Welcome to Insights — my space for publishing ideas, research, and reflections on technical leadership and the human systems that make or break it.

Here you’ll find:

  • Publications — peer-reviewed papers and conference presentations that form the foundation of The Emotional Architect.

  • Fresh perspectives — monthly reflections that expand on themes from my mentoring, book development, and speaking work.

  • Event recaps and updates — highlights from IEEE Aerospace Conference, WE Local, Women in Manufacturing, and other conferences where I share this framework in action.

I publish here to do what I ask of technical leaders: make the invisible visible. Human-systems failures often hide beneath the surface until they derail the mission. My goal is to surface the patterns, name them, and show you how to engineer better ones.

Fresh Perspectives Lisa Akers Fresh Perspectives Lisa Akers

The Evolution of a Book Cover: When Art Meets Marketing

I have four versions of my book cover sitting in a folder on my desktop. Every time I open it, I feel this little pang - not quite regret, but something adjacent to it. Maybe it's nostalgia for versions that felt more me, or maybe it's just the sting of learning that publishing a book means making your deeply personal work palatable for public consumption.

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