Path Found

Send us Fan Mail What does it actually take to build something of your own? In this compilation episode, we bring together eight voices from the Path Found archive — eight women who started businesses without a playbook, an MBA, or anyone’s permission. Their seeds were rarely what you’d expect: a friend’s move during COVID, a whisper at a niece’s birth, a bike commute in uncomfortable jeans, a jou...

Send us Fan Mail Tom Miller* grew up Catholic, careful, and certain that college wasn't for him. After losing his mother to leukemia at 18, and spending that summer as her primary caregiver, he drifted into a 24-year career in commercial printing, doing skilled work that paid well and meant nothing to him.   At 40, on a vacation to Savannah, Georgia, he told his wife: I can't do this any...

Send us Fan Mail William Combs always assumed he'd run his own business. He just didn't know it would be a Subway franchise in Orange County. In this conversation, William traces his path from a kid who scraped by as a B student, through Cal Poly Pomona's hotel and restaurant management program, into management roles at Islands and Jamba Juice, and eventually into a multi-year stint...

Send us Fan Mail Five guests. Five very different lives. One thing in common: every one of them dropped out, failed out, got kicked out, or walked away, and built something meaningful anyway. In this compilation, a deputy attorney general, a congressional staffer, an Amazon AI policy leader, a med-school admissions director, and a serial entrepreneur share how their worst setback became the start...

Send us Fan Mail What do investment banking, a Jewish farming fellowship, and New York City's trash have in common? For Anna Sacks, known to hundreds of thousands of followers as The Trash Walker, they're all stops on the winding road to her life's work.  In this episode, Anna shares the honest story of her career search: the years of trying art galleries, finance, and rotations thr...

Send us Fan Mail Six guests. Two truths.  There is no single right path. And you cannot do this alone.  In this special compilation episode of Path Found, I weave together conversations with David Camarena, Coach Christian, Michael Harley, Taylor Rabe, John Sayers, and Sierra Emrick — six people who took wildly different roads and arrived somewhere they never expected.  What they all share: the pl...

Send us Fan Mail Justin Rufa grew up in a small Rust Belt town on the St. Lawrence River with one clear thought: I'm leaving. What followed was nearly 24 years in the Air Force — aeronautical engineering, a master's, a PhD from Michigan, teaching calculus at the Air Force Academy, space launch operations in El Segundo — and then retirement at 42 with no clear next step. Two months in Kan...

Send us Fan Mail Eleanore Guthrie didn't set out to disrupt the fashion industry. She set out to find a pair of shorts that looked good on a bike. What followed was more than a decade of building Knorts, a brand built entirely on knit denim - from weekend photo shoots in her parents' driveway to Revolve partnerships, a Lady Gaga placement, a Kendall Jenner moment, a collaboration with Ur...

Send us Fan Mail Steven Kerns grew up in Long Beach, California, dropped out of high school at seventeen, and eventually made his way through the Army Infantry, Long Beach City College, Cal State Long Beach, Harvard Law School, and on to the California Department of Justice. Today, he works as a deputy attorney general, representing land-use and energy regulatory agencies, including California&apo...

Send us Fan Mail Alex Mitchell didn’t have a plan when he graduated from high school. No one in his family had gone to college, and he didn’t apply to a single university. He started at community college, changed his major five times, and it wasn’t until a political science professor connected history to present-day policymaking that something finally clicked.   Then the pandemic hit. Alex decided...

Send us Fan Mail Virginia Ross has one of those careers that sounds impossible until she explains exactly how each step led to the next — and even then, it barely seems planned. Because it wasn't.   After getting kicked out of college twice, pivoting from government consulting to culinary school to a startup acquired by a Utah telecom company, Virginia landed at Amazon's Ring, and accide...

Send us Fan Mail What does it actually mean to go to college? If your honest answer is “get a degree so I can get a job,” Ned Johnson and Scott Carlson want to complicate that, in the best possible way. In this conversation, the authors of Hacking College: Why the Major Doesn't Matter - and What Really Does, break down why the major is far less important than the experience students build aro...

Send us Fan Mail In her first round interview, Alicia Rose was asked about her dream job. She told the truth: she wanted to be an ambassador. The interviewer told her on the spot she wasn't getting the position, and explained exactly why that was the right call.  What followed was a 30-plus-year career at a single global professional services firm, not because Alicia stayed in one lane, but b...

Send us Fan Mail Steven Sewell didn’t plan on becoming a chaplain in corporate America. He thought he’d spend his life as a pastor. But after almost 30 years in ministry, he discovered something: the break room at a car dealership needs the same thing as a Sunday morning congregation. Someone who will actually listen.  Steve and I talked about grief, starting over in your 50s, finding love again a...

Send us Fan Mail What does it look like to stumble, pivot, fail, travel, and eventually find your calling, not once, but many times? Sean Walpole's story is a master class in entrepreneurial resilience: from founding an IT company as a teenager in Zimbabwe, to dropping out of university, to launching a scuba diving business, a microbrewery, and ultimately a venture that has sent thousands of...

Send us Fan Mail Eric Adams spent his childhood mute in the classroom and decades as the loudest, most electric presence in Los Angeles nightlife. In between: a path that refuses every conventional menu option. In this conversation, Eric traces the through-line from a traumatic childhood marked by PTSD and depression, to a 12-year-old's decision to use Disneyland as a North Star out of the da...

Send us Fan Mail Holly Hill didn't wait for the world to catch up with her vision — she designed her own path. In this episode, Holly shares her remarkable career journey from environmental compliance at IBM in the 1990s, to sustainable design at an architecture firm, to her current role as Head of Sustainability at Zoom. Long before corporate sustainability was mainstream, Holly was marrying...

Send us Fan Mail Tyler Reeb grew up on a Canadian farm, moved to Long Beach at 11, slacked through college, and somehow ended up leading one of the country's most influential transportation research centers. Tyler reflects on what his path has taught him — about failure, procrastination, the value of integrity over people-pleasing, and why he's genuinely worried that young people are tur...

Send us Fan Mail Jessica Nersesian’s journey doesn’t follow a straight line; it is driven by curiosity, ethics, and a deep belief that design can change the world. A lifelong reader and systems thinker, Jessica explored communication, ethics, sustainability, and design before co-founding a product design firm that now guides products from concept to manufacturing, recyclability, and end-of-life im...

Send us Fan Mail Gus Orozco’s story is one of resilience, service, and the power of saying yes to unexpected opportunities. Growing up in Long Beach as the child of immigrants, Gus struggled in school, dropped out of high school, and earned his GED while searching for direction and support. Structure and community eventually came through ROTC and military service, where he deployed to Iraq at a yo...

Send us Fan Mail Melissa Romero never followed a straight line—and that’s exactly the point. From a perfectionist, science-loving kid with dreams of being a singer or mermaid to an environmental advocate writing legislation and lobbying in Sacramento, Melissa built a meaningful career in public policy. Yet even in success, something felt unfinished.  That quiet pull led her somewhere unexpected: b...

Send us Fan Mail Sudeep Wahla’s path was anything but conventional. Raised in Fontana by first-generation immigrant parents, Sudeep assumed college was the next step—until he didn’t get into the schools he expected. Instead of regrouping locally, he made a bold decision at just 17 years old: move to India and enroll directly in veterinary school, bypassing the traditional U.S. undergraduate route...

Send us Fan Mail What happens when the path everyone expects you to take doesn’t feel right—and the one that does feels risky, misunderstood, or “not legitimate enough”? In this episode of Path Found, Monica sits down with Macey McCallion, an equine professional, entrepreneur, and lifelong learner whose journey challenges traditional ideas of success. Macey shares what it was like growing up shy,...

Send us Fan Mail Joon Kim’s life looks successful on paper: senior leadership in higher education, decades of mentoring students, and a career built around helping others reach medical and graduate school. But his path there was anything but linear. Born in Seoul, raised across three countries, and shaped by the expectations placed on children of immigrant families, Joon grew up believing there wa...

Send us Fan Mail Londa Jensen has lived many lives—often before most people finish their first résumé. From backstage passes at rock shows in high school, to studying Arabic in Cairo, teaching in northern Iraq, leading students across Russia, India, and China, and eventually becoming CEO of a global personal-development company, Londa’s path has never been linear—or safe. In this deeply honest con...