Acknowledgments

This book would not have been possible without the many people who partnered with us to make it happen.

First and foremost, once again, thank you to our dear friend Roger Gans for your partnership and brilliance in making our work soar. We appreciate all the support you have given and work you have done from the inception of this project to make it a reality— all while writing a dissertation! Thank you from our hearts for your collaboration, availability, and brilliance—always a treat. Tara Whittle, thank you for your insights and dedication to helping us bring forth our best. It is always good to have a Jeopardy contestant on the team. And a special thanks to Katelyn Kasmier for keeping us organized as we have gone through the many drafts of this book and the late nights and marathon writing sessions.

Thank you, Deborah Dagit and Harold L. Yoh III, for writing the forewords for this book. You are friends and leaders who are living interaction safety as you bring diversity, inclusion, and safer work environments to organizations. We are honored to know you and to get to hang out with you.

Mickey Bradley and Monica Biggs, two The Kaleel Jamison Consulting Group, Inc. consultants, your insights and experience enhanced the book because of your thinking, wealth of consulting experience, and honest feedback. Thank you!

We thank our many colleagues and friends who added their thinking, responded to our many questions and surveys about the book, and were a continued source of support and caring for us throughout this process—Glenn Bates, Kathy Clements, Dennis DaRos, Katelyn Kasmier, Daniel Levine, David Levine, Pauline Kamen Miller, Cindy Szadokierski, Andrew Van Breugel, Alison VanDerVolgen, Ilene Wasserman, and Harold L. Yoh III. Everyone helped make the book better, and we hope we did justice to your suggestions. We would also like to thank the many people who helped us select the title for this book. Your contributions are greatly appreciated. And a big thank-you goes to the Berrett-Koehler reviewers, who provided lengthy feedback to move the initial draft to new levels—Valerie Andres, Mike McNair, Joseph A. Webb, and Leigh Wilkinson.

Safe Enough to Soar would not be a book without our longtime editor, Steve Piersanti. Thank you, Steve, for your brilliance in assisting us to find the core of our message, challenging us as an ally, and believing in us and our work in the world. A big thank-you goes to Jeevan Sivasubramaniam for the many roles you played in the creation of this book. Once again you have brought energy to the book with your wonderful artwork. We love the bean people. Thanks for bringing them to life again. Thanks, Edward Wade, for managing the layout and many other aspects of this book. And thank you, Mimi Heft, for bringing your creativity to our manuscript and bringing it to life through your layout and artistic touch. We also appreciate María Jesús Aguiló, Shabnam Banerjee-McFarland, Leslie Crandell, Michael Crowley, Kristen Frantz, Catherine Lengronne, Liz McKellar, Melody Negron, Anders Renee, Courtney Schonfeld, Katie Sheehan, Johanna Vondeling, Lasell Whipple, and Chloe Wong. And to the whole Berrett-Koehler team: you are great, and we love working with you. The Berrett-Koehler community of staff and authors is a special and precious community, and we are so very proud to be part of it for this, our fourth book.

And, finally, thank you to everyone in The Kaleel Jamison Consulting Group, Inc. Business Village. You inspire us, nudge us to be better, and support us at every step on every journey. We do our founder, who started our company forty-eight years ago, proud. We feel Kaleel’s smile as we work together to make this a better world for all. And, last and most important, thanks to our clients, both current and past. You always teach us. We are so honored and proud to partner with you to make your organizations and this world a better place. We learn so much from you every day.

To all of those we mentioned and those we may have forgotten: thank you for enabling us to soar— and to achieve something that we could not have done without you.