“Her story attracts scrutiny.”
That’s what a journalist once wrote about me — and he was right, though his reason couldn’t have been more wrong.
But I had been here before.
As a teenager, I told the truth about what happened to me. In that case, the police didn’t believe me. My own family didn’t believe me. For 19 years, my story was treated like a question mark.
One day, I decided to take the same resourcefulness I’d learned in business and apply it to something much more personal. I called the Baltimore City Police Department every day until I found the right person, and he called me back.
Once my case was investigated, after 19 years, it was solved in three days.
Years later, when that journalist cast doubt on my integrity in two prominent newspapers, I knew I had to once again leverage my resourcefulness to prove I was telling the truth.
I dug through public records, scanned old articles, uncovered documents and long-buried secrets — until I could fully document my own story. Not because I needed to convince the world, but because I needed clarity for myself.
What I found was so much worse than I remembered…FBI knocking on our front door, ties to the mafia, corruption. And it laid the groundwork for a book.
This process of uncovering the secrets of the past led me to the first and most important principle of my life and leadership: get absolute clarity about who you are.
If you do not define yourself, someone else will.
It’s not just knowing your strengths or “personal brand.” It’s being willing to face the hardest truths, sift through the noise, and declare: This is my story. This is who I am. And no one else gets to decide it or define it.
That’s what clarity does — it gives you the power to decide your boundaries, your actions, and your leadership.
This is me with the binders of research I uncovered.
Have you ever had to claim your own story?
