An Insider’s View

I am an ordinary citizen, just like you, who answered a “call to action.” My parents were poor and they struggled to make life better for their children. Growing up in Birmingham, Alabama during the tumultuous Civil Rights Movement, I was just slightly younger than the little girls who died in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church on that Sunday morning.   But for the color of my skin, it could have been me in those church rubbles.  I learned about social justice at a very young age.

Growing up inside a racially torn city like Birmingham taught me that the images portrayed in the media do not always tell the whole story. 

Testifying as an expert witness inside courtrooms over the last twenty years taught me that some corporations have a dark, shadow side, which is carefully hidden from their customers.

Living inside the Deep South as a professional business woman and biomedical engineer taught me how to manage the creative tension between cherished cultural traditions and leading change into the 21st century and world economy.

Volunteering inside a homeless shelter for women and children over the last twenty-five years taught me about human dignity and our society’s structural impediments, which keep women and children in poverty.

Working inside a high technology start-up company as its founding CEO taught me about leading through bone- and soul-crushing challenges, including the pressure to compromise core values for the sake of profits.

Teaching and conducting research inside a world-class university as a tenured engineering professor taught me the power of science and young minds to make the world a safer, more sustainable place.

An insider’s view leads to greater insights. Greater insights lead to greater good.

May the words and actions that create greater good for humankind echo relentlessly for generations to come, just like the “repeated refrains of nature”— BioEchoes.    

“There is something healing in the repeated refrains of nature –
the assurance the dawn comes after night,
and spring after the winter.”
- Rachel Carson in The Sense of Wonder