MyLinh Brewster Shattan

The Hardest Conflict Is the One Within

MyLinh Brewster Shattan is the author of Raising Athena: A Mother and Daughter Attend West Point Thirty Years Apart. The memoir is built around the line at the top of this page, and the whole book is the work of facing it.

She evacuated Saigon as a child. Reported to West Point shortly after it began admitting women. Served as an Army officer. Thirty years later, she watched her daughter walk through the same gates as a cadet, which forced her to confront stories she had spent decades not telling.

MyLinh is my classmate. West Point asks eighteen-year-olds to choose the harder right before they understand what they're choosing. Most of us have spent the decades since finding out what we actually signed up for, in different terrain, with different stakes.

This conversation isn't about the military. It's about what it actually takes to keep choosing well when the conflict is the one no one else can see.

What you'll leave with:

• The stories you've been telling yourself about who you're supposed to be as a leader, what they're costing you, and a sharper read on both
• A name for the conflict that doesn't resolve with another promotion, another credential, or another year of doing the work
• The thing MyLinh spent thirty years learning to do, and how to start doing it now

Bring your own questions. The best conversations in this room happen when you do.

MyLinh's memoir, Raising Athena, is wherever books are sold. My recommendation, not a sponsorship.

Lead well.
~traci