Two-time Malone Grad Inspires with TEDx Talk

With the help of her BA in organizational business management and MA in organizational leadership, she became equipped with the knowledge and rhetoric to help develop tomorrow’s leaders. 

“Dr. Racine stressed in class the leader-follower diadic. It was everything that I believed; the leader becomes the follower, the follower becomes the leader, and it's a give and take of challenges, understanding, and growth. I totally bought into the idea,” said Grubbs. 

However, this was not what Grubbs always experienced in her professional life.

“I come from several different industries,” said Grubbs. “I bring an understanding of workplace culture everywhere I go, and so often leaders believe that the culture they inherit cannot be changed. That’s just not true. Leaders must make workplace culture a priority rather than an afterthought.”

Now, as Training and Development Manager for Columbus City Schools, Grubbs wants to foster professional and personal skills for leaders to take into their workplace. 

“I say all the time that professional development is personal development; these are not mutually exclusive - you need both. You can teach someone how to work a hammer and that’s great for the nail, but if you give someone a hammer and they don’t know how to talk to people, that hammer becomes dangerous,” said Grubbs. 

In her recent TEDx talk, Grubbs issues a challenge to all listening, drawing on much of her experience in class at Malone that has carried her further than she could have imagined.

“Don’t bully yourself into boundaries, push those limits. Dr. Racine said in the opening of his class that we’re going to graduate and he couldn’t wait to shake our hands as we crossed the stage, and when we call on him to write our letter for our doctoral program he couldn’t wait - and I thought no way,” said Grubbs. ‘But, now here I am pursuing my EdD at Youngstown State University because I was able to move those boundaries away and Dr. Racine put that vision in my head. He helped me to see it. I encourage everyone to see something bigger and different.” 

The challenge of Grubbs’ TEDx talk is just that - envision something bigger than common workplace culture and create an environment for all to thrive.