The Moment That Changed How I Lead — And Why I’m Grateful for It This Week

There’s a difference between something that changes how you think and something that changes how you lead.

This year did both.

 

I’ve spent my career in Democratic strategy. I know “the rules”: raise money, hoard it, spend heavy on paid media at the end. That’s the playbook.

And for a while, I assumed that’s what my campaign for Congress would look like too.

 

Then the year shifted under my feet.

 

Redistricting chaos, an incumbent with institutional backing, and a political moment that demanded something more grounded than consultants and TV ads forced an honest reckoning: the traditional path wasn’t going to work here—not if I wanted to run a campaign that meant something.

 

So I made the hardest leadership decision I’ve made yet:

I pivoted the entire campaign to field-first.

Before I had the money.

Before I had the infrastructure.

Before anyone “thought” it was the right move.

 

It wasn’t a romantic decision. It was clarity.

And it radicalized me—in the truest sense of the word: back to the root.

 

Knocking thousands of doors has shown me how disconnected our politics has become from the people it claims to serve. I’ve met Hoosiers who haven’t spoken to an elected official in twenty years. Folks who feel abandoned by a party that asks for their vote but not their voice. And elders who say no one running for office has ever knocked on their door.

 

This pivot taught me that leadership is not about holding the plan. It’s about letting go of the plan when the moment calls for it.

 

And this Thanksgiving, I’m grateful for that.

 

Because if fundraising had come easy, I may have run a top-down campaign.

Instead, this shift forced me into a bottom-up movement—one rooted in truth, people, belonging, and the belief that democracy starts at the door, not on a screen.

 

Every good thing about this campaign—the community we’re building, the volunteers emerging from every corner of the district, the conversations reshaping what’s possible—came because of that pivot.

 

I’m thankful, this week especially, for the reminder that the right decisions rarely feel comfortable at the beginning.

But they always lead you where you’re supposed to go.