Spirituality, Happiness & Poetry

In this live virtual conversation, Kristine and J.D. will explore how play and storytelling can become practical tools when you’re in the middle of big questions about what’s next.

You’ll hear Kristine’s memorable tale of a husky and a polar bear – and what that unlikely playdate reveals about defusing tension and opening connection. You’ll learn from J.D. how to talk about a pivot in your life in ways that feel real, whether you’re speaking to a close friend or a room full of stakeholders.

Together, they’ll share simple, usable practices for bringing play into serious conversations, loosening old stories that no longer fit, and crafting a narrative that can carry you through your next transition with more ease and clarity

We’ll also offer a glimpse into their upcoming MEA workshop, The Power of Play: Unlock Your Story & Purpose for What’s Next, three days in Santa Fe designed for anyone who wants to explore their next season of life with more imagination and less fear.

If there’s a book in you – even just a messy draft or an idea you keep coming back to – this one’s worth showing up for.

Derek’s sitting down for a virtual chat with Kelly Notaras, who’s edited more than 200 books over 25 years, a few of them New York Times bestsellers. She wrote The Book You Were Born to Write and founded KN Literary Arts. And she’s unusually good at seeing what a book wants to be before its writer does.

They’ll get into why writers stall out even when they know what they want to say – and how you keep moving without waiting for some mythical free time to open up. Plus the honest version of how a pile of scattered pages becomes a finished manuscript.

Most of us treat time away from work as a reward for pushing through. DJ DiDonna sees it differently: as protected time to ask what your work, energy, and ambition are asking of you now.

Join us for a live virtual conversation with DJ DiDonna, Harvard Business School Senior Lecturer, founder of The Sabbatical Project, and author of Big Time Off: The Transformative Power of Sabbaticals and How to Take One.

Drawing on a decade of research, interviews, and his own sabbatical after years of startup burnout, DJ will reframe sabbaticals from a rare perk into a serious tool for clarity, identity change, and regret prevention.