Engineer Your Success

Episode: 257 | Guest: Benjamin Kaiser | Host: Dr. James Bryant What can engineering leaders learn from a content strategist? Benjamin Kaiser spent nine years building a tech YouTube channel before pivoting to help businesses find their voice — and he makes the case that facts alone don’t build trust. Judgment does. In this episode you’ll discover: Why facts don’t build...

Episode 256 | Guest Tony Dina | Host: Dr. James Bryant If AI can do more of your work every day, what’s left for you to decide? Tony Dina, a professional coach and technology leader with three decades in high-tech leadership, argues that AI is a capacity game, not a productivity game, and that the real risk is handing over your judgment along with your tasks. In this episode you&#8...

Guest: Jeff Wetherfold | Host: Dr. James Bryant, PE | EP 255 What do you do when the people you lead don’t agree with the change? Jeff Wetherhold spent years in change management and organizational improvement before realizing that most change efforts, even the well-designed ones, don’t hold. He explains why calling people “resistant” works against you, and how active listening technique...

Engineering leaders listen in as Cullen Glass joins the show for a conversation on nonlinear career paths, overcoming doubt, why a great product is only half the job of building a lasting business, and the power of networking with purpose.

Episode 253 | Guest: Amie Fox | Host: Dr. James Bryant, PE Amie Fox, Managing Director of A Fox Consulting and a leadership development trainer based in Ireland, joins Dr. James Bryant to challenge how engineering leaders think about people problems. Amie argues that engineers actually have an unfair advantage when it comes to people management — and reveals exactly where that advantage...

Episode 252 | Guest: Sam Stidwell IV | Host: Dr. James Bryant Sam Stidwell IV spent five years building 3D printing technology for the Army Corps of Engineers by day, and a construction materials supply company by night, for a year and a half before he ever won a contract. He wasn’t at risk of losing his job, but when a voluntary buyout offer came through a second time, he took it,...

Episode Description This is the first episode in a new recurring series, From the Inbox to the Mic — where a subscriber’s own words take center stage. Dr. James Bryant reads the email he sent to longtime subscriber Ben, then shares Ben’s full response (voiced by AI, in Ben’s own words) to three questions about work-life balance. James closes with his own take on why the standard...

Episode 250 | Guest: Matthew Evington | Host: Dr. James Bryant Most people picture a straight line into engineering. Matt Evington’s path ran through retail, landscaping, and a materials testing lab before he ever set foot in a college classroom — at 26, in a night pre-calculus class he almost didn’t take. In this episode, the civil engineer turned solar farm specialist share...

Episode 249 | Guest: Dr. Stephanie Luster-Teasley Pass | Host: Dr. James Bryant What does it take to become the first person in your own story to walk through a door you once only saw in photographs? Dr. Stephanie Luster-Teasley Pass, Dean of the College of Engineering at North Carolina A&T State University and the first woman to hold that role, joins Dr. James Bryant to share her jo...

Episode 248 | Guest: Matt Gradados | Host Dr. James Bryant Episode Description Ignorance gets a bad rap. But this week’s guest, Matt Granados, calls it his greatest strategic asset — and once he explains why, you’ll see it too. James and Matt dig into what it actually takes to build a life and a business rooted in intentionality: the difference between truth and personal pref...

Guest: Douglas E. Noll, JD, MA | Host: Dr. James Bryant, P.E. A 22-year trial lawyer who walked away from a seven-figure career to become a peacemaker — and then took his methods into California’s most violent prison yards. Douglas E. Noll, JD, MA joins the show to break down a deceptively simple, neuroscience-backed technique for defusing any tense conversation in under 90 seconds. Jam...

Guest: Hitisha “Tish” Sharma, P.E. | Host: Dr. James Bryant, P.E. | Episode 246 What does it look like when a podcast becomes a coaching relationship before you ever meet the host? Hitisha “Tish” Sharma, P.E. — Associate Principal and Head of Electrical at a Bay Area engineering firm — has been part of the Engineer Your Success community for a long time, and in this episode she traces th...

Guest: Nick Serfass | Host: Dr. James Bryant Episode Description What happens when the skills you built in one profession turn out to be exactly what another field needs — even though you never planned for it? Nick Serfass trained as an architect, spent years designing healthcare facilities, and then accidentally built a career leading one of Richmond’s most impactful tech organizations...

How to stop avoiding the meeting you know you need to have and close the gap between what you intend and what you do. Episode Description There’s a difference between knowing what you should do and actually doing it — and most leaders have felt that gap. In this episode, Dr. James Bryant shares a real coaching story about a high-performing engineer named Debbie who kept deferring one critical lead...

Beyond the numbers on your dashboard lies a metric you can’t easily graph but can’t afford to ignore: love. In this episode of the Engineer Your Success Podcast, Dr. James Bryant continues the RVA Leaders Impact mini-series with Utibe “T-bay” Bassey, Vice President of Customer Experience at Dominion Energy and author of Love as a KPI . Together, they explore why the way people see and treat themse...

Ryland Potter is the U.S. Director at WDM, a company specializing in pavement condition measurement and friction management. Her work helps transportation agencies use friction data and leading indicators to make proactive decisions about their road networks — part of a broader effort to bring asset management thinking to road safety. In this conversation, she traces her own path through managemen...

Most people can name a building. Very few can name the people who made it possible. Crystal Miller is on a mission to change that — and she is starting long before students ever set foot on a job site. As the program director for architecture and AEC programs at Brightpoint Community College, Crystal sits at the intersection of education, workforce development, and mentorship. In this conversation...

Most leaders finish a quarter with a feeling — good or bad — but can’t fully explain why. The problem is usually the same: they never defined what winning looked like. In this Quarterly Review episode, Dr. James Bryant pulls back the curtain on Q1 2026 at Engineer Your Success — what the numbers actually mean, what worked, what didn’t, and what’s being built for Q2. This isn&#821...

Episode 239 Most business owners reach a point where they realize their company depends on them for everything — and that dependency isn’t just exhausting, it’s a ceiling on growth. But knowing that isn’t enough. The harder question is: what do you actually do about it? In this episode, Dr. James Bryant sits down with Laurie Barkman, a business advisor who has spent her career he...

What if exhaustion at the end of the day has nothing to do with how hard you worked — and everything to do with the state you were in while doing it? In this episode, Dr. James Bryant sits down with Deri Llewellyn-Davies, a former chemical engineer who spent decades studying peak performance in both extreme sport and the boardroom, to explore the science of flow state and why most leaders are unkn...

Episode 237 Description What does it look like when an industrial engineer decides that marketing has a measurement problem — and builds an entire business to solve it? Andy Janaitis, founder of PPC Pitbulls, turned his engineering training into a competitive advantage in a field that rarely asks whether the data is actually right. In this episode, Andy breaks down the systematic gap he found in d...

Episode 236: Most engineers and technical professionals are promoted because they’re exceptional at their craft. But nobody tells you that the skills that got you promoted are almost entirely different from the skills you need to lead. If you’ve ever felt underprepared stepping into a management role, this episode will tell you why — and more importantly, what to do about it. Ben Perre...

Episode Description Most leaders are already selling every day. They just don’t call it that. In this episode, Drew Norton — sales trainer, podcast host, and founder of the Everyday Sales Leader — makes the case that influence, discovery, and communication aren’t sales skills or leadership skills. They’re the same skill set, and most engineers are leaving them on the table. Drew...

Episode 234 What if the phrase “psychological safety” has been getting it wrong all along? In this episode, organizational culture expert Hacia Atherton reframes the conversation entirely — it’s not about creating safe spaces. It’s about creating brave spaces. And for engineering leaders navigating high-pressure environments, that distinction changes everything about how yo...

Episode Description: What if you could build an engineering firm where clients actually want to work with you AND top engineers want to work for you? Most firms assume you have to choose – either technical excellence or great relationships. Daniel McCaulley, founder of Ultimus Engineering, proved you can have both. In this conversation, Daniel shares how he went from corporate engineer to bu...