Book Launch: The Leadership Catalyst

by Jesse Landry, Guest Contributor

There’s a moment every great event pivots from being “another book launch” to something electric—something that doesn’t just fill a room, but rewires it. That moment arrived the second Ashley Cheung stood under the lights at Tempo by Hilton Times Square, looked across the audience, and turned vulnerability into velocity.

Ashley’s new book, The Leadership Catalyst: Igniting Inspired Change, isn’t theory. It’s lived architecture, a framework built from loss, resilience, and an unflinching study of what happens when generations stop colliding and start collaborating. It’s what happens when a 25-year patent veteran who built Virtual Patent Gateway (VPG) out of grit and ingenuity decides to translate her industry’s most rigid hierarchies into something human.

The event, co-hosted with Tavern Community Coworking, pulsed with that same spirit. Tavern isn’t a venue, it’s a social operating system disguised as a coworking space. A place where conversation replaces business cards and community replaces pretense. That alignment mattered. Because The Leadership Catalyst isn’t about management, it’s about movement.

And the movement in that room was

real. Melissa Cohen, the moderator and LinkedIn Top Voice, doesn’t just guide conversations, she engineers transformation. She opened by reframing #leadership not as a title but as a practice. Her story, one that spans Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger, and the founding of MBC Consulting Solutions, LLC, anchored the night in credibility. Her reminder, “We’re far more alike

than we are different,” set the tone.

Then came the panel: four women, four decades of perspective, one unifying thesis, authentic leadership demands risk.

Dina Blikshteyn, Partner at Haynes and Boone, LLP and co-chair of the firm’s #AI practice, pulled the curtain back on how #risk and #regulation coexist. Her story about convincing a law firm to embrace AI wasn’t just about #automation, it was about trust. “It doesn’t replace critical thought,” she said. “It magnifies it.”

Eva Kalivas, Founder of Empower Women That Rock, Inc., brought the audience back to first principles. After being laid off in the late ’90s, she walked out of the building, sat down at a bar, and founded her next company on a napkin. She reminded every professional in the room, failure isn’t a period, it’s punctuation.

And then there was Alyssa Gangaram, the 21-year-old illustrator who turned Ashley’s raccoon characters into a narrative vehicle. She’s the future of storytelling, proof that courage scales faster than experience. Her message hit hardest, “Sometimes fear is the only thing holding us back.”

But it was Ashley Cheung’s own

honesty that detonated the room. She didn’t talk about leadership as a ladder. She talked about it as loss, rebirth, and #responsibility. The sudden passing of her father became her ignition point, a reminder that time doesn’t grant permission slips. “Life is short,” she said. “Confidence isn’t something we’re born with; it’s something we build when we

take action and learn to ask for help.”

That theme: The Power of Showing Up, threaded the evening. It wasn’t just about attendance. It was about presence. About how each woman on that stage had taken something painful: #jobloss, #burnout, #inexperience, #fear, and turned it into propulsion.

For Ashley, showing up meant turning grief into creation. For Melissa, it meant walking away from #corporate certainty to help others find voice. For Eva, it meant building a #nonprofit that amplifies #womensleadership in boardrooms where it’s still rare. For Dina, it meant convincing a risk-averse industry to embrace #innovation. For Alyssa, it meant saying yes to illustrating a book she wasn’t “qualified” to draw and doing it anyway.

And that’s what makes The Leadership Catalyst more than a book. It’s a mirror. It’s the moment professionals from #law, #IP, #branding, and #creative industries realized they were all describing the same battle, the one between fear and forward motion.

By night’s end, the lessons were simple but seismic. Believe in yourself, but when you can’t, surround yourself with people who do. Find mentors across genders. Measure success not in status, but in impact. And perhaps most importantly, don’t let bad things stop you.

Leadership isn’t learned in conference rooms; it’s forged in collision, between generations, between disciplines, between who we were and who we’re becoming. The Raccoons’ Wheel of Wisdom isn’t cute branding, it’s allegory. #Resourcefulness. #Adaptability. #Belongingness. #Confidence. #Wisdom. They’re not traits; they’re currencies.

As the night wound down, Ashley closed with a line that summed it up: “Be the leader you wish you had.” In a world still recovering from its crisis of leadership, this wasn’t just a book launch. It was a recalibration. A reminder that growth begins with one simple, inconvenient, revolutionary act, to show up.

When belief becomes contagious, leadership becomes catalytic. That’s what October 22, 2025, at Tempo by Hilton really launched.

About Jesse Landry:

Jesse Landry is a dynamic tech expert with 13 years of experience, blending sharp intellect with a no-nonsense, cool style. Known for his smart sarcasm and authentic approach, he makes the tech world accessible and insightful. At Vention, he builds and manages remote software teams, ensuring strategic alignment and collaboration across borders. Jesse’s hands-on, result-driven approach creates cohesive teams that deliver long-term impact, setting him apart in the industry.