Difficult conversations don’t get easier just because you know they need to happen. Most managers avoid them, delay them, or walk in underprepared, and the stress of it follows them home. Susanne Drews spent 15 years in middle management watching this play out, and she built Chemp.ai to change it.

Diana Friedman found an old journal recently. She was in her twenties when she wrote it, and somewhere in those pages she had noted — almost like a wish — that she wanted to someday run writing retreats for women. That was 1987. Today, she runs retreats in the Basque Pyrenees of Spain, the Pocono foothills of Pennsylvania, and the mountains of Maryland. And they sell out every year.