Lunching with a group of women {as
fascinating as they may be} has never
been a desire of mine. So how, then,
does one describe the pull of the universe
that finds us mirroring what we had no
ambition to embrace?

Sitting across the circular table from me
was a woman who, trust me, no one
could ever forget! Who she was didn't
matter. Her magnetism did. We walked
out of the luncheon arm-in-arm and to
this day I've never ceased to marvel at her
feats.

Dr. Margaret R. O'Keeffe Umanzio,
{Peggy to all} was born in Boston to Irish
parents who met while immigrating to
the USA. When Peggy was two, they
moved to Cambridge, just two blocks
from the entrance to Harvard.

Cambridge, in those days, was a highly
diversified community filled with
immigrants from all over the world,
the majority arriving in exile: fleeing
religious, cultural and economic
oppression with people getting off the
boat with the shirts on their backs
and then living in poverty. In marked

contrast, there were the wealthiest:
Kennedys, Roosevelts, Rockefellers and
such innovators as James Watson, cocreator of the double helix (Nobel Prize
in Medicine), Dr. John Nash (Nobel
Laureate in Economics), Theodor Seuss
Geisel (aka Dr. Seuss), B.F. Skinner (the
most celebrated psychologist since Freud
and creator of operant conditioning),
and Julia Child, along with the not
always smart and famous: the Boston
strangler or, the proponent of LSD as a
recreational drug, Timothy Leary.

But Cambridge was noted for something
far greater than poverty, wealth and
power. It housed an institution called
Harvard University that produced a
prodigious amount of the wealthy and
powerful in the world today. And it is
where Peggy, at the entrance into the
Harvard grounds, took her very first
step as a tiny child: where the mark
of greatness was to mould yet another
ingenious Ph.D., Harvard mind.

As a young graduate, Peggy was a
founder of, and teacher at, the first fully
integrated alternative public school
in the US: the Cambridge Alternative
Public School (CAPS), a group venture
by a community of people determined
to change and improve the Cambridge
school system.

Like a capsule shooting into space -
Peggy would now undertake the most
defining moments of her life. She
married her soul mate, Richard; together

they followed their hearts to California;
and Peggy began her work as an adviser
to many of the cutting-edge Leaders. Becoming a keynote speaker at
COMDEX {now known as Interop}
led to working as an advisor to
CEOs, executive teams, and boards of
companies in Silicon Valley, all faced
with the challenges of hyper-growth,
selection and integration of mergers
and acquisitions and top management
succession - her primary role being
advisor to CEOs and executive teams.

In addition, Peggy designed a discoverybased
learning process that enabled
her clients to achieve their strategic,
organizational and financial goals 50
percent faster than other consulting
processes. Her management consulting
practice included corporate entities
and such not-for-profits as universities,
religious institutions and organizations
in the health care industry. She
delivered major keynotes, lectured at
the University of California at Berkeley,
Stanford University and, as a result of
her consulting experiences and research,
Peggy developed a new model of
leadership which lead to the formation
of an international forum for executive
women from around the world.

Do you ask - what ever could be her
pièce de résistance? I'm guessing you've
guessed. Yes! A riveting work of creative
non-fiction based on her life! Expected
to be at the top of the bestseller list.