The Closing Bell 10/5/2026

Heather Ditillo, MSW, is a TEDx speaker, leadership speaker, facilitator, and founder of Lead The KIND Way™. For more than 30 years, her work has explored how we navigate hard things without losing ourselves—or one another—along the way. From her early work alongside Mister Rogers’ team on the child-abuse prevention initiative OneKindWord to her years leading teams and organizations, Heather has returned again and again to a simple idea: kindness isn’t weakness. It’s how we find our way through hard things—and back to one another. In her upcoming TEDxBoulder talk, Are We Getting Kindness Wrong?, Heather challenges the idea that kindness means keeping people comfortable and explores what kindness asks of us when honesty, courage, and difficult conversations are required. You can find out more at

Website: LeadtheKINDWay.com

There’s a growing national conversation about men being left behind — in education, work, relationships and social connection. .

Joshua Aranda, co-founder of UNRATIONED, a national community helping men build stronger lives at work, at home and in their relationships, is seeing it firsthand.

Since 2022, Joshua has led men through 14,000-foot summits, ultramarathons and wilderness expeditions, while helping them address the challenges many men aren’t talking about openly.