Pentimento Podcast

How do you recognize a calling that doesn't look the way you pictured it? Father Carlos Lopez is a Benedictine monk at St. Andrew's Abbey in Valyermo, California, where he has lived for thirty years. Born in Tucson to parents from Mexico, he first felt drawn to the priesthood at a young age, stepped away from seminary for a time to work in customer service, then returned. And much to his s...

What happens when a businessman realizes he's been dormant? Yusif Al-hatlani grew up in Saudi Arabia, studied in England, and arrived at a university in Spokane, Washington, knowing almost nothing about it — including what a Jesuit was. As an undergraduate, a request from his community led him to ask a priest for a room on campus, and then a house. Years into a career in family business, he re...

How far does one act of conscience travel? Jim McGarry spent nearly four decades teaching in Catholic high schools in the Bay Area and beyond, where he became known for a particular kind of teaching: bringing Holocaust survivors into the classroom to speak directly to students, a practice he started after his first training as a Holocaust educator in 1992. At the center of the conversation is a st...

What does it feel like when you just know? Elsa Elbert built a career without ever quite meaning to — fifteen years in healthcare administration, a leap into data center operations, and then a brief and painful (though informative) stint at a financial institution that put her off corporate ladders… perhaps for good. She’s now the founder of Composed Living, a professional organizing business she’...

What happens when the story you've told about yourself turns out to be wrong? Joe Albert spent his early years labeled a slow kid — tracked out of college prep as a freshman and found himself on a vocational track with a group of boys who nicknamed themselves accordingly. A single class at a Jesuit college in Philadelphia changed that, launching him into decades of work in peace and justice mi...

What happens when it falls apart slowly? Janet Clancy-Feliciano didn't set out to find her path. A phone call from a family member in the middle of the night led her to grad school almost by accident — and from there into a career she never would have guessed for herself, one that has stayed genuinely curious about her studies all the way through her current doctoral work at Gonzaga's Scho...

What happens when you know you want to take a next step, but you have no idea where to place your foot? In this episode, Mike talks with Carrie Donker, a learning experience designer and executive coaching consultant, about a pattern that keeps showing up across her life: stepping into the unknown, from moving to a foreign country alone to volunteer, to leaving a leadership firm she loved at thirt...

What do you do when the path you're insisting on working just isn’t working... because life has something else in mind? In this episode, Mike sits down with Jeff Rosick — composer, actor, graphic artist, and the producer behind this very podcast — to talk about the years that took him from a Gonzaga stage to Friday Night Lights to a decade of quietly resisting what life was trying to tell him....

Linda Latto has spent her career asking one question: what is being asked of me right now? She has answered it from Alaska to Georgia to Seattle to Portland to Southern California, across roles in real estate, healthcare, government, and now coaching and consulting. But the through-line was never the job title. In this conversation, Linda traces a world-cracking moment in her mid-twenties, the slo...

What if the greatest obstacle to your growth was never your circumstances — but your certainty? Laura Miner spent much of her life in a world where questioning wasn't allowed. She learned early that you defend what you see — or else. It wasn't until her mid-40s, with no bachelor's degree and a funny argument with her husband, that everything began to shift. In this conversation, Michae...

Joel Junker was always told that leaders get results, and that leaders are measured based on the results that they get. But, after decades of building an identity around results — Army officer, Notre Dame grad, and a 27-year career helping military leaders transition into business, he realized it all came with a cost that he didn't fully see until life stopped cooperating with his plan. In thi...

What does it look like to stop chasing your life and start receiving it? Dr. Sherri Lynch has spent decades building things — programs, degrees, careers, community — including Women Lead, a program she founded at Gonzaga University that has grown over eleven years into a gathering place for women in leadership. But some of the most meaningful moments in her story weren't planned. They arrived....

Barry Barfield has spent his adult life following a pull he didn't choose so much as discover — through theology, law, liturgical dance, campus ministry, and decades of quiet service in places most people never think to go. In this conversation, Barry and Mike trace a journey that has wound through Los Angeles, San Francisco, Jerusalem, and 34 years at Gonzaga Preparatory High School. Along th...

Jay Ballinger came home to help his father for six months in 1982. He never left. Forty-four years later, Jay is still with the same family-owned company — moving from sales rep to division manager to his current role as Director of Leadership Development, and earning the unofficial title of "culture cop" along the way. It's a career he never planned, in a field he never studied, tha...

An introduction to the Pentimento Podcast — what it is, what it asks, and what it hopes to find. Narrated by Michael Carey.