Good evening, so wonderful to see you all tonight.  Thank you, Dr. Hartnett for asking us to speak and 
spend a few minutes talking about our mentorship partnership.  I will tell you, 6 years ago when Sherry 
asked me to be a mentor, I was like well, I donÕt know, do I have the time, could I do a good job?  And 
now, looking back, itÕs one of my favorite things that I do every month.  I learn as much from the 
students as, hopefully, they learn from me.  Let me tell you just briefly about how my mentorship 
experience and then I will tell you about my unique partnership with BreAnna who I have come to know 
this year.   One of the things I love about leading people at Cox or any organization that you serve is that 
you really have a chance to shape and influence their leadership walk and hopefully lead them to 
wherever they want to be in their career.  I think thatÕs what we are all striving to be.  I think about a 
book called ŌShe Taught Me To Eat ArtichokesĶ.  It was a book that was written after my momÕs passing 
but it really was her legacy.  She taught people and her children to eat artichokes.  You peel away the 
layers and you get to know people better.  Hopefully that is the relationship you have with your mentor.  
You get to the heart of the artichoke and really thatÕs the heart of the leader to be.  Hopefully, as a 
mentor, I always hope that I can help them find their garlic butter, or whatever it is they want to put 
with their artichoke hearts.  And for those of you who havenÕt had artichoke hearts, I give you that task 
to go out and try because you just might like them.  But I will tell you, over the years IÕve had a number 
of different mentees, 2 of which were swimmers, which was great because I am a swim mom.  I was very 
familiar with the 4 am alarm clock calls and things like that.  One of them was from Australia, which was 
super neat to get to know more about her culture and to take her to different community events. That 
was a lot of fun.  But just like anything in the world, sometimes you have bumps in the road.  I share this 
because I know that Dr. Hartnett wants us all to be lifelong mentors and I know you want to share 
details about your book where you share the importance of that.  But, just like artichokes have thorns at 
the end, sometimes those partnerships can have bumps too.  I think back to 2020 when we were all sort 
of figuring out what our new normal is.  And I got my new mentee.  And it was over Zoom and it was a 
challenge.  A couple of months went by.  And I was like, you know what, IÕm falling off my game here, I 
am not making a difference.  And this student was struggling, I think like all of us were with what was 
going on in the world.  With virtual classes, virtual learning environment, not connecting with business 
calculus.  Which, who can blame her?  But some of the things I was suggesting, like Ōhey, how about that 
math lab?Ķ, ŌLetÕs go get a tutorĶ, and things were just falling flat.  So, I started to question my ability as 
a leader to lead in a virtual environment and the truth is we all needed to figure that out, right?  Fast 
forward to most recently and last summer when Dr. Hartnett and her team paired me with BreAnna, 
who has been such a blessing to me and I think to the Pensacola community as well.  For those that 
donÕt know BreAnna, she is the marketing communications specialist at the Chamber.  So she is in the 
thick of everything that is going on in town.  And I love that because we are at a lot of the same events 
together, we share commonalities, we know a lot of the same people and I know she has a heart for 
making a difference.  I know she will go on to do great things when she graduates from her MBA 
program, which will be in person in May.  But I guess she has one more class to finish in August.  So, 
thank you BreAnna for our partnership this year and ongoing.  IÕll turn it over to you. 

https://www.amazon.com/She-Taught-Eat-Artichokes-Friendship/dp/1882835107