“See the need, meet the need.” ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ When I was 17 years old, I saw John Norlin speak at Mt. Adams Leadership Camp and it changed the way I thought about my role in my school and in the world. I learned that leadership wasn’t about a position or title, but about my capacity to discover and understand the needs of people around me and how I chose to work to meet those needs with compassion, creativity, and consistency. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ I spent 7 years after college speaking at over 600 schools trying to share some of the messages that John and Mt. Adams taught me. In 2016, after John had been teaching leadership for over a decade in the classroom, we decided to work together to build content that could scale beyond our individual messages. We knew that there was (and still is) a need for curricula in schools that cultivate the skills traditional classes don’t — how to navigate our emotions, engage others with empathy, communicate with courage, and all the many competencies that help people thrive and connect in the current reality of our world. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ It’s been a beautiful, challenging, and humbling 5 years. Making it onto the @incmagazine Inc. 500 fastest-growing private companies list has never been the aim of this work — but it is a really incredible byproduct of working hard alongside passionate, purposeful teammates to see the needs and meet the needs of educators and students globally. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Please know that, amidst a lot of divisiveness and darkness in the foreground of the world, Kindness is growing persistently in the background. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ We shape the culture of tomorrow by what we teach today. I’m proud of the whole @characterstrong team for helping to #makekindnessnormal.