In an era driven by automation and digital detachment, interpersonal leadership is more powerful—and more necessary—than ever. Tina Fox, Founder and CEO of TERN Mentoring, offers a deeply personal and practical perspective on how mentorship can be reimagined as a daily, living legacy. She opens up about how vulnerability, intentional connection, and service to others aren’t soft skills—they’re core leadership tools for creating meaningful, long-term impact. This conversation dives into what it means to truly live a legacy, why networks are more valuable than résumés, and how mentorship can help us build trust, confidence, and community in a world hungry for human connection.
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The Power Of The Interpersonal: Founder And CEO Of TERN Mentoring, Tina Fox On Living A Legacy Through Mentorship And Networks
Out of the mouths of babes. Such a common saying and it seems so fitting. What happened when such a babe actually woke up a very high-powered executive, who then realized the ladder she climbed may need to be redesigned. In this episode, I’m going to delve into exactly that as i sit down with Tina Fox, who’s the founder of TERN Mentoring and the architect of a new model for mentorship and intergenerational women’s leadership.
We’re going to unpack why traditional mentorship often misses the mark, how sponsorship changes the game, why you actually need both, and why they’re not always from the same origin space and what it really takes to build something that scales without losing soul and intimacy. She’s going to be very real and share what sparked TERN and why the name matters, a story that I love, and the blind spots that hold even the most accomplished women back and the messy, meaningful process of frankly re-imagining your success on your own terms. Sometimes, that’s right, you’ve got to swipe it all down. Take it down to dirt and start all over again. To me, this one’s for anyone realizing that you’re living a life, when really, what you want to live is a legacy and how to get there. Join me.
We are in for a treat. Why? It’s because we have none other than the illustrious and extraordinarily wise, Tina Fox, who’s the Founder and CEO of TERN Mentoring. Tina, welcome, welcome to the show.
Thank you, Kate. It’s a pleasure to be here with you. It’s great to see you after the conference.
Tina Fox: The Accidental Entrepreneur’s Origin Story
Thanks so much. We have a lot to dive into, so let’s get started. I want to start before TERN, and we’ll get to that point, what were you doing and who was Tina Fox prior to starting your own enterprise?
Yeah, I was somebody who was in the working world. I was doing my thing, mom of 2 kids, bonus mom of 1 kid, busy mom, and just loving life and just cruising along in my singular lane of MedTech. It’s something that I connected with. After college, I became a business development specialist and I continued in all of those roles up through leadership for Fortune 500 and for Silicon Valley and Western area startups. It was a blast. I was having a good time and then it just needed to end and I became an accidental entrepreneur.
Isn’t that the way? One day, you wake up, because that all sounds amazing and great until it’s not, until it’s not enough. You’re just thinking, “Why can’t it be enough?” On the other hand, “Yay, it’s not enough. That means I’m in for something new.” What was that moment you went on to lead TERN Mentoring?
From Corporate Ladder To Crossroads: A Mother’s Pivotal Moment
Yeah, so it really was a moment it wasn’t something that I had been actively thinking about. I wasn’t thinking about leaving my corporate job. I really enjoyed it. I had worked really hard in order to ascend into certain levels of MedTech. There weren’t a lot of women in those levels. I loved all the perks. Certainly, benefits, 401(k) matching, and stock options. There were a lot of things that the corporate world gave me and it also gave me a sense of security.
I had never in a million years thought that I would be the owner of my own company, that I would be out there having to be the CEO and chief bottle washer all at the same time but that’s what happened. That one moment for me was one of those things where when I was traveling towards the end of my career. I was traveling up to 90% of the time.
I had become a mom later in life. I had two boys of my own at 36 and 38 years of age. When that happened, I was traveling all the time. What I realized is when kids are younger, they don’t really have a concept of time. They don’t know that it’s 1:00, 2:00, etc. At age five, my older son started realizing duration of time. He started realizing she’s gone a short period of time or she’s gone a long period of time.
My suitcase became a source of anxiety for him. I needed to relegate myself to either leaving on the red eye because I was traveling a lot out West. Either leave on the red eye late at night or leave early in the morning before he got up. I was on another one of those East Coast West Coast trips and it was about 4:30 in the morning. I was zipping up my suitcase. The house was dead quiet.
Next thing I know, I see my son come into the closet and he pokes me in my lower back. He had gotten out of his bed. He had his little green whoopee, big green eyes. He just looked at me and he says, “Mommy, you’ve been gone too long.” That was the moment that absolutely shattered everything that I thought was going so right, so well.
I was loving my career. I was loving being a mom and it was no longer enough, like you said. I spent the next six months flying around the Earth, looking out that window, realizing, “Things are really small down there.” Problems that seem so big in your face when you look out a plain window, it just seems to put it in a different perspective. This is before the time of Zoom and remote work and all that stuff. I did ask my CEO if there would be any way that we could work something out because I was a high-performing person for the company.
It would sting if you left.
I was just trying to work out something. Everybody’s replaceable, as far as I’ve been told. At the same time, he didn’t really have a lot of empathy for me. He just said, “The guys figure it out. They have to leave their homes and their families too. You’re just going to have to figure it out.” There wasn’t any support there. My husband, looking at what we were doing and we had this common goal of family first, he said, “Why don’t we start our own business?”
I said, “What are you talking about? That’s a terrible idea.” His specialty is in title and settlement and mine is in business development. He said, “Why not take our two specialties and combine them? Let’s burn the boats. Let’s create our own company.” It took longer than that conversation to convince me. He actually decided to start doing things on his own.
Instead of joining him, I ended up taking a demotion of nine levels. You counted all the things that I had climbed over the 22 years, I needed to dial it back. That’s the circuitous path. I wasn’t used to that path, but it was the necessary path. I dialed it back. I spent about a year and a half in that role, which, to be perfectly honest, it would be like going back to high school.
Nobody wants to do it, but because we’ve already done it, we probably would do it better. I did that role far better than I did when I first started out in the business. At the same time, there was no joy in what I was doing. It was just checking the boxes and moving things along. I did well in that role, but I also went back to my husband
I said, “Let’s talk a little bit more about this building business thing together.” He said, “What do you need to be convinced?” I said, “I think I’d like informational interviews with ten people in your industry that I don’t know well because it’s not my industry that I could just sit down and have a conversation with to really better understand what’s going on. Why would we work or we not work?”
It was an interesting ten interviews. He did get me all of the information with big-time brokers and real estate agents and lenders and even competitors. I was like, “I think I’m getting this.” I also asked him, because I had trained at one of my corporations and I find that when people can teach, they really know their stuff and it’s how does the audience receive that education.
I said, “I need to see you teach too large classes because I want to see how you’re received and if you know your stuff. I really don’t know because I haven’t worked with you before. He satisfied all of those things for me, which I’m such a pain in the ass, but he satisfied all those things for me. I really had no excuse, Kate. I had to join him.
That was actually my first entrepreneurial venture. It was becoming a co-owner of our title and settlement business in Arlington, Virginia, called Cobalt Settlements. I spent five years doing that. We built out a lovely small business in Arlington. We’re really proud of it. We’re really proud of the team. They do amazing work.
The Birth Of TERN Mentoring: A Passion Project Emerges
At about five years in, he said to me, “I knew this was never your thing, but you decided because it was our lifetime goal for family first, that we would do this together, but if you want to go pursue something else, why don’t you go do that?” Kate, ever since I was 15 and 8 months, and the state of Virginia gave me the permission to get a work permit, all I’ve done is pursue work. Now I was in a position to pursue a passion, but I had no idea what that was going to look like. I was like, “Now what am I supposed to do with my life?” Talk about midlife crisis. Midlife crisis to the nth degree, by the way. There’s nothing that I do that’s small, it seems like.
You’ve got to go exponential.
That was just it. He gives me this gift of like, “Go find something for yourself.” Now, at the time, I did have an opportunity. I had been doing some sidebar consulting with a wonderful organization called Women on Course. It’s headed by Donna Hoffman. Donna had asked me if I would like to become co-owner of the organization because she wanted to spin out a corporate side.
It’s a national group of about 60,000 women in 15 cities and they leverage the game of golf in order to support women in networking. I was like, “This is going to be so much fun,” so I said yes to that opportunity, but I hadn’t started yet. I had the summer to take a little bit of a break, have a good time with the kids, all that stuff. I was excited about the opportunity.
By the way, I was also volunteering back at my university. That’s a very important point. I was excited about the opportunity. However, I was still, in the back of my mind, noodling on this concept of what am I going to be when I grow up? How am I going to live my legacy? It turns out, when the kids went back to school and I was getting ready to now join Donna, I fell into a really interesting situation health-wise.
I contracted Takotsubo cardiomyopathy. What is that? That is congestive heart failure. It’s a rare form. Its primary target is women. Layman’s way of me explaining this it’s also known as Broken Heart Syndrome, but I had no broken heart from the standpoint of losing a loved one or anything like that. I think my broken heart was I couldn’t figure out who I was going to be. I was really sad about that. When people are like, Imposter Syndrome or, “I’m 21 and I’m graduating from college, what am I going to be?” That happens even in your 40s and 50s.
You can have that as a lifelong underlying issue. That’s why I had to put the whole going onto Women on Course on hold and then I was able to luckily get out of Takotsubo after months of cardiac rehab and medications and hospitalizations. When I came out, it gave me time to think. What I decided was in all of my volunteering for my university, I was really feeling this pull towards everything that I was doing on the side for fun, which was mentoring.
I was a guest lecturer at my university. I was a board member. I chaired a board. I really loved my time there and I found that there was still a need. Making a very long story towards its end is that one of the professors, Professor Carol Hamilton, wonderful professor at James Madison University, just looked at me one day and despite all the stuff that we were already doing together with guest lecturing, I was giving back the three T’s as they like to say, time, talent, and treasure, she said, “I think there’s more you can do.”
I was a little perplexed as to what more was. I was like, “I’m tapped out. How much extra?” I came up with this idea because I was loving the mentoring so much, I said, “Why don’t I help you build a mentorship program for your class?” It was that seed of not being able to figure out myself, but just finding a place to go help other people.
Mentorship became the answer to living a legacy. Share on XFrom there, I started researching and I realized there really wasn’t anything like what I was offering anywhere. I looked at my husband and I said, “I think I figured out what I want to be when I grow up and I think I want to live my legacy through mentorship and I think I can get others to do the same. I’m going to build out this company called TERN Mentoring.” That’s how it all started. Not on purpose.
Unpacking “TERN Mentoring”: A Name With Deep Roots
Always the accidental. What does TERN stand for? Is it an acronym for something?
No. Do you see that bird right over my head?
Yeah. It’s a tern. I know a tern.
The reason for turn TERN Mentoring is because I remembered there was a naturalist that had once told me about these birds that they did these journeys, but they always came back home to roost. When I was looking up a name for my company because it’s like naming a baby. “Somebody can make fun of this name.” Of course everybody misspells tern, so that’s probably my one hiccup there.
The meaning is important because of all the different migratory paths on earth. That bird, the arctic tern, has the longest migratory path. It goes from pole to pole. By the way, in no sequential order, it just meanders everywhere. Inevitably, it comes back to the exact spot in order to bring the next generation forward. I thought, “That’s a mentor’s journey.” We leave our universities. We go on these circuitous paths around the world. The goal is that we hopefully come back to help the next generation move forward. I thought it was an appropriate name and it stuck with me.
The Demotion Dilemma: Navigating Career Setbacks For Personal Growth
I love that. That’s incredibly powerful. The other thing too is the mentees then go on to do the same, hopefully, at some point. I’m sure. Okay, there are a couple of different questions I want to ask. One is, just out of curiosity, going back to when you were in the corporate spot that you’re in and you had to be demoted, how did you get through that? There are a lot of people who are probably in that spot, or to your point, you had to take steps back knowing it would eventually help you get what you need for that leap forward. That’s a real ding, especially when you have been so successful.
You’re the first person that’s asked me that question, by the way, which I find really interesting. You’re going to get the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It was no picnic. What was interesting about the interview was I showed up at the interview. A friend of mine had said, “I heard your call to find something that makes you more local as opposed to having to travel. I think this opportunity would be good for you.”
I said, “Okay,” and then I went to the interview because it’s a trusted friend. In that interview, the gentleman who was interviewing me said, “I’ve only got two questions for you.” I said, “Okay.” He said, “One, why are you doing this?” He had researched me, I guess. “For me, a huge value in life is my family. I can’t figure out a way to do what I was doing before and satisfy being a more present parent to my kids. Something had to give and I’m going to regroup and figure it out. I’ve never burnt a bridge. I just need some time to get it all together. This job, I can do. I can do with my eyes closed.
I said, “What do you need done?” He said, “This area is a disaster. The customers hate us. The last rep did not do a good job. I need this thing cleaned up because quite honestly, it’s the albatross around my neck to get me to President’s Club. In my entire area that I manage, this is the one that I need cleaned up and done. Can you do that for me?”
That’s incredibly transparent and honest. In some ways, wow. In other ways, “Okay, great. I know who you are. You know who I am. Let’s be adults. Got it.”
It was one of the most fascinating interviews I had gone ever gone through. I said, “Alright. Yeah, I’m your turn it around gal.” he said, “Okay, great.” I was like, “Give me a year.”
Fair. That’s what I would’ve said.
He said, “Okay.” The next year, he was on stage getting the President’s Club this and that. That was when I was having these conversations with my husband about moving out of corporate and moving into entrepreneurship. I looked at my boss at the time and I said, “I delivered and now it’s time for me to consider leaving.” He was like, “Can you help me through a transition,” and so I did that.
It was bittersweet. Towards the end, though, there was one little hiccup. I had come to find out that there was an opportunity for a higher-level role in that company, which I had already done that role in other companies. I was not given the opportunity to interview for it until somebody had accidentally told me that it was open. They had not posted it. They had kept it secret and they had already earmarked who they wanted for that promotion.
That’s so classic.
One of the myths that I like to bust in corporate America is that if you think that there aren’t already people lined up for certain jobs, you’re mistaken. Posting is just a formality. In this case, they had not posted it. They were caught a little bit with their pants down on this one, to be honest with you. I had made it known to my management team that I found out through alternate methods and then they backed up the bus and they quickly entered me into the interview process. Sometimes, things happen for you not to you.
I think all the time things happen for me, not to me.
As much as I had wanted the opportunity to interview and to be able to get that job because I knew I could also do that job, like I said, they had already earmarked somebody for it. That individual got that job and I ended up just quietly exiting. Probably the best thing that ever happened to me, to be honest with you.
Mentorship Unveiled: Dispelling Myths And Maximizing Impact
With mentorship, I know there’s mentorship checking the boxes, “Hi, how are you?” There’s real deal membership. What do most people miss or get wrong and how do you get it right?
With mentors, it’s, “Am I qualified?” Number one question I get asked by mentors, which I love getting asked that question by a mentor, because I immediately feel as though they are based on the humility in them asking the question in the first place. I’m quick to then throw out my own question, which is, “Let me ask you, is there anything that you could provide in your own personal or professional experience to your 18 to 21-year-old self that would be of extreme benefit?” A hundred percent of the time the answer is yes. I look at them and I say, “You’re more than likely to be qualified as a mentor.”
That’s on the mentor side. On the mentee side, the thing that a lot of mentees get wrong is they don’t recognize the power of mentorship. They recognize the power of the internet, Google, now all the AI that’s out there, they recognize the power of all of that, but they don’t recognize the power of the interpersonal through mentorship.
A lot of times, I have to help walk them down the road of, “As much as you have all of this tech at your advantage,” and believe me, I understand. I own an EdTech company, there’s also this other side and that is the interpersonal and the communications major in me says, “If mentorship is nothing else, it is definitely interpersonal.”
TERN Mentoring’s Blueprint: Bridging Academia And Professional Growth
That is huge. Especially to your point, in this day and age of AI. I’m waiting for everybody. So many different industries to all of a sudden have their AI bot who does these kinds of things. What is TERN Mentorship and what does it do? I should have done that in the beginning.
TERN Mentoring, we’re an EdTech platform, but more importantly, we’re also a mentoring program. What we do is we partner the alumni of universities back with the undergraduate students. Our partners are the universities. The universities pay for our platform. We are the conduit in which both of those two connect and we work with them inside the classroom, in their specialty groups, in order to make all of that very seamless.
Not only to do it for the interpersonal, but what we’re trying to do is also scale this because a lot of mentorship programs are not scalable. We’re trying to scale it. We’re also looking at key data points in order to showcase how we are moving not only the students, but also the mentors and the university into better areas through mentorship. Whether it’s leadership, alumni connection, or student preparedness for post-collegiate, we’re moving them into a better area through our data gathering.
The thing that’s great about that is the universities win because you’re also giving their alumni, it’s another contact point they feel completely like a tern, coming back to roost where all that’s happened and that worked. The difference between mentorship and sponsorship and why women often get stuck with one when they actually really need the other.
I look at it as mentorship, sponsorship championship, actually. There’s like a third level to me. Mentorship is really the interpersonal. It’s probably the most vulnerable of all three. It’s where you have more one-on-one. You feel like you’re in a safe space with an individual to have discussions on all different kinds of topics, professional, personal, because they do bleed into the other.
The sponsorship championship part, they’re similar but different, in my opinion. They’re similar in that these are individuals that are typically within a business or an entity that’s going to help support you into some promotion or activity that’s going to help you grow from a professional standpoint. The difference between the sponsorship and the championship is I look at champions more as like the C-suite level people, it’s almost like when they speak, people listen because they’re leaders of the company.
Sponsors may be more of the direct hiring individuals. They might be the ones that become your bosses in the future. That’s the delineation that I give it. Those are the big differences. The second part of what you mentioned is women with the sponsorship versus the mentorship, you need all of it, Kate. You need all of it.
You need as many allies with whatever label they have speaking your favor.
I’m going to point out an elephant in the room that I don’t think a lot of people talk about. Having spent 22 years in corporate, I think it is extraordinarily difficult to find mentors within your own company. Here is why, and it was proven out in a podcast that I hosted with business leaders from across the United States.
We were all in agreement that when it comes to mentorship, oftentimes, people will look for mentors that are outside of their organization. The reason for that is the proximity. When people are inside of an organization, they may not feel the opportunity to be as vulnerable or that it is a safe space because of corporate politics, because of things that you don’t know at the water cooler. People are a little hesitant to engage in deep, meaningful mentorship within a corporation where you’re partnering people of the same company.
Now if you’ve got a huge organization and people are West Coast, East Coast, different departments, I think you have a better shot at it in that situation, but many of the folks that were on the call were talking about how they themselves seek individuals that are maybe company adjacent to them. They get what they’re doing within their organization, but they aren’t within the organization.
I see that happening, but I think for women, it’s important to identify, like don’t just stay in your lane. If you’re MedTech, if you’re ed tech, you’re right, whatever you are, this just happened to be mine, try to find people that you know are adjacent to you and seek out their mentorship. Connect with their network while working on who’s going to sponsor you to your next level of success, whatever that is for you in your own organization.
That makes sense anyway, too, because also, when you go, as you point out, to the adjacent, there are all sorts of other great things that happen. There are either just ideas for innovation, for partnership, for solutions. This area in this sector, they did this, I wonder what would happen if we applied that thinking to issues that we’re facing with.
Absolutely. We met at the Tom Tom Festival in Charlottesville and at that festival, one of the reasons why I found it so empowering is that there were so many different founders there. They were sharing their ideas, their hiccups, and sharing of so many things. They weren’t necessarily in my industry, but my notebook was filled with ideas because I was just listening to their stories and it just sparked something in me, so I agree.
I did not appreciate that whole getting outside of your lane until I became an entrepreneur. I realized through networking and networking with people of all different programs, companies, that’s when I was like, “There is something so applicable over there that I could use.” It took me a long time to get there, Kate.
Conquering Imposter Syndrome: A Universal Challenge
I get it. I’m going to also call out something that annoys me a lot. I’m going to make sure to that point, there’s always some relevance in kernel of utility, I think, in different people with whom you cross paths with. I would say we’ve all been there. We’ve all gone to a conference. Someone walks up, they talk and then within 30 seconds, they look over your shoulder because they’re like, “you can’t get me this, this or this.”
I can’t stand that. The truth is, that person is probably actually able to help you, I would say. Don’t just discount automatically someone who’s not going to be able to give you money. There’s always something. They can give you connection, they can give you in in innovative ideas, all sorts of things. What’s a common blind spot? You’ve worked with all these people, high performing women, high performing men, mid-performance, etc. What is a common blind spot or limiting belief that you see and how do you help reframe it?
I’m going to bring up something that was brought up before, but it’s also something that we study and I think everybody experiences it. I mentioned it earlier, it’s the Imposter Syndrome. What everybody gets wrong about this is that it’s this thing and only certain people own it. You own it typically because you haven’t been there before. That’s why you own this Imposter Syndrome.
Over time, it just goes away. I think that’s what people get wrong. What I love about the stories that I hear at TERN Mentoring, when we partner this 18 to 21-year-old student with somebody of any generation thereafter, they find out that person, even though their title is chief of staff or CEO or whatever the title is that they were partnered with, and again, we partner them with people they don’t know, so these are complete strangers, so there’s a lot of Imposter Syndrome for the student going into this.
They’re like, “What am I going to say to this person of such and such title?” They realize so quickly that that’s just another human being and we all suffer our own things on this planet and we all have our hurdles to overcome. That’s the thing that people get wrong. They think that you’re the only person that owns Imposter Syndrome when the reality is that everybody owns it and we just we need to get through it.
To your point, don’t be so surface-level curious like, “What’s your name? What’s your rank? Can you do something for me?” Get a little bit more authentically curious about that person and you’ll find out things that you were so grateful you stuck around and asked a couple more questions in the conversation.
It always reminds me of old college party days, “What’s your name? What’s your major?” The same thing.
You’ve got to go further. You’ve got to scrape a little bit more.
Vulnerability In Leadership: Redefining Strength
To that point, vulnerability, I have always thought that plays such a strong role to me in strong leadership. As a woman, oftentimes, we’re slapped with this notion of, “You’re being too emotional,” or, “You’re so sensitive.” How do we normalize that and actually help others recognize that as, honestly, that’s my secret sauce?
Obviously, Brené Brown. We’ve got to give a shout out to her because she’s the queen of research and vulnerability and I think she’s brought it more to mainstream America. Thank you for that. Even to the point where the US military is hiring her to come in and work with them and their leadership. I think we’re get doing a much better job, Kate, to be honest with you.
You asked me like where do we get mentorship wrong. Where I think we get vulnerability wrong is I don’t look at vulnerability as the opportunity to just dump. Backing up, I am a Chinese American military dependent. There’s nothing about those words strung together that says it’s okay to whine and cry. There’s no showing of emotions.
There’s no crying in baseball.
Yes. Thank you, Tom Hanks. For me, I look at vulnerability as being able to come from a real space. We talked about that really interesting interview that I had with that one gentleman, that was being vulnerable. He was sharing with me like, “At the end of the day, this is what I need to get done.” I was sharing with him, “This is why I’m doing this.”
We cut through all the crap in order to get to where we needed to be in order to advance and solve a problem. I think with vulnerability, the way that we can normalize it is not looking it as an opportunity to just dump and be like, “Now, you just have to deal with me.” It’d be lovely if we all wore signs that said, “My mood is this and this is what I’m dealing with today.” That way, we’d be able to figure out the other person a little bit faster.
Vulnerability is not dumping—it's sharing real information to solve problems together. Share on XAt the same time, the reason we don’t have those signs hanging on us or the billboards over our head is because this is the human side of who we are. We need to show up in a way that is honest and real. At the end of the day, everybody wants problems solved. They don’t want more problems dumped on them. If you come at it from that thing, I think vulnerability, people would embrace it all the time like, “Yeah, you’re giving me real information, you’re being very honest with me, and at the same time, you’re going to help me solve this problem.
The Entrepreneur’s Compass: Guiding Principles In Growth
Exactly. It’s the other half of the equation. As you’re growing this movement, because to me, that’s really what this has the potential. It’s a platform. It’s hard. You don’t always know which way is what, and pressure’s high and there’s just the realities of running a business. What is your go-to principles or questions that you go to when you’re feeling, “What am I going to do next?” Are there any just grounding, or “Whenever I’m feeling afraid, I say this,” or, “I think of this or I go to this?” The best practice.
I think it’s a little bit easier for me to tackle this one than maybe most people because I had that nice little brush with death.
That stays with you.
Yeah. That sets your compass in a way where you’re like, “Alright, so there was that. Now we need to do better than that.” Somebody asked me a long time ago, “Was that the changing point in your life?” The honest answer to that is no, interestingly. A few years before that, I was asked to do a program called Profiles and Success. It was an honor, quite honestly. I sat with the gentleman, Gordon Bernhardt, and he interviewed me and he provided me with the transcript.
It was similar to what we’re discussing, just having a conversation about like, “What are you doing? Who are you?” All that good stuff. It took me a long time to actually open the Word document that came back to me because, I don’t know, there was something in me that didn’t sit right as to really, “Do you want to read these words?”
I had to get it back to them. I finally did open the document and I was so late in opening it. They were really mad at me, but they were giving me a lot of grace. When I opened it, I read it and I hated it. I hated the story of my life. I called Gordon and I said, “I am so sorry to have wasted your time. If it’s okay with you, I would like to retract this article because I think I’ve got some work to do.”
He was like, “What are you talking about?” He’d said all the right things about, “You could leverage it for this and that and the other thing,” but it wasn’t something that I was proud of. I said to him, “I’ll tell you what, if you’re still doing this moving forward in life and I actually have something that is interesting and worthy of sharing, I’ll come back to you and we can revisit this.”
He said, “Are you sure?” I said, “Yeah.” We are still friends to this day. I am the only person that he’s interviewed out of hundreds of people who have redacted their story because I did not feel like I was doing a good enough job. I was living a life, but I wasn’t living a legacy. That was the difference. When you asked like, “What’s that thing?” My thing is start with the end in mind and what is that legacy that you want to live?
I can say this because I’ve lived several decades of life. That will keep the number under wraps. I’ve lived several decades of life and in the reinvention of self in all of that, I’ve done things that are fun. I’ve done things that are challenging. I’ve done things that have created income for myself. I’ve done a lot of those things, but I had not done anything that I felt like, “This is what I want the epitaph to be later on.”
I get to serve my younger self today. Share on XFor me, it was, “What is that?” When I finally founded TERN, it was like, “This is the legacy that I want to leave.” Now I get to share the legacy with other people that want to be mentors. I get to serve my younger self because I was first generation. Going through college, my military father was tapped out on, “How do I help her when she graduates?”
My Chinese-born mother immigrated to Taiwan and then to the United States. She was like, “Yeah, you’ve got two siblings and you’ve got all these cousins and you got to figure this out.” I get to serve my younger self now. It’s both ways. Those are my guiding lights. My guiding principles are living the best legacy and helping others to do the same. Should they choose, they can come to us at TERN Mentoring. We’re happy to support in that regard. No, I haven’t gone back to Gordon yet because my work’s not done. I stay in touch with him. It’s going to be some time. It’s not yet.
You’re just getting started. You’re not near complete. Tina, thank you so much. I was going to ask what advice would you give your younger self, but I think you just shared it. That was nicely put and that’s just a fabulous leaping off point for readers to just savor that morsel. Thank you so much for joining me and I’m so appreciative of everything you’re working on. Obviously, people, run. Do not walk. Either become a mentor or frankly, to receive mentorship because it can take you to a whole new level.
Thank you for that. It’s been so much fun. I knew it would be, Kate. I enjoyed meeting you the first time and I enjoy every interaction with you afterwards. Thank you so much.
Thanks. Alright. Until next time.
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Key Takeaways From Tina Fox: Living A Legacy, Not Just A Life
What a terrific conversation with Tina. I adore her energy and, frankly, her vulnerability and transparency. KB’s takeaways, three, pure and simple. One, living a life, not a legacy. Making sure that you are spending your time with this one precious life, to quote Mary Oliver, doing what you want to do with whom you want to do it. I know for some that may sound like, “That’s lucky. I can’t do that.” Even in some way, find a part of your life where you could, because I guarantee you, you can’t.
Two, everybody can be a mentor. There’s something to learn from everyone. The next time you’re at a networking event, just realize there’s some pearl in the majority of the people there. Don’t be so surface and quick to pass somebody by. You might be missing the opportunity of a lifetime. Broken heart syndrome, real deal. That can happen when you’ve given up on yourself. Have faith in yourself, one step at a time, you’ll get through it. Lastly, in order to do that, you’ve got to step back to move forward and sum those times. That means you’ve got to make a really big, courageous decision, and then go for it. All right, thanks so much for joining me on this episode. I look forward to chatting more on the next one.
Important Links
- TERN Mentoring
- Tina Fox on LinkedIn
- TERN Mentoring on Facebook
- TERN Mentoring on LinkedIn
- TERN Mentoring on YouTube
- TERN Mentoring on Instagram
- Tina Fox on Instagram
About Tina Fox
Tina Fox calls herself an “accidental entrepreneur,” but every step of her career has led her to where she is today. After years of thriving in corporate leadership and building high-performing teams, Tina discovered her greatest passion was mentoring others through the challenges of professional growth.
That calling led her to create TERN Mentoring, a platform designed to help students and young professionals build meaningful connections as they navigate their careers. Drawing from her own experiences as a business leader, university board member, and parent, Tina now leads TERN with a deep sense of purpose. She continues to share her insights as a speaker and mentor, inspiring others to embrace change, grow through relationships, and find unexpected paths to meaningful work.