Jean Root

I am absolutely ravenously, rabidly, driven. If I think that I need to find out about something, I'm going to find out about it. If I think something's missing, I'm going to keep working incrementally towards it, even if it takes years and years to get there, and it will happen. I just keep pushing just a little bit, just a little bit, just a little bit, until the pieces all line up. I also am always checking myself. I don't have all the answers, I just know that there's a problem that needs to be thought out, defined, and then Answers often are evolving. But it you can't just ignore a problem. You have to be good. You have to work towards something. That's my and that's where I just I don't I refuse to just step back and say it's not my problem. Especially if it's a community scale issue.

The best career advice I ever received was in one of the many annual performance reviews. This idea of being a changemaker. And recognizing that being a changemaker, the success indicators are actually the negative reviews. But lead to very positive outcomes long-term. Being focused on that long-term, as opposed to just satisfying and making someone who's your obvious senior happy and comfortable. If you do that you will be able to keep your job. If you keep pushing you get to keep your job, because that's what people actually remember. If you are complacent, you are easily discarded.

The advice I would give is to keep looking at your career and your daily work at multiple scales. To not worry so much about what other people think, because you have to live with yourself at the end of the day. They don't have to. And if you do work that you are satisfied with, and that you are proud of, and that you are happy to put forth, and you have made the world a little bit better, you've done good. And you should be okay with that. And it shouldn't matter that someone else says it didn't fit their expectations. It should matter whether you can live with yourself, because that's who we have to live with each day, and just ourselves. Love yourself. Be kind to yourself.

The opportunities that we are seeing actually by flipping the equation upside down. I'm in Oregon, and Oregon is not a favored state by the federal government at this time. We go to Texas. We go where we have to go where we can continue to serve the mission. We dive deeper into smaller communities that are often on the edge of economic failure. Opportunity also is in the private sector, because the private sector has not isn't as subject to this, they are subject to this, but they aren't as subject to an age shift in values. The private industries we're finding like actually leaning into potential partners around affordable housing. The challenges are the same opportunities for discussion dictated by the challenges.

It's really just one, integrity. Because of energy. Integrities. There is there is so much that that falls into integrity, correct? Like Honesty, showing up. And Being able to give hard news to someone in a kind and loving way is integrity. Holding your own emotions for yourself, and not putting those off on somebody else when you're trying to do a hard thing is integrity. It's not easy.