Hello lovey humans,

If you're the kind of person that does a lot for others, there's a moment when you life starts to ask something of you in return. When you wonder if you're working harder than the people you're helping. This is Christina's story.

The Startup Junkie

Christina Luconi spent the better part of three decades building the human side of companies most people only read about in business school case studies. She helped grow Sapient from 150 people to nearly 3,500. She built @stake from launch through its acquisition by Symantec. She joined Rapid7 when it was still finding its footing and spent twelve years alongside CEO Corey Thomas architecting a people philosophy so strong the company is the poster child for culture. Together they created a diversity commitment they refused to round up to 50 percent because getting to 49.7 meant they weren't done yet.

Christina has always been drawn to the early stage mess. Those insecure-teenager moments before a company knows what it is, when the right human decisions can shape everything that follows. She calls herself a "startup junkie," but that undersells it. What she believes is that how you treat people is the strategy.

Not A Career Story

Christina grew up in a home that ran on ideas. Her father was an entrepreneur. The kind who showed you, by how he lived, that you could build something from nothing if you were willing to work for it. School, though, was a different story. For most of her childhood, Christina carried the belief that she just wasn't smart enough. It wasn't laziness or lack of effort. It was a learning disability that wouldn't be diagnosed until college. And when it finally was, something shifted. What she'd always read as inability was actually a different way of processing the world. That reframing didn't just change her grades. It changed her entire relationship with herself.

Her father gave her another gift, too — a single observation that rerouted her life. Christina had been drawn to psychology, fascinated by what makes people tick. She assumed she'd go clinical. But her dad described human resources as the place where psychology meets business, and the idea lodged itself somewhere permanent. Her first internship at a small software company in Cambridge sealed the deal. The company went public during her first few weeks. She watched smart, driven people build something meaningful together, and something clicked. She dove headfirst into the world of startups and never looked back.

What made Christina exceptional in those rooms wasn't just strategic instinct — though she has that in spades. It was her refusal to treat people as a function. She saw human resources not as a department but as a performance engine. She understood, long before it became fashionable to say so, that culture isn't a poster on a wall. It's the accumulation of a thousand small decisions about how you hire, how you promote, how you show up when things get hard.

The Perfect Storm

And things did get hard. Behind the professional trajectory that reads like a highlight reel, Christina's life was delivering its own curriculum. She faced fertility challenges before becoming the mother of two premature daughters. Her marriage fell apart after she joined Rapid7. And then, in June of 2023, came the diagnosis that reorganizes everything: multiple myeloma, a blood cancer with no cure.

She is now in remission. She is also in treatment for life.

Resilience is often talked about in a gritted-teeth, white-knuckle kind of way. What's remarkable about Christina, is her resilience looks almost playful. She has always been able to find something real to hold onto, even in the worst moments. Not optimism as performance. Just a stubborn, almost constitutional ability to locate the thing worth being grateful for.

"I can honestly say I am grateful for all of it," she says. "Not in a superficial way, but in a way that comes from having lived through enough to know that growth rarely comes from ease."

Maxing Out Life

In early 2025, she made the decision to leave Rapid7. Not because she was done caring but because she wanted to care on her own terms. She relaunched People Innovations with her longtime partner Courtney Campbell, returning to the work that has always lit her up — helping leaders build companies that people are proud to belong to. But this time, the shape is different. The company, the calendar, and the terms are hers.

Her daughters are grown and building their own lives. She describes her relationship with them as wonderful. And there is a quality to how Christina talks about this chapter that you can't manufacture. It's not the relief of someone who survived. It's the clarity of someone who knows exactly what she wants and has stopped asking permission to go get it.

"I love my life," she says. "And at this stage, I'm not looking to slow down. I'm looking to max it out."

This is what a second harvest looks like. Not a second act that implies the first one ended. Like many of us. Christina's story doesn't have a clean break in the middle. But in time we seek more meaning and purpose. The same curiosity about people that drew her to psychology as a young woman is the same force driving her consulting practice today. The same entrepreneurial energy she absorbed from her father is the same energy running through People Innovations. What's different now is the ownership. The knowledge that the life she's building isn't for a board of directors or a stock price. It's for her.

There's a version of this story where a cancer diagnosis becomes the turning point. The wake-up call. But that's not Christina's version. She was already moving toward this awakening. The diagnosis didn't create the clarity, it confirmed what she already knew. That she'd spent a career helping other people build lives they were proud of, and it was time to apply that same fierce intentionality to her own.

She came to Second Harvest because she recognized something familiar: a room full of people who aren't interested in slowing down, who bring curiosity and energy and intention to every chapter, and who understand that making the most of what comes next isn't a retirement plan. It's a way of being alive.

We're glad she's here. And we think you will be too.

Until next time, take care of each other.

-- Richard & Devon