I Believe

Creating an Elite Athlete.   For most of its history, the British cycling team wasn’t only non-competitive it was just plain bad.   Between 1924 and 1988, British cyclists won exactly zero gold medals.   The sport was dominated by countries like France and Germany.   Yet, by 2012, British cycling had become the most successful cycling nation on earth, with a riders winning back to back Tour de France competitions and the team winning twelve medals in the 2012 Olympics, twice as many as any other nation.   What changed?   How did the former laughing stock become seemingly unstoppable?   In his book Heros, Villians & Velodromes , Dave Brailsford, the director of British cycling reported that the phenomenal change can be boiled down to a single philosophy:   “performance by the aggregation of marginal gains.”      What does this mean?   Instead of looking for one earth shattering solution (probably because there...

     I don’t think it would surprise anyone for me to acknowledge that I consider myself a strong and capable woman.   I am sure it initially stemmed from my background and my upbringing.   As a child, it never occurred to me that there was anything in this world that I was not capable of doing.   My parents never discouraged any of my dreams (well, except for the time that my father convinced me that becoming a gymnast was not likely my most promising athletic pursuit).   As a child, I assumed that I would be a gold medalist in the Olympics and world record holder in swimming.   I never questioned whether I possessed the ability to go to law school or to get both academic and athletic scholarships to college.   I never saw the fact that I am female as a setback.   Such a thought never even occurred to me. And my parents certainly never created such a thought. Even in professional setting as an adult, I do find the dialogue o...

That many of the problems in our modern world stem from the disintegration of the traditional family and the absence of strong fathers in the home appears to be beyond debate.   Being a strong father, like being a strong mother, is an exhausting responsibility.   Not characterized by a string of glamour and fame, but more appropriately by consistent, loyal service (frequently unrecognized and unappreciated). It was not until I was an adult living on my own that I realized I lived in a magic house as a child.   The garbage was always taken out; the furnace filter always changed; the bills always paid; the cars always registered; the mortgage always paid (the light were not always turned out but that is a different issue J ); the doors always locked at night; the temperature appropriately regulated; the dead light bulbs always replaced; the yard always maintained; and not a weed in sight. While I have always appreciated my father, it is only now that I try to m...

      I had a disturbing experience with a long-time colleague that has caused me to spend some serious time reflecting on the roles of both tolerance and religious truth in our society.   After working together and being friends for nearly five years, I was surprised one day with a very hostile encounter.   My colleague confronted me with the assertion that he was no longer interested in being friends with me because he had discovered I was a practicing Mormon (not sure why it took five years for him to learn this).        He explained that because the Mormon Church did not support homosexual relationships that he was no longer willing to tolerate and respect me as a friend.   In response, I reminded him that I had always known of his sexuality and had always treated him with respect.   I was confused:   I had always tolerated and respected him and his beliefs, why was he no longer willing to return to me th...

LDS Women Don’t Hold the Priesthood:   A Professional LDS Woman’s Perspective on Equality, Gender Roles and the Family Over the course of my professional career, my colleagues have inquired, with respect and concern, how I could be a member of the LDS church.   They wonder how a women who is intelligent, educated and successful embraces concepts of gender roles that they view old fashion or demeaning to women.   These questions allow me to correct fundamental mis-understandings regarding LDS doctrine and LDS families. Not only do I live and work in a man’s world, I work with some very rough men in a tough industry.   The experiences solving business problems with them, knee to knee, have caused me to embrace rather than reject my femininity.   As I sit around the table, a decade younger than anyone else in the room and in a brightly colored dress and heels, nobody is going to mistake me for one of the guys.   Nobody is going to seek me to be t...