From Deneen’s Desk

Why I Built This

I didn’t leave a career to start this. I started this while I still had the career.

In 2020, twenty years into AT&T, I launched Women of Color: An Intimate Conversation — initially a panel for an annual conference. Over the six years since, it’s gone through format changes, focus changes, more than one pivot, finding its way into what it is now.

I kept building it while I was still working — the last several years of that career spent inside Diversity & Inclusion, watching rooms change slowly, watching what it cost the women in them to keep showing up excellent. In 2022, after twenty-two years, I retired. And I kept building.

This year, I sharpened the focus again.

Not because the broader conversation stopped mattering — it doesn’t. But because I kept noticing who was actually showing up: Black women 50+, dreaming boldly and rarely being spoken to like it. Women with ambition still fully alive, wisdom nobody’s asking them for, and a next chapter they’re building on their own terms. That’s who the Dream Lifestyle™️ Collective is for — the framework I kept coming back to, Dream → Decide → Drive, finally given a proper home.

This blog is where I’ll write the parts that don’t fit neatly into an episode or a newsletter edition. The behind-the-scenes of six years of pivots. What I’m learning about culture, leadership, and legacy as I go. The occasional unfiltered thought I’m not ready to turn into content — just true.

If you’re building your own next chapter, on whatever terms and whatever timeline, I hope something here is useful to you.

Let’s get into it.

— Deneen