LESSONS FROM THIRTY YEARS OF GOING FIRST
The Real Work of Going First
Moving before confidence arrives.
For more than thirty years, I’ve learned leadership from being in the room, being the only woman in the room, getting things wrong, finding my voice, and making room for others. I’m still learning. This is where I share those lessons, the wins, the mistakes, and what I wish someone had told me along the way.
Jen Brooks, CMAA
Athletic Administrator • Founder, Global Community of Women in High School Sports
I learned about being outside the room long before I had words for it.
Some of my earliest memories of sports are sitting outside a locker room with a book while my father coached on the other side of the door.
I couldn’t go in.
Years later, I would spend much of my career walking into rooms where I was one of the few women. Sometimes the only one.
Funny how some lessons begin long before you know you’re learning them.
Confidence didn’t come first. Courage did.
LEADERSHIP REFLECTIONS
Leadership is rarely learned in the big moments.
Most of what I know came from ordinary days. Difficult conversations. Mistakes. People who trusted me. People who disappointed me. Moments when I spoke up, and moments when I learned to stay quiet.
These are the lessons I am still learning.
WHY I SHARE WHAT I’VE LEARNED
I write for every woman who has walked into a room and wondered whether she belonged.
For every woman who realized she was one of the few, or the only one.
I know that feeling.
These lessons came from thirty years of doing the work — meetings where I stayed quiet too long, decisions I got wrong before I got them right, and people who saw something in me before I could see it myself.
Those lessons were never meant to stay with me.