One thing I’ve been truly lucky to experience is having bosses, mentors and colleagues, who are not only excellent at what they do but also inspiring. They might not realize or remember it, but they taught me a lot. I’ll be sharing some of them over the next few days (weeks?) but lemme start with this.

This happened almost 5 years ago. For one important project, Maxine and I had been trying to get Issa’s approval for some aspects of an event, but she wouldn’t give us the go signal.

For many days, we tried and tried but she just won’t. The night before the event, she finally gave us the green light. She still could not understand why we were adamant about it, but she trusted that “there must be something there” that we just WOULD NOT give up.

Long story short, it worked. After the event, on the way to the elevator, she told us how happy she was about it. Max and I apologized for bugging her all week about it. The elevator had opened but she held the door to say this.

We’d always admired her but this made us *love* her.