An ode to Mom ...
Today my mom was chosen to receive the Leadership Medal for the City of Greensboro. To say that I'm proud of her is an understatement ... since she spends so much of the time getting out of the spotlight, I'm mostly happy that the spotlight will shine on her and the rest of the city will recognize her for the amazing accomplishments she's generated in a city long known for its ability to sit still.
Here's the nominaton:
We are proud to nominate Sue Polinsky for the 2006 Leadership Greensboro Leadership Medal. We believe that if you understand the authentic servant leadership that Sue practices, you will truly appreciate the sphere of Sue's behind-the-scenes leadership that she's practiced on behalf of the Greensboro and the Metro-Triad community for almost three decades.
You just have to understand how Sue works.
Most people recognize her name, although they often fail to recognize her in person. She smiles every time Jim Melvin searches for her nametag at meetings yet knows how he relies on her to keep the foundation's domain name safe. She urges Ed Williams and John Robinson to keep her name out of the paper for any of the civic projects she undertakes so that she can pass them off to the “young 'uns,” as she called synerG members who just received credit for putting free WiFi onto South Elm Street. You might not know that Sue put GoTriad, Time Warner, and synerG together with funding in place so she could step quietly out of the ensuing publicity.
You might also not know that Sue, who calls herself a “terrible fundraiser,” raised $25,000 to initiate ConvergeSouth, the first southeastern 2-day web creativity meeting at A&T University in October, 2005. That meeting brought national and international attention to Greensboro's bloggers, and more importantly, raised the nation's consciousness as to the tech-savvy folks available-for jobs-in Greensboro. ConvergeSouth was the first ethnically-diverse bloggercon in the United States and she pulled it off, almost single-handedly, but with the expertise of those who said they didn't have the time or the interest to help. You just don't realize you're saying “yes” to all that work when Sue tells you what your job is. “Get the best people and let them do what they do best,” she quotes her father as always telling her.
You don't have to know what a blog is to understand that companies seeking communities with creative character now know that Greensboro, its newspaper, and its colleges have annual tech meetings, a combination of co-conspirators found nowhere else in the US. With 2006's ConvergeSouth focusing on hands-on videoblogging, audiocasting, and NORGs - those are national news organizations - we have another techno-first coming to town in October and Sue is once again chairing the event. By the way, some funders agreed to support the conference again only if Sue were in charge.
Sue brings players together, sets up the diverse team of skills, attitudes, styles, and funding, and then lets others play nicely with each other until there's a problem and she steps in only long enough to handle it and insist that credit be given only to the team she built. It was that way with the WWII 60th Commemoration that Leadership Greensboro put together a couple of years ago. Sue didn't attend too many meetings. Instead, she talked to Jack Shields, found out what he needed; then simply did it, quietly and behind-the-scenes.
Her style? Sue helps choose who should be interviewed at the press conference but she rarely attends them. If there, she's behind the camera making sure everyone's picture gets on the Web page.
For a New York transplant, Sue mastered the Southern art of compromise while sticking to her figurative guns in a critical field: there is no team, no project, no undertaking she works on that isn't culturally, racially, and ethnically diverse. Working with the Guilford Education Alliance and Handycapable to help solve Greensboro's digital divide, Sue met with the groups' leaders and made specific additions to the list to make the program more representative of Greensboro. “After all,” she's often heard asking, “We keep hearing how committees and boards are reflective of the community. It's not so hard to reflect and be a mirror but you also have to be a lamp and shine out the way it can be.” The mirror and the lamp metaphor is the staple of her thinking.
Be a MIRROR - REFLECT what's going on here. But be a LAMP - and SHINE on new people and new ideas.
Sue probably has the best understanding of herself of anyone we know. TechTriad, the company she founded, is the oldest Triad technology business continuously owned by a woman. “I am comfortable in my own skin,” she says all the time, yet knows that many others are not, especially those who are new to leadership roles. Those folks always get invited to a unique “Sue lunch,” usually held in her special conference room (also known as her kitchen), and are handed possibility after possibility to see which generates the spark she has to find in a new potential leader's eyes before she can push that person toward center stage. I know. She's done it to me.
No one has gotten as much practical technology to more nonprofits, small businesses, and foundations than has TechTriad's “Designs 123” division, which is dedicated solely to getting entrepreneurial startups, small businesses, nonprofits and foundations online with low fees until they grow. She finds 'used-but-still-good' computers for nonprofits, unearths software discounts for groups who don't realize they were eligible and she works, often for free, to get these groups through the maze of regulations that 501(c)(3)s face.
“It's good for Greensboro,” is her only comment when asked why she gives her time freely.
It's common knowledge through the geek community that if you need a job, get in touch with Sue. Companies who are hiring contact her because her silent network usually finds suitable local candidates. That's another of her passions that she gives back: hire local.
Even as she works for Greensboro, her company has grown every year since its inception and now employs or contracts with 5 programmers, 3 Web designers, 1 Graphic Designer and several part-time college students - all from the Metro-Triad area.
I snuck a look at her PDA “to-do” lists.
* Upgrade the Nussbaum Center conference room to a video-conferencing facility with donations, fundraising, and gifts with the help of a friend whose business this is.
* Remind Skip Moore that the nonprofit incubator is still a good idea and she has some thoughts on how that could be visioned and built.
* Get more free wireless Internet across all of downtown Greensboro and the rest of the city.
* Bring a new public art and economic opportunity to downtown Greensboro and get John Bakane, Nancy Doll, Dabney Sanders, Scott Richardson, Jim Boitnott, and the Creative Character committee of Action Greensboro to help.
Servant leadership is one of those hard-to-define terms that we often use in Leadership Greensboro activities and projects although we rarely see examples of it in action with people who really don't want anything other than to give back, to offer more, or to move good things along because they're good for Greensboro. The test of a leader is not her accomplishment list; rather, it's the quantity and quality of the lives she's improved. Our nomination for Sue Polinsky is made precisely because she is the quiet servant leader who nurtures others to do the same good things that she does, usually quietly and out of the limelight. Did you know that Sue:
* Mentored synerG silently to get the RFP written and grant funding for wireless internet in Center City Park?
* Helped raise more than $40,000 for Community Theatre by providing all the technology needed for Triad Idol for free?
* Sends at least one person every year to Leadership Greensboro and subsidizes them if they can't afford the tuition - even though they don't work for her company?
* Organized the Leadership Greensboro 25th Anniversary celebration just a few weeks after 9/11 and at the same time she was putting together the TechSummit conference?
* Brought the Red Hat Academy to Guilford County Schools - the first certification-track Red Hat Academy anywhere in the world?
We are proud to nominate Sue Polinsky for the Leadership Greensboro Annual Leadership Medal Award. I'm thrilled to list the names of all the nominators.
Here's the nominaton:
We are proud to nominate Sue Polinsky for the 2006 Leadership Greensboro Leadership Medal. We believe that if you understand the authentic servant leadership that Sue practices, you will truly appreciate the sphere of Sue's behind-the-scenes leadership that she's practiced on behalf of the Greensboro and the Metro-Triad community for almost three decades.
You just have to understand how Sue works.
Most people recognize her name, although they often fail to recognize her in person. She smiles every time Jim Melvin searches for her nametag at meetings yet knows how he relies on her to keep the foundation's domain name safe. She urges Ed Williams and John Robinson to keep her name out of the paper for any of the civic projects she undertakes so that she can pass them off to the “young 'uns,” as she called synerG members who just received credit for putting free WiFi onto South Elm Street. You might not know that Sue put GoTriad, Time Warner, and synerG together with funding in place so she could step quietly out of the ensuing publicity.
You might also not know that Sue, who calls herself a “terrible fundraiser,” raised $25,000 to initiate ConvergeSouth, the first southeastern 2-day web creativity meeting at A&T University in October, 2005. That meeting brought national and international attention to Greensboro's bloggers, and more importantly, raised the nation's consciousness as to the tech-savvy folks available-for jobs-in Greensboro. ConvergeSouth was the first ethnically-diverse bloggercon in the United States and she pulled it off, almost single-handedly, but with the expertise of those who said they didn't have the time or the interest to help. You just don't realize you're saying “yes” to all that work when Sue tells you what your job is. “Get the best people and let them do what they do best,” she quotes her father as always telling her.
You don't have to know what a blog is to understand that companies seeking communities with creative character now know that Greensboro, its newspaper, and its colleges have annual tech meetings, a combination of co-conspirators found nowhere else in the US. With 2006's ConvergeSouth focusing on hands-on videoblogging, audiocasting, and NORGs - those are national news organizations - we have another techno-first coming to town in October and Sue is once again chairing the event. By the way, some funders agreed to support the conference again only if Sue were in charge.
Sue brings players together, sets up the diverse team of skills, attitudes, styles, and funding, and then lets others play nicely with each other until there's a problem and she steps in only long enough to handle it and insist that credit be given only to the team she built. It was that way with the WWII 60th Commemoration that Leadership Greensboro put together a couple of years ago. Sue didn't attend too many meetings. Instead, she talked to Jack Shields, found out what he needed; then simply did it, quietly and behind-the-scenes.
Her style? Sue helps choose who should be interviewed at the press conference but she rarely attends them. If there, she's behind the camera making sure everyone's picture gets on the Web page.
For a New York transplant, Sue mastered the Southern art of compromise while sticking to her figurative guns in a critical field: there is no team, no project, no undertaking she works on that isn't culturally, racially, and ethnically diverse. Working with the Guilford Education Alliance and Handycapable to help solve Greensboro's digital divide, Sue met with the groups' leaders and made specific additions to the list to make the program more representative of Greensboro. “After all,” she's often heard asking, “We keep hearing how committees and boards are reflective of the community. It's not so hard to reflect and be a mirror but you also have to be a lamp and shine out the way it can be.” The mirror and the lamp metaphor is the staple of her thinking.
Be a MIRROR - REFLECT what's going on here. But be a LAMP - and SHINE on new people and new ideas.
Sue probably has the best understanding of herself of anyone we know. TechTriad, the company she founded, is the oldest Triad technology business continuously owned by a woman. “I am comfortable in my own skin,” she says all the time, yet knows that many others are not, especially those who are new to leadership roles. Those folks always get invited to a unique “Sue lunch,” usually held in her special conference room (also known as her kitchen), and are handed possibility after possibility to see which generates the spark she has to find in a new potential leader's eyes before she can push that person toward center stage. I know. She's done it to me.
No one has gotten as much practical technology to more nonprofits, small businesses, and foundations than has TechTriad's “Designs 123” division, which is dedicated solely to getting entrepreneurial startups, small businesses, nonprofits and foundations online with low fees until they grow. She finds 'used-but-still-good' computers for nonprofits, unearths software discounts for groups who don't realize they were eligible and she works, often for free, to get these groups through the maze of regulations that 501(c)(3)s face.
“It's good for Greensboro,” is her only comment when asked why she gives her time freely.
It's common knowledge through the geek community that if you need a job, get in touch with Sue. Companies who are hiring contact her because her silent network usually finds suitable local candidates. That's another of her passions that she gives back: hire local.
Even as she works for Greensboro, her company has grown every year since its inception and now employs or contracts with 5 programmers, 3 Web designers, 1 Graphic Designer and several part-time college students - all from the Metro-Triad area.
I snuck a look at her PDA “to-do” lists.
* Upgrade the Nussbaum Center conference room to a video-conferencing facility with donations, fundraising, and gifts with the help of a friend whose business this is.
* Remind Skip Moore that the nonprofit incubator is still a good idea and she has some thoughts on how that could be visioned and built.
* Get more free wireless Internet across all of downtown Greensboro and the rest of the city.
* Bring a new public art and economic opportunity to downtown Greensboro and get John Bakane, Nancy Doll, Dabney Sanders, Scott Richardson, Jim Boitnott, and the Creative Character committee of Action Greensboro to help.
Servant leadership is one of those hard-to-define terms that we often use in Leadership Greensboro activities and projects although we rarely see examples of it in action with people who really don't want anything other than to give back, to offer more, or to move good things along because they're good for Greensboro. The test of a leader is not her accomplishment list; rather, it's the quantity and quality of the lives she's improved. Our nomination for Sue Polinsky is made precisely because she is the quiet servant leader who nurtures others to do the same good things that she does, usually quietly and out of the limelight. Did you know that Sue:
* Mentored synerG silently to get the RFP written and grant funding for wireless internet in Center City Park?
* Helped raise more than $40,000 for Community Theatre by providing all the technology needed for Triad Idol for free?
* Sends at least one person every year to Leadership Greensboro and subsidizes them if they can't afford the tuition - even though they don't work for her company?
* Organized the Leadership Greensboro 25th Anniversary celebration just a few weeks after 9/11 and at the same time she was putting together the TechSummit conference?
* Brought the Red Hat Academy to Guilford County Schools - the first certification-track Red Hat Academy anywhere in the world?
We are proud to nominate Sue Polinsky for the Leadership Greensboro Annual Leadership Medal Award. I'm thrilled to list the names of all the nominators.