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Diary Entries

May 1, 2004

Yesterday I volunteered to give up my seat for a ticket and had a free night in Memphis, TN. (In between one week of meetings on the east coast to a convention in Florida).

It happened to be the weekend of an annual music festival. Four stages in a park with different musical acts were playing all day long. I got downtown Memphis around midnight when it the festival was ending.

There happened to be a nice girl in my shuttle and she agreed to go down to the famous Beale Street where Elvis used to play. BB King has a restaurant/bar there too.

Today when I returned to the airport, I saw Dennis, a member of the Temptations. He was going to Birmingham, VA I believe. What an interesting night. I rented a taxi roundtrip to Mississpi’s Grand Casino. I didn’t stay long, but the drive was nice.

I’ve realized that when I travel alone, I am more apt to meet people and reach out, relate, visit and not be as skeptical of hidden agendas.

This trip has refreshed my sensibility that people are good.

By Trudy Sobocienski

My blog, "Beyond Leadership" is a creative place to share my personal feelings and thoughts while working in leadership roles for a variety of Alaska Native organizations, both for and not-for profit entities.

An incredible leader and mentor of mine once asked while we were in Washington, DC, "What happened to you between the ages of 7-10 that motivated you to serve in a native leadership capacity". I was struck by that poignant thought and as such, include actual entries from my mother and my diaries beginning in the early 1970's.

I enjoy sharing these excerpts because it captures the parallels she and I were experiencing throughout life, from two separate worldviews. Hers as a young mother of four and mine as her eldest child.
I have never came across a book on leadership that lays bare a leaders personal feelings, thoughts, hopes, fears and dreams they were experiencing.

So for me, my goal is two-fold:

1. Share the incredible life my parents created for my siblings and I growing up in remote Alaska; and,

2) Sharing my humanity, through my personal diaries and journals, while serving as the youngest-ever President/CEO for the Alaska Native Health Board.

There are passages that will include significant policy issues I was working on throughout my career and travels. There are many more passages that do not.

I cannot speak for my mom's passages, because I am reading them as I share them here, with you; with her permission of course.

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