Forged by Fire, Formed by Fortitude
As a child, I was a true “Jean Louise Finch”, a nonconformist, curious and courageous tomboy with an unconventional upbringing. Being the youngest of four, I was the less complicated and more free-spirited child who enjoyed the company of my own imagination. I spent much of my childhood tinkering away with tools at the jeweller’s bench and learned how to manipulate metal at the touch of fire and oxygen, recognize the smell of various chemicals, and eventually, fashion jewellery with precision. Working with people’s most precious possessions taught me to value precision and quality, and to appreciate the uniqueness of every piece. As a young girl, I learned the fundamentals of human formation: pressure, patience, and precision. I did not know it then, but I was being trained to see systems, where stress reveals structure, and where small fractures eventually become failures.
After a long career in jewellery, including two internationally recognized publications, I transitioned into finance and completed an MBA in Spain. Breaking into a new industry exposed something deeper than a career shift. It revealed how operational design shapes behaviour. Incentive structures influence decisions. Reporting systems determine what leaders see. Poorly built workflows create miscommunication, cultural friction, and inefficiencies that compound over time.
Writing “Online Resume Submissions: The Black Hole”, was not simply a commentary on HR’s hiring practices; it was an examination of poorly built systems. I began to see that performance failures are often structural. When operations distort incentives, fragment information, or reward wrong behaviour, even capable people stall.
During Covid-19, I took a job at a local garage, earning $19 an hour at the front counter. Within two months, I was promoted to manage one of their flagship locations that had not turned a profit in four years. Within a year, I made it profitable again. Not because I followed a playbook, but because I mapped information flow, corrected breakdowns between front desk and technicians, rebuilt trust, and aligned incentives with execution.
GS Fortitude emerged, not as a personal brand, but as a conviction: that performance without formation is hollow. Organizations often chase metrics while ignoring the structures that produce them. Most performance problems are not talent problems. They are structural.
Sales blames operations.
Operations blames sales.
Leadership blames people.
The real issue is coherence.
I work inside organizations to identify where breakdowns occur, in reporting, incentives, communication, CRM systems, governance structures, and frontline execution, and rebuild processes that allow good people to perform well. Strong operations do not constrain people. They free them to perform.
