From the Editor

When I interviewed for my position at Coulee Region Women, I was asked a question about how I would work as part of a team. I remember getting very excited as I answered.

"There's nothing as satisfying as working on a really well-functioning team!" I gushed. "The best teams are ones where each person is really good at what they do, and the other team members trust them to do their best work. You have both talent and mutual respect-and then you can do wonderful things."

Ten years later, and still part of one of the best teams I've ever worked on, I get just as excited over being a part of great teamwork. And this issue in particular has made me realize how far-reaching our Coulee Region Women team really is.

Call it the Ides of March, blame it on Mercury in retrograde and for goodness' sake, blame the weather-but it felt like this issue came out despite obstacles thrown in our way. There was the polar vortex that shut school for days and kept us from the office. There was snow and ice that forced us to reschedule not one but two photo shoots. There were travel schedules to work around for those team members lucky enough to escape, and there were sick kids. We even suffered through mechanical failures from cars that wouldn't start to the writer who lost all her interview notes when her cloud-based recording service had a server go down.

But these glitches were no match for Team Coulee Region Women. Interviewees gladly engaged in more conversation, persistent photographers accommodated our schedules and writers persevered. In the end, amazingly, we came in ahead of schedule, handing our files off to our printer just in time to send one of our graphic designers off on a well-deserved vacation.

This vignette proves my point above about a well-functioning team, but it also expands that team far beyond our small staff. Not only did we rely on our own talents and hard work, but a whole community's worth. This is true not only of the magazine you hold in your hands, but of every issue we publish. We rely on an army of very good writers as well as photographers who are as flexible and cheerful as they are talented. We count on women who are willing to share their stories, whether personal or professional. We are so grateful for marketing teams who help us arrange complicated stories and photo shoots at their places of business. And we are honored to have the support of advertisers who believe in community and connection as much as we do.

The result? Our "Teamwork" issue, filled with women engaged in teams and teamwork of all kinds. You'll meet team builders like our cover woman, EO Johnson CEO Mary Jo Johnson, who leads eight branches of her company with generosity and grace. Another team leader, Cindy Roberts of Mayo Clinic Health System, shares her secrets for building a great team. You'll witness a surgical team in action and see what a team of women can do for their community when they put their minds and money together. You'll learn how sharing our stories and supporting each other can lift us all through life's struggles.

Women have always understood that, while we each can do great things, we can do even more in numbers. So in the spirit of teamwork, let's celebrate each other's individual talents-and then see what wonderful things we can accomplish when we put them together.

Betty Christiansen

From the Editor

What is inside this month's issue: