Nell (2) 0:00

And the board call and the walk and the exercise and prepare for the guests. Caroline, I looked down at my phone, didn't even touch it. Not that I don't, because guilty ......of that. Looked down at my phone for a split second on a sharp turn that I drive every day and go head-on into a twenty-ton landscaping truck

Caroline 0:19

This is the Your Next Success podcast, and I'm your host, Dr. Caroline Sangal. We explore how to build a career that truly fuels your life, and you will hear stories from people who have navigated big career transitions themselves so you can become your own version of authentic success. if you have ever felt so busy with all the things you have to do that you don't even know if there's time left for what you actually want to do, this episode is for you. Today's guest is Nell Dereck Debevoise-Dewey. She's a Subtraction Activist who helps high-performing leaders build success that feels as good as it looks. She's Harvard-trained, educated by horses, and known for helping people do more good without piling on more to-dos. she She's built organizations on three continents, led her own company for over a decade, and she reached a point where doing more stopped making anything better, so she started taking things out instead of fitting more in. You'll hear how she decides what goes, what horses understand about conserving energy that most high achievers learn far too late, and how she measures success now in three dimensions: me, we, and world. Welcome to Your Next Success, Nell Dereck Debevoise-Dewey.

Caroline 2 1:40

I am so excited for our conversation

Nell (2) 1:44

Same, Caroline. Thank you. I'm so glad to be here

Caroline 2 1:47

we are gonna get into all the amazing work that you do, including this book and this TEDx talk. And in Next Success fashion, let's take it all the way back. Help us understand where were you born? What was life like for the very youngest little Nell?

Nell (2) 2:03

I was born in Hartford, Connecticut, which is a New England capital. With love, I, you know, call it a little bit of a shitty New England city kind of down on its luck. It definitely had a glory day when Mark Twain was living there and all this beautiful culture and it was the insurance capital. There was a lot of business and commerce happening. And as some of those industries moved out and, you know, got less human-heavy, it lost a lot of the income that was in the city and, you know, decline comes thereafter. So I grew up there. I went to this phenomenal elementary school I walked to school, as many of us did. It was a really diverse range of families and kids in every way in terms of profession, in terms of race, in terms of recent immigrants, all of that, and amazing teachers and resources. We had this Mayfair that was really fun. I raised money so that we could have a dunk tank one year, which I thought was so cool. Sixth grade graduation was a really big deal. Like, they had an art show, and we all got white dresses, and it was this really cool ritual. The sad underbelly of that is why they made it a big ritual is that they knew that most of my sixth grade class would not reach another graduation that was the reality in Hartford, Connecticut, at that time. And so the middle school I would have gone to for seventh grade was really troubled by gangs and teenage pregnancy, like at thirteen and fourteen in the middle school, violence, to say nothing of, like, the academics were not very sharp, much less extracurriculars because people and teachers were, like, scared about survival. And so my mom, bless her heart, was a self-employed massage therapist, so not, like, a ton of financial resources, but she had the savvy. She had actually grown up in the town next door from which we lived about four hundred yards over, like literally. And so she and my stepfather wrangled a down payment and moved us to a house on the other side of the town line. And off I went to leafy green, suburban, well-funded, statewide recognized public schools in West Hartford, Connecticut.

Caroline 2 4:08

And your mom was a massage therapist. You have a stepdad in the picture. What about your dad? What... Just curious

Nell (2) 4:15

My dad was an artist. He was a photographer, and he did some, like, wedding photography for money and then was an artist. He moved to New York when I was probably, like, nine or ten. And he lived in New York City and was one of the first professors of digital art at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. And so he started manipulating his photography on the computer, which was, you know, very new in the mid-'80s. And then actually his photography fell away, and his art became purely digital, which also was very early and kind of avant-garde.

Caroline 2 4:48

to have parents who are trained in massage therapy and who are in tune with art and, you know, kind of communicating feelings and stuff through there, like, I'm say- I, I mean, I don't know. Like, I bet you never had, like, a tense, tight back. Like, your mom just helped. You knew stuff, you know?

Nell (2) 5:07

My mom taught infant massage using me as the baby model in the infant massage class. And then I had a, I had a foot massage till every night till I was too cool, which was, I was, I don't know, I was stupid at 15 or something. But if my mom would try to leave the bedroom when putting me to bed and not give me a foot massage, I would stick my feet out of the little comforter and kick her and say, I have feet."

Caroline 2 5:28

How cute, but how

Nell (2) 5:29

She may not have after a long workday of giving massage for money. She's like, "Ah, okay, fine. Here's a two-minute foot massage."

Caroline 2 5:36

in your elementary school experience, were there certain activities or subjects that you enjoyed more than others? And then even outside of school. You mentioned, like, walking and, you know, all this kind, but yeah

Nell (2) 5:47

I was, I'm a nerd. I'm a s- good student, gold star junkie kind of, so I definitely loved my gifted and talented classes, in math, and English, and all of the classes. I hated, in any of the subjects, speaking in front of the class, to the point... My, my body hated it. Like, so I would get called on to do my presentation. I would sort of creep up to the front of the class, and within 10 to 60 seconds, my face was red, my cheeks were burning, tears were forming, my chin was quivering, and I, I don't think I ever made it through more than 100 or 200 words of any presentation before just, like, melting in floods of tears.

Caroline 2 6:26

I have a hint of how the rest of the story goes, but yeah, we'll, we'll pin that.

Nell (2) 6:30

I, activities-wise, you know, I was in the choir. My voice was better before I broke puberty, I think, for singing anyway, so I was in the choir. There was a really cool city regional program around diversity, and so a few kids from each school went to this, like, leadership program, and we did these, like, outdoor, you know, trust falls and blah, blah. And then I s- did start riding horses, which we'll also pin for later, A dear friend at school was really horse crazy, and her mom said that, you know, there were not any horses right near Hartford. It was probably a thirty-minute drive to the barn. And so her mom said, "If you can find someone to carpool, you can take riding lessons." And so Alicia said, "Would you want to take riding lessons with me, and would your mom drive every other week?" And I said, "Sure, I would take riding lessons." And my mom said, "Sure, I can drive you to a barn every other week." And so I started riding and hung on to it way longer than Alicia ever did, which is funny. But that's how I started.

Caroline 2 7:26

wait, what? In the, like, '80s-ish there was a diversity leadership sort of thing, initiative? That's

Nell (2) 7:35

For 11 and 12-year-olds.

Caroline 2 7:36

I don't know that we're that far apart in age. You might be younger than me probably. But, like, we had, like, basically the drug-free class of 2000 was supposed to come after us. I don't think it worked, right? But there was, like, stranger

Nell (2) 7:49

Doubt it. Right, right.

Caroline 2 7:52

Drug-free initiatives ......that I recall. I don't recall diversity effort, but that was probably because of where I was living wasn't that diverse.

Nell (2) 8:01

Common Ground, yeah. Honestly, I don't know who was behind it. It wasn't a public school initiative. It was a nonprofit but it was very cool.

Caroline 2 8:07

Okay, and you're also noticing this shift from how schools were zoned from elementary to middle school. Now the side of the street you're on is affecting your opportunity and experience

Nell (2) 8:21

In my kind of only child precocious way, at 12 years old, I see, okay, here's those kids that I went to elementary school with who are like smart, who are mischievous, who are athletic, who are annoying, but they're kids. And then I move schools, and now I see all these kids. Well, they're smart and athletic and mischievous and annoying in exactly the same blend that these kids are. Only this school system like has a ski bus on Wednesday afternoons and has a jazz band that tours Europe every other summer, and any sport you could choose from, and, and, and, and guidance counselors who, in my case, guided me off to Harvard, right? As many of my classmates went to various Ivy League or other great schools, which is certainly not the only fabulous outcome that one can have after high school, but you get the idea, right? Compared to that fact that most of my sixth-grade classmates were not going to graduate from twelfth grade, much less go anywhere else. So, you know, and it wasn't like a pity party. Like, my friends who stayed all did fine and, and great and survived and thrived in their ways. But again, in a 12-year-old precocious way, I was just like, "That seems suboptimal." Like, we're missing out on those kids' fabulousness, and they're missing out on these opportunities, and these kids didn't earn this. They were just born on the right side of the street

Caroline 2 9:47

So then how does that shape your... So your middle school and high school experience, you just kinda like, you know, noted that, that seems incredibly un, you know, unjust, and I'm not sure how I'm gonna deal with that, but I wanna do something. That's not fair. I, wanna make it

Nell (2) 10:05

Fix that when I, when, when it's time, was my, again, precocious 12-year-old thought as, as me. And, and so I, you know, get launched off to Harvard, which was shocking and not, like, a childhood dream or anything. I was pretty... I was like, "I don't wanna tour Harvard. It's gonna be a bunch of nerds, and I'm not gonna fit in, and I don't wanna go there." And then my mom was like, "Let's just go there." And so we did, you know, college tours as you do, and I actually loved it. I really right away kind of walking on campus was like, "Oh, this is kind of magic." And then shocked myself as much as anybody, got in early and was like, "Wow, okay." And then got an amazing offer from UConn, our state university, to be in the honors program, and that came with all kinds of goodies. I mean, a free ride, but I think also, like, a stipend. You know, it was just a really juicy, generous, supportive program. I found out about Harvard early. And, I was like, "I mean, that's a good deal. It's free plus income generating, and it's right here, and it's a good school, and it's an honors program." And my mom interestingly was like, "Honey, y-you're not gonna say no to Harvard. And, like, don't take someone else's spot in that program just to hold your options. Like, you're not gonna do that. Just go to Harvard. We'll figure it out. We'll get loans. We'll get aid. You'll work. We'll figure it out." And sure enough, there, that's what I did

Caroline 2 11:28

How did you even think about wanting to go to college? Was it just because on that side of the street most everybody was going? Or y- that just seemed the, the thing to do

Nell (2) 11:39

My mom had gone to co- a few colleges. She transferred and had a different, you know, kind of varied path. Her parents did not go to college, but she, but, but that was clearly her path and, and she had gotten a master's and education was very much prioritized. On my dad's side, I think I would've been, I don't know-ish. I would've been about the 12th generation on my dad's side to have gone to Yale if I went to Yale.

Caroline 2 12:06

Oh,

Nell (2) 12:07

my dad actually did not, the artist black sheep, but three of his, his, all three of his siblings did and, and I, that was kind of the 11th generation. I would've been the 12th. So I didn't even look at Yale because I would've been the 12th generation and that felt

Caroline 2 12:21

You don't wanna do that.

Nell (2) 12:22

I w-- Yeah, Harvard, re- rebel. I was gonna rebel and go to the, go to the rival.

Caroline 2 12:27

Now, I'm curious from your youngest vantage point and that c- I don't know if that's elementary, middle, or high school, but somewhere along in there, what did you think it meant to be a successful adult?

Nell (2) 12:42

You know, I really, I I don't know that I had... I certainly didn't have an explicit, explicit vision of that. I wanted to be a vet for a while, so like I went to a veterinary summer camp program when I was, I don't know, probably 13 or something. and my aunt was a vet in Vet- in Vermont, so I would like shadow her sometimes when we went to visit. And then when we moved to West Hartford, you know, the average income and socioeconomic status was definitely a notch higher. It wasn't a super wealthy city. West Hartford was, you know, kind of solidly upper middle class professional folks. And so on the other side of town where my classmates and new friends were, houses were bigger and vacations were fancier and cars were newer and there were more frequent mall- trips to the mall and J.Crew boxes arriving. You know, there was definitely more of that kind of upper middle class existence that just had not been on my radar and was not my experience. So I guess that was my first vision of

Nell 3D 13:50

like

Nell (2) 13:51

traditional success, right? My best friend's dad was a doctor and mom worked in healthcare administration, and they definitely... They had a sailboat and, you know, those were just trappings that I had never even touched. And so that kind of filled in a blank in my worldview of like what that, quote, "success" looks like. But it definitely wasn't like... I mean, you know, I started wanting J.Crew stuff for Christmas for sure. But it didn't flip a switch of like, I will have that house. My house will be that size, not my house's size." Not because I didn't want that or, you know... I, I don't know. I, I really didn't have a vision of success. I, I don't think it ever clicked and landed for me at that time

Caroline 2 14:42

And so now you go into Harvard, a little bit being the rebel. and then what, how did you choose what you even wanted to study out of all the options?

Nell (2) 14:53

Yeah, I studied psychology, which was really not a big debate because I wanted to fix education. And so I figured I have to study how people work and how people learn, how people think, how people develop. and I got to cross-register at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, so I took some education classes already in my undergrad. And yeah, that, that wasn't a huge debate. I was always... I remember kind of looking at like sociology, then I zeroed in on psychology. I actually was really interested in neuroscience, so I took that course my freshman year. It was really hard and too early. I took... I shouldn't have taken it freshman year probably. And so that turned me off, and so I just stuck with psychology and didn't do the neuro path. you know, that freed time for cross-registering at the ed school and, and all of that. So it was great. And lo- I loved it. I love psychology. I mean, I just find it fascinating and har... You know, I was studying with Richard Hackman, who's like one of the gurus of organizational psych, and Carol Dweck was there at the time Oh, what's our fabulous happiness guy? Tal Ben-Shahar.

Caroline 2 15:55

yeah

Nell (2) 15:56

He, yeah, he was like 28 and a grad student when I was there, so it, it was an amazing department, learned so much, and totally loved it

Caroline 2 16:03

Okay. So you're loving this college experience, getting to learn f- with and from amazing people very well known in the field. How about you as far as your own work experience? What were some of your first opportunities of using your gifts and talents for the benefit of others?

Nell (2) 16:23

Yeah. So even in high school, I worked at a tutoring center, and so I was like, kind of guiding kids through computer tutoring sessions and actually giving out little basically gold stars, which is hysterical 'cause of where we'll get to and everything I'm doing now. And then during college, I really... I had some work study jobs that were just, like, staffing the reception desk at the repertory theater so that I could get tickets to shows But most of my gigs were related. Like, I helped a nonprofit rewrite their pedagogy, their, their kind of, you know, after-school program, in conflict resolution. Helped... I did a, a few research projects in the psych department, you know, but it was all that theme of kind of non-formal education. Like, I, I never was pulled to actually teaching certification. Like, one of my dear friends did that while at Harvard, which was not totally typical. But she did that. But that wasn't the way I wanted to go. It was much more kind of the human development, non-academic side of learning that really, lured me to, to do both on the study and the work side.

Caroline 2 17:27

And so then as you kind of get through your undergraduate education there, then what were you drawn to do next?

Nell (2) 17:34

So the really important part during school was that probably like February of my sophomore year, t- my two roommates, said that they were applying to study abroad. And Harvard's general policy was like, "Why on earth would you leave and go anywhere else to study when you could just stay at the finest educational institution in the world?" Which is charming that that's how they position it. But my two roommates had really wanted to do that and persisted and kind of did the legwork to find out how to buck this very strong pressure to not study abroad, right? I think something like one percent of our class studied abroad. And so they're all filling out their paperwork and all the protests and all the justification of why this was a reasonable idea for them. And I was like, "Huh, That's interesting. I think it was due in forty-eight hours, and I was like, "My dad took me to Paris when I was sixteen, and it was my first time out of the country, and it was pretty amazing. Maybe I would like to go to Paris." And so I scramble, scramble, scrambled and submitted an application forty-eight a-hours later to leave the next fall, and, and it all took off and happened. And so off I went in the fall of two thousand to Paris. And we registered at the Sorbonne. We had kind of a mediator program, but just registered at the Sorbonne and took classes with French people and took a class in Musée d'Orsay with other Americans, which was delightful and lived in Paris and so totally, deeply fell in love with being an expat and living abroad. And so that very much colored what I was gonna do after graduation

Caroline 2 19:15

And when you said we, was that your, like, the roommates or the other people who were trying to, like, make this? Or who was we? Who was we?

Nell (2) 19:22

me and the other Americans who did that program. My roommates went to Sydney and Madrid respectively and I was in Paris. So yeah, I was, enrolled in this program that kind of helped you navigate the bureaucracy of the French university system. And so there were probably 12 of us or something. There was, My closest friend was from Princeton, and another girl from Bates and from Brown. And so it was the 12 of us sort of in a little huddle, then sprayed out around Paris having our own adventures. I lived with a family and took classes, and it was magic

Caroline 2 19:55

All right. Okay, so now you have this, oh, living and being abroad is a really awesome, amazing experience. Okay, so then what happened? Okay, so now you, you, you went back to Harvard.

Nell (2) 20:07

I get back to campus, yeah, September senior year, everyone's at the investment banking reception and being wined and dined by Goldman and McKinsey and all the investment banks and consulting. There's definitely like a strong presence of Teach For America on campus. My roommate is studying for the MCATs and headed to med school, and I'm like, "Mm, I'm gonna go live abroad somewhere." And like, I think I've done Europe now. I lived in Paris. I traveled several weekends. Like, I'm done with that. So I'm actually gonna go to Asia and push further. But Tokyo is like a really westernized city, so that'll be really easy. So I'll go teach English in Japan

Caroline 2 20:50

Wow.

Nell (2) 20:51

What could go wrong?

Caroline 20:52

Did,

Caroline 2 20:52

You know anyone in Japan or

Nell (2) 20:54

It was just, it just sounded very familiar, and again, I was like, "It's so Westernized." I got there, Caroline, I couldn't read, so I was, like, jet-lagged and vertigo for, like, 72 hours or something, at least. Because in 2002, I mean, the train stations didn't have English, so I, ......I literally couldn't read. I lived in this apartment right outside Tokyo in a valley, and the kind of town center and the grocery store were, was in the bottom of the valley, and then the apartments were up on the sides. So I went shopping probably my first day there to, like, get ramen or something to eat, and I leave my little apartment and walk down to the grocery store and come out of the grocery store totally shell-shocked because I can't read at the grocery store either, and so I don't know what I'm buying. I've never seen these packages. Nothing makes sense. And I realize that I don't know which side of the valley I live on, and I don't know how to get home. They all look the same. I cannot read street signs. I cannot speak Japanese. I do not have a smartphone. And I, I don't know. Some- I made it home. Spoiler. But I don't remember how.

Caroline 2 22:03

Wow.

Caroline 22:05

so

Caroline 2 22:05

so your experience of going to Paris with your dad and your experience of studying abroad where there was a liaison that helped coordinate all the details, and now here,

Nell (2) 22:16

I spoke the language, and I read the alphabet

Caroline 2 22:19

A- and now you're like, "Sounds like a great idea. Okay, here I am, and I don't know where my house is."

Nell (2) 22:27

Correct. Correct. And though it pretty quickly it became a phenomenal experience and phenomenal year, for a number of reasons, mostly which is important to our conversation about career paths. I worked for Nova, which is now out of business, rightly. It was an English school that was started by some Australians who were very much just looking to capitalize on an economic opportunity of teaching English to every salaryman, as workers are called in Japan. And it was atrocious. I mean, uh, you know, I think it went down in some flame of fraud a few years ago, but when I was there, it was just... I called it the McDonald's of English. You know, we were literally flipping burgers. It just happened to be an English lesson every forty-five minutes in a fifty-minute block, and then cycled on to the next and the next. There was no sense of, like, investment in the students' achievement or creative pedagogy or... It, it was just a total production line. Um, and having studied pedagogy and, like, caring about teaching and learning, it was really soul-destroying for me. So by, you know, a few months in, I would, like, cry on the threshold of this little English school, um, because it was just so discouraging and unrewarding and uninspiring. And so that was very much like, you know, to your earlier question, I think that was a clear lesson of like, okay, success is not this. Like, success is some sense of impact, some sense of creativity, some sense of challenge, and this is not that, and I am miserable. Never again will I take a job no matter what, right? It was pretty good conditions. I mean, I wasn't... I missed kind of the boom when people were making, like, healthy six figures for teaching English. There was a moment when you could really, like, make kind of finance salaries for teaching English. That was not my moment. But I was well-paid. I was making good money. I had a great apartment. I was saving up to travel. But that was obviously not enough for me to tolerate this for much more. I think I stayed about eleven months and then was like, "I gotta go."

Caroline 2 24:32

it seems like in, you know, your, your earlier years this like greater sense of community or friendships ......were really helpful. And even in, in Paris, having that ......group of 12 of you that kind of all went out, ......but you seemed like you could kind of come back together. I'm curious, in Japan, what was your support system? Obviously, the, the workplace wasn't it, and if they're not even caring about the students, how do they care about the people helping the students? So w- what became your outside of what you were supposed to do sense of community, belonging, and did, did you have that there?

Nell (2) 25:11

Yeah, that's a great question. You know, w-we definitely-- There was a, a teacher, a teacher community. We all trained together, and we were all kind of fish out of water expats. ......Mostly American, some English and British some Australian. And so that was nice for sure. Those were my few friends. I lived with one girl from the school 'cause we shared an apartment. And then I actually dated a Japanese guy who I met just out in Tokyo. And so we dated for most of the year that I was there pretty seriously and, and even after I left for a bit. So that was very sweet. I didn't really engage with his friends or family at all. I was not sort of kosher in his life at that point, certainly. So, I got to experience him and his Japaneseness in our relationship, but it didn't really open a community. I taught English privately a little bit to, to some students, and so they became, client friends, and gave me little windows. I would go to some of their houses for dinner now and then and met some of their kids and stuff, so that was really sweet. But yeah, I mean, it's a theme that... So this was the first year of a decade of working abroad, and so I can zoom out to that more segue here in terms of community. It was always, you know, in the very-- I was living in di- very many different places over those ten years, and it was always kind of that like, expat bubble that was my greatest community because, I mean, I think that's just natural. It's hard to get beyond that, especially in the first year or few years when you're living somewhere new. You have so much shared experience 'cause here you are in this weird different place trying to make it work and mostly Americans, so this kind of shared also upbringing, depending on where people had but also a really small pool to choose from, and so not necessarily people who you would have chosen to be friends with at home, but you're kind of thrown into this thing. And so despite different interests or different hobbies or different social styles, here you are as a friend group. And that was certainly always interesting.

Caroline 27:17

Imagine what your life would be like if your career aligned with who you are, what you do best, and actually fueled the life you want. At Next Success, we support all ages and stages through career transitions from students exploring majors or careers to job seekers actively searching or re-imagining their next move to professionals committed to self-awareness and leadership growth. Stay connected and explore what's possible at nextsuccesscareers.com and follow @nextsuccessmethod on LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook.

Caroline 2 27:54

So then what happened? So you mentioned, like, then you traveled for the next 10 years. So give a little overview of, like, what were some of the bouncings around that that became there?

Nell (2) 28:06

Well, so the first kind of smart pivot at twenty-two was to teach English, but to teach English in a public school system in France. So there was a government-run program that I went through, and now all of a sudden, I was in a public school with teachers who were trained as teachers and who cared, and students who had to be there and wanted to learn English from an American. So that was, that was a great turn. I still, by the end of that, felt like my brain really wasn't being stretched in the way that I wanted. Again, I didn't want to be a teacher, so that wasn't my path. And so I went to do a master's in England, kind of keeping the international piece, but, digging a little bit back into academia. And that was a total delight. It was that kind of English style of schooling where you mostly just, like, read and think and then go hang out with a professor for a few hours a week in a very small, intimate seminar and get stretched. And that was about politics, democracy, and education. So it was this beautifully interdisciplinary, wide-ranging kind of next step of my thinking about learning. And then from there, the began kind of what I would really consider that decade of work, which was in nonprofits helping to design and run programs for young people, in that kind of non-formal way. So leadership, community activism, that kind of a thing. The first was in Rome. I was based in Rome and working for an international organization. We had a network of mayors in sixty or seventy cities, and each mayor appointed two youth activists, and I got to manage that network of youth activists of, you know, a hundred and forty kids, kind of sixteen to twenty-five and help them work together and get work done in their cities and get collaboration happening between their cities, and it was... and, and live in Rome all the while. So that was delightful.

Caroline 2 29:51

and, then what happened?

Nell (2) 29:54

Then I got recruited. That organization had kind of a splinter project. It was sort of a, a sad nonprofit tale of having some funding dangled to build community centers in post-conflict areas to help really young children with mental health issues, which is an absolutely fabulous idea and a really important thing to do. But this organization was like a networking organization for mayors.

Caroline 30:21

Yeah.

Nell (2) 30:21

and so that wasn't really a match for the mission nor for the staff's capacity. And so it didn't go that well. It's, a very hard thing to do to walk into Freetown, Sierra Leone and try to, you know, work in mental health. So that was getting kind of derailed, spun the organization down. The projects weren't going well. But one of the organization leader's kind of friends, colleagues, was a Palestinian American who had ties to a city in the West Bank where this project was trying to launch. And he said, "You know, you all are not equipped to launch this project, but this project is really important, and the young children in the city where I grew up really need some mental health support. And so I will start fresh and do that with the right team and the right structure and do that." And so I got to know him and he said, "Hey, I'm gonna do this right. Do you want to come over and help me build it?" And I said "Sure. I'm headed to business school." I had applications out to business schools in the States because I felt like it was time for me to learn about the private sector and maybe make a pivot. but I'm not gonna start school for eight or nine months. We met in November and, you know, that would have been the next year, so I'm happy to help and start, do some research or build some relationships or do whatever I can. And he said, "Great." So I left my job in Rome and moved to the West Bank and spent time there. And by May, when it came time to accept or decline my full ride at Tuck, I declined and stayed in the West Bank for four years

Caroline 2 31:58

W- what was it that made you wanna stay? Was it, like, being there and seeing the opportunity, seeing the need? Or, 'Cause how do you turn down a full ride? Like,

Nell (2) 32:08

It was the adventure of building it. You know, I really, I have no attachment to the Middle East. I'm not Jewish. I'm not Muslim. I'm not-- I didn't study politics or the region. But the challenge of doing something for these kids and families who were so isolated by, the occupation and the conflict there and the potential, the, the, the gratitude and the eagerness and the dedication of these, this local staff that we were starting to assemble was just really inspiring. You know, I think in Rome, I had been very much arm's length. Like, I was geographically removed from what these amazing ......kids were doing. So it was cool to have the variety of the projects and the personalities and the cultures. But we were only together for a few days a year in our conferences, which was amazing, but then they all scattered and did their own thing. And so I think here I felt I, I was literally living in the community center that we were building and seeing the kids every day and meeting the parents, and it was just so, And, and it was beginning, so the, the curve was so steep 'cause we were building something from nothing. So all of that was just too rewarding, challenging, engaging to, to leave.

Caroline 2 33:25

That's fascinating. Okay, so you're immersed in this. You're having this ability to really see the benefit of, you know, those children's lives and things like that. So what were some of the favorite things about that experience that you really liked?

Nell (2) 33:39

I mean, really mostly, you know, I certainly wasn't doing the work. I'm not a social worker. I don't speak Arabic. So for me, it really was about that team and being able to find... We, we found, we got introduced to the only family therapist in all of Palestine. She had done a Fulbright at one of the SUNY schools in the US and gotten trained in family therapy and, we were like, "You, come work with us." And she still runs the center now, a decade plus, plus later, which is so gratifying, and to her credit, it's not easy work. And so seeing that and then, you know, when we would hire teachers, seeing them get this role that was such an amazing opportunity and for them to really thrive and flourish and be able to change the kids' lives. I would say it was like the staff level that I was most engaged with and really rewarded by. And I pushed my boss to start an international volunteer program and bring American grad students over in the summers and that was really rewarding too just to see their own growth and everything they were able to contribute to the center and the challenges of that, you know, the cultural them navigating life in the West Bank and professional relationships with the Palestinian staff and all of that. But I think those were really the highlights was like seeing that professional development as much as the kids and parents like obviously that was so amazing to hear and watch kids progress and grow out of bedwetting or even more dire mental health stuff that they really did come out of. But I felt like my contribution to that was attracting and supporting these teachers more than the direct service.

Caroline 2 35:18

Your experience of having been in a place where it was like you're just literally a number making money, not getting support in your own development I'm sure played a part in how you were designing the experience for this staff to be

Nell (2) 35:33

A thousand

Caroline 2 35:33

not only help down, but also help themselves grow in the process

Nell (2) 35:38

A thousand percent. No, that's good, good, connecting the dots. That was definitely part of my influence subconsciously and very much explicitly as well

Caroline 2 35:47

And then what happened?

Nell (2) 35:49

So I still-- I never lost the curiosity about the private sector to really make sure... You know, the nonprofit work was, was certainly impactful and amazing, and, and building the whole organization felt more impactful 'cause we could make so many choices. But I still was like, "Okay, this is still a very small part of GDP. I-if we wanna actually look at changing the system, I wanna go upstream and, and just out into broader impact that the private sector has." And so I found a program that was executive, and so it was kind of appropriate for now I was four or five years older and had kind of aged out of full-time MBA programs. But it also was a joint program between Columbia in New York and London Business School in London. And so it kind of fit my international. At this point, We had just staff on the ground in the West Bank. And so, I was going back a bit to the US to kind of do fundraising and partnership work back home. And so I could kind of go to DC, then New York, and then London for school, and then the West Bank, and that became kind of my cycle for two years which was phenomenal and really eye-opening and stretched my globalness even further and actually interestingly kind of brought me back to New York. You know, I had never worked in the US as an adult. I had really left college and been abroad for those ten years. So that was my first kind of dip back into the US context

Caroline 2 37:13

And then after that amazing educational experience with all this, you know, 10 years of working abroad, then what did you choose to do at that next transition?

Nell (2) 37:26

So I thought the kind of logical career move would be To, get a job in New York. I had mostly decided that I wanted to work in New York for a while and had an apartment. And I applied for a handful of things. I was working with a coach, thanks to Columbia. And but I, if we're being honest, I don't think there was anything I really want... There were a few things I was excited about that I didn't get. And, then, you know, just kind of realized that I was maybe unemployable at that point or, or didn't wanna be employable. and so I started a company. I was doing some consulting and so that was kind of helping pay rent and keep me, you know, above water. But I really saw this opportunity. You know, my classmates who all were coming from Google and Goldman and São Paulo's National Bank and the Russian train system and these very, you know, high-powered folks, they were so intrigued and, like, famished for that specific one-on-one sense of impact that I had had in my decade before school. And I was like, "Okay. Well, it's not all sunshine and roses over there. And, like, you don't... You're a banker. You're a lawyer. You're a marketing guy. Like, you don't necessarily know how to slot into the nonprofit system. Like, you're not a social worker, so, you know? But that's not to say you can't have impact. And so the company I started was training about impact and purpose and, like, what does impact really look like, not just in the nonprofit space, but across the economy. And what is your thing? What do you care about and want to do and need in your career? And then how do we match that? And so we had a consulting practice as well, so that people could not only reflect and think and learn, but also practice and do a project. It was awesome. It was such a cool kind of hybrid model and opportunity. And so I ran that for ten years. We were anywhere from two to fourteen staff at any given time, and we had anywhere from six to thirty fellows at any given time in our training program and in those consulting projects. yeah, and it was phenomenal. I mean, it was so cool to kind of see people... Again, my interest and passion really is on, like, the worker as much as the impact. Like, the projects we were doing were great, helping Goodwill to optimize their pricing and supply chain and helping a huge financial firm to start a social responsibility practice. And, you know, we were doing cool work, but I loved the fellows. Like, seeing them transform and understand how they could have impact and have a professional private sector career was just really rewarding for me. and ten years later, we didn't really ever find replicable product market fit. Like, it was tough. Every year was a struggle of like, "Okay, who are the clients this year, and can they pay 'cause they're nonprofits?" So I wasn't paying myself anywhere near a market salary that I could have or should have made had I had a job. And I was working like a maniac. So COVID is what kind of forced the issue and made me see, you know, we had to stop our in-person programs and then what was really left, and that was kind of the moment of reckoning of like, I think it's been a really good run, but we didn't quite reach escape velocity to, to create something that's sustainable.

Caroline 2 40:44

Gotcha. Okay, so COVID. So you're seeing, again, you're seeing this impact your ability to help other people spread their impact even further, ......supporting their growth, and yet, yeah, when you're trying to focus on nonprofits, there's not a lot of money available to pay for the training, although the need is definitely there. Okay, so you shut that down, or what happened?

Nell (2) 41:09

Shut it down

Caroline 2 41:11

and then what? Now it's COVID,

Nell (2) 41:14

now it's COVID, so my immediate move was to write a book, to kind of pull the learnings of that and, and the, the teachings, you know, what h- we had refined over this ten years, into a book, and that was a kind of satisfying catharsis project as much as anything. I love writing and so that was a very natural outlet. I self-published it, and honestly, once it came out, didn't... I, I kind of got bestseller on Amazon, which if you've talked to other authors, you know that that's kind of a winnable game. It's very specific, persistent, text and email campaigns, and you get your people in twenty-four hours, and you get bestseller and you know, turns out that wasn't all that satisfying. but it was satisfying to have the book out in the world, and it made me realize, I was at a, book marketing conference, and I was seeing authors on stage speaking, and I was like, "Aha, And I too now love to be on stage because I'm so passionate about what I have to say, and I have seen it change lives and help people navigate careers, and so I wanna be a speaker. Because I'm an education addict, you might have been following all these various degrees that I've woven through the last twenty years, I did a very intensive speaker training program with like, you know, Shakespearean actors to teach stage performance. At some point, the speech that I was writing became a book proposal, and so now I signed an agent last fall, and I'm working on that book proposal with that agent. And yeah, so this is like kind of the second inning of this third decade of work as what I'm calling a subtraction activist. You know, the last decade was all about kind of that integration of, of impact plus profit and wellbeing and, you know, a kind of holistic happy success. And this decade is all about, yes, holistic and 3D, i.e. my name, me, we, world, all the goals have to fit together. And if you do too much in those three dimensions, it's still too much, and it's actually not only not impactful, it can be dangerous to yourself and to the people around you. And so we need to subtract and do less,

Caroline 2 43:32

Had you experienced the too much and danger to yourself with all of those things, of all of your giving, giving, giving on behalf of others? And, "Yes, I'll do this. Yes, yes, sure, I'll help you. Okay, awesome. Be my fellow. You don't have money? Sure, okay, come on over anyway." 'cause even from your, your earliest foundation, your mom was giving you a foot massage, and you're having your big day, and yet you're taking time for wellness.

Caroline 44:01

I

Caroline 2 44:01

can imagine that part of your passion for this, okay, now let's take away from some of the doing. Tell me a little bit more about ......your personal experience of how that manifested or came about in, in, you.

Nell (2) 44:15

So the early burnouts and lessons were around exactly that, of kind of giving, giving, giving. It's for the mission, more work. It's about the children. They need this so much. And as a result of that overwork, I decided not to go to my dad's funeral Which was a tough one. And I blew up my first marriage. That didn't-- I, I didn't show up enough in that relationship to keep that going. So that was the root of the like me, we world, right? I had been so world-focused, like let me save these children, which is really not a helpful approach for anyone to take. So ......that was kind of the me, we world that I got in that first decade. And so the second decade was like, okay, now we do need the meditation. I do need the physical fitness. I do need the mindfulness, But you're right, my mom should have... That was implanted in me. I just forgot for a little while. And at near-- Right after I closed my company and was kind of in that book-writing next phase, I was really aligned. I was honoring... You know, I had the meditation practice. I was excited about some weight training I was doing and kind of that physical piece. Had my second marriage, was really happy and healthy, and I had these stepkids that were this awesome new adventure. And work that I was super excited by and still feeling very impactful, right? Still had that world purpose. So it's a summer day. I'm just back from retreat, so I'm like so lit up and, you know, happy and inspired and I'm driving to the trainer. It's Friday. It's summer. Life is good. It's busy. I have guests arriving that afternoon. I have work to finish after trainer, and I'm driving, and I'm rehearsing, "Okay, how do I do this, and when do I do this?" And the board call and the walk and the exercise and prepare for the guests. Caroline, I looked down at my phone, didn't even touch it. Not that I don't, because guilty ......of that. Looked down at my phone for a split second on a sharp turn that I drive every day and go head-on into a twenty-ton landscaping truck

Caroline 2 46:08

Oh, wow

Caroline 46:08

wow

Nell (2) 46:10

Car's totaled Somehow we all walk away. The guys were, you know, 10 feet above me in their truck cab, and so they were okay. I had a really well-made German car, and I was okay, totally okay. But that was the lesson of like, "Okay, you're aligned. Good job. That's step one, but you're doing too much, and it could have killed you or someone else around you, and that's really not okay." So that was the dawn of subtraction

Caroline 2 46:38

Uh-huh. How terrifying in, in that, in that actual moment. Did it immediately hit you, or you're just, like, in shock and you're like, "Now what? I'm late," and but, you know... Or, like, h- how does... Walk me through The those first moments and then when did it dawn on you, "Okay, it really is too much, and now I... And not I know this, I have this opportunity, I'm still here. What do I wanna do with it?"

Nell (2) 47:03

Yeah. The immediate lesson was the presence, right? It was pretty immediately obvious to me the irony of the fact that in every workshop, in every talk, in every webinar that I give, I do 60 seconds of presencing and breathing to get present. And yet, in my real life or my mundane life or whatever we call kind of the in-between stuff of moving from event to event, I was so distracted that I could have killed somebody. And it was like, okay, that's an incongruousness. That is not okay. And then you know, it's been two years, so the learnings obviously have kind of metabolized and, and clarified, especially as I'm writing now so much about them. But, Pretty clearly, the takeaway was, okay, well, I can't be present if I'm trying to do all of this. That's just impossible. And so if I want to improve something and, and get more aligned and more congruent and present all the time, not just when I'm on stage, I'm gonna have to remove some things because you can only improve things when there's available capacity

Caroline 48:18

Hmm.

Nell (2) 48:19

on the calendar, right, in all the ways. And so that was the aha of like, right, some stuff has to go

Caroline 2 48:27

Thank you so much for sharing that. Okay, so ......now you're a subtraction activist. You have a book ......in the works. I'm pretty sure I, I recently saw a LinkedIn posting, or maybe it was an email, or maybe it was both, about a TEDx that you just did. what can we look forward to? tell a little bit about, about, about that.

Nell (2) 48:48

Yeah. So I was on, the TEDx San Diego main stage a week ago today, which is crazy, after like four months of intense preparation as anybody who has seen or done or been part of any TEDx anywhere knows, it's a really fabulously rigorous preparation to, to put on those events. And it went so well. It was so rewarding. I put so much into it and got so much back from the audience and the other speakers and the organizers. I think San Diego is editing as we speak, and it'll go off to TED Global in the next few days, and then it's in their hands. They have total authority over the title and the final edits and all of that, and then it will come out, and I will be shouting it from the rooftops, so you will not miss it.

Caroline 2 49:34

So now aside from speaking and aside from writing this book, are you working with people one-on-one in this moment? Or how does that, how do people find you? How do they work with you?

Nell (2) 49:45

Yeah. So right now, not really. I am working with people through my Substack, which is kind of my little subtraction laboratory, and so I write about once a week and then do a video about once a week as well, really just living out this subtraction practice of my own and of some clients that I'm working with and some readers who are just really engaging and, and trying it out. It's a very simple practice, and it's not easy. It is so counter to everything we've been taught and rewarded and everything that is coming at us so loudly on social media and mainstream media and historical ideas about success that it's really hard to, to build this subtraction muscle to counter our addition muscle, which is also important, right? We're not-- We're-- I'm not resigning. We're not giving up ambition. There's a lot of work to do, and so it's not about kind of, a four-hour workweek or early retirement or anything. It's about a more intense, focused, sustainable, impactful way of moving through the world. So stay tuned. I, I hope and think that as the book project, you know, hopefully gets full this fall and then launched really two years after that with a lot of writing for me in the meantime. What I love to do is coaching with horses, and so I have partners

Caroline 2 51:09

Oh, like I do have the note about

Nell (2) 51:10

I know.

Caroline 2 51:11

Yes.

Nell (2) 51:11

Where are the

Caroline 2 51:12

cool. So horses, your friend invites you to be part of this thing. If your mom could drive, you do that, and, and you stayed with it, and you love it, and now wait, what? You do stuff with hor- Yeah.

Nell (2) 51:23

Yeah. So that was another little COVID adventure that I didn't mention. I, I really was kind of divinely led to this woman who lives in Santa Fe and is, in my opinion, one of the absolute most skilled and ethical and deeply thoughtful practitioners of equine-assisted coaching, or people call it different things. We're not therapists, so it's not therapy, which you might hear about. It is coaching, but with horses, and it is very magical work. It is really transformational for people, I, I think largely because it's non-verbal and the horses are so wise. They have fifty-six million years. They've been around forty times longer than humans, right? So if we're like one-year-old babies trying to figure out how to survive in this situation, they are forty and have a heck of a lot of experience and wisdom and, strategy really for getting along as individuals, as a herd, and as a species. So they've got a lot to teach, and it's really fun work. And, you know, spoiler, one of their most powerful lessons is about energy conservation. They are prey animals, and so every step they take, every shake of their head is a reduction in their ability to escape a predator. And so not because they have a great coach or because they got in a scary car accident, but because of evolution, they know not to do things that don't matter, not to spend too much effort on things that don't matter. And so they teach that really beautifully and elegantly in our horse sessions. .So I, I see and hope that in the next few years I will have more time and energy to either slot that into other people's retreats that they're running or to run my own at Partners. I, I work with herds in Italy, which is amazing, and here in Montana, and in the New York area for people who are there, and then Santa Fe. So that's on the horizon. That, that's when I'll get back to direct work with, with individuals and teams.

Caroline 2 53:22

That's so fascinating. Okay, and so I have to ask, from this vantage point now, how do you define authentic success

Nell (2) 53:31

So it's certainly three D, right? It's, it's this kind of simultaneous investment and attention to me, my holistic wellbeing, which means physical, intellectual, mental, spiritual, like all the dimensions of me. It's we, my team or clients or colleagues, right? Whatever my professional situation looks like, and my personal we, my family, chosen family, blood family, married family, all of that. And then world, so that impact piece in a very specific way though, right? Not saving the Amazon, not ending racism, not curing cancer, but like, my specific part of that, which for me is spreading subtraction and helping the helpers not burn out and fry themselves so that they can continue to help. So that, that three D-ness really matters. And then for me it's growth. It's really important that I'm learning and changing and developing and advancing, not necessarily linearly but in some way that continues to feel dynamic and fresh because the world is changing so much these days. I think it's so important to kind of, to keep up with that and to benefit from those changes and evolutions and to serve in a way that is still kind of real and up to date.

Caroline 2 54:49

That is so, so beautiful. Nell, thank you so much for all of your time, for sharing more about your journey and your new message of subtraction. I'm so excited to watch the TEDx talk. When the book comes out, look me back up. We'll, we'll... We can do a, we can do a follow-up to help with those promotion efforts. But I just am so grateful for your wisdom, ......for your experience, for your authenticity, and for just sharing so much about you and your journey. Thank you so, so very much. I can't wait for your next success

Nell (2) 55:24

Thank you so much, Caroline. Really appreciate the conversation.

55:27

Thanks for listening to Your Next Success. And remember, authentic success is yours to define and includes aligning your career to support the life you want