Mother Cabrini, Creating a Vision for An Empire of Hope

I had the pleasure of watching a new movie (yes, at a theater like we did in the olden days) called Cabrini. Growing up Catholic, I was in grade school when Elizabeth Ann Seton was canonized as the first American-born Saint. But I didn’t know much about America’s first Saint, Italian immigrant Francesca Xavier Cabrini.  […]

The Marketing Personality

Working in healthcare for the past 25 years has been interesting psychologically. When working with clinical people, I’ve marveled at how neatly they tend to self-select into certain specialties. Native personalities tend to steer us down career paths if we are lucky. I’ve discovered that it is best to harness those innate God-given talents when […]

The Blockbuster Effect

The Blockbuster Effect defined: when we trust that what is working now will always work. Everyone remembers those stores that rented thousands of movies housed in blue boxes. They seemed to be on every corner, yet this once-booming company filed for bankruptcy in 2010.  As a marketing professional, I’ve seen many examples of this seismic fizzle […]

Fundamentals of Marketing, Know Thy Audience

Just this week, a major consumer brand experienced the same sort of nosedive as “New Coke.” For those younger than my 57 years, New Coke was a massive error I learned about in depth during graduate school…an error that cost Coke millions in 1985. Fast forward to 2023,  Bud Light selects transgender Dylan Mulvaney as […]

Honors Convocation

Although more than 3 decades have passed, my experience at St. Vincent College continues to impact my life in many ways and my prayer is that each of you will share this same experience. I was in the first class of women to graduate from SVC. I transferred from William & Mary where I was […]

Life in Rural Mississippi

This New Year, I’m on the farm worked by my husband’s family since the early 1800s. They settled this area before it was a state, when those willing to move to the outer edge of what was still unsettled frontier. Through land grants bestowed for Revolutionary and War of 1812 service, they staked their claim […]

I Will Not Get the COVID-19 Vaccine

Why? Because it’s not actually a vaccine, it is a type of gene therapy called mRNA and it’s still in clinical trial—making half of Americans the biggest mass experiment on society ever conducted. As a parent of two children with an incurable disease (Friedrich’s Ataxia, a rare form of Muscular Dystrophy) I’m well aware of […]

Addiction in Franklin, Tennessee

I’m crying tonight as I write this. A night out for pizza has become another lesson in the hideous tragedy of addiction. I live in a beautiful small town, Franklin, Tennessee, that I’ve often described as a real-life Hallmark movie. And yet, our children are dying. I’m tired of it. The stories, the babies left […]

Amanda Cecconi invited to join Nashville Business Journal Leadership Trust

Blog Hero: Amanda Cecconi

Franklin, TN (February 5, 2020) — Amanda Cecconi, Founder and Managing Partner of Punching Nun Group, has been invited to join Nashville Business Journal Leadership Trust, an exclusive community for influential business leaders, executives and entrepreneurs in Middle Tennessee. Amanda was chosen for membership by the Nashville Business Journal Leadership Trust Selection Committee due to her […]

Vision Without Execution is Hallucination

Factors to Close the Execution Gap Thomas Edison’s quote, uttered more than 100 years ago, rings true across organizations of all sizes in the year 2013. In fact, in a wobbly economy where entrepreneurial activity is on the rise, execution is even more critical for success and survival. There was a time when strategic planning […]