By Amy Bailey
The last few weeks have been the most trying of my professional career. As a marketing person who runs a team that plans over 150 events a year, we had to fly into action to reschedule events and draft emails to explain what I still find baffling. I often ask myself how we didn’t see this coming or how it could have gotten so bad so fast.
What has impressed me is this — people around me have risen to the occasion. I have newer members on my team who have jumped in with both feet and done the research to come up with creative ideas. We have an executive team that has worked on scenarios and thought through ways things can change and how we will respond.
That’s really what this all comes down to, right? Leadership. How we react in times of crisis.
Like you, I’ve been digesting an unfathomable amount of information in the past two weeks, but this has to be my favorite read. The author, Gretchen Schmelzer, compares this trying time to another in our history when the Apollo 13 oxygen tank failed, putting lives in danger. At that moment, Gene Kranz, the lead flight director overheard people saying that this could be the worst disaster NASA had ever experienced—to which he is rumored to have responded, “With all due respect, I believe this is going to be our finest hour.”
She writes: “Imagine if we could make our response to this crisis our finest hour. Imagine if a year or two from now, we looked back on this and told the stories of how we came together as a team in our community, in our state, in our nation, and across the world.”
She’s not only talking about the leadership of our elected officials, she’s talking about the leadership in each of us.
Take care and be well,
Amy Bailey
President
Alliance of Channel Women
About the Author
As vice president of marketing at Telarus Inc., Amy Bailey leads communications strategy and manages events, creative and recruiting. Having worked in many aspects of the business, she is able to bring a comprehensive knowledge of the industry landscape to communications outreach in order to provide targeted and effective results. Bailey earned a bachelor’s degree in speech communication and liberal arts from San Diego State University. Passionate about empowering women in business, she participates in the SDSU Aztec Mentor Program and serves on the board of Alliance of Channel Women and is the organization’s current president.