Words, a newsletter that delivers practical insights on the day’s issues.
The novelist Chimamanda Adichie was the first to warn me about the danger of a single story. In her 2009 TED talk she said, "We are more than a single story…if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding of the whole."
I do my best to live by her mantra: We are more than a single story—more than our worst and more than our best. Our lives are composed of so many overlapping stories.
Yes, and I can't help but think back to one story—one transformative experience that changed everything about how I think, feel, and show up as a person, a business owner, a CEO, and a parent.
Some might call it a Damascus moment—a biblical reference to Paul the Apostle, who had an experience that dramatically altered his life and beliefs—but I call it my awakening.
It was October 20, 2016, the night of the third presidential debate between candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. I had just put my six- and three-year-old girls to bed and sat down to watch this final debate before the November election. Chris Wallace moderated the debate, which focused on the American economy.
They were meant to be talking about the American people. They were meant to discuss how they would support and center the American people through economic policies. Instead, they repeatedly focused on attacking each other and leaving the American people to fend for themselves.
This was more than egos at play. It was deeper, revealing a darker truth about the growing disconnect between our national leaders and the American people.
Watching two of the most powerful people in the world attack each other on stage instead of addressing the audience's questions left me with a sensation I had never before experienced. I felt the future was about to get very, very bad.
In this single story, I worried I had become part of the problem.
At the time, I was the founder and CEO of a PR firm specializing in nonprofit communications. I had been running the agency successfully for more than a decade, guiding nonprofit leaders to tell their best stories in ways that could influence philanthropy, legislation, and communities to improve the human experience. I was doing my best to use communications as a force for good. And in many ways, I was.
But that night sparked something deeper in me.
Had I been complicit in letting some of the storylines I heard that night take hold? Had I ignored the root causes of the stories we were telling?
I had dedicated years of my life to supporting nonprofits whose mission was to break the cycle of poverty in America, but that cycle wasn't breaking. Actually, poverty rates had barely budged. In 2004—the year I founded my company—12.6% of the nation's population lived below the poverty level. By that night in 2016, the percentage was 12.7%.
Over that 13-year period, I had helped direct millions of dollars to fighting poverty, but as I saw with fresh eyes that night, nothing was changing.
It was time to stop lifting those in positions of power as heroes and stop centering nonprofits as the single greatest solution makers.
If we were to move the needle on issues that affected Americans, we needed more people willing to speak the truth to power and more businesses to acknowledge their harm to society.
That included me.
The following week, I did something many thought was ridiculous and short-sighted. I announced to my team that we were shutting down the firm—a financially successful business that was thriving. We would take two months to wind down operations and start again. Navigating that decision with colleagues I loved and respected was heavy and heartbreaking, as I held both what we had built and what I had to let go.
And yet I knew that if I were to come to this work from a place of truth, willing to uncover root causes and work to address those, I would start from a different place, as a partner in the process.
On January 1, 2017, Mission Partners opened its doors, committed to speaking truth to power with love and pushing the limits of a business as a force for good.
We were certified as a B Corp in 2018, and in keeping with that commitment, we choose intentionally and every day to challenge the standard norms of business.
We distribute most of our profits back into the communities we serve.
We challenge false urgency in our workplace and with our clients.
We call out misinformation when we see it.
We check toxic power dynamics in our own company and in those we counsel.
We keep communities and people at the center of the stories we tell and contribute to the type of society we believe America can be.
The road to getting here wasn't clear, and the road ahead may require change, too. But in these times, our mission has never mattered more.
Bottom Line. We all have moments that shape us, and what we do in those moments ultimately defines us. We're once again living in a time when truth is muddied, and our role in it is often less clear. So here's an invitation: What incomplete truth are you living? And what might change if you told the whole truth?
This post is part of the Finding The Words column, a series published every Wednesday that delivers a dose of communication insights direct to your inbox. If you like what you read, we hope you’ll subscribe to ensure you receive this each week.
