Early in my career, I found myself venting to a coworker after pouring everything into a campaign that had been met with skepticism from the very beginning. Behind the scenes, nearly every detail was questioned, and I was repeatedly told it wouldn't be successful. Yet when the campaign launched, and the team's response, sales performance, and results exceeded expectations, the conversation quickly shifted from whether it would work to that person taking credit.

After listening to me spiral for a bit, she offered a perspective that has stayed with me for more than a decade.

"Amanda, the best people in the business don't get recognition. You're not Anna Wintour, you're Grace Coddington. Look to the people who give the public figure recognition through their work. The real ones know they want to be Grace, not Anna."

For those who aren't fashion people, Anna Wintour is arguably one of the most recognizable names in publishing and fashion. As Editor-in-Chief of Vogue, she became the public face of an entire era of fashion media. Grace Coddington, Vogue's longtime Creative Director, was responsible for many of the iconic editorial stories and visual moments that helped define that era. Anna became the symbol. Grace helped create the substance behind it.

And to be clear, I took this comparison as an enormous compliment.

Grace is widely regarded as one of the most brilliant creative minds in fashion. Her influence shaped generations of photographers, stylists, editors, and creatives. Within the industry, her contributions weren't hidden at all. In many ways, they were legendary. What made the comparison interesting wasn't the implication that Grace mattered less. It was the opposite. My coworker was pointing out that some of the most influential people in any field aren't necessarily the most visible.

At the time, however, I don't think I fully understood what she meant.

Like many people early in their careers, I was still operating under the assumption that visibility and success were closely connected. If your work was valuable, people would know about it. If your contributions mattered, they would be acknowledged. If you did enough good work, recognition would naturally follow. The older I get, the more I've realized how incomplete that equation is.

Visibility and value are often related, but they are not the same thing.

In almost every industry, there are people whose names carry significant public recognition and people whose expertise quietly shapes the outcome. Sometimes they're the same person. Often they're not. The further I've progressed in my career, the more I've realized that the people closest to the work almost always know the difference.

They know who developed the strategy. They know who solved the problem. They know who stayed late, navigated the obstacles, managed the relationships, and carried the project across the finish line. While recognition may not always land where it should publicly, credibility has a way of finding the right audience. That's because credibility can't be manufactured the way visibility can.

Visibility can come from a title, a platform, proximity, timing, or simply being the person standing at the front of the room. Credibility is different. Credibility is earned through consistency. It accumulates over the years. It grows every time you deliver, every time you solve a problem, every time you become the person others trust when the stakes are high.

In hindsight, I think that's what my coworker was really trying to teach me. Not that recognition doesn't matter, but that there are different kinds of recognition, and some are far more valuable than others.

As I moved into leadership positions, I've found myself thinking about this lesson from the opposite perspective as well. The best leaders I've worked with never seemed particularly concerned about collecting credit. What distinguished them wasn't humility for humility's sake. It was that they understood the work deeply enough to know exactly where the credit belonged.

There's a difference between acknowledging a team and understanding a team.

Some leaders operate at such a distance from execution that every outcome becomes a summary. They know whether something worked, but not necessarily how it worked. Others remain curious. They ask questions. They learn the details. They understand both the strategy and the execution because they genuinely respect the expertise required to produce great work.

As a result, they're able to recognize contributions with specificity. They know whose idea shifted the direction of a project. They know who solved the problem no one else could solve. They know who quietly held everything together behind the scenes. Those leaders become trusted because people feel seen.

I've also noticed that the most respected leaders rarely seem threatened by someone else's contribution or success. In fact, they actively create opportunities for it to be visible. They mention names in meetings. They advocate for people when they aren't in the room. They share ownership. They create opportunities. They understand that leadership is not about being the smartest person in the room but about building a room full of smart people and ensuring they have the opportunity to succeed.

Ironically, those are often the leaders who earn the deepest respect themselves. Not because they demanded it, but because they created an environment where great work could thrive.

Looking back, I don't think my coworker was telling me to become comfortable with being overlooked. I think she was encouraging me to pay attention to a different scoreboard altogether.

The goal isn't invisibility. The goal isn't martyrdom. The goal isn't convincing yourself that recognition doesn't matter. The goal is to build a reputation so strong that the people who understand the work understand your contribution. And if you're fortunate enough to lead others, to create the kind of environment where that recognition extends beyond you.

The public knew Anna. The fashion industry knew Grace.

And the older I get, the more I understand why that distinction matters.

2025 didn’t ease in or let go softly. It was sharp in places. It shifted the ground under my feet in ways I didn’t ask for and couldn’t fully prepare for. It was a year that demanded growth before I felt ready, growth that wasn’t always graceful, but real.

There were days that felt heavy before they even began. Days where showing up looked less like ambition and more like endurance. But there were also moments of real momentum. Milestones reached. Work I’m proud of. Wins that, on paper and to those looking in were the highest achievements, and yet even in those high points, I found myself quietly wondering what more I could do. If I could sustain what I had built. If strength was supposed to feel like more of an arrival than this.

Somewhere in between achievement and uncertainty were the small moments that kept me human. A little too much champagne. A girls weekend screaming Jonas Brothers lyrics at the top of my lungs with best friends. Laughing at myself for thinking I could white knuckle my way through everything without ever needing a pause. Growth, it turns out, is rarely linear and often requires questioning everything, filtering the noise, and bringing yourself back to the people who remind you who you are.

Not every year gets to be labeled great. Some years are simply formative. Some years don’t sparkle in hindsight, they teach through friction. 2025 was that kind of year, one that held accomplishment and self doubt at the same time. One that has glittery chapters, and one that had me questioning what the next page was going to start with.

It asked me to let go of versions of myself that no longer fit, even when I wasn’t done loving them. It fractured assumptions and routines, forcing me to look at what was real versus what was familiar. But it also clarified what matters. It showed me that I can’t carry it all and setting some things down or that needing support doesn’t make strength any less valid. You can be capable and still need help. You can lead and still lean.

And still, there was laughter. There was love that stayed and grew. There were people who showed up in quiet, necessary ways. There was strength I didn’t know I had until I felt myself reaching for it, and allowing others to meet me there. There were moments where the most productive thing I did was laugh, reset, and try again the next day.

I found pieces of myself in the hard parts. The grounded ones. The scary and honest ones. The ones that don’t perform well on social media, or let alone even get posted. Pain has a way of refining you if you let it, of stripping things down to what’s essential. 2025 did that. It reminded me that resilience doesn’t mean facing it alone, and that sometimes survival looks suspiciously like joy in disguise.

As 2025 closed, there’s a temptation to wrap it up neatly. To declare a reset. To brand a new beginning. But the truth is, a new year is a manufactured milestone. A calendar flip doesn’t absolve the past or guarantee the future. Every day, ordinary and unnamed, is the real gift.

So instead of resolutions or declarations, I’m carrying forward what this year taught me. I’m going to find my creativity again and to write even when it’s imperfect. I’m choosing to sit comfortably in silence instead of chasing noise. I’m prioritizing friendships and time outdoors and travel that inspires me rather than exhausts. I’m going to continue to give as much as I can to others but know that doesn’t mean I’m losing myself to do so. I’m reading more books, drinking more champagne because, obviously, and keeping authenticity close, even when it’s inconvenient. Not because a new year demands it, but because the learning did.

Hope doesn’t come from a date. It comes from staying. From choosing to keep going with a little more softness, a little more humor, and a deeper trust in myself than I had before.

And that feels like enough. Happy New Year, y’all xx

Hey y’all, Happy New Year! I was looking back at the blog and realized I haven’t posted since July. That month was pretty crazy for us - we sold our house unexpectedly, moved downtown, and started an entirely new path than what we had planned for ourselves earlier that year. Since July, I’ve been thinking a lot about what the decision to sell our house has led us to, along with the decisions that followed. Almost 6 months later, I can look back and know it was absolutely the right call, but having the faith in the moment of making it was the challenge. We were going against what we knew, carving a different path than what the world around us was promoting, and jumping into a big unknown.

When we took the above pictures, we had just moved and I was questioning a lot. What had we done? Did we overreact in selling? How does this fit into the “plan” we had when buying our house and thinking life would go a certain way? How is this going to change the future and our timeline? If only I could tell my previous self what she’s up to now.

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Growing up I was always led to believe that you went to school, met a boy, graduated, got a job, got engaged, bought a house, got married, started having kids, and maybe a dog or two in between. A lot of people around me started living that life and there is nothing wrong with it. Some people did the order a bit differently or started earlier than others, but that was the way things went.

In middle school, I read the book To Kill a Mockingbird, and to this day it is one of my favorite books. The sequel Go Set a Watchman explores the versions of people we see when we grow up and aren’t viewing them through the lens we have as children where we idolize our parents or think every adult has life figured out. After reading Go Set a Watchman, I realized that every kid probably goes through something similar and that the same can be said for the life we build ourselves.

The picturesque, “American Dream” lifestyle of a house, kids, a good job and a dog in the backyard is a beautiful sentiment and something that a lot of people want out of life, myself included. But life isn’t that simple for a lot of us. Even those who appear to have the life we’ve all been told to chase have setbacks, challenges, and hardships. We all struggle with comparison and jealousy at some level. But what many fail to remember is that we aren’t all meant to have the same life and furthermore, we shouldn’t be ashamed for living a life that doesn’t fit the mold of what others are doing.

This year, Kollin and I got some news about the first home we built together and we decided to sell. After years of living in apartments, moving several times, and finally getting the dream of owning a home, we realized something. We weren’t sad about it… everyone in our life felt so bad for us and wondered how devastated we were. Sure, we didn’t want to move or have to sell the house, but we felt a little strange about being so okay with it. But then we realized something. Owning a home is hard. It’s expensive and time-consuming. Growing up, that was the goal. Own something, make it yours, and build your family and wealth. When we got into the house we were really happy there and loved owning something, but as the months went on we realized we weren’t spending a ton of time there, the responsibility of everything was a lot and it wasn’t as amazing as everyone made it seem. The world around us romanticizes all of these life steps and doesn’t talk about how difficult things can be or the not-so-pretty side of things.

Yes, I’m proud of us and grateful for being able to buy a home and go through that process, but I’m more proud of us for making a change and living the life we want rather than the life that is expected of us.

What if the version of your story is that you go to school and end up not loving the career you picked for yourself or maybe “met a boy” turned into “met a girl"? What if you got married and had a great few years, but then things changed and you’re back to dating? What if you’re struggling with infertility or have decided kids aren’t the right choice for your family? What if you prefer renting over owning or you’d rather live in a van and travel the world than have roots in one place?

We all experience things differently and we’re all dealt a different hand in life, but without those unique and personal experiences, we aren’t who we are. So think about where you are in life right now and know that is where you’re supposed to be. Choose the life you want instead of building a life off of others’ expectations of you. Normalize living outside society’s path of what is next and figure out what makes you happy.

I wish I could tell the girl back in April who got the news about the new home she just built that everything would work out and this is actually meant to be. That one decision to sell completely changed the trajectory of what our life would look like. We’d move downtown, save money, end up living .5 miles from a new job that is everything I was looking for in my career. We’d create more opportunities for travel, spend more quality time with friends and family, and learn the importance of want vs. need again. We learned to prioritize certain desires and really focus inward on goals we set for ourselves rather than the goals the outside world is creating for us.

So, the girl in the above photos was scared. Scared of the decisions she’d just made, scared to make the leap in looking for a new job, scared that she was now behind in the timeline she planned for herself, and scared that everything would be different. The best part is that everything is different. It was still scary at times, there were still questions, but I challenged myself in ways I hadn’t before and made it through what was a huge setback to the world around us. That fear can and does still set in sometimes, but now I know I always have a choice in front of me and that it will work out how it is intended to. I suppose if we’re not leading a life that scares us a little, we may not be living at all.