Wonder Woman Wednesday

Beth Flynn:
To the Wonder Woman Wednesday webinar series. That's a lot of W's. My name is Beth Flynn and I work for the OSU Leadership Center. I'd like to introduce the Wonder Woman crew who are my good friends. We have Kyle White and Bethany Povarski, of OSU Extension, Medina County, and Kathy Lechman and Leo Taylor with the College of Food, Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. And in our college we call that FAESDEI. Lots of acronyms. We've been celebrating International Women's Month for the past three years and continuing that this year. And we are recognizing and celebrating five special women. By hearing their stories in their own words. By sharing their stories, our featured speakers will open our eyes to the benefits of supporting each other. Personal resilience, determination and self care. Our guest today is Rosemarie Rossetti. Take this hour for yourself. Sit back, listen, and absorb the stories of this diverse group of women. Because all of us have a story. This is your time to dig deep. Discover your story and celebrate it. And celebrate also who you are and all you have accomplished, because we all do have stories of resilience. So let's get started. I'd like to introduce Rosemarie Rossetti. Rather than reading her bio, Rosemarie will be sharing her story with us. Kathy Lechman is guiding our discussion today. So, Kathy, please kick us off.

Kathy Lechman:
Thanks, Beth, and good afternoon to everyone. It's such a pleasure to be here and I'm so excited to be able to talk with you, Rosemarie. We're going to jump right in. And one of the first questions we're going to start with kind of a little fun question. So when you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up? If somebody asked you that question, how would you have responded?

Rosemarie Rossetti:
Well, that's an easy answer. I always wanted to be a teacher. I really enjoyed being a student in school and I really was attracted to all the teachers, had a great relationship from the time I was in elementary school, high school and college. So I knew I wanted to be a teacher. And fortunately that was my career path. As I went through Ohio State University as an undergraduate, as a master's and as a doctoral studying agricultural education and horticulture. So I always loved plants as a child and my love of gardening turned into a dual major. Then at the Ohio State University, when I left Ohio State, I was teaching horticulture at a career center in Delaware County.

Kathy Lechman:
That is awesome. That's great. So you did what you wanted to do from from the time you were young. That's that is exciting. So, Rosemarie, as you think about your life and we're going to ask you to talk about your leadership story. So did you come into your leadership position by plan or by chance if somebody told you that?

Rosemarie Rossetti:
Not a chance. This this business actually got started on purpose.

Kathy Lechman:
Okay, Talk to us about that.

Rosemarie Rossetti:
Well, I had been on the faculty at Ohio State University for 11 years, and I left there in January of 1997 to start my business, Rosetti Enterprises, as a speaking and training and consulting company. My first client was a company in Canada, Friesen Kay and Associates, and I had a contract with them to deliver train the trainer programs throughout North America. And you see it was such an easy transition for me with a new client because I had been teaching teaching methods at Ohio State and public speaking. So that was a great transition to then say, I'm leaving the university, I'm now on my own. I have a contract with a company that will send me to workshops throughout North America. So I had a wonderful start with my new business.

Kathy Lechman:
That is great. Just to follow up to that. So if somebody had told you you'd be running your own business, what would you have said? What would you have thought?

Rosemarie Rossetti:
Well, it depends when they would have said that. I always wanted to be in the teaching profession and for me to think about being a solo entrepreneur in the teaching world was a definite diversion where most of my thoughts would be in an academic setting. But it it turned out for the best. I could use the expertise and the education from before to use that in the corporate world and do much more than I was doing at the university.

Kathy Lechman:
Yeah, more you can you can kind of determine your own path and not have the parameters of like the university. So I'm sure that that provided a lot more opportunity. Um, thinking about your, your career trajectory, did you have a formal mentor?

Rosemarie Rossetti:
Well, there's lots of mentors in my life. There's not one formal one. But as I look back from the start of the business, learning how to be a professional speaker and and becoming a member of the National Speakers Association and going to their conferences, especially the National Speakers Association here in Ohio. Those were the people who mentored me as the members of the association, particularly those in central Ohio, but also throughout the nation as they had workshops and training sessions and one on one consulting with me. So it was not one mentor. It was really the family, as I call it, the National Speakers Association.

Kathy Lechman:
How did you get connected with the National Speakers Association? Is it something that you applied to be a part of or did somebody meet? Did you meet somebody that was connected?

Rosemarie Rossetti:
I did meet someone when I was on the faculty at Ohio State University, a fellow faculty member in the Department of Agricultural Engineering. Randall Reeder, was a member of the National Speakers Association. So he told me about it and said, If you want guest speakers in your class while you're teaching public speaking, why don't you come to a meeting of the Ohio chapter so that you can meet some of the current members? And then I would invite every quarter at that time one speaker from the National Speakers Association to be a guest speaker in my public speaking class on campus. So that's how I got initiated.

Kathy Lechman:
Great. Um, thinking back is how were who were some of the the women or men that helped you along the way? You mentioned people, the National Speakers Bureau and you mentioned Randall. Anybody else that kind of helped you along the way?

Rosemarie Rossetti:
Well, there's been a lot of mastermind groups. I've been in several of them. And the one I'm currently in, I've been in for 16 years. So what it is, is a group of of like minded professional speakers, consultants, trainers and writers that either get together virtually or occasionally in person. So by being in a mastermind group that has really propelled me to have them come to my presentations or watch my videos and critique them or help me write a proposal or guide me as I'm thinking about expansion or just sharing my joy, my big wins, as well as my frustrations in life.

Kathy Lechman:
Okay. What are some of the best referenced that you have a story. So thinking about everything that you've experienced in life and in your career, what are some of the leadership lessons that you have learned?

Rosemarie Rossetti:
Well, I've learned about delegation and not doing everything yourself and being able to ask others who are more expert than you are. I have some skills, but there's some skills that I don't possess. So it's important as a leader to recognize the things that I don't enjoy doing or do poorly and find other people to hire. Now, this could be a virtual person or it could be someone that comes to the house or someone in another country that I get through a organization or a website and find that they're better at. For example, designing a cover of my book or designing the inside pages of a book or creating a new logo or creating a new one sheet. There's marketing specialists out there that write my marketing copy and design my website. So it's about it's very important that you as an entrepreneur realize it's very strategic to build your business by delegating people who delegate, make more money than people who don't delegate. So let them elevate themselves. When you delegate to them.

Kathy Lechman:
Delegation is, I hear you. And I think sometimes that's one of the things that people have a struggle with, is kind of that letting go to trust somebody else to do something. You also make me think of this concept of self-awareness. You know, you mentioned, you know, recognizing the things that you might not be good at or that aren't your strengths. How do you develop that? How do you work to hone that, that kind of self-awareness and realizing what needs to be delegated?

Rosemarie Rossetti:
Well, when I'm spending way too much time on an activity and a task and I get frustrated and then I look at the results and I say, Why did I even think I could do this So? Or I just put it off and keep procrastinating it. I look at my to do list and it's still there a week later. And I think, you know, I just don't want to do this. This is not something that I am proficient in. Let me find someone else. So when you look at the legal field, of course, I have no legal background. You look at accounting and taxes. I would rather pay someone else to do that than for me to figure out how to learn to be a tax accountant. So things come up every once in a while and I say, You know what? We're going to turn that over to someone now. The one I turn things over to the most is my husband, Mark Leder. He is my business partner and he's my webmaster, my IT person, my creative designer, my photographer, my videographer, my editor. And so we have a really unique relationship in that we both work here at our home together and he's the guy that gets delegated to and I have to make him accountable. So that that's an interesting juxtaposition as a married couple to have our professional time separate from our personal time and to make sure that we're not rubbing each other the wrong way.

Kathy Lechman:
Yeah, that's that sounds like that. That's a lot of togetherness. And so you mentioned how how do you kind of mediate that? What are some tips for other people who might be engaging in this kind of process where you're working with a partner?

Rosemarie Rossetti:
Well, in my case, I have to be very specific on deadlines. I could write a whole bunch of to do lists for him and he gets overwhelmed. And so I have to just be very cognizant of his life and his schedule and things that he has to do outside of being my business partner. And if there is a deadline, I need to let him know that, hey, by the end of today I need that document edited because they're looking for it. So I just have to stress what are the parameters of getting this done. And then sometimes I have to stretch it out. I talk to him and say, How are you coming on that project? And he'll say, Well, I haven't gotten to it yet and I've just got to back off and understand that to be more patient with him. I don't want to ever jeopardize our marriage and our relationship. We have been married now for 28 years. There's no way I want to put any stress on that marriage. He's my best friend. He's the best husband I could ever have chosen. If I could clone him for other women, they would be delighted to have a husband as loving and devoted as Mark.

Kathy Lechman:
Oh, that is. That is awesome. That. That's just make me smile. Hearing that. That. That's wonderful. And it sounds like communication is really the key.

Rosemarie Rossetti:
Oh, absolutely. His office is on the other side of the house and we both close our doors when we are deep in work. So he knows not to disturb me and I know not to disturb him. So we will send emails back and forth. Occasionally I'll call his cell phone to see where he is. And usually we have a lot of discussions at meals where I say, You know, what's going on today? What did you do today? What have you got planned? And then at the end of the day, at dinner, we try to report on what we had as a win today. And then usually when we're going to sleep last night, we started talking about, you know, this has been a good day today and actually it's been a great week for business. So we might talk about it before we turn the light out.

Kathy Lechman:
Good. So having some going to sleep on a positive note, having that over a meal, that's that sounds like great advice. Yeah.

Rosemarie Rossetti:
And a lot of vacation time together, too. You have to balance it. The benefit for Mark is I get speeches and consulting all over the country. In fact, recently we were in Europe in a tour of Europe on a cruise as well as in Barcelona. That was part business. So that's his benefit, is he gets to come with me to a lot of the locations where I'm working and he just really enjoys traveling with me. And I put him to work sometimes in terms of taking photographs or videos that then we use to develop new content.

Kathy Lechman:
Uh huh. Wow. Sounds like a great partnership there. Thinking about thinking about your career trajectory and kind of your, your experiences and how you developed into this entrepreneur, Um. What do you wish somebody would have done for you or told you? You know, like advice. What advice do you wish maybe you would have gotten a little earlier in your career as you were developing your business?

Rosemarie Rossetti:
I should have hired a virtual assistant earlier than I did for the marketing, and I should have hired someone that was experienced in marketing and helping to sell speakers. I did hire two virtual assistants, but they had no training, no expertise, no experience. They were just people who lived near my house, who had some skills in telephone sales, but I had to train them in how to sell me. I should have hired an experienced salesperson to represent me that was maybe representing other speakers at the same time so that I'd have a much faster build to know who was my prospect list, how to put sales material together, how to develop the website. So I should have approached it from a more professional avenue in terms of someone on my side as an assistant to help me with the bookings. And that's about 90% of the business is marketing and sales, delivering a speech or delivering a consulting or writing an article that's about 10%. It's really about getting the the business in, and that takes forever. It's a long sales process.

Kathy Lechman:
So thinking about this is still kind of thinking about going backward. But what advice would you give your younger self about leadership and kind of building your brand and your, you know, being an entrepreneur?

Rosemarie Rossetti:
This phrase has come into my life at the beginning of COVID. I have a little sign on my desk. It's still here. It's been here now over two years. Be relentlessly optimistic. I look at it every day. That message needs to resonate with everyone on this webinar because we just don't understand the ups and downs of life, the ups and downs of the economy, of our health, of our situations. But by being relentlessly optimistic and never giving up has been the salvation for me. As you might imagine, during the COVID pandemic, what happened to me as a speaker was devastating and traumatic. I had no more business. I had all these airline tickets that I now had to figure out what to do with. I had all these cancellations and my income went to zero as a speaker. So how do you get your mind around that to say, will this ever end? Will people start meeting again? And then we started doing more virtual presentations. So I had to start learning and buying the equipment to do virtual presentations and expand my business to another media. So realizing the the attitude makes such a difference and why not be more optimistic to see that light at the end of the tunnel? It'll be there some day. Just keep going after it.

Kathy Lechman:
You talk about this, the sense of optimism. Was that something that you kind of always had, or is that something you developed as you experienced things throughout life?

Rosemarie Rossetti:
Well, you're not always optimistic when something bad happens. There's many times that grief and depression set in, especially after my bike injury. So I wasn't always optimistic, always hopeful, but realized if I changed my thoughts to be more hopeful, my attitude did change.

Kathy Lechman:
You mentioned the bike accident. Is that something that you feel comfortable talking a little bit about and how that impacted your view and how you are a leader now? Or you have been a leader not just now, but you have been.

Rosemarie Rossetti:
Well, the day that my life changed forever was June 13th of 1998. It was our third wedding anniversary. And we went to a bike trail over in Granville, Ohio, to celebrate our wedding anniversary. So we're riding our bike on a Saturday. A beautiful day. No wind, no rain, a Caribbean blue sky when suddenly Mark hears what he thinks is a gunshot. With that, he looks around and surveys. What was that noise? And then I hear him behind me on his bike, yelling, saying, Stop, stop. It's like I didn't know what he was telling me. What do you mean, stop? Well, what he had seen was a tree halfway down and it was on a path. And literally this tree, 7,000 pounds, fell on top of me with the live power lines and instantly crushed me, leaving me paralyzed from the waist down. So that was a surreal experience to be celebrating our love one minute and then hearing him yelling stop and then being unconscious for a period of time until the rescuers were there lifting me out from under the tree. And I woke up on my back looking up at Mark saying what happened? And then I couldn't move my legs and I was in excruciating pain. So that whole part of my life, the summer of 98 was totally traumatic, depressing, dismal. What was going to happen now? Realize my business was only a year and a half old. I had another business as a publishing company that was in my basement with a book that I had written, The Healthy Indoor Plant. All business stopped. Both businesses shut down. Now I am paralyzed from the waist down. And what was the recovery going to be?

Kathy Lechman:
And how because again, think about that sense of optimism and that that traumatic experience, the tragedy and then to where you are now. And so, again, how did you build that, that kind of optimism? How did you kind of come through to this other side?

Rosemarie Rossetti:
Well, when I woke up from surgery, I found out that I had a spinal cord injury. I was lucky to be alive when I went under the anesthesiology. I thought my last thought before the surgery was, Will this be my last thought? Am I going to be dead because of the accident and waking up in intensive care? I looked around at all the machines and the tubes in me and the beeping noises and that I really was alive. And it was a sudden awakening to say I am alive. They did operate. Now what? I've got to take whatever I can and go forward with it. I've always been a strong and determined and persistent person, and so I made that decision internally to myself to be grateful for life and to move forward with it.

Kathy Lechman:
That's just amazing. And thinking about everything you've been through and where you've come. And you're you might not like it, but you're a role model for people. And so thinking about that, how do you help other people or how have you helped like other women kind of come into their own leadership or encourage them, you know, the way you you know, you're an entrepreneur, new entrepreneur when this happened, but you kept going. So are there things that you have done for other people to kind of help them kind of see this this same path?

Rosemarie Rossetti:
Yeah. Fortunately, I recorded in the hospital every day on a small mini cassette recorder, what my day was like and what I was learning lessons, things that I was thinking about. And so I did that for two years. Every day would put a personal journal together on a tape recorder. I then started a monthly column that was in a newspaper, Women's News. So it was a syndicated column. I started putting it on other websites and other newspapers. So every month I was writing about lessons I was learning, and that was, I guess, helping other women and helping other men. Any readers were seeing what I had gone through and what I was learning. Then I started the motivational speaking and began sharing the lessons that I had learned. And then later on I started looking at all the articles and I said I should just make a book out of them. So I took the collection of the monthly articles. I gave them to some friends to read and said, Pick the best 20 and let's decide which 20 will make it into my book, "Take Back Your Life". And that then became the new distribution of my lessons to live by and my motivation and inspiration to others. So it's a combination of me speaking on stages, speaking virtually, doing podcasts, writing articles, writing, "Take Back Your Life", and then the Ohio State University would call upon me every once in a while to go back to the rehabilitation center when a new patient was admitted and they would say, "Would you mentor this new man or woman? They've just come out of surgery. Life is just a turmoil. Will you help them?" And so, of course, I would go back, introduce myself and interact with that newly injured person.

Kathy Lechman:
So what are you what are your thoughts on you know, we have people listening and I know you might not be able to see some of the comments, but I've been kind of looking at the comments and people are talking about, you know, what an amazing woman you are. You know, the determination, you know, what message or lesson do you would you like others to take from your story and your experiences?

Rosemarie Rossetti:
Well, I have five of them, actually, in terms of lessons. And the one is doing something new every day. I learned that one in the rehabilitation setting while I was in inpatient as well as the two years that I was an outpatient. Three days a week, I went back to the university for physical therapy, occupational therapy and recreation therapy. And so every time I would go back to the university for my therapy, I would ask the therapist, "What are we going to do new today?" And I continue to think that way as I develop my skills and my business or personally exercise-wise. I'm always challenging myself to learn new things so that I can do something new every day. So that'd be one lesson to think about.

Kathy Lechman:
Okay. I think that's, yhat's very encouraging. That's. That's great. Um, are there. I know that I thought I saw some questions. So Leah or Bethany, were there questions for Rosemarie?

Bethany:
And she already addressed the first question that we had. But now I see a new one. What are the other four areas that you were talking? You mentioned five.

Rosemarie Rossetti:
Okay.

Rosemarie Rossetti:
Focus on a hopeful future, not on your self-pity. How does that one strike you? You can imagine the tear soaked pillows at the rehabilitation center where I was crying my eyes out day and night after my injury. And I realized that I had to focus on something hopeful, not on my self-pity. That lesson was taught to me by Christopher Reeve a year before my injury. He was the the keynote speaker in Columbus at an event I had attended. And that was his lesson to the audience. A year later, I got the photograph of Christopher Reeve on stage that Randall Reeder had taken and brought to the hospital room to put on the wall at the foot of my bed to remind me of that lesson. Focus on a hopeful future, not on your self-pity. So that's my second one. The third one is to believe the impossible just might be possible. And so with that, we started thinking about all the activities I used to do, like biking and kayaking and swimming and skiing. Originally, I thought I'd never be able to do that again. I didn't know the world of adaptive sports, but I am doing all those things again with modifications. So to believe that the impossible is just likely possible. So those are the first three.

Kathy Lechman:
Four and five.

Rosemarie Rossetti:
You want four and five?

Kathy Lechman:
Well, she said. Regina asked, "What are the other four?"

Rosemarie Rossetti:
You want all five of them, don't you. You want you want to hear the the total. All right. The next one is allow more time to get things done and be patient with yourself. Allow more time to get things done and be patient with yourself. Your to do list often times exceeds your capabilities. And so think about what is a realistic out output of energy and time so that you don't get so frustrated. And the last one to lower your stress, lower your expectations of other people. And here's how I learned that one. Because of my need to have help at home. When I first was injured, Mark had to take over all the housekeeping, all the landscaping, all the laundry, all the cooking, and I was leaving him a large to do list every day. Immediately, when he got home from work, there was a lot of stress put on him and a lot of bickering in our relationship. So I had to realize I had to lower my expectations of what he had to do for me so I could lower both of our levels of stress. I was asking way too much. He couldn't get that done.

Kathy Lechman:
You mentioned that you have been married for 28 years and the accident occurred during when you were celebrating your third anniversary. So that's that's a kind of a transition. And I'm sure there's a lot and you just mentioned this example of, you know, adapting and the tasks that you had to be done. How did you all come to this? You know, kind of come out to the other side. What did you do? Because I'm sure that there were some ups and downs during that time. So I know you talked about the importance of communication. Do you think that your communication improved throughout the years? Is that something that was enhanced because of the situation?

Rosemarie Rossetti:
Absolutely. Our relationship has grown much stronger because of the communication and of course, because now I need his help in my personal care also. I need his help around the house. I need his help. Recently, I had a bad muscle spasm and I couldn't even get in and or out of bed. And I'm now recovered from that thanks to medicines. But I started biking when the weather got warm a few weeks ago, and as a result I had a back spasm extreme, not not able to take care of myself. And there he was, my hero. And I and I told him as he was getting me out of bed the other day, I said, You are my hero. And I looked at his sincerely and his response is, And you're not talking about a large sandwich, are you?

Kathy Lechman:
No, that. That. Yeah. Good sense of humor seems to be something that's also important.

Rosemarie Rossetti:
Yeah. I don't know where that came from. I thought. I thought that was just the perfect response to me calling him my hero.

Kathy Lechman:
One of the things that you said previously was about kind of being more patient with yourself. And this is. This is totally self-serving. I tend to not be very patient with myself. I want I should be doing things right. I should be doing this, this, this, this. How do you take a step back and kind of give yourself that grace that you're talking about?

Rosemarie Rossetti:
Well, you start pursuing something and the time that it takes oftentimes is longer than you expected. And you just say, you know, that was a bigger task. I couldn't eat it as quickly as I wanted to in terms of the the magnitude of the task or the interruption that happened, I might have three things every day on my desk that I really want to get done. I try to have little notes and say at the end of the day, this has to be done. But then other emails come in and other potential business development that supersede and have a higher priority. And so I just say, okay, then that's the way it is. Sometimes we just have to be flexible and have more patience and say there's other things. We're not a higher priority.

Kathy Lechman:
Now, are these before? Before the accident. So are these kinds of things that you develop the ways of of kind of looking at life, kind of like developing the patience and giving yourself grace? Is this stuff that you've just learned along the way? Um, well, they.

Rosemarie Rossetti:
Definitely came from the recovery period. They came very quickly. Most of them came to me either at the rehab hospital or during that two years of of rehabilitation.

Kathy Lechman:
Okay. Excellent. You know, I appreciate you taking time to share your story and your experiences, and I've not been watching the chat or the Q&A, so I'm not sure if there are any additional questions that folks have for Rosemarie or anything that they would like to share.

Bethany:
Uh, we do not have any additional questions at the moment.

Regina:
Okay.

Beth Flynn:
Rosemarie?

Rosemarie Rossetti:
Yes.

Beth Flynn:
I thought of a question really quickly. Will you talk a little bit about this universal design house that you in and how you've made that part of your mission? Because I think a lot of us aren't familiar. I've been putting the link in the in the chat box, but people before they knew your story, that didn't make much sense. But a lot of us don't understand what universal living is.

Rosemarie Rossetti:
Sure, you're actually seeing my office at the Universal Design Living Laboratory, our home. This is a national demonstration, home and garden. We're here in Columbus, and it is a model of universal design, accessible design and green building design. The top rated universal design home in North America, earning certifications for universal design and also for green building. The house is ten years old. It took us 32 months of construction. We were the general contractors. Never built a house before and will never build another one. You can see our house virtually and take a tour anytime at UDLL.com, which is our website. Just click on the virtual tour. You can also click on the video tour and there's a free chapter of my book, the "Universal Design Toolkit", which you can download. And while you're doing the virtual tour, reference that chapter because it tells you the universal design features in our home room by room. And what is universal design? It's Beyond the Americans with Disabilities Act. It is taking it to the point of it's usable by all people without a need for specialized design.

Rosemarie Rossetti:
So we have 36 inch wide doors. We have no thresholds, no steps to get in and out of any of the doors. We have a four by seven shower with no curb on it and a seat there with a handheld shower. We have four different heights of counters in the kitchen to accommodate everyone in the kitchen. As I'm seated here, I'm four foot one. My husband standing is six foot four. So we had to accommodate a diverse group of people. He's the clean up guy, I'm the cook. And so we can operate together as a tandem as we do meal preparations and clean up. So in a nutshell, Universal Design is featured here. We have a classroom here, we have an acre and a half property. We've had 3500 people here on tour in person and countless people virtually have seen it. During construction, we had a camera on the entire time that this was built. We had over 200 sponsors. Talk about a Herculean project. This one started in 2004, hiring an architect. We opened to the public in 2014 when finally the landscaping and the lower level was finished a ten year journey.

Kyle White:
Rosemarie, this is Kyle, and I just wanted to ask you, can you tell me a little bit about your book, if you don't mind? Kathy I'm jumping in here. I just so interested in it. "Take Back Your Life". Is that an autobiography?

Rosemarie Rossetti:
That is the collection of the inspirational articles. The best of the 20. So it starts on the bike trail and ends on the bike trail on the second anniversary of my injury. So it describes what happened on the scene, and then it parallels some of the most important revelations that I went through and the lessons that I was learning. So it was selected by a committee that had read all of my inspirational articles and said these were the ones that resonated, and these are the ones that should be in that book. You should be able to get it at Amazon.

Kyle White:
That's just awesome. Do you still journal?

Rosemarie Rossetti:
It's "Take Back Your Life, Regaining Your Footing When Life Throws You A Curve".

Kyle White:
Excellent. Do you journal still now?

Rosemarie Rossetti:
I do not. Okay. I am writing a new book, though. The new book is about accessible homes, so it's going to be a take off of the "Universal Design Toolkit" designed for the older adult and any consumer who's looking to renovate their house, remodel their house, or start anew to find something that can be a forever home to suit them for their lifetime.

Kyle White:
So interesting. I was wondering if anybody from HGTV has ever contacted you to do a spot.

Rosemarie Rossetti:
We've tried. We can't seem to get their attention.

Regina:
Mm. This is great. Awesome.

Kyle White:
Do we have any other questions? Because I want to make sure everybody gets their chance to pitch in if they do. Yeah.

Rosemarie Rossetti:
I might also suggest that if people are interested in watching a video of myself where I'm talking about the home and giving the five lessons to live by, there is a TEDx video that you can watch so you can go to Rosemariespeaks.com and the TEDx video is highlighted there or just search "TedX Rosemarie Rossetti" and you'll see it. That was in my estimation, one of my premier performances that took way too long to write, rehearse and deliver that particular stress that I put on myself. To put that TEDx together was enormous. But I think if you look at it, hopefully it's communicating the right message as you watch it.

Kathy Lechman:
And I see that there is a question that came and it says, "I love your gentleness as you speak, but can you share what you use to alleviate frustration when you see injustices for the disabled?"

Rosemarie Rossetti:
I go after whoever is doing the injustice. I am rabid. I go to the source and figure out why. What happened? I'm an advocate. I want to leave the place better than I found it. If there's some injustice that I see, I try to intervene. If it's an environmental problem, I ask to see the manager immediately and then say, "I'll give you 30 days to report back, what are you going to do about this?" So I'm always looking at environmental barriers. I'm in the meetings industry helping them to accommodate people with disabilities. I'm now working with cities. In fact, Columbus has hired me for Experience Columbus, and I created a new accessibility guide on their website. To help people to see Columbus as a tourist destination for accessibility. So if I see something, I'm going to do something.

Kathy Lechman:
I love that. Another question came in. See, we're inspiring. More questions. It says "Your resilience and positive attitude are remarkable. What do you do when you're feeling down? How do you rediscover your positive outlook?"

Rosemarie Rossetti:
I might go to sleep at that point if I'm really frustrated and down. I will lay down for a while and say it's going to be a better day when I wake up. So sometimes rest will rejuvenate me. And of course, having a good meal. I love to be energized by biking, by kayaking, by being outdoors. There's nothing better for me to rejuvenate my spirit than to just take off from the neighborhood in my three wheeled recumbent bike and ride around for a while. Or take the trailer, put the bike and the kayak on and let's just get away for a while. So move away from that situation, get some rest, get a good meal, and have a different attitude when you get back.

Kyle White:
Are there any particular books that you've been reading or that you you want to share with our audience?

Rosemarie Rossetti:
There's one book. It made a difference for me. It was right after my injury. Someone had suggested it. Take it down. "Man's Search for Meaning". It was written by Viktor Frankl, a survivor of the German concentration camp. That book was a turning point for me, taking me from the despair and depression. When I immediately got home from the hospital. I was devastated. I was depressed. We had counseling for a year, both Mark and I, to get over our depression and grief. That book was a major turning point. The simple lesson that I learned is what is the meaning of life? And the answer is love. And it was apparent to me that if I loved my husband, my mother, my brothers, all my friends and relatives, that I had to move forward. I had to be a rebounder because they all depended on me. There was no way I was going to end my life. I had to move forward with it because the meaning of life is love.

Kyle White:
That's excellent. Wow. Look, when I'm looking at the chat, Rosemarie, there's just a number of people saying such a great book. So profound, very emotional. I love everything written by Victor Frankel. I actually had a poster this last year at our conference with a lot of information on him. Very inspirational.

Kathy Lechman:
There's a there's a comment. But I have one other question, because a lot of things you like to do. You talked about it's outdoors. It's still biking, it's kayaking. Those are determined on the weather. So what do you do in the winter time when we can't necessarily get out as much?

Rosemarie Rossetti:
Well, we invested in equipment here at the house during COVID since our YMCA was closed. So that was our Christmas gift to each other. We bought some used equipment. I have a recumbent bike, I have a dual cable cross and I have a UBE, which is a hand cranking machine. I also have hand weights and TheraBands and yoga mats and I looked at a lot of things online to follow some adaptive fitness programs. So we did that during COVID for the two years. Then YMCA reopened and we're back there again. So I'm swimming laps usually once a week. I go biking when the weather's nice in the neighborhood. We did go to Florida for about a 12 day vacation, so I got to go swimming outside in a pool in Florida while we were gone.

Kathy Lechman:
Oh, that's. Great because I know sometimes winter time can be hard. And then, as you said, COVID just kind of did a lot of people and it was very hard. The comment that somebody made is, "Unfortunately, there are still many challenges for the disabled to cross properties. Are you connected with Ohio State and the ADA coordinator and or facilities operations and development here? If not, it'd be wonderful."

Rosemarie Rossetti:
Yes, I am. If the same people are there. I believe it was Scott Lissner who was one of the people that I had connected with. So they seem to be a very established group. He's been there a long time and I'm not aware of what problems the university is having as it continues to expand. I'm just amazed every time I drive on campus, all the major cranes and construction going on. So if you see something that needs attention, I think Scott Listener's office needs to know about it.

Kathy Lechman:
And Scott is still here. And I think he's I think he does a wonderful job and yes, definitely bring things to his attention. Here's another question that came in. "What is your biggest hope, the disability community ten years from now?"

Rosemarie Rossetti:
Well, I hope that accessible design, universal design, becomes the standard for building homes so that the laws for building codes change. And that at least one entrance is visitable so that there's no step to get into a house. So that there's 36 inch wide doors and that they have at least a half a bathroom on the first floor. These are three components of a Visitable house. So I would like to think that people say universal design. What was that? And they don't even know that homes didn't have these features so that it becomes just commonplace. Doesn't every shower not have a curb? Isn't every door 36 inches wide? Are all door handles lever style? Doesn't every shower have a handheld shower where it's adjustable? So I would love to see in ten years that the homes of the future have these as standard practice. Not have to think about putting them in when you're designing the house as we do now.

Kathy Lechman:
And. Let me see if there are any other questions that have come in.

Leo:
No, this is Leo. I'll just chime in really quickly that to make a connection here, it sounds like Rosemarie your house is well-designed for aging in place, too. Yes. Not just an issue that impacts people who are currently disabled or have a disability. It's folks who are well, I refer to them as temporarily non-disabled.

Rosemarie Rossetti:
That's right.

Rosemarie Rossetti:
As we age, our mobility will change our vision, our reflexes, our sight, our mental capacity. And that's why I'm writing the new book, is to feature what does happen as a person ages and how that impacts your safety in the home primarily, and what supports can be there for safety. People have a higher quality of life if they can stay at home. And so it's my my wish that people understand how they can create these environmental features so that they can stay in their homes, possibly for the whole lifetime.

Kyle White:
Right. Let's try to get our the rest of the questions in if we can. And while we're waiting, I'm just going to thank everybody who came here today because I know we're on spring break. So, Rosemarie, you had quite a crowd and we had a lot of people that have probably been off campus. So I want to thank you.

Rosemarie Rossetti:
Thank you for your participation and please connect with me after this program. [email protected]. If any of you need to reach out to me, I'd be happy to continue the discussion as well

as going to my two websites and looking at the resources and the articles and the videos that are there.

Kathy Lechman:
I know I'm definitely going to take a virtual tour because you've got me very excited and thinking about different possibilities. And I just want to say, you know, thank you for your willingness to share your story. I love your your your quote on, you know, being optimistic and that kind of reminder and also, you know, allowing yourself some grace and and trying to be more patient with yourself. I think you had a lot of great messages for all of us as far as even leading. Leading through difficult times, too.

Rosemarie Rossetti:
Sure. Well, as you're taking the virtual tour, you can play a little game. When the photographer from Google was here, I asked him if I should put our cat in one of the rooms so that she would be isolated from all the photographs that he was going to take. And he said, "No, just let her run around." And she did. So you'll see her, the photo bomber, throughout the virtual tour. She's a little orange tabby cat named Keiko. So look for Keiko in that virtual tour. She's there.

Kathy Lechman:
We'll definitely do that.

Kyle White:
I love it. I love it. And before I wanted to just mention, as we see, maybe some people might be getting ready to drop off or we're getting towards the end of our hour. I wanted to first of all, thank you so much, Rosemarie. I think we connected on LinkedIn and I'm looking forward to continuing our relationship and hopefully meeting you in person someday. So stay tuned. I'll be in touch with you. And I also wanted everyone to know this this week. Kathy Lechman was the interviewer. But next week I will be interviewing Kathy for the Wonder Woman Wednesday series, So stop on in Rosemarie if you want to see what's going on with with Kathy and hear her story. And then the last in our series of Wonder Woman Wednesday workshops, we will be featuring our dean, Dr. Catherine Cress, the dean of the College of Food, Agriculture and Environmental Sciences. So I want to thank everybody for coming. I don't know if there's any more questions. Do we have any more questionsm, my friends?

Kathy Lechman:
I don't see any, Kyle.

Kyle White:
Okay. Well, with that, again, I want to thank you, Rosemarie. I think you've got the most beautiful smile we have seen, the most beautiful smiles on this on this workshop series. So I want to thank you again and everyone, I hope you have a great rest of the week. We're getting lots of thank you's and yay's and just all kinds of great stuff in the chat. So next week, same time, same place, my friends. We'll see you then. Take care and have a great week.

Rosemarie Rossetti:
Thank you. It's been a pleasure.