Forget About Your Life Plan

What It's About

What do you do when you find your best friend and boss murdered on a Baltimore rooftop?

No seriously, I'm asking. Any tricks or tips?

Forget About Your Life Plan is the story of my evolving friendship with Pava LaPere: a 5-foot-2 giant who swept me up in her orbit and changed the trajectory of my life. It begins in 2017, when I arrived in Baltimore as a Venture for America fellow, and it ends in 2025, on the other side of grief, with a new understanding of how to move forward without moving on.
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Along the way it takes a tour through Baltimore and its ecosystem: a student entrepreneurship program at Johns Hopkins, COVID-era initiatives to support local business, a high-growth startup called EcoMap Technologies. and then reckons with the aftermath of a murder that rocked a city, and what it means to build a legacy.

Pava was a prolific writer. After she died, I went back through all of it ... her Medium essays, EcoMap speeches, and the personal journal entries her family entrusted to me, and wove her voice through every chapter. She is a co-author of this book in more than spirit; Pava is absolutely alive in these pages.

Half of all proceeds will go to the foundation established in Pava's memory by her father, Frank.