Learn it, Live it, Love it: The Holiday Edition

Learn it:

Tavi Gevenson’s final letter to the editor on her online sensation, Rookie Mag, offers valuable insights into the nature of business, growing up, learning to be a professional, and the media world. As I dream about the potential for AF in the digital space, this letter provided some very useful, hard-won lessons.

AFF’s chairman, Richard Lorenc, recently shared this fantastic Harvard Business Review piece on Facebook, How to Talk to Your Boss When You’re Underperforming. It offers some great lessons and a useful reminder: your boss is usually on your side, and they want to help you succeed and get the job done–they also really like solutions!

Live it:

Shame Storm, by Helen Andrews, covers a topic that’s a bit heavy for holiday family conversation, but I think it is important food for thought nonetheless. In a time when a simple accusation can mean personal and professional ruin, how do we seek the truth, and how should guilty parties be treated? I’m still grappling with this issue, as I imagine many of you are too.

My hope is that AF provides a joyful, welcoming, and inspiring space for young professionals around the country. With loneliness continually on the rise, building communities like ours is more important than ever.

Love it:

This week, the Senate and Senate passed a landmark criminal justice reform bill, The First Step Act that will help lower instances of recidivism, scale back minimum sentencing requirements, and overall clean up a system that currently keeps 2.1 million of our fellow citizens behind bars. While it’s certainly not a massive overhaul, and a great deal still needs to be done on the state level, this is still an exciting “first step.” I’m so grateful to organizations like Right on Crime, The Georgia Center for Opportunity, the Buckeye Institute, and so many others across the country who have made this cause a central focus of their work. Here’s to hoping the President signs the bill, and some of these lower-level offenders will get to go home for the holidays. Check out this helpful outline to learn more.

One of my favorite events in DC every year is the Kingman Island Bluegrass Festival. Great music, s’mores, so much mud, and a beautiful setting surrounded by the Anacostia, what’s not to love? The 2019 date was just announced, and tickets go on sale tomorrow. I’ll see you there May 4!