Reflecting on this day, 23 years ago and my very non-marketing experience handling a forum for 9/11 World Trade Center attack survivors.

I walked into my office in Chicago where I was Director of e-Business Strategy for a Fortune 200 that sustained the third-highest employee casualties in the WTC. By mid-morning I was part of a phone call with an employee trapped in his office who asked to get off the phone to say goodbye to his wife. He died. In the days that followed I handled two forums used by our WTC employees — now survivors and their loved ones to keep them updated on the lists we received every day from NYC government of our employees rescued and sent to the hospital, those confirmed dead, and those missing.

I witnessed survivors looking for fellow employees they feared dead find one another on the forums, and I witnessed as I glanced at my list to find people dead and contacted people to start the process of informing them that their loved one had died. I was responsible for a meeting scheduled for 10 AM in the North WTC, that fortunately ended up getting delayed, but most people on that floor ended up dying. I was horrified to think that one of my favorite employees in the WTC, who was then 9 months pregnant likely perished. Having lost my closest sibling when she was 26 and 6 months pregnant, it seemed all too familiar to me. I spoke to her and found that she had a craving and came to the ground floor for a snack. Meanwhile, all of her office co-wokers died. She later tried to return to work, but it was too emotional and she resigned and went to another company. She was extremely successful too. Making 7 figures. But the memories were too much.

I ended up using my marketing publication and the related forum on my site to share my story, I hoped something could be learned from all of this and I wanted to share the beauty of what I observed in those two forums. I was also concerned that Americans learn from this tragedy to more greatly value diversity, not to lash out in intolerance, as the terrorists thrived on intolerance — their intolerance defined them. We needed to remind ourselves that what has always made this nation great is our diversity; what harms us is intolerance. After I shared the article in my email newsletter, I shared a little bit in a post on the forum. I found this amazing group of forum members I really didn’t know from all over the world started posting these beautiful pro peace messages. Even more, I was surprised that some of my readers weren’t even in the marketing profession. One man was a philosophy professor from Canada, and he was a wonderful, kind person. Back at work, to my surprise, I found our CMO — who I regularly would have lunch with – was a subscriber and asked me if I would let our CEO use my article and put his name on it, as an op-ed on the front page of the business section of a major newspaper. I said yes, because I thought that my message was much more important than me — I cared about the message. Even though our CEO’s values, worldview and politics, were a million miles from mine and I thought my thinking in that piece didn’t sound remotely like him, it was still an opportunity to see a message I thought was important go out into the world and possibly impact people in a way my 40,000 reader reach publication wouldn’t do. To this day, only a few friends of mine even know any of this.

I hope today, in this small community, that you might consider remembering what was lost on this day and hopefully, what might be learned from it.