The Female CEO™ Podcast

Anne Wilkinson came out of corporate leadership with brilliant people skills and no idea what VAT, a route to market or a target audience was. She learned the business side the hard way. Two years into coaching, she was running four businesses. Now she's the founder of Sprint Central and the author of the Independent Practice Longevity Report, and she talks to Mark Sephton about why so many gi...

Leslie Leifer runs marketing and product development for Prudent Publishing and The Gallery Collection. She has worked in IT, in marketing, in project management — a career she spent years assuming was evidence that she had no idea what she wanted. Then somebody asked her what her career goal was, told her there were only two answers available, and changed how she reads her own history. This conve...

Victoria Costa Paz is the co-founder and CEO of Eywa, producing clinical-grade psilocybin through biosynthesis so that it can go where mushrooms cannot: into clinical trials, in front of regulators, and eventually onto a prescription pad. Her route there ran through Coca-Cola, a bank, and a startup in Mexico — each move made on the same question. What do I want to learn in order to become a better...

Lisa Dunn and Lori Sherrington are the co-founders of Inner Vision Healing & Wellness in Port Perry, Ontario; a centre built around the Harmonic Egg, a sound and light therapy chamber, and around remote energy healing that reaches clients wherever they happen to be sitting. They met in a meditation group. Lisa had twenty-five years managing multidisciplinary healthcare clinics behind her; Lori...

Viji Richard is the founder of NeoFelis Labs — an enterprise intelligence company building AI and process solutions with ethics and governance at the core. Twenty years in corporate management, strategy and commercials. A master's in engineering, published research, and a leadership team made up of the friends she has had since she was a child. She and those friends built their first product a...

Kate Hobbs is the founder of Insight with Kate — an intuitive empath, energy healer and consultant who helps people and businesses find the thing that is holding them back. Most of the women who come to her have already done the hard part. They have the business, the title, the relationship. What they have lost, somewhere between the beginning and here, is themselves. In this conversation, she mak...

Viki Vallance Clark is the founder of the Ditch Booze for Good Movement and the creator of the Over-the-Influence System - a programme built on one central insight: problem drinking is a symptom, not a cause. The root is almost always something older and something unprocessed. Address the surface and the surface keeps returning. Address the source, and the symptom dissolves. In this conversation w...

Simer Dhillon is the founder of Sharp Mind, Sharp Style and the creator of the SHARP framework — a five-pillar leadership system designed to make integrity, trust, and accountability visible, measurable, and actionable in any organisation. She works with founders, executives, and directors who are ready to stop treating governance as a compliance exercise and start building it as a strategic asset...

Dr Melanie Lee is a clinical psychologist who has spent a decade running Trust Psychology in the northeast of England. She has trained in Internal Family Systems, somatic therapy, and mind-body work. She received her own ADHD diagnosis mid-career. She is now building Freeing Female Founders - a psychological practice for women in business, sitting between therapy and coaching, built on the belief...

April Jones did not plan to found a law firm. She planned to survive. Three kids under four. A legal career she was not willing to abandon. A partnership environment that was not going to make space for both. So she walked out, started her own firm, and spent the next 18 years learning to be an exceptional attorney — then spent the years after that learning to run the whole thing like a business....

LeNae Goolsby is an entrepreneur, best-selling author, award-winning podcast host, and COO of Infinite Health Integrative Medicine Center - an integrative and regenerative medicine practice she has shaped from the inside out for over two decades. She's also a law school graduate, a recent convert to country songwriting, and someone with a very clear sense of who she is and what she's build...

Ally Boyes-Varley grew up dyslexic and ADHD in a school system that gave her every academic intervention going — and none of the emotional regulation underneath. She is the founder of Roots & Wings Tutoring and the creator of the Connect-Ed Method, which centres one principle above all others: connection before correction. In this conversation with Mark Sephton, she talks about what the three-...

In this episode, Mark Sephton sits down with Desiree Wingo - co-founder of Awaken IV and personal transformation advocate, for a conversation about what it really means to stop letting the past write the future.  Desiree shares the tools she actually uses: the "ultimate truth" filter, the "could it be possible" practice, and the philosophy of leaning in to resistance rather tha...

Rebecca Henwood spent eighteen years as a single mum running her household like a military operation: career, children, structure, forward motion. When her youngest followed her son to the UK for university and the corporate role fell away, the identity she'd built around all of it went with them. She packed up her Sydney life, drove north to Byron Bay, and started asking what had been underne...

She had the salons, the fashion weeks, the superhero cape — and a body sending signs she'd learned to slam the lid on. On the surface it was winning at life. Three salons, London and New York Fashion Week, creative director on a global show, four children, the school runs and the sports days all somehow handled. Jane Bellis had ticked off the whole bucket list — and built a performative versio...

He's the King of Conversation. He has held the space for hundreds of women's stories in business, in leadership, in healing, and he has heard what most interviewers miss. But what does Mark Sephton actually believe about real connection? What has sitting across from so many remarkable women taught him about himself? And when Tricia Scott finally flips the script and asks the hard questions...

A special edition: Mark Sephton interviews The Female CEO's own founder, Tricia Scott. From an anonymous blog she was certain no one would read to a brand in 181 countries — Tricia talks real-over-polished as an operating model, the 3am doubt that still surfaces, the loss that turned a side hustle into a now-or-never decision, and why every part of the platform is free. Warm, honest, and refre...

Somewhere in the early 2000s, we collectively decided that exhaustion was a sign of commitment. The busier you were, the more you mattered. The more you were always on, always available, always pinging back — the more valuable you must be. Psychologists call it costly signalling. Most of us just called it Tuesday. Sue Stoneman, founder of Moxie, has spent years working with global CEOs and high-pe...

Discover why high performance is a biological state, not just willpower, and how Female CEOs can avoid burnout by leading from presence. In this episode, we sit down with  Stef Mandirola , a former aerospace COO who traded the high-stakes world of multi-million pound global operations for the disciplined path of Zen. As the founder of  HASU , Stef bridges the gap between centuries-old Japanese tra...

Are you leading with authority or awareness? Join us as behavioral expert Lotta Spjut explains how the relationship with our dogs can transform our executive presence. Discover how to identify your triggers, set firm boundaries with empathy, and lead from a place of regulated power. As the founder of  Lotta Dog PT , Lotta uses a powerful framework of behavioral science and emotional intelligence t...

What if the secret to sustainable leadership isn't more 'hustle,' but a balance of three specific energies? In this episode, Angelica Umali breaks down The Trinity of Conscious Leadership - Power, Love, and Light - and how female CEOs can use them to find deeper purpose and avoid the burnout of ego-driven success. In a corporate world often driven by relentless hustle, short-term profits, and "int...

Can you build a global empire on a “Huggable Business Model”? In this episode, we sit down with  Donna Loughlin , the "Architect of Visibility" and the powerhouse behind over 500 successful launches in the world’s most competitive tech hub. As the founder and CEO of  LMGPR , Donna reveals why authenticity is the bedrock of growth, how she uses her pilot’s mindset to navigate business tur...

What happens when a human right feels like a "legal minimum"? After a lifetime of navigating a world not built for her, Tara Mackings BEM stopped advocating for change and started architecting it. In this episode, we explore the tenacity, the mission, and the massive social impact of moving from "token" accessibility to meaningful inclusion. Tara shares her journey from living...

Are you leading from a place of 'intellectual overdose'? In this episode, distinguished neuroscientist and therapist Dr. Selen Atasoy reveals why logic and relentless drive often lead to a profound internal disconnect, and how you can use the science of 'Connectome Harmonics' to reclaim your inner sovereignty and lead with organic, instinctive power. In this episode of  The Female...

Have you reached the top of the professional ladder only to feel strangely empty? In this episode, we sit down with existential career counselor Britt Mari Sykes to dismantle the 'business model' of careers. We’re diving deep into why the linear path is a myth, how to navigate professional 'existential awakenings,' and why you should stop climbing and start creating a 'career l...