Notes on Resilience

Send us Fan Mail The strange part of a crisis is not the first week. It’s the months after, when the debris is cleared, the headlines move on, and your body finally stops running on adrenaline. That’s when many people begin to notice the insomnia, anxiety, irritability, brain fog, and avoidance they couldn’t afford to feel earlier. And too often, that’s exactly when the surge of support has alread...

Send us Fan Mail Would you follow someone up the hill if they’ve never taken one themselves?  That question sits at the center of our conversation with executive coach and keynote speaker Chris Harris, whose warrior mindset approach strips leadership down to what people actually feel: credibility, trust, and the calm confidence that comes from real resilience. We get personal fast. Chris shares a...

Send us Fan Mail Doctor visits can feel like a high-stakes performance: you get 15 minutes, you are anxious, and you only remember the perfect question after you leave.  We sit down with Dana Sherwin, a healthcare management consultant and speaker specializing in patient-physician communication, to make those minutes count and to make the relationship feel like a partnership instead of a power str...

Send us Fan Mail A bomb explodes across the street, and you walk away with both your legs. People call that fine. But your body tells a different story for years. On the 13th anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombing, I share what that day felt like from the bleachers, what came after, and why invisible injuries like trauma, PTSD symptoms, and nervous system triggers can be so hard to explain to...

Send us Fan Mail What if leadership were less about being impressive and more about being useful?  Robin Goad joins me to get painfully honest about how most of us learn leadership the wrong way, then spend years unlearning it. She’s a technology executive at Amazon Web Services, a speaker and coach, and the author of Girl By Birth, Woman By Fire , and she brings a clear message: leading well is s...

Send us Fan Mail The strongest leaders change what people believe about themselves.  That’s the thread running through my conversation with Dr. Daniel Tataje, founder and CEO of Mercy Dental Group and author of T he Leader Humanity Needs , a leader who’s built an award-winning workplace culture by treating compassion as a responsibility, not a strategy. For Daniel, leadership means putting your ta...

Send us Fan Mail The finish line gets repainted, the cameras come back, and the speeches sound certain: we’re stronger, we’ve recovered, we’ve moved forward.  But what happens when a community’s timeline keeps marching and a person’s nervous system does not?  We take a close look at the recovery gap that shows up after public tragedies and large disruptions, using the Boston Marathon bombing anniv...

Send us Fan Mail Your boss doesn’t know what’s coming next. Neither do you.  That’s not a crisis; it’s the new starting point for modern leadership, where real agency can finally show up. We sit down with Allister Frost , former Microsoft leader, speaker, and author of Ready Already , to talk about what to do when you have an idea, and you’re not sure it’s ready. He shares what changed when he mov...

Send us Fan Mail Good intentions can still break trust. After a crisis, many leaders speak with calm certainty, hoping to steady the room, only to discover it doesn't work the way they thought. We unpack why offering reassurance can backfire, how timing and tone shape meaning, and what it takes to communicate in a way that doesn't unintentionally push people away.  Guided by the lived re...

Send us Fan Mail Balance isn’t the finish line. It's the pendulum that’s almost never centered, the butterfly that needs resistance to fly, and the swimmer who learns to win with water in his goggles. We sat down with coach, author, and financial services executive Kenyada Meadows to rethink resilience through values, emotional integrity, and the power of community. From a career on Wall Stre...

Send us Fan Mail When the headlines fade and the urgent meetings stop, most leaders exhale—and miss the most important phase of recovery.  We unpack the quiet phase, that deceptive calm where people finally feel the impact and disengagement takes root long before anyone speaks up or turns in a resignation letter.  Drawing on the Boston Marathon bombing as a case study, we examine why acute respons...

Send us Fan Mail When a crisis engulfs your community, the urge to go quiet can be powerful—and costly.  We sit down with Ayme Zemke, Chief Client Officer and Certified Crisis Communication Leader at Beehive Strategic Communication, to break down how leaders can speak with clarity, protect trust, and support employees without getting pulled into partisan crossfire. From the current turbulence in M...

Send us Fan Mail Pressure tests every organization, and Tony Crescenzo believes resilience isn’t a perk—it’s the infrastructure that keeps the mission alive.  We sit down with the Marine veteran turned CEO of Intelligent Waves and founder of Peak Neuro to unpack a practical, values‑driven approach to leadership that holds up under pressure. Tony draws a clear line between management and leadership...

Send us Fan Mail What happens when the crisis is no longer in the news? We dig into that uneasy stretch when calendars fill back up and leaders feel the urge to get back to normal. And why that push can cause mistrust and leave people alone with their pain. Drawing from a survivor-informed lens, we unpack how disruption changes beliefs, expectations, and bodies. We walk through the invisible press...

Send us Fan Mail What if we stopped treating trauma like a forbidden topic and started treating it like a leadership skill set?  That’s the spark for a candid, practical conversation with physician and public health expert Kemia Sarraf on how to show up for others—and ourselves—when life overwhelms.  We unpack a core distinction that changes everything: traumatic stress exposure is inevitable; tra...

Send us Fan Mail What if compassion without boundaries is the very thing burning leaders out? We sit down with organizational psychologist and executive coach Kathryn McEwen to unpack resilience at work as a living system. Kathryn leads the Working with Resilience Consortium and helped develop the Resilience at Work Toolkit, and she brings stories that reveal why good intentions often backfire—and...

Send us Fan Mail Real care at work isn’t about saying yes to everything. It is about designing a culture where people can struggle together and still deliver.  We brought Pete Turner, partner and senior executive coach at 2B Limitless, to talk about how teams can be genuinely compassionate without "compassioning" themselves out of business. From the pains of fast growth pains to real-wor...

Send us Fan Mail Ever wish you had a steady rhythm to move you through doubt, fatigue, and fear?  We sit down with Shaun Murphy—Mr. Motivation—to explore how a veteran turned educator, musician, and author uses leadership and motivation to transform pain into power. Sean shares the core lessons from the Army: leaders provide purpose, direction, and motivation, and trust is built by keeping your wo...

Send us Fan Mail Resilience shows up in the small choices that restore steadiness after a hard season, and in the rare moments when private truth reshapes public policy. As we mark three years of the show, I share the unexpected chapter that changed my professional life: partnering with Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley on the Post-Disaster Mental Health Response Act. The work was slow and human. It d...

Send us Fan Mail What if the choices that define you arrive sideways—on an ordinary day, without a plan, and ask you to cross a threshold you never imagined existed?  We pull together standout moments from season three to explore how our identifies can change in real time: a spontaneous dance on a Paris stage, a living kidney donation made without hesitation, a tattoo on trust, a climb up Mount Fu...

Send us Fan Mail Silence protects bullies. We sit down with Kim Williams—veteran HR executive, survivor of workplace abuse, and founder of the Fair Path Project—to unpack how brilliant jerks get shielded, why moral injury cuts deeper than most leaders realize, and what it takes to turn empathy into accountability. Kim explains how fear operates at every level: employees fear retaliation, HR fears...

Send us Fan Mail What if the fastest path to better outcomes is a renewed commitment to empathy you can actually teach, measure, and scale?  We sit down with Dr. Helen Riess—Harvard Medical School psychiatrist, founder of Empathetics, and author of The Empathy Effect—to unpack the science that turns the so-called soft skills into hard results. Helen shares the journey from lab to classroom to ente...

Send us Fan Mail Crisis leadership is about recognizing reality faster than everyone else. And telling the truth when it’s hardest.  We sit down with Samantha Montano—associate professor of emergency management and author of Disasterology—to unpack what actually works when the stakes are life and death. From Katrina’s painful lessons to the East Palestine train derailment and the long haul of COVI...

Send us Fan Mail Fear rewires leadership in the moments that matter most.  We sit down with Melissa Agnes, keynote speaker, author of Crisis Ready, and a shaper of ISO 22361, to explore how leaders can move from survival mode to creation mode when the stakes are high. Melissa shares why so many teams cling to the concept of getting back to normal after disruption, and how that reflex can stall rec...

Send us Fan Mail News travels faster than your approval chain—so who speaks for you when it matters most?  We sit down with crisis management consultant Suzanne Bernier to unpack what effective leadership looks like under pressure. The conversation quickly turns practical: why a team-led model outperforms lone-wolf leadership, how to select a spokesperson who naturally projects trust, and when to...