https://www.catherinealonzo.com/

Catherine Alonzo, Phoenix, AZ (2026)

01/09/2026

“Hustle has a shelf life.” – words from a business leader that have been echoing in my head lately.

It sounds obvious when you hear it – it did [email protected] said it on my podcast.

And yet it is still so easy to forget. Many leaders (especially women, maybe?) feel stretched thin, running on an internal operating system that hasn’t been updated in years. And I’ve been there too.

The feeling may show up in your body before your mind lets you admit it.

We treat exhaustion as evidence of commitment.
We think we’ll be okay if we can just make it to bedtime.
We forget that clarity rarely comes from chaos.

But here’s the truth Quinn laid out:
You cannot create meaningful, sustainable impact from a depleted place.

I know this to be true. I see it in the changemakers I work alongside. It’s advice I give to other people. I’m sure I’ve written multiple LinkedIn posts on the same topic.

And yet, I find it very difficult to put into practice. I’m still overcommitted, stretched too thin, and saying yes to too many things.

I don’t know the answer (though I highly recommend Quinn’s community for exploring important questions like this one) but here’s something I do know:

It’s okay to be imperfect.

Knowing your purpose - your personal “why” - is a radical tool. And after that, it’s okay to use trial and error. To successfully streamline in some places and overcommit in others. To have good and bad weeks/ months/years.

Perfection is not the goal; awareness is. And it’s never a bad time to consider:

✨ What needs an update in your work right now?
✨ And where might slowing down help you move forward faster?

01/08/2026

Discussing Emotional Labor by Rose Hackman, and how it impacted our viewpoint and leadership.

Emotional labor is work.

It takes time, skill, and energy…and it’s often invisible and uncompensated.
Naming it matters. Acknowledging it can change how we lead, how we manage, and how we understand our own work.

🎧 Hear this conversation (and more standout book insights) on the podcast.
https://youtu.be/3dUSxV8aBkI

01/07/2026

Here is what I believe will matter most in 2026:

2025 was difficult for too many communities and the organizations that serve them.

Human rights were attacked.
Funding tightened.
Public attention splintered.
Technology evolved faster than any of us could track.
And global uncertainty continued to ripple into every community.

The new year doesn’t wipe away these challenges. But I do think there are important reasons to feel hopeful:

1. Collaboration becomes a communication strategy.
Not just in programs, but in messaging. People want to see alignment, not isolation, and orgs that show they’re a part of a wider movement (rather than a lone voice) will earn more trust and visibility.

2. Everyday changemakers move into the spotlight.
Institutions alone are no longer the most persuasive messengers — people trust people. As a result, community members, participants, volunteers, and those with lived experience are becoming the most credible voices, with authenticity consistently outperforming polish.

3. Local impact becomes the strongest proof point.
In 2026, the most successful campaigns won’t claim to solve everything. Instead they’ll show how change feels in one specific place, family, or community.

4. AI transforms how we work, but not why we work.
It can increase efficiency, improve consistency, and free up time, ut it cannot replace context, equity, creativity, or trust.

The best communicators in 2026 will use AI to support the human parts of the work, rather than replacing them altogether.

The changemakers who lead next year will be the ones who communicate with clarity, collaboration, and an unwavering belief in what people can do together.

People are not inspired by what is broken.
They are inspired by what is being built.

01/05/2026

A healthy mind needs a healthy media diet.

Growing up, I was taught that being informed is part of being a responsible human.

You read the news. You keep up with the world. You stay on top of what is going on.
For most of my life, I’ve carried that belief: to help the world you have to know what’s going on in the world.

But lately, I’ve started to question that assumption.
Because knowing more doesn’t always mean understanding more.
And quite often recently, it just makes me feel worse.

Scrolling the news these days can feel a little like eating junk food…
It gives a quick hit of stimulation, but leaves me feeling heavy and drained.

So I’ve been trying something new: a media nutrition plan.
It’s about being intentional. Balancing what I take in, and choosing sources that nourish rather than exhaust.

For every breaking headline, I seek out stories of progress.
For every crisis update, I look for examples of communities making change.
It’s not about tuning out.
It’s about tuning in wisely.

Educating myself while protecting my mental and emotional health.
Because leadership isn’t just about being informed.

It’s about staying grounded enough to make sense of what you learn –
and turning awareness into action, not anxiety.

01/01/2026

Okay, this feels big.

Seeing a 3D version of my book is one of those moments that makes everything feel real.

This is surreal.
That’s it. That’s the post.

12/30/2025

This year stretched me in ways I did not see coming.

Every year, I choose a word to guide me. This year, my word was positivity.

And then the year turned out to be… really hard.

Professionally, it was brutal. The clients we serve – and the communities they serve – came under immediate and sustained attack from the federal administration. Funding was curtailed. Services were reduced. An already stretched sector was pushed even closer to the edge.

For the first time in 15 years of running a business, I had to make layoffs. It absolutely sucked.

Personally, I felt it too. My stress spiked. My anxiety worsened. Tools I’d relied on for years suddenly stopped working. I had to learn new ways to take care of myself while everything kept moving.

At first, I thought choosing positivity had been naïve (a bit like choosing “optimism” in 2020).

But I kept coming back to it.

And what I realized is this: positivity isn’t an outcome but a process.

It’s not about being happy all the time or forcing a smile. It’s about returning, again and again, to what helps. Time with people you love. Doing things that ground you. Choosing what supports you and letting go of what doesn’t.

I’m not leaving 2025 with a glass-half-full mindset.

But I am leaving with a stronger, more honest toolbox for when things get hard.

And that feels pretty positive to me.

12/29/2025

The best thing I ever learned from swimming lessons had nothing to do with swimming.

A few years ago, I was injured and couldn’t run. I needed something else to keep me active, so I took swimming lessons.

The lessons were at the YMCA, in the winter, in an outdoor pool.
My instructor was very young and clearly would have preferred to be almost anywhere else. She stood bundled in a huge bomber jacket at the end of the lane, offering feedback between laps.

After each lap, she’d call out a new note.

“Chin down.”
“Reach with your arms.”
“Straight legs.”
“No, not that straight.”
“Lower your hips.”
“Actually, your chin’s too low.”

So I’d get back in the water thinking:
Chin down, reaching arms, legs straight but not too straight, hips lower, chin up…
And of course, everything fell apart. I was trying to fix everything at once and consequently made it all worse.

That’s when it clicked for me:
When you’re trying to improve, progress doesn’t come from addressing every note at the same time.
It comes from choosing one thing and working on that.

I think about this a lot in my public speaking now.
I want to improve my crowd interaction.
I want to get better at using space.
I want to vary my voice more intentionally.

But trying to do all of that in one keynote would be the swimming lesson all over again.

So I pick one thing.
I work on it.
I let it settle.
Then I move on to the next.

Whether you’re learning something new or refining something you’ve done for years, the same rule applies:
Pick one thing.
Get better at it.
Then go back for round two.

12/26/2025

These are some of my favorite quotes from everyday changemakers.

They come from a survey of my email list and community that I completed at the end of last year.

The survey was about who has the responsibility to make social change, who has the power, and what stands in the way of driving social progress.

I found myself reading the responses over and over, and I wanted to share some of my favorite quotes with you.

“Who has the most power is different than who will actually make change.”

“I am motivated to show up and help and collaborate. I am overwhelmed at what is required of me right now.”

“It can’t be done in silos.”

“I’m not a hero. I’m a contributor. That’s where change starts.”

“I believe small wins matter. If you achieve something, even if small, it’s a win you can build upon.”

Thank you to everyone who took the time to share your perspective.
These voices, tensions, and hopes are shaping how I’m thinking about the year ahead.

12/23/2025

Business has quietly become one of the most powerful actors in our society — and much of our media hasn’t caught up.

Elizabeth MacBride shares why our information environment still centers government and politics, even as business decisions increasingly shape our economy, communities, and daily lives. The hopeful shift? More journalists and institutions are beginning to build the financial and business literacy needed to hold business leaders accountable.

🎧 Hear more from Seth Levine and Elizabeth MacBride on the podcast:
→ https://youtu.be/W6id-sngGWA

12/22/2025

I walked into a recent keynote carrying two worries that sat with me more than I expected.

The first was my voice.
I had been struggling with it all week while recording my audiobook, and I was nervous it would give out halfway through the session.

The second was my content.
This was a room full of state-level leaders who do incredibly complex work, and I worried that my material might feel too abstract or not fully connected to their day-to-day.

I told myself all the stories we tell when we are unsure.
I haven’t positioned the ideas in the right way. They’d be better served by a different speaker.

What was I thinking imagining I could do this?

But something happened the moment I started speaking.
As I moved through the room, made eye contact, and watched people jot down detailed notes, the story I had been telling myself started to shift.

They’re engaged.
They’re listening deeply.
They’re connecting the dots in real time.

Afterward, the organizer told me he had received text messages during the session about how helpful the content was.

And it reminded me of something I know but too easily forget:
Telling myself that my work is “too abstract” or “only for certain people” is not helpful.
It closes the door before anyone has a chance to walk through it.

The truth is, I was booked for a reason.
They asked me to be there.
They knew what they wanted their team to hear.
And my job is not to predict who will resonate with what I share.
My job is to show up with authenticity, passion, and curiosity.
If one person connects with the message, it has done its work.

Put your attention to what can go right, not every story your doubt tries to tell you.

12/19/2025

I learned a new word while proofreading my book, and it’s been on my mind ever since.

Eggcorn.

A word or phrase that sounds right, but isn’t.
Like saying “hone in” when the correct phrase is “home in” (which was the error I spotted in my book).
Or “doggy dog world” when it’s actually “dog eat dog world.”

The thing about eggcorns is that while they might sound right, they’re not.

So much of this year felt like an eggcorn – a moment that seemed to say one thing on the surface:
The problems are too big.
Nothing is improving.
The pace of change is impossible to keep up with.

But a second look reveals a different story.
Small, steady signs of progress.
People doing meaningful work that doesn’t get the attention it deserves.
Communities moving things forward behind the noise of negative headlines.

Sometimes the story we hear first isn’t the full one.
Sometimes it takes looking – or listening – a little differently.

If you want the fuller reflection (including some of the moments from 2025 that gave me hope), I wrote about it in this month’s newsletter.

Visit my website to read the full article:
www.catherinealonzo.com

12/18/2025

Capitalism isn’t going away — but it is changing. 🔄

Seth Levine and Elizabeth MacBride explain why the version we’ve been living in hasn’t worked for the middle class, and what dynamic capitalism could look like instead: long-term thinking, broader ownership, and more people with a real stake in the economy.
🎧 Hear the full conversation on the podcast:
→ https://youtu.be/W6id-sngGWA

Catherine Alonzo

01/09/2026

01/08/2026

01/07/2026

01/05/2026

01/01/2026

12/30/2025

12/29/2025

12/26/2025

12/23/2025

12/22/2025

12/19/2025

12/18/2025

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