Blog - joanne tombrakos -

A Digital-First Approach To Personal Branding Is No Longer Optional

here’s how to make it work for you I’ve advocated a digital-first approach to personal branding for a long time. Getting your brand right online first forces you to articulate who you are, what you do, why you do it, and where you want to go. You can’t wing it online, in the same manner, […]

Here Comes The Sun: My First Steps Towards Life Post COVID-19

I remember when leaving my apartment and walking the three blocks it takes to get to the PATH train was routine. It required no thought, only muscle memory to slide my metro card through the turnstile and descend the giant escalator to the platform where I would wait for the next train. But not today. […]

My First Father’s Day Without My Father

I knew something was different that first November when my birthday rolled around and there was no card in the mail addressed “To my one and only daughter, xoxo, Daddy.” Then there was Thanksgiving which marked my first attempt to cook a turkey, the one he was not there to carve. And that first Christmas when […]

In Order To Fix Our Problem, We Have to Acknowledge We Have One

There’s been a problem with my mother’s freezer for awhile. She knew it. I knew it. My brother knew it. Not everything was freezing equally and ice kept accumulating on the thermostat in the back. None of us wanted to deal with it. Not even my mother who in her younger days would have called […]

When Trying To Stay Optimistic Is Like Playing A Game of Whack-a-Mole

Every day when I call my mother, not more than a few minutes into the conversation she laments about what is going on in this country. She grew up during the Great Depression, lost her mother at the start of WWll, and worked at the Fairchild Plant in NY helping the war effort. After she […]

My Four Best Practices For Making New Friends On LinkedIn

I love talking to strangers and I love making new friends. Before the pandemic, WFH, and wearing a mask in public, it would usually begin with some point of connection that engages a conversation. That might be the current state of the weather, how long it’s taking to get served at Starbucks or how much […]