Thank you to these fine folks who referred new attendees to the New Orleans Conference!
Brenna Worl Caitlin DuMars Jay Hartwig Carrie Martin Christina Gerome
Christina Heilig Tess Barsody Corban Nichols Dave Rozelle Dina Taher
Eric Mickelson Erin Flynn-Renner Heather Murray Jamie Herring Kathleen Wood
Kathryn Harris Kim Evans Missy McKinley Jillian Melton Nicole King-Smith
Nicole Marien Patrick Leonard Stacy Pedersen Stephen Gusman
Interested in Running for the ’26-’27 CHART Board of Directors? Email CHART’s President-Elect, Dr. Jennifer Belk White, Ed.D., at jenbelkwhite@gmail.com by May 15.
Welcome to Our New Silver Partners!
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PresidenTalks What We Focus On Grows
Before I bought my RAV4, I never really noticed them on the road. Driving home in my new wheels, suddenly, they were everywhere. Was I a trendsetter? (Only in my mind.) The truth is my purchase rewired my brain to notice something that had been there all along. This isn’t a coincidence or your phone’s algorithm at work. Our brains are wired to recognize patterns. When we look for something, we start to see it everywhere.
Try this: think about the color red. Close your eyes for 30 seconds and really focus on it – the richness, the warmth. Now open your eyes. POW! Red suddenly pops, doesn’t it? (I first tried this exercise in a Chipotle, and if you’ve ever been inside one, you know how well this worked for me.) Your change in perception comes from a change in focus.* What we focus on, we give energy to. That can work for us or against us. The brain can trap us into a cycle of reinforcing what’s wrong, or it can train itself to recognize opportunity and possibility. The brain is especially good at this when it is being challenged. Learning something new forces it to rewire, which may explain why new hires are often much more open to feedback and change than our most tenured crew. We can use this intentionally in training. One simple way is Active Recall Testing . Instead of saving quizzes for the end of a module or only testing what was just taught, try spacing quizzes throughout training and pulling from everything they’ve learned so far. This helps the brain practice retrieving information, not just reviewing it, making that knowledge easier to access when it matters. Recently, the CHART Board has been discussing how we strengthen the impact of membership. At the same time, my team was book clubbing Lessons from the Drive Thru .** The final chapter, “Be Like Sandi,” highlights our 1990 CHART President, Sandi Spivey. Seeing her influence still shaping leaders decades later was exactly the reminder my brain was primed to notice. It reinforced something I already knew but needed to see again: what we focus on grows. So let’s choose to focus on learning, impact, and the difference our work continues to make. *For more on this and so many other amazing lessons, check out The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor and Activate Your Power by Eitan Sharir. **Another great book recco with real-world stories: Lessons from the Drive Thru by Monica Rothgery CHART President Kelly McCutcheon
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