Values Day and a mini honeymoon

Hi everyone! Hope you had a wonderful month of August. For today’s post I wanted to share my experience at the Chicago office’s Values Day.

Once a year, the whole firm spends a day celebrating our values. Our event this year took place earlier this summer at the Chicago History Museum, and our theme was on creating an unparalleled environment for exceptional people. We had a wonderful guest speaker—Iron Chef Stephanie Izard. (If you haven’t heard of her, she’s the first female winner of the Bravo television show Top Chef.) Stephanie spoke about passion—passion for work, how to find the right people to work with, and how to inspire people at work. She was a fantastic and fun speaker.

Top Chef Stephanie Izard (right) at the Chicago office Values Day event

After the plenary session, we spent the rest of the day giving back to our community. We put together back-to-school care packages for Chicago youth and wrote encouraging and inspiring notes to them to read as they start school. It’s fun to think that they are now opening our packages and reading our notes—which I hope are making a positive difference for some of the children!

At the end of June, Brian and I flew to Palm Springs for a mini honeymoon in the desert. We went to Joshua Tree National Park (see photo above), which was beautiful; played some golf; and enjoyed some spa time. We still haven’t figured out what our big honeymoon will be, but you know I love to travel, so it will be exciting!

Next time I’ll share more about the trip to Taiwan that I mentioned in my last post.

Britta