" I had to start trying to think beneath the questions: what are they really saying?" - Wanda J. Herndon
" I had to start trying to think beneath the questions: what are they really saying?" - Wanda J. Herndon
Wanda J. Herndon trained as a journalist, then spent forty years on the other side of the notebook. Dow. DuPont. Eleven years as Starbucks SVP of Global Communications while the company grew from 550 stores to more than 11,000.
Her curiosity starts with a middle child in Flint, Michigan, who wore out her siblings asking why. She describes learning, after being misquoted, to ask what a reporter is really asking. She calls listening a discipline she never mastered. And the question that carried her through divorce: what is this moment trying to teach me?
Crisis work as a puzzle solved with who, what, why, when, where, how. Mentoring as a two-way street. Why she always asked Howard Schultz why. Being the CEO of you. Owning Flint rather than letting others define it.
And her right now question: will we survive this chaos, and what can I do to help?
This Curated Questions episode can be found on all major platforms and at CuratedQuestions.com.
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Episode Notes
00:00 Welcome to Curated Questions
02:02 Meet Wanda Herndon
03:23 Career Moves and Independence
04:18 First Power of Why
05:22 Lifelong Learning Mindset
06:01 Answering Side Lessons
06:47 Listening and Silence Discipline
09:10 Starbucks Interview Wake Up
12:25 Parents and Early Curiosity
14:18 Great Migration Questions
15:53 Flint Roots and Rivalries
17:05 Divorce and Hard Lessons
19:40 Play Self Care and Rest
23:31 CEO of Me at Work
26:08 Curiosity in New Industries
29:31 Opening Paragraph of Chapter Entitled: Strength
31:56 A Mentor's Impact
36:32 Mentoring Culture Gap
37:25 Find Mentors Early
38:16 Earning Advocacy
39:06 Spotting High Performers
40:02 Handling Hypergrowth
41:06 Be The CEO Of You
43:03 Owning Flint Roots
45:31 Memoir Relevance Today
46:47 Crisis Questions Framework
48:58 Puzzle To Strategy
50:14 Internal Vs External Comms
51:59 Working With Howard Schultz
53:51 Hard Truths And Trust
56:55 Sisterhood And Community Care
01:00:35 Life in The Pacific Northwest
01:05:21 Chaos Now And Giving Back
Resources Mentioned
Orin Smith (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orin_C._Smith)
Nikki Giovanni (https://www.nikki-giovanni.com/)
Starbucks (https://www.starbucks.com/)
Audre Lorde (https://alp.org/about/audre)
Flint Michigan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint,_Michigan)
Howard Schultz (https://schultzfamilyfoundation.org/team-member/howard-schultz/)
Onward by Howard Schultz (https://a.co/d/0cG7QyPF)
Pour Your Heart Into It by Howard Schultz (https://a.co/d/00OhYP7W)
Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. (https://aka1908.com/)
Greater Seattle Chapter of The Links, Inc. (https://www.greaterseattlelinks.org/)
Wanda Herndon website (http://wcommgroup.com/)
Wanda Herndon on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/wandajherndon)
Wanda Herndon on Facebook (https://facebook.com/wandajherndon)
Wanda Herndon on Instagram (https://instagram.com/wandajherndon)
Producer Ben Ford (https://www.producerbenford.com/)
Beauty Pill (https://www.beautypill.com/)