The Connect2 Origin Story

In loving memory of Jochen Wünn, 1966-1998

This Wednesday, March 19th, Connect2 Corporation turns 26 years old. Anniversaries make me reflective. Read on to join me as I review the key moments of how this business came to be.

Starting and Ending My First Full-Time Job

My senior year at Wellesley College I was most interested in psychology, business, higher education, and technologies that improved personal productivity and efficiency. To my parents' near-horror, I turned down several post-graduation job offers that didn't spark my passion. Instead, I sought opportunities to work at the intersection of as many of my interests as possible.

By Fall I began working in the research department of an organizational change consulting firm. I loved it! Sadly, the Boston-area professional services economy crashed within a year, and I experienced my first layoff.

Further Post-Undergrad Work Experience

Finding few job listings for a 23-year-old organizational change "expert", I started freelancing under the business name Woog Research Consulting. Many of the consultants (and attorneys and accountants) I knew had also been laid off. When I heard about their plans to start independent practices, I offered to serve as their research associate on a project-by-project basis, certain that I'd soak up valuable information as I observed their entrepreneurial journeys.

Perhaps a year in, a junior professor at Harvard Business School hired me as his very part-time research associate. The following year he brought me onto his research team full time. There I had the privilege of interviewing 150 executives and managers in 3 Fortune 100 companies and analyzing the heck out of all the qualitative and quantitative data. I also wrote HBS case studies profiling women with unique career paths. I absorbed countless powerful lessons studying the development of all these leaders.

By the time I started my business school application essays, I knew I wanted to hang out my own shingle someday. I just didn't know yet what that shingle might say below my name. The MIT Sloan MBA program felt like the ideal place to pursue my ever-deepening interests.

The Business School Years

Unsurprisingly, I found MIT to be an intense educational environment. I slept far less than I should have so that I could try to gain everything the opportunity offered. This lifestyle required me to employ tools to calm down my maxed-out nervous system. One day, while waiting for my craniosacral therapy appointment to begin, I picked up a magazine. The cover showed Cheryl Richardson, one of the first nationally acclaimed professional coaches. As soon as I read the featured article, I knew I wanted to do work like hers.

Post-MBA Work Experience

After earning my MBA, I joined another consultancy. At the kickoff meeting for my first project there, the team leader ominously announced, "At best, this project is going to be a death march."

Offended by both the term and the concept, I asked, "Why did we commit to work we doubt we can deliver?"

She responded, without irony (please note that was the same year as the first Austin Powers movie), "Eight million dollars, Debra. Eight million dollars." That was the expected gross revenue for the consulting firm. Personally, I thought committing a sizable team to a death march should require a lot more moolah; apparently she disagreed. The directive was clear.

We began weekly trips to New Jersey, leaving Sunday nights or early Monday mornings and returning home late Friday nights or, if we were lucky, Thursdays just in time to see the beginning of ER at 10:00 PM. That grueling role taught me the importance of prioritizing my time to align with my values.

Jochen & TJ

Jochen, one of my best friends from high school, lived less than 15 minutes from our team's New Jersey hotel. Each week I promised myself I would visit him, but regularly working until 2 AM kept me from doing so. I maintained this routine until I rolled off the project in November.

On Thanksgiving Day 1997, Jochen found his elbow repeatedly falling off his dining room table, as if he had no control over it. Soon after, he and his partner TJ learned that Jochen had lesions on his brain from full-blown AIDS. (They had been unaware of Jochen's HIV+ status until that point.) My heart broke for them, and as I realized I had likely missed some of Jochen's final months for work that felt meaningless to me.

Determined to try to make up for lost time, I began visiting them regularly. When Jochen lost the ability to move or speak, TJ asked me to research clinical trials that might help. Although I spent a week gathering, organizing, and analyzing all the relevant information I could find, illness ravaged Jochen's mind and body too quickly. He passed away on March 19, 1998, only four months after that Thanksgiving. He was 31 years old.

Jochen and TJ's experience was a dramatic wake-up call. I thought, "If I might have only 4 months to live, I do not want to spend it in a toxic work environment." My fiancé and I talked a lot about that. We bought a house with a first-floor room that could be my office, the room I'm sitting in as I write this origin story.

Connect2 Early Years

Even though I didn't feel fully ready to start my own business, the urgency of life's potential brevity drove me to action. I took the leap and trusted that the net would appear. On March 19, 1999, the first anniversary of Jochen's death, I filed papers with the Town Clerk to do business as Connect2. I've been doing business as Connect2 ever since.

Early on, I wanted a way to earn income while staying flexible for my children. I wanted to use my top skills, interests, and qualities to make the most positive impact, so I served clients as an organizational change consultant and a leadership and career coach. Beyond starting and running my business, I faced many complex challenges including marriage, home ownership, divorce, children, significant diagnoses for loved ones and, not to be forgotten, my own needs.

Connect2 Recent Years

In 2019, I refined Connect2's focus to work exclusively with people in crisis, interweaving my strategy, research, and communication skills with my ability to provide outstanding emotional support. I coined (and registered the trademark for) the term Crisis Navigation Partner® to describe my role and committed all my professional attention to serving clients in crisis with compassion, insight, and inspiration.

Connect2 Expansion

Looking back, my experience with Jochen was a formative moment. At the time I remained unaware that I had already been a Crisis Navigation Partner® for more than half my life. The end of Jochen's served as a concrete example: I supported him and his family by doing research, facilitating difficult conversations, and creating viable plans amid extreme stress and uncertainty. I continue these practices today.

Connect2 has grown as my values have remained consistent. Now that my children are approaching their final year of college, I've felt ready to expand Connect2 Corporation. In the past several months we've added two Associate Crisis Navigation Partners® and three new members of our operational team. I dare say that none of us describe our work as a death march.

It turns out that hanging my shingle brought many people more joy and ease. I'm proud of the leaders we've guided out of isolation and through overwhelm as we've mitigated, navigated, and prevented personal, professional, and organizational crises.

This week, as we celebrate 26 years in business, I pause to honor Jochen's memory. I thank him and TJ and every other person and experience I've learned from along the way. As we continue to grow, I look forward to my team and I "marching" forward with the purpose of Crisis Navigation Partnership®.