Hi, I’m Mindy.

I’m the founder of Grief Leadership, the author of two books, a keynote speaker, a CEO, and the co-founder of a nonprofit that teaches kindness as a discipline.

But in 2014, I was simply a CEO who thought grief was something you handled at home.

I ran a wealth management firm in Kansas City. I had a team, a calendar, and a plan. I believed what most leaders believe: that the hard parts of life stay on the other side of the office door.

Then, on a Sunday afternoon in April, my father, Dr. William Corporon, and my fourteen-year-old son, Reat Underwood, were murdered in a hate crime outside the Jewish Community Center.

I learned something that week that no leadership book had taught me.

Grief does not wait for a convenient time. It walks straight into the workplace. And almost no one, including me, knew what to do when it did.

Some people said exactly the right thing. Most said nothing at all, not because they didn’t care, but because nobody had ever shown them how.

So I started paying attention to what helped. What helped me come back. What helped my team keep going. What helped the people around us stay human while the work still got done.

I turned that into a practice. First for myself. Then for other leaders.

I co-founded SevenDays, a nonprofit built on the idea that kindness is a skill you can teach. I co-founded Workplace Healing Inc. and built the Human Recovery Platform™ to give managers practical tools for supporting employees through life’s hardest transitions. I wrote a memoir, Healing a Shattered Soul, about the long road back.

And I kept hearing the same question from executives, HR leaders, and managers: What do I actually say? What do I actually do?

That question became Grief Leadership: Guiding Your Team Through Personal Loss and Building a Resilient Organization.  

These lessons cost me more than I can put into words. Now I can teach them to you.