Episode 6

Myisha Gatson

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Season 1

The Business of Caring with Myisha Gatson

Welcome to All Hands, a podcast where C-suite leaders talk about how smart HR and people strategy is good business strategy. In this episode, our host, Katelin Holloway talks with Myisha Gatson, Founder & CEO of Pearl Long Term Care Solutions and Senior Democracy Fellow at the NAACP about how to know when you’ve built the right team, what it’s like working in the healthcare space during COVID-19, and how she uses her faith to help guide her decision making process.

“I've always wanted everywhere I worked to be a place I want enjoyed going to, in addition to making change. Those two things are really important and a big part of that because I'm a people person is the people I work with, do I enjoy working with them? Do we have fun together while also accomplishing some really great stuff?”


Welcome to ALL HANDS by Lattice, where we believe that People Strategy IS Business Strategy. I’m your host -- Katelin Holloway. For the last decade, I’ve been a People & Culture executive at some of the internet’s most beloved startups, but my fascination with building true people-first cultures started many, many years ago. From film to tech (and a few interesting layovers in between), the one common denominator remains: I am most passionate about enabling people through belonging to create beautiful, innovative products.

On All Hands, I talk with CEOs and other c-level leaders about how being a "people first" company is a strategic advantage. Join us while we chat with these top leaders about how a “people first” approach isn’t just good for people -- it’s good for business too.

[Music fades out]


In this episode, we’re chatting with the unstoppable Myisha Gatson, CEO and Founder of Pearl Long Term Care Solutions and current Democracy Fellow at the NAACP.

Since the day I met Myisha, her center of being has been deeply rooted in advocacy. She has dedicated her career to combating disparities and injustice, ensuring that all people have access to quality health care. She’s held seats at some of the most progressive organizations impacting healthcare in our country today: the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Black AIDS Institute, Amnesty International and others.

Recently launching her startup Pearl, Myisha has created a model that solves one of the biggest problems in the senior housing industry: affordable access. Pearl maximizes occupancy through care-driven, economical choices -- creating mutually beneficial relationships between providers and those seeking care.

Named for not just one -- but both of her grandmothers -- Pearl is the culmination of a beautifully rich and interesting journey for Myisha.

Katelin Holloway:  Myisha, welcome to All-Hands.

Myisha Gatson:  Thank you for having me, Katelin. I'm so excited to be here.

Katelin Holloway: I've been looking forward to this for a very long time. I really am grateful for you taking the time to chat with our audience today. So now my first question for you, this is going to be a really, really hard one for ya. Do you remember the year we met?

Myisha Gatson:  So that depends. Were you at Claudia Landine before Brookside?

Katelin Holloway: Nope.

Myisha Gatson: So then it was sixth grade.

Katelin Holloway:  Oh, my God, it was sixth grade.

Myisha Gatson:  It was sixth grade because we were the first class,  that ever went to that school and it started at sixth grade. We were the first graduating class at eighth grade. So yeah, that's when we met.

Katelin Holloway:  We were what, 11, 12 years old. Tag Team was back again. Sisters had voices. Our girl Whitney would always, always love us. We crushed on Boyz II Men. We crushed. It's super hard. But you were my first friend in a new school and a new life after my parents had just split. They had gone through a divorce and I moved into a totally new neighborhood in Stockton and you were there, you were my best friend. You were also my advocate, which is why this journey and sharing your journey was so important. You had a huge impact on them and the way that I viewed the world and the way that I learned to view the world over those, those precious middle school years that are so challenging, so, so hard but so shaping, I think. I say this earnestly, I honestly don't know what I would have done without you there part of my life and how lovely and emotional.

Myisha Gatson:  I do not keep tissues by the computer Katelin.

Katelin Holloway: I apologize. I think that one thing that, even when we were young, that was so present in you is this notion of just a familiarity. You were an incredibly warm-- you're a people person and what better quality to have in a leader than to be someone who is compassionate and cares about people around them. Whether it's on the bike path in seventh grade or flash forward, you know, dang near 25 years later, here we are, right?  I was so proud, inspired to learn about all of the things that you had done and accomplished since we had seen eachother in high school.

I think that there was no doubt that you would be the most successful coming out of our little Stockton, California class. Really understanding and hearing from your point of view, all of the things that you had done, the work that you had done, the depths of the work that you had done in the health care world, it is even further, no surprise that you decided to go ahead and do something with it. Not just go ahead and try to change systems from the inside, but really then go out and create something new. So tell me a little bit about Pearl.

Myisha Gatson: Yeah. Pearl, my company was born out of kind of a personal pain point. So my grandmother, Pearl Moore, who was my mom's mom and Katelin, you mentioned it before I had two grandmothers named Pearl. So my dad's mom, both of them at the end of their lives, suffered from diabetes and both lost their mobility due to diabetes related complications. When my dad's mom lost her mobility. She had just sold her house in Richmond, and bought a new, like newer house in Suison City. It had wider hallways and, you know, easier for it to be outfitted to accommodate her disability.

Then we had a family member, his husband was in the service and who had some, you know, minor medical training that could be her home health care person and, and care for her. Our family was very blessed and lucky to have some people we trusted that were family members and my grandmother could get the care and the comfort of her home. Fast forward, 10 plus years later, my grandmother, Pearl Moore, who, you know, raise me for part of my life. So I was really close to her and my grandfather, Pastor RD Moore, they shaped a lot of who I am, my social justice kind of lens.

They were just top notch Christians and wanting to make a difference in the community. They instilled that in me, just really early on. So my grandmother, Pearl Moore, when she got sick at the end of her life and lost her mobility, like complete loss of mobility, her home, that's a story in and of itself, but she had stayed in South side of Stockton. For those of you who aren't from Stockton, the South side is where you looked at move from, graduate to the North side, so you're safe. They were beacons of the community and they decided to stay in it and not leave it, even though they could afford a kind of quote, unquote, "more safe environment".So fast forward to when my grandmother lost her mobility, my grandfather had already passed a few years before, so she's living in the house alone.

And we had tried, you know, kind of having family members in there to help, but her house was older. We couldn't put in the same kind of accommodations in her home that could help her around. She needed pretty much around the clock care. That became cost prohibitive because anytime we're needing someone to give her medical care 24 hours a day, it actually ended up being more expensive than putting her in a facility.

So my family turned to me as a help because of my experience in working on Medicare and Medicaid and S-Chip, they knew that I could probably help them kind of navigate the process. So I was happy to do so.

And It just became very clear that the processes that are in place are not really meant to make this easy. When you're looking to do something in a short turnaround time, and it's not time sensitive.  I mean, like it's just so hard and at a time when the families have high stress.

I'm thinking of at the same time that I'm helping my family go through this, I kind of recruited to work on implementing the Affordable Care Act. So it was kind of this weird kind of a junction of different things happening in my life where I was just like, "Huh? If we're making it this easy for people to sign up for healthcare online, then there has to be a better way for families in my situation that are looking to help their loved one find longterm care."

After that, the idea for Pearl Longterm Care Solutions was born and I got the balls to do it in 2018. That's a big one. I had been kind of denying my entrepreneurial spirit because I felt particularly after I had my son, I felt really risk averse. I felt like I needed to be in a job that it was more quote, unquote, secure, that I needed benefits. I had a child, I needed to be responsible. I had left. I had done two years of independent consulting and I had decided to go back to a traditional job. Despite the fact that I made more money and I liked my independence and I did it because I was just gotta go. I can't depend on the hustle and grind. I have a baby now.
It took me the balls until 2018 after having two kids, but having a husband that believed in me and believed in this concept that you have to do this, like the world needs what you're doing. So I was blessed in that regards. It's been a wild ride for these last few years, but, good nonetheless.

Katelin Holloway: Where are you in the life cycle of the company? Do you have full time employees yet? Talk to me a little bit about where you are in the business life cycle.

Myisha Gatson: Sure. Yeah, we have full time employees. I have my C-suite all set. Um, which is, it happened like early 2020, like January. I have a CTO, I have a COO, Chief of strategy, a Chief of Business and Sales development and a Chief marketing officer. We're looking to bring on some additional support on the executive side, as well as some operational support. We're outsourcing our tech builds. We're working with a company called Velvitech to do our tech build that'll be supervised by our CTO and our COO.

Katelin Holloway: Excellent. So how many full time employees does Pearl have? I don't mean to make you do math.

Myisha Gatson: I know. I know. I'm like, wait, because I haven't counted lately. We're actually in the middle of doing two more hires, so seven now, but next week that number would be probably closer to 10.

Katelin Holloway: Where are you in the actual business life cycle? Is Pearl in market just yet?

Myisha Gatson: No, but we plan on being in market with an NVP by the end of 2020. We're actually next week kicking off our tech build. We believe we'll have MP3(?) within three months and we have some providers lined up for a pilot. So what's important to us is that from the get go, we're building value on both sides. For both the longterm care providers, as well as the consumers who are looking to find care for themselves or their loved ones.

Like you said, it starts with culture, not just with once you bring on people, it starts with the kind of the brands you want to build with your company. I want the Pearl name to be synonymous with quality, ease, transparency that when you come on our site, you're not going to be stressed out. We'll be there right along the way with you every step of the way. The way I wanted to be there for my family, the way I wanted to be there for my grandmother. So we're going to extend the grace of Pearl to you when you join our Pearl family.

Katelin Holloway: And then internally, do you also think that the nature of your product being in care, I mean, the word care is in the name of your business. How does that impact or influence your care for your own team?

Myisha Gatson: Oh, it influences every piece of it. I've had many iterations of the team. The team that I have now is the right team. It took me a while to get there and understand. It's funny because some people that are on team now on were on previous iterations of the team earlier and came back around. It didn't matter what team it was, I was always very clear about these are the cultural things I want to put in place for the company. Really the same thing: transparency, trust and ease. Understanding that I'm a mother, I'm a wife before I'm a CEO. I'm also a full time student, sit on three boards. I mean, like we can go down the list, but I encourage everybody else to have balance that I don't actually give myself, but you know, that that's par for the course for me.

I said all that to say I've had about five different iterations of corporate retreats with these different teams. I made it a priority for us to do the cultural stuff versus the like tactical and logistical things first, because for me, you can't even conquer those other things if you haven't set out to create an appropriate and strong culture on what are expectations and how you interact with each other, expectations around how the work is done, and kind of graces. The team I recruited now, it's like having a team of seven Myishas. We're all type A, go getter, genius people that like we never stop. I can see my team, I can see their brains working. I'm like, "okay guys, I know I probably don't do this, but..." I literally spent 10 minutes in our team meeting right before this saying, "I need you guys to really like don't do anything Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, please. If you email me, I'm not responding." I said, "I know you're not going to listen, but okay at least set maybe just two hours in the morning and then give yourself the rest of the day." So just setting those and, you know.

And also, my team is diverse. I have folks that represent the LGBT community veterans community. I have a few women. I have a white man. I have few Black men. We're all over the board. We check all the boxes. We're actually in the process of getting our 8A certification for that very reason. It was intentional, but not intentional in the sense of I was looking for quality people. I wasn't looking for them to fit a prototype. It was gonna be a black person was going to fit this role or white person would fit that role. It was, "I want the right person for the right role for what we're looking to do and what we're looking to bring to the world." The result of that was a super diverse team and we're all the better because of it.


[Music up]

Right now, we’re seeing a lot of companies that didn’t pay attention to this factor early on. Much of corporate America is now on the defense-- trying to make up for years of exclusion. Hiring and nurturing a diverse team doesn’t happen overnight -- that’s why it was so important for Myisha from day one to have a diverse leadership team -- those flywheels will pay dividends as Pearl grows.

[Music fades out]

Myisha Gatson: I think that there's a lot of people that have good intentions, but they have not thought about the impact of their intentions because they don't have people who look like me in the room or people who look like other diverse populations.

Katelin Holloway: I actually want to go back a little bit. We talked earlier about how growing up, you have always been a people person. You have always been very, very people first in your relationships. You were the glue, you were the party mom, you were the one making sure everyone had the invite, and with staying safe and all of those, those good things that we needed as children, but, and because we were children, let's be clear.

But to translate that forward into your leadership style, how has being people first really shaped you the way you decided you wanted to lead, not just when you broke out to be an entrepreneur, but as you have been a manager and a leader within different organizations, how has any of that translated to your leadership style?

Myisha Gatson: I've been blessed to work on issues and in organizations that I wanted to work for. So what that meant for me is anytime that changed, I was looking to go somewhere else and I knew I'd be employable. But just to make that, to answer that more granularly I've always wanted everywhere I worked to be a place I want enjoyed going to, in addition to making change. Those two things are really important and a big part of that because I'm a people person is the people I work with, do I enjoy working with them? Do we have fun together while also accomplishing some really great stuff? Up until the point, one of those things changed, I stayed there and then it'd be like, "okay, time to peace out, where's the next thing?" I knew coming in just kind of analyzing my journey up until Pearl that it wasn't good enough to just have one or the other. It wasn't good enough to work on an issue that was amazing and be around people who are assholes.

I mean, I don't want to be around assholes just because I'm working on a really good thing, right? It's not good to work with people who are just nice, but can't get shit done. Neither of those two are great. I realized coming into Pearl, I needed people were going to be like, execution was number one, but also number one, was you being a person I want to be around. I was hoping that was what I had built. Cause I was enjoying my team a lot and they were giving me every indication they were enjoying it.

Katelin Holloway: You had mentioned that, that you maybe had gone through a few different iterations of your current team. Were there any learnings in that process for you? Coming out the other side, what are some of those common denominators or the things that were really salient for you to get to this lovely, steady state that you have now?

Myisha Gatson: As a startup founder, you're really protective of your ideas. So you tend to go to the people you trust and are closest to you first with your idea and think that they're the right team for you. So that was my first inclination and it was the wrong one because of the closeness of those people for various reasons, it just didn't work out. It's just really tough to survive. You either are going to survive on the business side or your friendship's going to survive.

I don't think both make it intact during the really early hard days of a startup. So I commend my friends though that I didn't lose any friends in this process because, at the end of the day, they kind of stepped back on their own. It felt a certain way in the moment I understood the decision.  It was actually the right decision, not only for the friendship, but also on my side for the business side, because I wasn't getting what I needed. It ended up being in most cases, a very mutual decision. That caused me to learn a lot about myself ---  also not just about myself, but how I'm perceived because I realized that my perception, because everyone knew that this was so important to me. It was tied to me honoring my grandmothers' legacy. Even when I said, "Hey, it's okay. You can wait," or whatever, they just felt pressure. They also just didn't feel empowered to step into what I needed in that moment.

I've given two years of my life. I've been working for somebody like my career was on the up. Why isn't this moving?" What became clear to me was that God had to move some people out that were not meant to be a part of this. He had to bring me the right team. And then as soon as I had the right team in place, it's like rocket launch.

I would just encourage you at other founders, if you find yourself in that same place, like, just pray about it. I know that sounds really broad, but like, it's not a formal prayer. I had a real come to Jesus moment with Jesus. I was like, "listen, you said," cause I was frustrated. I was frustrated, but He wants us to come, you know, come in that manner of just being honest and open and transparent and you know, he was like, "okay, okay daughter, I got you. Let me just like, make some moves and make it clear to you and here you go." Having that breakthrough really loosened up like the right resources for us to be in this place right now.
I think if I hadn't gotten to that point and if I hadn't gotten the right people in the right seats and the people were in the wrong seats, either in the right seats or out, we wouldn't have the momentum we have going right now.

Katelin Holloway: Let's talk a little bit about about current affairs. So in addition to everything else that's going on, we're also currently living through a global pandemic, that has lasted far longer than I think anyone anticipated. How has the state of the union impacted your business? How has it impacted your team? How have you had to show up as a leader for your team? Either from a product side or from, a heart side, a human side?

Myisha Gatson: Whew.. I'll start with the Pearl side of like just our business. Before COVID-19, if you had a family member who needed longterm care, like let's say you're looking at three providers. Let's use three of the big ones: maybe you're looking at Brookdale, maybe you're looking at Sunrise, maybe you're looking at Genesis.

You would have to go to each of those facilities, fill out their paperwork, go on their tours. Have their care level assessment done at each of those facilities. That's before you even really might even know whether they can meet your loved one's needs, whether their services were in your family's budget, all these different things. So it was very time consuming, very manual.

So then hit COVID-19 and senior housing facilities become the kind of epicenter pretty quickly of how these cases are kind of growing, right? So many of these facilities just like close their doors to outside visitors. What that also meant is they closed their doors to new residents, and their occupancies sharply declined and their revenues as a result also sharply decline.

It kind of created this perfect storm of where, everything we were already planning to do in terms of just making it seamless. If you don't want to talk to a human, you don't have to through this whole process until you like actually move in your loved one. But if you do in any place, along the way, we're also here for you.

So that was one piece of it. Now later on, COVID-19, and then, George Floyd's death, Black Lives Matter, and this larger conversation around equity and justice. You're talking to a freedom fighter who read Roots in the fifth grade and has been a member of the NAACP most of my life serve. I'm sitting there like reading the tea leaves and being like, "Oh my gosh,". We've had these windows open before, right? When Philando Castile happened. When Sandra Bland happened. When Trayvon Martin happened. It was a window, but it closed pretty quickly and it closed in a way that I don't think we were able to truly have the real conversation. This time feels different.


[Music up]

Katelin: As Myisha and I were chatting, she started telling me about an incident that happened to her on Juneteenth. Her family was about to go on vacation, and the night before she went to a big box retailer to get some last minute things for their rental. She ended up with multiple baskets of things -- kids toys, bed sheets, air mattresses -- you name it. But it was getting late. The store was about to close, and sales associates were still ringing her up and helping her get a few items on her list.

[Music fades out]


Myisha Gatson: All of a sudden this manager goes over the PA and she goes "to the one customer that's left in the store. The store closed at 8:30. You need to either leave the store or check out. You need to leave now. The store closed at 8:30. We have contractors here." She's blasting me, just me. “We have contractors here that have been here since 8:30 and they can't start as long as you're in the store.”

And so I get to the front, and there's a, another man, like an assistant manager. And I'm like, "who just made that, made that announcement because I don't like to spend money anywhere where I'm not treated with dignity and respect." Despite the fact that I've probably amassed, you know, like $2,000 worth of things that I won't be able to get it from anywhere else, I'm more than happy to walk away from this cart if I can't talk to this person and they don't issue an apology.  

And so the manager comes out and the whole time she's walking up, we closed at 8:30, we closed at 8:30, we closed at 8:30." Because she hears me talking to the other person and I'm just like, I couldn't see where she was coming from so I didn't know like who it was and much to my chagrin, it was a Black woman who was the manager.

I say, "Hey, so I'm just trying to get this stuff. I had the person who was ringing me up was still ringing me up when I went to get this. She said it was okay for me to go." She was like, "Well, we have contractors coming and dah, dah, dah," and I was like, "Ma'am, I understand that.

However, I don't appreciate how you spoke to me on the intercom, and how you're speaking to me now as a paying customer. So she goes, "Well, I apologize, but I'm going to get the cops to escort you out."

I said, "SIS, really on Juneteenth. You a black woman store manager of this store is going to call the cops on another black woman, just because I'm trying to buy stuff from your store?" She was already gone out the door, already gone out the door. Long story short, the cop did not come in. They realized that she was just completely irrational. I'm just lucky like that the cops didn't come in and escalate and nothing happened. My kids were in the car when this happened, watching a movie on the DVD player. I'm sitting there thinking, "Oh my gosh, I can't believe this is happening right now." I got my stuff, I checked out. It was just all the staff and most of them were white. They just were like hanging their heads and like shaking their heads in shame like I can't believe this happened. The cashier, she walked me out to help me cause I had two baskets and she basically was like, "you know, I'm so sorry you had to go through that".

So basically, my team and I, we talked about the incident and I was just like, this is such a done deaf thing to happen, corporation to corporation. This was right after, earlier in that day, we had issued a press release that Pearl was making Juneteenth a holiday, and that we're calling on all U.S. corporations, all States, the federal government and all US-based VC firms to make Juneteenth the holiday. So then this happens and I'm like, "okay, I think we should maybe put this out what just happened because it really just speaks to the moment and the sensitivities that we need to take." My whole thing was, I'm going to make sure that this company knows about it. I'm also going to like, make sure that the circumstances, like the story minus the company's name is out there because there's some changes happen in multiple ways.

My chief strategy officer made a really astute point. He said, The narrative is not just, you know, kind of Black Lives Matter, don't call the police on Black people", but it's really a business imperative. First you need to create an environment where your leaders feel empowered to provide a level of customer service to customers no matter what, because he was like, "I'm sure as a manager, she's worked her way up to get this job and the decision she made to be rude to you was "I need to get this customer out because I'm going to hear it from corporate because I have these, these contractors were on the clock". So she was rude to me for that, but it should never be a dichotomous situation. You should know the difference that you can care for a customer because corporate will have your back because having that customer be there is that important to them. So it becomes a business decision, not a color decision.

Then take the other lens of depending on your brand, any number of your customers look like me. Right? So then even if you're just saying at a high level, all customers should be treated with dignity and respect. And Oh, by the way, a good portion of those customers are going to be Black and Brown, and if you escalate these situations, like you're perpetuating something that'll be bad for our brand and bad for our business. So that's a conversation, not just about race, but it's a business conversation. If you can't monetize on a business deal because of the impact that your kind of leadership practices are creating, then we have a problem. I think we see this in so many different industries. So I wanted to create a broader conversation around that. So, you know, now it's like Pearl meets social justice.

Katelin Holloway: I think that that's so salient. I mean, there was a slow movement in, you know, just the employer branding a world prior to, to we'll just call it 2020 and the weight that that bears. But there was this movement from an employer branding standpoint where companies can no longer not take a moral stance on issues, on things. It's a moral imperative to show up and do the right thing because otherwise you will limit your ability to hire top talent. You will limit your ability to attract customers. The business case for diversity, equity and inclusion has been around. But I think that this really, you know, the kind of confluence of events has really put us in a position to face it head on. I think that as founders and as business leaders, to embrace that, to truly embrace that is what is necessary now. And is honestly, what will will help us make change and not in small strides in this next chapter, in the post 2020 world, whatever that may look like. Alright. Rapid fire. I'm going to hit you with these questions and I want you to answer them as quickly as possible. Don't overthink it. Are you ready?

Myisha Gatson: Yeah.

Katelin Holloway: Okay, good. First question, total segue: is a hotdog a sandwich?

Myisha Gatson: No.

Katelin Holloway: You almost thought about it. I appreciate that you didn't

Myisha Gatson: I was like "a sandwich is this way, a hot dog, no.

Katelin Holloway: Zoom or phone call?

Myisha Gatson: Zoom.

Katelin Holloway: Best Brandy song of all time.

Myisha Gatson: Ooh. You got me! I'm just going to go with, I Wanna Be Down, hand movements, you know, cause I'm doing them totally. I love Brandy. She's one of my favorites. Oh my gosh.

Katelin Holloway: Okay. Okay. That was the warmup. The last few questions here won't be so easy. So company culture: family, or sports team?

Myisha Gatson: Oh, my Whoa.

Katelin Holloway: I told you they wouldn't be easy. You thought Brandy was hard.

Myisha Gatson: So I'm going to go ahead and say family because my company and my family are intertwined. So I get to cheat on that one.

Katelin Holloway: Yeah. It's fair. Next question. How do you know when you have the right people assembled to build something?

Myisha Gatson: It's not painful.

Katelin Holloway: Love that answer. It doesn't hurt. I love it. Well, last question of the rapid fire actually relates. When was the last time you wanted something so badly it hurt?

Myisha Gatson: Every day of my life.

Katelin Holloway: You are very deep feeler, very deep feeler.

Myisha Gatson: But every day of my life, something, yeah.

Katelin Holloway: I do believe that you, you were a deeply empathetic, compassionate person who has a lot of drive so that, that actually doesn't surprise me at all. Something I actually really appreciated about you. So in conclusion, one final question Myisha, what advice would you give to founders and people leaders out there trying to make sense of this moment in history? How can they use this opportunity to build a better organization in this next chapter?

Myisha Gatson: Yeah, I think, one is the main question or the word is try, right? Just do the best you can. Marshal your resources. We are all here at such a time as this. It's not an accident that we are in the positions of the seats that we're in right now in this moment. So use whatever your seat is to make the positive change that you want to make and you'll see it fall into place. I think when Pearl started really having the success is when I let go of the outcome when I said, "okay, maybe God's going to bless me, bless Pearl through some avenue that is not Pearl and I just need to let go of the outcome." I was holding so tightly onto it. I think when you just look around and just try to be the person and do the things that you want to come back to you

I used to be so tightly wed on "do unto others as you want them to do unto you." I had a one to one ratio. So it was like, if I was nice to Katelin, I expected Katelin to be nice to me. When I let that go, I'm just putting out positivity in the universe. I don't   need it to come back to me from the person I gave it to, but I know it's going to come right back to me in some way, shape, form, or fashion, whether it's personally, whether it's for my family, for my business. When I tell you I let go of those two things, my world flipped upside down and revved up more than I can catch up with it. I think if all of us were to do those things and just do, and remember love and grace that we get so much farther and so much faster together.

Katelin Holloway: Oh, I love that. I agree wholeheartedly. I think now is the time to be open and redefine and reprioritize. All of the things that we thought were precious, that this really has been a moment where we can step back and think a very, very long and hard about how we want to move forward. Um, So I, I am so grateful for you being on the show. I'm so grateful for you sharing your stories. I very much look forward to the next time we can catch up, but thank you so much Myisha.

Myisha Gatson: Thanks so much for having me. This was so, so great.


[Music]

Katelin Holloway VO:

And to you, the listener! Thanks so much for joining me on this week’s episode of All Hands, brought to you by Lattice. I’m your host, Katelin Holloway.
This episode was produced by Pod People: Rachael King, Eliza Lambert [AH-liza], and Samantha Gattsek [GATT-sic]. Special thanks to Annette Cardwell. Learn more about how Lattice can help your business stay people focused at Lattice DOT com or find us on Twitter @LatticeHQ. Don’t forget to subscribe to All Hands, wherever you get your podcasts.


Join us next time!


About the Guest

podcast guest

Myisha Gatson

Myisha M. Gatson is the Senior Director of Advocacy and Strategic Alliances for PhRMA. She brings more than 15 years of experience and expertise in health policy and public affairs to her role at PhRMA, where she builds collaborative partnerships and coordinates outreach to multicultural and LGBT communities.

She has dedicated her career to combating health disparities and ensuring that all people have access to quality medicine and care. Myisha delivers with expertise in strategic campaigns at local, state and national levels; community outreach and engagement; public policy and analysis; government relations and training and development.

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