Gratitude Conversations #6

[The Stage is on Fire] is a page-turner in which, much like life, there are no easy answers and yet each step of the journey yields insight and hope. This work of heart must not be missed!

Melanie Faith

Creative Writing Teacher, Essayist & Poet.

Katie Steedly’s first-person piece [The Unspeakable Gift] is a riveting retelling of her participation in a National Institutes of Health study that aided her quest to come to grips with her life of living with a rare genetic disorder. Her writing is superb.

The Society of Professional Journalists

In recognition of receiving the Dateline Award for the Washingtonian Magazine essay, The Unspeakable Gift.

I thank you … It is the authenticity of your “class notes”; and it is the delicacy and skill with which you present the nuances of classroom life and the actuality of your students’ and fellow teachers’ lives.

Maxine Greene

Philosopher and Education Scholar

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Gratitude Conversations #6

Aimee Imundo. Robin Kropf. Moira Sullivan.

Why Gratitude?

In 2017, heartbroken and eyeballs deep in despair, I started searching for things for which to be grateful. I asked myself the question asked by poet Katie Farris

“Why write love poetry in a burning world? To train myself, in the midst of a burning world, to offer poems of love to a burning world.”

I reached out to people who — in the way in which they live — write love poems to our burning world. I cast my net far and wide amongst my heroes — those I knew personally and those who teach us all by their example. I invited artists, philosophers, psychologists, politicians, professors, yogis, writers, clergy, and others into a dialogue about gratitude. I am deeply grateful to those who said yes. Read more about my gratitude project methodology here.

Aimee Imundo

Aimee Imundo is an expert in international competition law and policy. She has more than 25 years of experience as a competition lawyer at a top Washington, DC, law firm, as a senior executive with a large multinational company, and as an international competition policy advisor to the U.S. Government. Aimee has also been recognized as one of the top “100 Women in Antitrust” by the leading global publication in the field. She has served on the leadership of the ABA Antitrust Section in a variety of roles, and is an experienced speaker at antitrust law conferences on international, transactional, and compliance-related topics. She has contributed chapters to the ABA’s major publications on antitrust compliance.

Robin Kropf

Robin Kropf has indeed had a “checkered career” and a topsy-turvy life ranging from her birth in Honolulu only months before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, through 3 years early schooling in a dusty small country town now submerged under Six Flags Over Texas. “If you did anything remotely naughty on the way back from school, your mom and the entire telephone party line knew about it before you got home.” Contrast that with junior high years uniformed into a French girls’ school outside of Paris and a Swiss girls’ school above Lake Geneva, only to return to Washington, DC, and a public American high school of 3000 — the proverbial Blackboard Jungle. Nevertheless happily befriended there by other Army and Navy brats some fine teachers and an astute guidance counselor she managed to access her dream college. In addition to a great time, a great education, and great friends she appropriately fell in love senior year with a Duke med-school intern.

Moira Sullivan

Moira makes her living as a lawyer, and says she is writing the definitive law review article on animal cruelty laws. She is the eccentric aunt of 9 nieces and nephews, and laughs daily at the antics of her dogs and cats.

Read my gratitude conversation with Moira here.