Retired coach and financial marketing exec, Spiritual companion, Outside adventurer. Living gratefully.
Joined February 2010
- Tweets 5,069
- Following 429
- Followers 412
- Likes 4,456
157 Photos and videos
Jun 13
Youngest. Woman. Ever.
At 36. @taylorswift13 is inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Brava!
Taylor Swift Enters the Songwriters Hall of Fame With Tears, Jokes and a Warning nytimes.com/2026/06/12/arts/… via @NYTimes
26
Gerri Leder retweeted
In 1958, a divorced single mom got fired from her secretary job for being a bad typist.
21 years later, she sold her side hustle for $47.5 million.
And her teenage helper would go on to help invent MTV.
Her name was Bette Nesmith Graham.
Before she became a millionaire inventor, she was a struggling single mother in Dallas with no college degree and very few options.
She married young during WWII.
By 22, she was divorced, raising a son alone, and trying to survive on secretary jobs.
She eventually became an executive secretary at Texas Bank & Trust.
There was just one problem:
She was a terrible typist.
The bank had recently installed new IBM electric typewriters that made correcting mistakes almost impossible.
One typo could mean retyping an entire page.
Her son later remembered watching her sit at the kitchen table in “tears of panic,” terrified she’d lose her job.
But Bette had another skill.
She painted holiday window displays at the bank for extra money.
One day, while painting over a mistake on a window, she had a realization:
“An artist never erases mistakes. They paint over them.”
That night, she went home and mixed a white liquid in her kitchen blender using tempera paint.
She poured it into a nail polish bottle.
The next morning, she used it to cover typing errors.
It worked.
For five years, her boss never noticed.
Other secretaries did.
Soon, women from offices across the city were asking for bottles.
Bette started making batches at home with help from her teenage son, Michael, and his friends.
She called the product “Mistake Out.”
Then came the twist.
In 1958, she accidentally typed the name of her side business onto a company letter.
Her boss fired her immediately.
It became the best thing that ever happened to her.
She renamed the product Liquid Paper and focused on it full-time.
Orders exploded.
By the late 1960s, she was selling over a million bottles a year.
By the 1970s, 25 million bottles annually.
Then she did something even more unusual:
She built one of the most progressive workplaces in America.
Her company offered:
• child care
• continuing education
• leadership roles for women
• jobs for disabled workers
• integrated staffing
This was decades before most corporations even considered those ideas.
In 1979, with failing health, Bette sold Liquid Paper to Gillette for $47.5 million.
Six months later, she died at age 56.
Half her fortune went to women-focused charities.
The other half went to her son.
That son was Michael Nesmith.
Yes the same Michael Nesmith from The Monkees.
And with the money from Liquid Paper royalties, he funded a small experimental cable TV project called PopClips.
It featured short films set to music.
PopClips became the direct prototype for MTV.
So one woman’s “typing mistake” helped create:
• a multimillion-dollar company
• one of America’s most progressive workplaces
• and the blueprint for the modern music video era
Bette Graham proved something her old boss never understood:
The mistake wasn’t the failure.
It was the opportunity.
134
2,221
9,886
316,941
Gerri Leder retweeted
Jun 5
“The Vatican has replaced Silicon Valley as ground zero for disruptive thinking. The Catholic church … is becoming a beacon of light in a very dark world…. The pope has become a reassuring – and all too rare – voice of moral clarity.” theguardian.com/commentisfre…
80
1,038
3,915
171,726
Gerri Leder retweeted
May 29
Ken Paxton is throwing everything he has at us.
He’s called me a radical leftist. He’s called me a fake Christian. He’s even called me a vegan!
I’m an 8th generation Texan — I've been eating BBQ since before Ken Paxton’s first indictment.
10,081
12,583
75,249
1,910,834
I got a call from my daughter’s high school principal today. He said she’d been caught operating an “unauthorized commercial enterprise” out of the girls’ locker room. My stomach DROPPED. I left work immediately, already imagining the worst: Drugs. Vapes. Stolen stuff. Some TikTok side hustle gone wrong. By the time I got to the school, I was preparing myself for lawyers, suspension, maybe even police involvement. I walk into the principal’s office….…and my daughter is sitting there quietly with a spiral notebook full of spreadsheets. Not cash. Not customer lists. Spreadsheets. Turns out, she’d noticed some girls at school were quietly struggling: • no money for feminine hygiene products • no winter jackets • wearing the same clothes every week after budget cuts hit families hard So she started her own underground support network. She collected donated jackets, hygiene products, gloves, and clothes from wealthier neighborhoods.
Then she cataloged everything by size and need in her notebook like a tiny operations manager. And from her gym locker, she distributed items discreetly to students who needed them — no embarrassment, no announcements, no attention. The principal wasn’t calling because she was in trouble. He called because the school found out… and wanted my permission to turn her “illegal locker room business” into an official school charity program.
I thought I was driving to the biggest parenting nightmare of my life. Instead, I walked into one of the proudest moments I’ve ever had as a parent.
615
4,696
39,903
1,085,405
May 27
Sting’s Kids Won’t Inherit His Millions Because He Says It’s One Of The Worst Things A Parent Can Do | The WealthAdvisor thewealthadvisor.com/article…
16
May 24
Girl admitted to Yale, Dartmouth after teaching herself Excel to support struggling immigrant father e.vnexpress.net/news/news/ed…
11
Gerri Leder retweeted
May 23
As Trump posts AI videos of him assaulting Stephen Colbert, here’s what Colbert was doing:
Dancing with his wife, having fun at the Fired & Festive!” afterparty in NYC.
3,606
13,899
132,992
2,130,557
May 17
Those who deny history are doomed to repeat it. Black Americans have fought hard, lost their lives for the right to vote, Richardson writes.
open.substack.com/pub/heathe…
27
May 13
Dear educators, Gen Z here. Could you please teach us like it’s 2026? timeshighereducation.com/cam… via @timeshighered
11
May 13
Ted Turner’s kids grew up knowing that Conservation and philanthropy mattered more to him than dynastic wealth. thewealthadvisor.com/article…
6
May 10
Never say never - this woman is ready to serve as Dr!
Fulfilling a lifelong dream, 72-year-old will graduate from medical school washingtonpost.com/lifestyle…
11
Apr 29
Inside Jack Schlossberg's Trust Fund Amid Political Campaign | The WealthAdvisor thewealthadvisor.com/article…
9
Apr 28
Thank you @HiltonHotels
Apr 27
The Hilton donated the ~2600 dinners that went unserved at WHCD. They freeze dried the steak and lobster for longer shelf life before giving them to 2 shelters for abused women and children. HUGE thank you to the staff that worked through the night under terrible circumstances.
7
Apr 15
THIS….
Apr 14
Los libros de historia pasaron por alto discretamente el hecho de que Barack Obama, durante las noches más saturadas de presión de su presidencia, se retiraba solo a la Sala de Tratados en el segundo piso de la residencia de la Casa Blanca —no para trazar estrategias, no para tomar llamadas, sino para escribir a mano cartas personales a diez ciudadanos estadounidenses comunes cada única noche, una práctica que mantuvo con una devoción casi monástica durante los ocho años completos, seleccionando él mismo las cartas de las 40.000 que llegaban diariamente a la Casa Blanca, y su directora de correspondencia de toda la vida, Fiona Reese, confirmó que Obama a menudo lloraba en privado mientras leía ciertas cartas, doblándolas con cuidado antes de escribir respuestas tan personalmente detalladas y emocionalmente presentes que los destinatarios describían frecuentemente la experiencia de recibirlas como el momento más significativo de sus vidas, con un obrero siderúrgico de Ohio escribiendo de vuelta para decir que la carta de Obama lo había detenido físicamente de tomar una decisión que habría alterado permanentemente el futuro de su familia. Lo que hace que esta práctica sea casi insoportablemente conmovedora es el detalle que surgió después —Obama nunca usó una computadora para estas cartas, siempre un bolígrafo de punta de fieltro negro, siempre papel legal amarillo primero como borrador, siempre reescrito a mano una segunda vez en el papel membretado de la Casa Blanca, porque él creía, como le dijo a la historiadora Doris Kearns Goodwin en una rara conversación privada después relatada en su obra de 2018, que el acto físico de presionar la pluma contra el papel obligaba a una calidad de atención que simplemente teclear no podía replicar, una filosofía arraigada en sus años como profesor de derecho constitucional en la Universidad de Chicago de 1992 a 2004, donde desarrolló la convicción de que la democracia solo funciona cuando sus líderes permanecen genuinamente, incómodamente cerca de la gravedad específica del sufrimiento humano individual en lugar de procesarlo desde la distancia aislante de las instituciones y las pantallas.
20
Gerri Leder retweeted
Apr 10
Artemis II chief astronaut Reid Weisman gave a shoutout to the state of Maryland and his alma mater, Dulaney High School, after Sen. Chris Van Hollen asked a question during a call with the crew of the spacecraft heading back toward Earth.
"Lots of love," Weisman said about the state of Maryland before offering his advice to students at Dulaney and across the country.
🎥: Senator Chris Van Hollen on X
7
65
406
17,784
Gerri Leder retweeted
Pope Leo XIV at the Stations of the Cross: "Every person in authority will have to answer to God for the way they exercise their power." Jesus says. "Whatever you do to another human being, especially to the small and vulnerable, you do unto me. And it is to me that you will one day give an account."
Image: @vaticannews_it
140
3,011
10,603
183,572
Apr 3
12