The week after the ceremony moved like a body settling into a new rhythm. The signatures we had made on the legal paper sat in the foundation’s files like a small, heavy island of fact. The world could tip and shout around us; the ink was a place the lawyers could point to and say, this is real. For a day or two that was enough. Then the subpoena rolled toward the foundation like a cold wind that no contract could stanch.
Board meetings multiplied, and with each one the ordinary arithmetic of our work—budgets, KPIs, mentor rosters—became an armor we polished. I felt the vice-chair title under my name as a tool now, not an ornament. It meant I had to be public, articulate, unflappable. It meant I had to be visible in places where the market might prefer me invisible.
Conley took the lead
