Nonprofit Leadership Lessons From a Theater Kid: Toby Myles & Ramona Baker on Finding Her Voice

Yeah.

Well, I mean, I'm glad you said that.

And, but the thing is like, I, I find that to be so much more true than I ever realized before I started doing this podcast.

Like I always felt that was true about my story because I started, I was a phys ed major and, played volleyball in college, but then I dropped out.

Cause really I was only there to play volleyball.

And so I dabbled in a few other things, went back from another semester and majored in hotel motel management, but I didn't care about that.

I just wanted to play volleyball.

And then I took off and went to Israel for six months to visit my sister who was there at the time.

And when I came back, I was like, I need to like, it's time for me to grow up and actually like focus on something.

And yeah, It was that same sister that said, well, why don't you take an art class? You've always been super creative.

And then I did.

And that led to enrolling full time and becoming a graphic designer.

And that was like the first part of my career.

But after that, I was I was in marketing.

I was in fitness and now, you know, copywriting and then storytelling.

So I, too, look at my career.

the line, you know, and it's just, it's kind of all over the place.

And I think Steve Jobs, and I always butcher this quote, but he talks about that you can't connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect the dots looking backwards.

So do you feel like even though it seems like a scribble that you were always just ready for the next right thing, like you were always faced with the next opportunity, and it made sense to you at the time? Yeah.

um it didn't make sense to me at the time but now i can connect the dots as i look back

um

i um one of the things i had the opportunity to do uh along the way was um to speak, to do public speaking internationally.

So it was a program that the State Department had in conjunction with the Kennedy Center, and someone at the Kennedy Center had heard me speak.

And so I spent several weeks in China one year and the Soviet Union one year, Australia, Northern Ireland, a variety of different cultures to talk about the arts and nonprofits in the U.S., which is different from the way they appear in other countries.

And it was mind expanding.