Not Simple

Claudette Rowley is a wellness-first interior designer who helps people create spaces that not only look beautiful but also support their well-being. Drawing from her background in social work, coaching, and cultural transformation, Claudette practices neuro-aesthetic design - an approach grounded in the science of how color, light, texture, and flow impact our nervous systems. Rebecca and Claudet...

Dan Minnich is the co-founder and Executive Director of Waypoint Adventure, an organization creating outdoor adventure programs for people with disabilities in the greater Boston area and western North Carolina. Waypoint's mission is to challenge people with disabilities to discover their purpose, talents, and strengths through the transforming power of adventure. For Dan, accessibility often come...

Lisa Tilstra: The Transformational Power of Personal Storytelling Lisa Tilstra is a coach, podcaster, and storytelling enthusiast who describes herself as a "creative disrupter." After years of telling stories without recognizing their value, Lisa now understands storytelling's power for transformation, healing, and connection. Through her podcast "Make Life Less Difficult" and storytelling worksh...

What if divorce could be a path to healing, rather than harm? In this conversation, attorney  Nanci  Smith offers a window into the world of  collaborative divorce —a non-adversarial approach designed to help families navigate separation with dignity, empathy, and support. Drawing on over 30 years of experience and themes from her book  Untangling Your Marriage: A Guide to Collaborative Divorce, w...

Mark is a trauma-informed coach with roots in somatics, development, and mindfulness. He is also a trained teacher of Mindful Self-Compassion and believes how we talk to ourselves is more than just a way to feel better. It's also instrumental to our growth as leaders in a complex world. He came to Not Simple to discuss what we get wrong about self-compassion, as well as how it can improve our live...

Cathy Carroll is the granddaughter of an entrepreneur who led a Fortune 500 company and the daughter of an entrepreneur. She led a turnaround of her father's manufacturing business and encountered the distinctions between leadership in a corporate domain and leadership in a family business. She founded Legacy Onward, Inc. to support family business leaders through the complexities of family busine...

"Societal change requires movements and networks of organizations working together—but what if the way we work together could be even better? Could it lead to greater freedom for our leaders and more realistic expectations? ... No one person holds the answer, but when the right people come together, we just might find a better one." Robin Katcher is a colleague at Cultivating Leadership and has sp...

"How do you experience rest while doing what you love? What if we could even experience a sense of relaxed focus while hosting a party for 20?"  In our latest podcast episode, we dive deep into the art of grounded leadership with  Dr. Jaime Lee , a fellow CL colleague. Jaime believes that true leadership starts with connecting to our health and the innate intelligence of our bodies. She expertly g...

"So it's not that our brain constrains the activities we can engage in and the behaviors that we have. It's the other way around. The behaviors we engage in change the brain we have." Dr. Victoria Leavitt is an assistant professor of neuropsychology at Columbia University who studies brain resilience, brain reserve, and cognitive reserve, companion theories that help us understand individual diffe...

"In addition to it being small moves, I would say consistent moves. What are those consistent practices help that create the conditions for impact?" CL colleague Barry Bales thinks of leadership as an action rather than a title, and he knows that sometimes the most effective actions are small ones. He and Wendy discuss the importance of connection and engagement, as well as the small moves they've...

"It's like our mind wants to categorize things, and it's much easier to feel pity than trying to embrace the complexity that life goes on and you can live in the midst of war." Elena Tochilina is a Ukrainian coach and consultant as well as a colleague at Cultivating Leadership. In this conversation she challenges Wendy, and all of us, to step away from pity and see life in the midst of war as chan...

"I care about supporting people more as wayfinders and what it might take to ditch the maps and find your own way—and keep learning and growing." CL colleague Fred Jones is a lover and collector of questions that he stays with a long time. One of those questions: how do you help people create time and space for reflection in periods of transition, those moments of "meanwhile" where what's next isn...

"It matters how we feel because how we feel and how we're doing impocts everyone." 

TV has taught us that doctors are sexy, mysterious superheroes, but what is really happening at the other end of the stethoscope is more complex than we realize. Rehema Kutua, a pediatrician and certified coach, came to Not Simple to discuss what it feels like to be a primary care physician today and what happens...

"There's a deep sense of letting go, of surrendering so they can open up into a new possibility for themselves, whether it's becoming a coach or becoming a senior leader or leading in a new way."     We all know changing behaviors and habits is hard, but our language around it often "just" oversimplifies it. Bill Pullen brings his experience as a person in recovery, a coach, and a teacher of coach...

"Carolyn and I got excited about the question of how does your body know how to handle complexity in ways that are exciting and useful and even joyful—and how can you amplify that?" Wendy is back in the host's chair, talking to her longtime friends and colleagues about their book, Unleash Your Complexity Genius: Growing Your Inner Capacity to Lead . They cover action urges, the power of noticing,...

"What we're seeing as we start to humanise organizations is this acknowledgment that actually leadership exists within everyone." Leanne Holdsworth and Naryan Wong recently led their Cultivating Leadership colleagues in a research and writing project that resulted in the book Human Work: Five Leadership Mindsets for Humanising Workplaces . They share those mindsets with Rebecca and discuss the rip...

"I think we do ourselves such a disservice to not acknowledge that iterative process, to just pretend that it's yes/no, black/white. It's never been the world we live in, but it certainly isn't now." Jarel LaPan Hill, the former city manager of the City of Santa Fe, NM, shares the complexity lessons learned managing an organization through Covid and how we might carry them forward.

"I spent two decades writing prescriptions… and it occurred to me that what determined somebody's health was really what they were doing between visits."

 Dr. Eileen O'Grady is a nurse practitioner, a wellness coach, and the author of Choosing Wellness: Unconventional Wisdom for the Overwhelmed, the Discouraged, the Addicted, the Fearful, or the Stuck . She joined Rebecca and Diana to discuss oft...

"We tend to think if we send teachers off to a two day workshop magically they'll come back to the classroom and be able to do something different that will impact the lives of children." Dr. Jennie Snyder, deputy superintendent for instructional services for the Sonoma County Office of Education and longtime educator, talks to Wendy about enacting change in education and the difference made by ap...

"There is so much emergent change that's happening around us, so we need every piece of this human condition to be able to be okay and to thrive and to be resilient." Dr. Ciela Hartanov is the founder of humcollective , and her book, Reclaiming Sensitivity , will be out in the new year. She and Wendy discuss how we have oversimplified the idea of sensitivity and what we may gain by embracing it in...

"We try to help people ask additional questions, to say 'How might I work differently than Wendy and how can I take a couple of steps to be closer to where she is so that our differences can be strengths?'" Parker Mitchell is the founder of Valence , a software company specializing in building stronger teams. He joined Wendy to talk about teamwork—especially how to help individuals work with a wid...

"The world doesn't allow a lot of room for messiness these days, as messy as the world is." Sarah Dasher is a communications professional, a college professor, and a person living in recovery. She and Rebecca talk about the dual issues of stigma and disclosure for people in recovery—and living with chronic illness.

"Every moment in my life where I've learned some massive truth or had some big epiphany has always been in some small group or coffee shop experience. Human connection is ridiculously important to me." TJ Fairchild, founder and CEO of Commonplace Coffee , has a mission to create environments that foster human connection. He and Wendy discuss the many things that go into running a successful, purpo...

"The world demands that all leaders be inclusive leaders. If we're not leading inclusively, we're really not leading in some crucial dimension." Not Simple welcomed Cultivating Leadership colleague and founder of Flourishing Gays Dominic Longo to discuss how organizations compartmentalize leadership development and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion efforts and to consider what happens when individu...

"I see democracy as a reflection of and a demonstration of how much we value each other as human beings. And in that light, it is very relational. It is very interdependent." Not Simple welcomes back Greg Thomas and Jewel Kinch-Thomas of The Jazz Leadership Project and executive coach Amiel Handelsman to talk about all the things democracy entails beyond voting. Learn more about their upcoming cou...