An Executive Team: Sara & Alison

I am thrilled to introduce an amazing  Bridging the Gap pairing making a guest appearance on my blog: Sara Harvey, COO of the Chopra Center and her Executive Assistant, Alison Smith. These two incredible ladies work together to truly change lives and bring people into a space of listening to your soul and discovering your life’s purpose! Reciprocal Mentorship at it’s finest.

Sara Harvey:

When two professional women, who are well matched, work together for 3 years, they form a relationship that goes beyond the job.  They confide in one another.  They laugh at the same memories.  They lift each other up by celebrating their respective wins and they lean on each other when the going gets tough.

Alison, my assistant and millennial extraordinaire, has taught me that graciousness has nothing to do with age – that grace comes from within.  From the moment we first met she had an elegance about her that I knew I would want to emulate.

All of the best relationships are symbiotic and my relationship with Alison is no exception.  We know each other strengths and weaknesses and look for opportunities to help the other expand and grow.  She lightens my load helping to bring forth the best parts of myself. I help her to navigate new opportunities and tap into her wisdom and inner knowingness.  She shows me how valuable it is to depend on someone when my initial instinct is to do it myself.

As women the best we can do for each other is to see ourselves in each other, share our experiences, share our successes (and failures) and bring out the best in one another.

Alison Smith:

I grew up a creative and free-spirited child. I was an artist. I told everyone. Around age 15 I got my first job and quickly decided being an “artist” was going to get me nowhere and I slowly tucked my creativity away and never uttered the word again. I manipulated and controlled my career trajectory based upon societal expectations. I moved up quickly – but my lack of self-awareness,

I manipulated and controlled my career trajectory based upon societal expectations. I moved up quickly – but my lack of self-awareness, urgency, and discontentment led me down a path of ego-based decisions and put me in a job where I hit my lowest point. I wasn’t an artist, I was a fool.

By a happy chain of events, I left that job and started working for Sara, a COO of a company founded in spirituality. Sara is a transparent and fair leader and I immediately wanted to impress her and show her what I was capable of in a work environment. Unbeknownst to me, Sara already knew what I could do, and she was ready to help me grow me in ways I had tucked away long ago. Sara is never afraid of vulnerability, to share her own experiences and to be a mirror during hard situations; never telling you what to do, just showing you what could be done in a conscious way. Sara explained life is a series of events and choices and none of them are wrong because they’re all getting you to where you’re supposed to be.

I came to her as an adult, but she watched me grow into a woman and with her encouragement, re-discover myself and most importantly accept myself. She showed me no one is perfect, we all work hard and do our best, sometimes we succeed and sometimes we fail, but what’s most important is that we have to trust. Trust the universal plan and most importantly trust ourselves. Our inner child already knows. I am an artist. Now I tell everyone.

Allison’s lovely designs can be found on IG!