Lifelong Learner Dr. Bonnie Kay: How to Take the Best and Leave the Rest (and insights on being Lisa's mom!)
Season 1 Episode 10 (Season 1 Finale)
You can’t be a leader unless you’re a continuous learner.
In this special Season 1 closer, Lisa is joined by her mom, Dr. Bonnie Kay! Bonnie is many things: consultant, psychologist, continuous learner, competitive golfer, and lifelong inventor of her own path. Together, they revisit the choices, relationships, and philosophies that shaped Bonnie’s unconventional career and deeply influenced Lisa’s own work in futures thinking and design.
During the conversation, Bonnie shares stories from her early days as an English teacher, her leap into psychology during a major turning point for women, the “shortest dissertation ever” on gender roles and marital satisfaction, and her later career helping leaders grow through quality management and emotional intelligence.
You’ll hear:
How “continuous learning” became her north star
Why the circle of influence still matters in chaotic times
The power of great conversations
Her signature philosophies like “take the best and leave the rest”
It’s a warm, funny conversation about ambition, family, reinvention, and the lifelong practice of creating a meaningful life on your own terms. A perfect end to Season 1.
Some of Bonnie’s Favorite books and resources:
7 Habits of Highly Effective People Stephen Covey
Fierce Conversations by Susan Scott
Women Who Run with Wolves, by Clarissa Pinkola Estés
Think Again by Adam Grant (my mom literally gives everyone in her life Adam Grant’s calendar)
9 lifetime Hole in Ones, Impressive! An informal account of golf highlights by Bonnie Kay
The Rise of the full Stack Learning Organization, Lisa Kay Solomon
🎧 Listen now:
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📖 Read now:
Lisa Kay Solomon: I’m Lisa Kay Solomon, and this is How We Future, where I talk to some of my favorite changemakers about shaping tomorrow, starting today.
Today’s episode is really special because I get to sit down with my mom, Dr. Bonnie Tavlin Kay. People ask me all the time how I’ve come to do the work that I do, and honestly, so much of it traces back to what I’ve learned from her. I truly hit the jackpot with my mom, not just because of her endless love and support, but because of everything she’s taught me about relationships, learning, and work.
Then there’s what she modeled, an accomplished professional woman who somehow blended career, family, and competitive golf at the highest levels. My mom is one of the original inspirations for How We Future, someone who kept doing things her own way even when the norms around her said otherwise. Thank you for being here for the season one finale of How We Future with the best guest I could ask for. Let’s get into it with Dr. Bonnie Kay.
Dr. Bonnie Kay, thank you so much for being here.
Dr. Bonnie Kay: Lisa, I am honored to be with you. Honored.
Lisa: It’s so exciting. I often get asked about my background, like, “How did you get into this funky field of futures thinking and design strategy and helping leaders?” Almost every time I talk about my origin story, you get featured. [laughs] You are a prominent figure in why I’m doing the work that I’m doing now. And so I thought it’s really only fitting to have you on the How We Future to unpack some of the ways that you’ve futured that has inspired me and so many others in your career and in your life. So we’re going to do a slightly different format today, Mom, where we’re going to talk a little bit about your background. I’ll ask you some questions.
Then I’m going to share some of my favorite sayings that I’ve learned from you that, in preparing for this, I’ve realized are really life sayings. We’ll talk about maybe how you came to them and what they mean to you. First, I just really want to give a little bit more background about your background and who you are. You really helped teach me that you can invent your own future, that you can create a new model that didn’t exist in your different career and life choices. I want to ask you first to maybe talk about highlights of your career, starting with maybe being a teacher when you left college.
Bonnie: I think it’s important to put my careers in the context of the ages that I lived through. I graduated in 1965, where even the best and the brightest women were becoming teachers or nurses. I married my wonderful husband of 60 years on, I think, the day that I was supposed to attend my own graduation. Right away, you got it. It’s most important to be married. I was lucky enough to get a teaching position outside of Philadelphia because your father was going to medical school. I was enjoying being a teacher. I loved it. I had full access to five classes and enjoyed creating experiences. My best story is that they used to call me Special Kay. I was 21. I taught 8th grade, and they were all bigger than me. I was-
Lisa: I should say, although we’re recording this-
Bonnie: -taller.
Lisa: -you are little. Mighty might for a reason. 5 foot on a good day.
Bonnie: Still 5 feet.
Lisa: Still 5 feet. Yes. Standing tall. I will say, though, no slouch. You graduated Cornell University at a time where not that many women went. You were an English major. Brilliant. Wonderful that you could take your love of English as a student to then become a teacher. Early days.
Bonnie: Yes. I think that a couple of great things happened at that time. I taught 8th-grade English. We were a new school, and we did something like team teaching. Immediately, I got into the experience that you do a better job if you have a team. We all shared the same 125 students. It was great. For almost three years, I remember well a few of the students. In fact, my favorite story is one of them became my pet. He was so smart and so good. I decided that, and the next day, he led a walkout in my class. [laughter] Just to say.
Lisa: You never know. Ambiguity early.
Bonnie: Right. Special Kay was humble.
Lisa: Right. You were a teacher and then ever the lifelong learner, which we’re going to come back to again and again in this conversation. You decided to get a master’s in reading. You became a reading specialist.
Bonnie: I had to end my teaching because Mike, my husband, went to Vermont. We all went to Vermont for his internship. That’s where your brother was born. Then we had an interesting two years, a year of which he went to Vietnam during the war. I went home to live with my parents and with Steve. Then, when he came back, back to my career, we moved to Philadelphia, where he had a residency. Now I went back to graduate school, to University of Pennsylvania. I was taking courses in English, a master’s in English because that’s what I had taught.
Somehow that didn’t work. Somebody said, “You know what’s hot? Reading specialist is hot. They’re hiring reading specialists.” I said, “Okay.” I enrolled in a master’s in reading, which I did get. I got a master’s in reading. I actually taught at both a Catholic Montessori school and a secondary Jewish Hebrew academy. I found what was interesting about that was not being in the classroom was not as much fun when you’re just a consultant to other people who are in the fray.
Lisa: Essentially, not having the classroom, you were the person called in when extra support was needed. You were there to help out, but not necessarily, as you were saying earlier, architecting the whole class.
Bonnie: Yes. It was a time when reading specialist was hot. There were all kinds of ways to teach kids reading. I even helped write a book that Dr. Botel from U of P, he published. I wasn’t having a good time. I remember a phone call that changed my life because a friend of mine who had also gone to Cornell and was now at Penn, and loved being a reading specialist, and was getting her PhD in that. I said, “I don’t really love this, but I love the fact that I have some freedom in my time.” I don’t know when you want to introduce that I was a golf brat, aside from the fact that I had two children.
I said, “I don’t really want to work full-time. I think I’m stuck being a reading specialist.” She said to me, “Nobody really wants to work full-time.” I said, “Okay.” I took another course. The course was called Psychology of Women. It basically changed my life. Again, back to when I was a younger career person, it was the women’s movement. It was early 70s, mid-70s, late 70s. I just was different than everybody else. Very few of my friends, because we were living in the suburbs and playing some golf or stuff like that, were not working. I was always charging forward. When I took Psychology of Women, I realized it was like holding up a mirror to myself.
I said, “I’m a competitive person. I want to keep working and learning. It’s not enough for me.” I was a terrible housekeeper, by the way. Sorry, Lisa. I just wanted to do more, be excited about what I was doing in my work. After taking that, learning about psychological androgyny, which means you can both be empathetic and competitive and assertive, and you can take care of people, but you can also charge ahead, I said, “I have to teach other women that we’re on the cusp. I can make a difference.” I was going to be a feminist therapist. I actually worked at the Women’s Center at Penn and the feminist therapy collective in Philadelphia.
Lisa: I remember early on seeing you make choices about leaning into your passion. Just even hearing that story, it strikes me that one of the things that I teach in my futures classes is that this idea of futures doesn’t come from nowhere. It comes from a process of reflection to prospect. This idea of tapping into either your past experiences or your assumptions, or learning that you’ve done, whether you or at a larger scale to help inform choices forward.
Hearing you tell the story, it really strikes me that the choices forward you were making didn’t exist, that you were paving new territory to say, “Wait a minute. I’m tapping into something here. Society is telling me to take some different paths, but I’m not willing to do that because I’m not happy.” As you said earlier, you got to make sure you can play golf. It’s important, as we said in the intro, that you are still at 81, a competitive golfer, and have been playing amateur competitive golf for over 5 decades. That was really important to you. Again, no model for that. There’s no model for how do you have a meaningful career and still have time to do something that you love.
Bonnie: There are more and more models now. At that time, and I still remember this conversation, somebody said to me, “Bonnie, what are you trying to prove by going back for your PhD?” Because that’s what happened post this awareness that I was going to be a feminist therapist. I had to get a PhD. I went back to Penn and started taking courses. Lisa, you were born in intercession. You were always such perfect timing.
Lisa: [laughs] To this day.
Bonnie: It was so good. Gee whiz, Leah. I got to go back to class. I pursued a PhD, and I got it. I wrote a dissertation, the title of which is-
Lisa: I have it right here.
Bonnie: -Sexual Identity, which is a behavioral concept. How do you define yourself as stereotype female, stereotype male, high on both, the BEM inventory, androgynous, or undifferentiated? How does that correlate with marital satisfaction when both in the marriage are working? I was studying marital conflicts at the time. It was autobiographical, actually.
Lisa: I love it. Yet another way of trying to figure out how to make sense of your choices and your ambition. Here it is. I actually have the dissertation. I still have it. You got me a copy. That was so kind. I’ll also note that you’ve often said it was the shortest dissertation in history. You said, “You know what they say for people that have short dissertations? Done.”
Bonnie: Done. I have to say that the people who graded it loved it. They like reading short dissertations that are about them. I’m sure they were all struggling.
Lisa: It was really groundbreaking, this idea of exploring a marriage that had traditional, as you said, social sex roles where a woman is the more caretaker and stays at home, and the male is allowed to do more ambitious things, more competitive things. This idea that androgynous marriages were more successful or happier than those that had traditional roles. That’s huge. This is 1982.
I also want to say that while you were at Penn, you wrote and taught in a groundbreaking class called the Psychology of Personal Growth, which is extraordinary. Pre-Angela Duckworth, pre-Adam Grant, you were studying what does it mean to feel like a flourishing human that’s growing in a field that didn’t exist. I just think that’s remarkable.
Bonnie: [laughs] I do remember sitting there with Penn students and talking about career choices, and more female Penn students would say, “I want to get married.” I said, “What is the matter with you that you’re not thinking about your career?” This was-
Lisa: This is extremely unique.
Bonnie: -1979. I love teaching them assertiveness training, how to really speak up for yourself and not feel like you were being harsh or a bitch or something. Always teaching them skills. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed that very much. At the same time, that wasn’t enough for me as a career. I wasn’t going to be a reading specialist anymore. I said, “Oh, my God. What am I going to do? Join aerobics like everybody else? This is not okay.” The phone rang. Do you want to know next?
Lisa: Yes. What happened next? You have me on the edge of my seat. What happened? Who was it?
Bonnie: A wonderful future employee and friend said, “Hi, you have been referred to me by a Penn professor because I went to Penn as well. We need somebody to do a special project for welfare recipients on how to find a job.” It was a principal in a consulting firm. Gabe, let’s just call him Gabe, he actually changed my life. I said, “Gabe, can I do it on my own time?” This was a summer project. He said, “Yes, sure.”
Lisa: Wow. Before flex work.
Bonnie: Flex work. I did it, something I knew nothing about, but I wrote this program for welfare recipients on how to find a job. They liked me. They said, “We’d like to hire you.” I said, “Part-time?” They said, “Sure.” [laughter] Here I was, very interesting. I had a PhD. If you don’t mind me saying, I was making $150 a day, which was not a lot even then. They hired me to be a consultant in what was a huge movement called Quality Management.
It was based on what Japan was doing post-World War II, where they were turning out cameras and all kinds of appliances without any rework. This famous Dr. Deming was teaching Ford and anybody else like us in this consulting firm how to help the companies in America catch up, until I became a consultant in Quality Management. I have to say it was the beginning of a great career, and it was like taking another PhD. I read more books. I went to more conferences. I went to a conference with you-
Lisa: We did.
Bonnie: -on systems thinking in San Francisco. We were the only mother-daughter in 1,000 people. [laughs] It was continuous learning. I was able to put together teaching, which I love to do, with a broader canvas and ended up working with leaders in both nonprofit, government, family, Fortune 500, and the rest is history. It was, “Oh, my God.”
Lisa: I know. It’s amazing. You were a chief learning officer really before that became a mainstay title, and essentially working with leaders to help them in their positions of influence be the best version of themselves, be learning with you. I know you would say, “I’m their learning partner.” I know you’re responsible for many bulk book buys. You’d get excited about a book. You’re like, “You have to read it. You have to give it to everybody else.” I also think the language of Total Quality Management and even the processes gave yet another way to describe your passion for continuous improvement yourself.
Bonnie: I kept pushing my own learning and bringing people along. I have to say, now that I think about it, I was like a triangle. I had this PhD in psychology, and I have to say that every CEO of Fortune 500 companies loved having their own shrink. They loved that. I had a single-digit handicap. They loved that. Then I had this whole source of making their company work better, of teaching their whole leadership team to be smarter and grow better teams, called Quality Management. That was the triangle, and it was a best seller.
Lisa: Guess what? I think you’d be a best seller now in the world of AI. Who doesn’t need that now? Get back to work. Get back to work. All right. Maybe that’s a good place for us to jump off and talk about some of the maxims that I’ve learned, your philosophies that I know you’ve shared with leaders and others, and we can talk a little bit more about them because I really do think they’ve informed my perspective on agency and how to bring new things to life and really what this podcast is all about, these conversations about how we future.
One of the books that I remember you giving me early on, while you were going through probably the early years of post-PhD to consulting, to then becoming this leadership coach, was Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. That was foundational, and this idea of emotional bank accounts. I know you were early on to emotional intelligence, tapping into that, why it mattered for leaders, and this idea of the emotional bank account and deposits and withdrawals. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that work and how it’s influenced how you think about the human side of leadership.
Bonnie: It was very important to grow leaders personally, not just the data of measuring their systems and where the breakdowns were, and how we should run improvement cycles. That was a scientific part of it. The psychology part of it was I would try to bring models. Emotional intelligence is a model, being optimistic, being empathetic, and then being motivating to others, and so on. There was absolutely that emotional intelligence model to go along with the whole systems thinking, drawing, how the organization worked, where the breakdowns, and so on.
You had to be both. You had to be growing yourself. Continuous learning, that was the tag. You can’t be a leader unless you’re a continuous learner, constant learner, and bringing others along. Yes, we read a lot of books. I want to say, so from each book, there’s something that still works. The emotional bank account piece was if there’s enough positive in the emotional bank account in a relationship, you can forgive a lot of stuff. If there isn’t, then you’re going to cut it off. That was the emotional bank account.
The other thing that Stephen Covey did, which is still, and I would say, huge today, is the circle of concern and the circle of influence, and that we need to focus on what we have control over, because if we spend all our energy on stuff that we can’t change, we’ll be depleted.
Lisa: Yes, that was going to be my next point about that. I remember it was one of my first jobs out of college, and I called you in a total panic because I just couldn’t map how to make a difference, how to get my arms around, where I was putting my time. I remember you drawing those circles with me. I just remember sitting there, and you had this great pen. You still have great handwriting, very distinct handwriting. [laughs] You wrote a circle, and you said, “This is your circle of influence.” Then you wrote this bigger, “This is your circle of concern. What’s where? How do we focus your energy more productively?”
It was just a phenomenal conversation that really helped ground me. I think right now, when so many of us are feeling like the world is out of control, like it just feels so many of these macro forces are coming at us faster and faster, we don’t have any influence, we don’t have any agency, reminding ourselves, and this has already been a big theme in some early conversations we’ve had on the podcast, that there are things you can influence, even in your micro choices. That was something I learned from you, really, really early on. Moving on, the other thing I learned from you really early on, related to that, is the value of having great conversations.
I, as you know, wrote a whole book on conversations and can trace it back to a lot of what I learned from you because so much of the relationships that you had with your leaders, why they were willing to invite you to be learning partners, was because they trusted you, because you created a safe space. You did all this before there was, again, the concepts of psychological safety and Brené Brown’s work on vulnerability.
You were modeling all that. You made it safe for them. I know that Susan Scott’s work on Fierce Conversations was a big influence on you. You used to tell me that all work gets done through relationships and that the conversation is the relationship. Connected to the emotional bank account, how do you connect it?
Bonnie: Very good.
Lisa: Yes, I’m a good student.
Bonnie: Very good.
Lisa: I’m a good student. I’ve learned. Pay attention.
Bonnie: Excellent. Excellent. I think about our current world, which is so much Zooms. I’m so happy to see you, Lisa. Thank God for Zoom because you’re in California and I’m in Philadelphia. That was a book I was going to write, The Conversations That Change Your Life. I think if everybody who hears this thinks about conversations that have changed their life, it will give them a sense of their journey. I will say one other conversation that changed my life, or many of them. Can I talk about the one where I was going to be a therapist, and then I became a consultant?
Lisa: Yes. What happened to that feminist therapist path? What happened?
Bonnie: I was working in Villanova in the counseling center and coming home every day, and no feeling in the left side of my mouth. I can still feel it right here. Luckily, I had a wonderful friend who’s a neurologist. He said, “Come right over, sit on my couch.” He used that very expensive test called a safety pin. He went like this, “All right, fine. What else is going on in your life?”
A great question when you don’t know what’s happening to this person that you care about. I said, “I don’t think I was cut out to go, uh-huh.” [chuckles] That was the end of being a therapist, a feminist therapist, any kind of therapist, because I would say to students who came in, “We talked about that last week. Why are we talking about the same thing?”
Lisa: [laughs] Very empathetic of you. Very empathetic.
Bonnie: Right. I said, “Maybe my genius, if I have any, or my talents is not exactly in this path.” Then that’s why the phone call was so important to do a consulting project. It was better to put together the teaching that I loved with the learning that I loved with some of the psychology that I had, and move toward organizations and people who could learn without delving back into their history about why they’re unhappy.
Lisa: This gets me to another life lesson I’ve learned from you, which is take the best and leave the rest. That’s another Bonnyism. What I hear from making the connection between therapy and then going into being a leadership coach is that you took the best of the conversation and the dialogue, and you left the formality of maybe a therapeutic model, and you instead created a different kind of way for people to talk through complex or messiness in their lives in ways that were meaningful.
Bonnie: Yes. I see it first in personal relationships because everybody’s going to annoy you. [laughter] It happens, especially as you get older. As I get older, I also realize, and here’s a new one, everybody who I come in contact with and who I choose to be with has their own genius or talent. That’s what I celebrate. They don’t have what I have, and I don’t have what they have, but together we’re a better force. We are not only a better relationship, we can make the world around us better. That’s something that keeps me with positive energy. I try not to hold on to negative energy any longer than it takes to get rid of it.
Lisa: You’ve definitely modeled just an incredible spirit of generosity and abundance in how you think about your time.
Bonnie: Let’s talk about [unintelligible 00:27:36].
Lisa: Yes. No, totally. Listen, we know that Ezra Klein just wrote this big bestselling book called Abundance, but I’m going to say I think you were the original creator. Yet again, another bestseller you could have had but didn’t write on the abundance mindset. That was another huge, huge gift that you’ve given me, and I know so many others, which is to reframe how we’re taking in information to be one of abundance and not one of scarcity.
Bonnie: It goes back to my mother, who was-
Lisa: [crosstalk] I knew she’d get in here. [laughs]
Bonnie: -the source of abundance. She loved material abundance. I said as part of her eulogy, she taught me a lot of things, and one of them is, if you like it, buy it in every color. I don’t know. I love to share with my family and people I love in abundance. The way I do it is one for you, one for me. That’s how I do it.
Lisa: You really are one of the most generous givers, not because of the thing, but because of the intention. The way that you check in on people when they’re not well. The way you try to honor their birthdays or celebrations. You’ve always said to me, this is another one of yours, “A mile deep and an inch wide.” You wanted to go for the meaningful moments and the connections, and not spread yourself so thin. I think that also was a way that your energy got fueled and how you applied your genius.
Bonnie: Not big on crowds, cocktail parties, but very big on one-on-one conversations. I always learn something. I want to say that in my life, I have been blessed by having amazing partners. I’m certainly, at age 81, in a grateful mode. Starting with, I don’t know how, I was able to choose Michael Kay to be my life partner. He was 23. I was 21 when we got married.
My favorite line is, we didn’t spend that much time together because he was in medical school, I was finishing college. We met at the altar, and he looked at me, and he said, “Oh, my God. I didn’t know you were that short.” [laughter] With that humor, and that sticktoitiveness that was an amazing partnership. Because I was a terrible housekeeper, and I wanted to work at a time when we had kids. Lisa, you know we had Auntie June, who was our partner, our caring, loving person living with us when we needed it, for sure.
Lisa: Walked down my aisle.
Bonnie: Walked down the aisle at your wedding.
Lisa: [crosstalk] A big member of the family. I will say this. Like me, raising a family in California, I did not have family around. You did not have family around in Philadelphia. You had to build your family, build your village. Yet again, another concept before Hillary Clinton talked about takes a village. You build partnerships. I always saw you investing in the people around you to build a better life for everybody and doing it creatively. I will say this theme has come up.
A definite memory I have going back to the ambitious life you wanted to have that was professionally fulfilling, that honored your family, but also honored your golf. I remember you saying to me, “Lisa, I don’t work full-time, not for my family, but for my golf. There’s no serious golfer that has a full-time job.” [laughs] It was this notion, though, of--
Bonnie: That’s authenticity in its ultimate.
Lisa: Yes, for sure. It’s very authentic. It’s also, I think, this idea, like you wanted your family to have dinner at night. It didn’t necessarily mean you had to make the dinner. Dinner had to be made. There were creative ways of architecting a fulfilling life that I just think was very liberating. How many books have been written on balance and having it all?
Bonnie: Yes, really.
Lisa: You modeled a blend that was so healthy for me to see, including, by the way, striving always and still to this day of being a better golfer. There’s always the next swing to find. You’re still having lessons. Sometimes I can’t catch you on the phone because you’re going to practice on the tee and find your swing again. Worth noting, you had one of your best competitive seasons ever this past year.
Bonnie: I won things, which I actually think that when I’m competing, I do my best as opposed to party golf. I had some great chips today. [laughter] Anyway. I want to say this. Talk about partners. I have to say that, Lisa, you are my most loving, wonderful partner because I stopped working 10 years ago. If it weren’t for you, I would not be as fulfilled as a person as I am now, because you don’t let me just do nothing. You say, “Mom, look at this. I’m doing this.” I got to hang with you because you’re amazing. You bring so much to my life. You are life’s gift. Who else said that? Anybody else say that in the podcast? You are my life’s gift.
Lisa: I feel the same. We often talk about how lucky we are when we have children that we appreciate. I often say how lucky I am that I got to have the parents that I had. The model of you, the rock of Dad, the stability, the care, the shared values. You just celebrated 60 years of marriage, which was extraordinary. As you said, you were the miracle marriage.
Bonnie: A miracle.
Lisa: Modeling, respect, and humor, these are, again, I would say, things in the circle of influence, of control. How we choose to take in our partner’s strengths, how we choose to navigate areas of difference with grace, with humor. So much that you have modeled for me, and now I get to model for my children. How you work with your students, I get to bring to my students. It is a gift for me, too. It’s an absolute gift.
I want to end maybe on that note of gratitude with one of my favorite bodyisms that I’ve learned. I would remember saying to you, “Mom, there’s all these wonderful things happening. I’m getting nervous that things are going to go wrong.” Getting that anxious that the shoe is going to drop. It’s one of my favorite bodyisms. You said, “Lee, celebrate the good times because the shit always comes.” [laughter]
Bonnie: I’m telling you.
Lisa: Shit always comes.
Bonnie: I’m telling you. I want to say this. I have already learned from the two podcasts that I have listened to. The first one with Ray, when I was going through cataracts, now is not forever. I said, “All right, you’ll get through this, and so on.” Then with Dan Klein, where he says, “Every offer, if you say yes, you’re on an adventure, and if you say no, you’re blocking. If you’re blocking, you’re safe. If you say yes, you have an adventure.” I now understand how your father and I work-
Lisa: Always learning.
Bonnie: -because-
Lisa: Boom.
Bonnie: -he’s the blocker. [laughter] He’s the blocker. He just wants to stay safe.
Lisa: [crosstalk] He wants to stay safe.
Bonnie: I get it.
Lisa: [unintelligible 00:35:14] empathy for that, but he is learning ChatGPT, and that’s impressive at 83. Mom, I just want to thank you so much for fitting me in between your golf and all the other great activities that you’re doing.
Bonnie: Have to go play bridge.
Lisa: Yes, exactly. Bridge, because you’re the doable, still doing. I just want to thank you for being my best learning partner in life, and for all of your generosity and deep care, and someone who is futuring in a way that I have benefited so much from, and I hope others can now too, from listening to your life story and what gets you up every day.
Bonnie: Oh, my God. Conversations make a difference, and you are the light in my life, I have to say.
Lisa: Love you.
Bonnie: Love you so much.
Lisa: This conversation with my mom, Dr. Bonnie Kay, was one of my favorites ever, and it reminded me just how much of my own success and journey comes from what I learned from her. If our conversation sparked anything for you, maybe take a moment to reach out to someone who shaped your path. A quick text, a thank you, or even a shared memory can go a long way.
Thank you for listening to the season one finale of How We Future. I have had such a blast developing and hosting the show, and I have to give a huge shout-out to my incredible producer, Kaela Rosenbaum. I cannot wait to pick up season two with you in January. I’m Lisa Kay Solomon. Thanks so much for listening. Happy holidays, and have a great start to the new year.