Rest In Peace to Our Longtime Witty & Wonderful Writer, Carol Slott
Over the last few years at ChooseWhat, we’ve predominantly featured the business blog writings of one wonderful Carol Slott – not only because she was an excellent writer, but because she was truly an incredible person to work with. It is with a heavy heart that we announce her all-too-soon departure.
Carol’s Sudden Passing
Carol unexpectedly died in June of acute pancreatitis. Over just a few days, she went to the hospital, was sedated, placed in the ICU, and passed. She had no indication of anything wrong before then - it just abruptly happened. The previous day she even went shopping. Losing such a precious person so quickly & unexpectedly really makes you think about how fragile our existence actually is.
The suddenness of this news hit me personally really hard. It’s been a long stretch since I’ve lost anyone that I interacted with that frequently, and it’s among even fewer instances of someone so familiar to me passing so suddenly.
Carol’s Writing
Carol had an impeccable knack for picking relevant business topics, doing the deep dive research needed to better understand them & support them, and delivering content that made readers want to keep reading.
More than that, her witticisms helped elevate articles to be more engaging and added levity to sometimes/otherwise stodgy business topics. In her very last article for ChooseWhat titled Make Better Business Decisions by Asking “What-If”, she used the example of a personal teleporter, quite practically I might add, to illustrate bringing a wholly new product to market. She had a propensity to use Elon Musk both as an icon of industrial genius and as the butt of some jokes, such as in A Can-Do Attitude Moves Small Businesses to the Moon. She even occasionally wrote certain posts as a veiled outlet of frustration at the very real companies she was having personal customer difficulties with, as in Take One Step Back for Your Customers, to much comedic effect; in that case to better illustrate how companies could learn from the issues of their consumers.
In all, it was a pleasure to review and post each of her exclusive-to-ChooseWhat pieces, and every ChooseWhat reader was better off for the pieces that they read.
Carol As a Person
I've talked to Carol nearly every week for the last three years, about all kinds of things beyond work. This felt like more of a loss to me than just that of a colleague - she was a bit of a mentor to me, offering everything from old-home owner advice to general life tips at every opportunity.
To know Carol is to know that she derived immense pleasure from tending to her personal garden (practically filling out her own personal produce section in her backyard) and taking her canine companion, Charlie, on long walks around her neighborhood – no matter the extremity of Chicago weather at any given time of the year. She loved her pet Charlie so much that she even wrote “Blog Topics on Wily Dogs” - of which he was frequently the teaching subject.
Carol was resilient, clever, stubborn in the best way, independent, empathetic, and so many other warm things. And though I never got the chance to meet her in person, I’m sure that aspects of those showed in nearly every interaction that she had with others.
Carol’s Obituary
Carol Jean Slott, age 68, of Des Plaines, Illinois passed away June 20, 2021. Carol was born September 10, 1952 in Chicago, Illinois to the late Seymour and the late Audrey (nee Karger) Slott. She is survived by her loving sister Julie Griess. Carol enjoyed gardening and spending time with her beloved dog, Charlie. Private family services were held. In lieu of flowers, donations to your favorite pet charity in Carol's name would be appreciated.