A stroke at just 29 years old wasn’t in my career plan.
They can happen at any age, and one in five women in the US will experience one. But the average age for Black women is 69, not 29. I was decades ahead of schedule.
At the time, I lived in Palm Coast, a burgeoning central Florida city between St. Augustine and Daytona Beach, and had just returned from a trip home to Trinidad and Tobago. I was vice president of media and communications for a busy hospitality company and seemingly in the best shape of my life, training for a half-marathon.
I was a picture of health. Then came the stroke.
Within weeks of the stroke in 2011 — later traced, in part, to hormonal birth control — I was back in meetings, running communications and social media for the hospitality company where I’d worked for over a year.
I learned quickly that in crisis, healing isn’t optional — and neither is leadership.
What recovery required of me
I was off work for a few weeks, but without paid leave I had to return sooner than doctors advised. I worked from home for a few months since I still couldn’t drive.
I loved the challenge of the work, the way no day was ever the same, and I had thrived on that pace. But I was still recovering. Winded by the smallest physical activity, I struggled with memory, and words sometimes came out scrambled or not at all. I was in and out of outpatient appointments.
Still, I tried to keep up with new initiatives as if nothing had happened.
My coworkers were sympathetic, but with no formal HR and a fast-moving team, there was little room for weakness. People noticed when I struggled to articulate myself or keep up. I noticed it even more. I felt like I was drowning, fighting to heal and failing at work.
It was like running on a treadmill set too fast. I just hadn’t realized I had the power and the responsibility to change the speed. Slowly, I began to understand that recovery required both time and empathy, and that as leaders, we owe people the time and understanding I hadn’t known how to ask for.
I realized that pace isn’t proof of strength
Less than a year later, I was pregnant with my first child and, on top of my recovery, I was helping to open two new attractions and restaurants. It seemed to be an easy pregnancy, and I stayed active with yoga and running, often waddling between properties under renovation, keeping up with the job’s demands.
But I held onto the lessons I’d been learning in stroke recovery. I needed balance, not burnout, if I wanted to manage health and motherhood.
It was a turning point: realizing that leadership isn’t about pushing through, but knowing when to take stock, adjust, and create space for the life changes that matter more than the work.
I wasn’t leading a team then, but the experience shaped the leader I wanted to be and the kind of culture I wanted to work in. My first big adjustment? A new job.
How I learned to trust
Eager for a return to journalism, I joined a TV newsroom in Orlando months later as executive producer of social media, with a new baby at home. I immediately plunged into high-pressure coverage of the George Zimmerman trial in 2013. My job was to build a social media strategy around both the trial and daily reporting, while co-leading a digital team.
At home, I was nursing and sleep-deprived. At work, I dozed off in morning pitch meetings. I caught every daycare illness my daughter brought home and often had to duck out for urgent care visits or daycare pickups. On those days, coverage had to move forward without me.
Years later, I still laugh with one of those teammates about the chaos we survived, from publishing stories while my infant daughter slept in her car seat beneath my desk to racing through relentless breaking news days.
But that season taught me something fundamental: Leadership in crisis isn’t about being everywhere at once, it’s about building trust and capacity in others to carry the work forward.
Reshaping my leadership, one crisis at a time
After a few more years in various digital news roles, I moved into nonprofit news and now run a journalism fellowship for alumni of historically Black colleges and universities. Looking back, the stroke and the experiences that came after it taught me important lessons I still carry with me.
- Healing takes time and space, and people take cues from leaders. We have to model that if we want our teams to know it.
- Knowing when and how to take stock of your life and making accommodations are key.
- Trust and delegation empower teams that thrive without needing one person to hold everything together.
- Boundaries and balance are essential for sustaining both the pace and the people.
Most of all, I’ve learned that a crisis doesn’t disqualify anyone from leading. It simply reshapes how we lead, pushing us toward empathy, clarity, and adaptability. These days, when someone on my team needs time, I think back to 29-year-old me, trying to outrun recovery.
I give them the space I wish I’d given myself and try to encourage them to see resilience differently: not powering through at all costs, but creating conditions that allow us, and the people we manage, to carry on.
I thought a stroke at 29 would derail my career. Instead, it redefined my philosophy on work and leadership. Recovery, motherhood, and leading through hard times have stayed with me far longer than any job. I have two kids now and a flexible job, and I continue to try to give myself grace.
It was never about being all-knowing, invincible, or always showing up at full strength. It was always about showing up with honesty, trust, and the courage to adapt.
Kari Cobham, the founding director of fellowships at The 19th News, is an award-winning writer with over two decades of experience in journalism and is working on a book tying her chronic illness to the generational trauma endured by the women in her family (Danielle Chiotti, Upstart Crow). She lives in Atlanta with her two kids, two kittens, and a collection of antique typewriters.
