[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Two, Episode #5 – Donya Zimmerman, Former Lawyer, Business Development Consultant, Mediator, Entrepreneur, Community Engager
[powerpress]
Sometimes, you wind up with a problem you didn’t expect, because you weren’t paying attention to the right thing at the right time.
Instead, you were so focused on the wrong thing (thinking that it was the right thing to be focused on at the time) that you totally missed the problem staring you in the face.
Then, when the problem rears its ugly head (as problems often do), you are—well—blindsided—by what happens to you.
This happens to people, neighborhoods, societies, and cultures. And as of the summer of 2015, (and leading into more recent incidents in the fall) well, the only thing that we know for sure, is that blindsiding is happening more and more in our American culture.
Our guest today knows all about being blindsided by not paying attention.
Donya Zimmerman, former lawyer and current business consultant and mediator, ran her own law firm for a little while. But like many entrepreneurs, she became so focused on one area, that she completely neglected focusing on another area.
She is a native of Baltimore, Maryland, born and raised in the hardest of hard places. Donya is honest about her mistakes, her missteps, and her blindness in a way that is humorous, refreshing and—quite frankly—courageous.
Look, courage is more lacking than genius is in our fraying culture.
We laud the entrepreneur who cocks and crows about cashing out at a high valuation, or the one who makes his or her next round of seed funding, but we celebrate less failures and disappointments. We also celebrate less the culture that grinds the courage out of people and pulls them back into the bucket of mediocrity and accepting the status quo.
Donya’s trying to do better. She’s trying to avoid being blindsided again. And, much like her city, her state and her country, what she needs most is not our approbation, condemnation or our slings and arrows.
What she—and many others who try, fail and try again—needs is our grace, our forgiveness and our open hand of hope and help.
Connect with Donya via all the ways below:
Donya Zimmerman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dzbusconsultantandmediator
Family & Community Mediation and Business Consulting blog: https://dzimmerman36.wordpress.com/about/
Powerful Biz Woman on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PowerfulBizWoman
Family & Community Mediation and Business Consulting website: http://conflictresolutionandconsulting.com/
Family & Community Mediation and Business Consulting on Twitter: https://twitter.com/FACMBC
