The Lesley Hawkins Podcast

Our guest never finished high school, so at 18, she walked into the corporate world and decided that was where she would build her future. What followed was twenty-five years with the same company. Evolving, growing and building 5 distinct careers under one roof. Then came an opportunity that would test everything she thought she knew about leadership. A new role in a new city with a team that was...

Some seasons of life ask more of us than we ever thought we could give. For our guest, grief didn't arrive once. It arrived in waves, each one before she had fully caught her breath from the last. Within the span of a single year, she lost both her mother and her newborn baby girl. There are no words adequate for that kind of loss. And she would be the first to tell you that the path through...

For twenty-one years, our guest was a special education teacher, advocating for those whose voices were too often overlooked. It was work rooted in purpose, patience, and a deep belief in human dignity. Then her parents began to age, and she stepped into a new role as caregiver. When her father moved from a retirement home to a long-term care facility, she went looking for adaptive clothing that w...

Our guest had what most people spend their lives working toward: a thriving business, a loving marriage, two young boys, good health. Every box checked but one question kept creeping in: Is that all there is? A single exercise in a book provided him the answer. Over months, he built his personal mission statement – it’s not about money, ambition, or assets, but instead about his impact on others....

For twenty-five years, our guest stayed quiet. Not because he had nothing to say, but because saying it came at a cost most of us will never understand. He stuttered. And for a long time, silence felt safer than the alternative. So he made a change. He left Lebanon for Montreal, searching for a breakthrough, a new version of himself. An "aha" moment that would make everything click. What...

Most of us have had a hard season. But for our guest, eight months of his life brought a convergence of personal and professional challenges that would have broken most people. And for a time, it did. He collapsed under the weight of the strain. His tank was empty in every way possible – physically, emotionally, mentally.  He had to find a way back to himself, to understand what really matters. It...

Our guest has spent her career deep inside the human brain. As a neuropsychologist, she works with adults navigating some of life's most challenging moments — brain injuries, post-concussion symptoms, stroke. She understands how the brain shapes everything. When her son was diagnosed with ADHD, suddenly, the professional became deeply personal. What followed was a journey that would change no...

For our guest, she thought her life was settled; a happy marriage, two young kids, a career she loved; and yet it came apart in ways she never anticipated. In the aftermath, she took what was supposed to be a short stint in her family's homestay business: facilitating the placement of international students into private homes across her community. On the surface, it was a practical solution,...

Our guest had built a career as a lawyer, and on paper, it checked every box. But something was missing. She had a lifelong love of sports, but the fandom industry was not built for the female fan.  On a whim she entered a week-long national AI hackathon, and while she knew nothing about coding, nothing about artificial intelligence, she pushed through her fear and won the whole thing! What came o...

Our guest grew up with a deep love for the arts. Classical piano wasn't just something she studied, it was part of who she was. Then one day, a neighbour overheard her playing. What followed from that single, accidental moment was something she never planned and couldn't have predicted. A ripple effect that would shape both her career and her entire sense of purpose. Her journey hasn&apo...

Our guest experienced a loss that most of us cannot begin to imagine. By ten years old, he had lost both of his parents to suicide. What followed was a childhood spent finding his footing in whatever ways he could. One of those ways was numbers. He became a self-proclaimed "mathlete", finding order, logic, and a sense of control in a world that had given him very little of either. Beyond...

For our guest, food is where his story began, working in his uncle's grocery store from an early age. After college, he returned to Jamaica to run his uncle's food manufacturing plant before eventually making his way back to Canada to build a career in sales.  Then the economic downturn of 2008 arrived, and with it, a pull back toward his entrepreneurial roots that he could no longer ign...

She was climbing the corporate ladder, working all hours of the day and night, but one question kept surfacing: Is this all there is? So she did something radical by stepping away from everything, sold her house, left her career, and spent a year at a monastery learning about ancient wisdom. What she found in that silence was the emotions she had carried for decades, rooted in an unimaginable chil...

Our guest built a career she loved, working freelance across entertainment, sports, and news media. Then the pandemic arrived. And like so many in her industry, everything went quiet overnight. So she did what felt natural. She went into hyper-drive. Lots of calls, emails. More and more outreach. Chasing every opening, knocking on every door. And every rejection hit harder than the last. So she ma...

We tell ourselves it doesn't happen here. Not in our neighbourhood. Not behind those doors. Not to someone like her. But domestic abuse doesn't announce itself. And for our guest, it wasn't just her own story, it was a pattern that had quietly shaped the generations before her. Until she chose to make it stop. Finding herself in a domestic abuse situation with children to protect, s...

Hockey was never just a game for our guest. It was in his blood. Growing up, he had one dream: to one day be the voice on Hockey Night in Canada. But life had a different play in mind. He found himself in sales, comfortable but restless, knowing he wanted something different. Then an unlikely opportunity appeared: to buy a bankrupt hockey stick manufacturer. And despite not having any experience i...

As a teenager, our guest was a high-performance athlete. Her body was strong, capable, built for competition. Then it started to change and what followed was a battle with an eating disorder that reshaped not just her relationship with her body, but her understanding of the forces working against young people every single day. Because this isn't just a personal story. It's a much bigger...

Some people wait for the perfect moment to pursue an idea. Our guest decided that maternity leave was hers. While most people use that time to simply survive the newborn stage, she used it to quietly build a two-sided marketplace gig platform that had been living in her mind, waiting for its moment. But having an idea and actually making the leap are two very different things. So she returned to c...

Our guest was a business owner. Driven, entrepreneurial, building her own social media company. Then she met a client and what started as a business relationship led to a vacation in the Caribbean. But when she returned to Canada, she was arrested with 2kg of cocaine strapped to her body. What followed was a period of her life she never anticipated: a 4-year prison sentence. Behind those walls, wi...

From the outside, our guest was living the life. A beautiful family, a career as an executive in the public sector with upward momentum. She had the kind of résumé that screamed success, prestige, power. But something was off. A persistent, uncomfortable feeling that the life she had built wasn't quite the life she was meant to live. So she did something that took equal parts clarity and conv...

His father opened a sports store in Toronto, and from an early age, the family business wasn't just where he worked, but where he grew up. But not everything built with love is easy to sustain. So he walked away, not from the work, but to save the relationship that mattered most.  He forged his own path in entrepreneurship, until his father called him back. This time, not to run the business,...

When our guest was in university, her family faced two crises at the same time. Her mother, a business owner, fell seriously ill. And without proper financial planning in place, a health crisis quickly became a financial one too. That experience lit a fire that would shape the entire direction of her life. She became a wealth advisor on a mission to make sure other families never face what hers di...

At 28 years old, our guest received a diagnosis that stopped her life in its tracks. Breast cancer. And with it, medically induced menopause that no one her age expects to navigate. So she did what many high-achievers do when life becomes unmanageable. She threw herself into work. A demanding career in marketing became both her anchor and her escape.  But the body keeps score. And eventually, hers...

She built her dream life. A beautiful home. Three gorgeous daughters. A marriage that checked all the boxes. But inside, something didn’t fit. There was a quiet whisper she couldn’t ignore. A growing realization that nothing would ever be enough for her until she was enough for herself. No house, no role, no relationship could fill a space that required her own self-worth. Listening to that voice...

Sometimes the path you’re meant to follow starts in the most unlikely place. For today’s guest, it began on Christmas Day, watching football games on TV while the rest of the world celebrated the holiday. That quiet tradition sparked a love for the game that would shape the course of his life. His career started in university sports communications. It was steady, predictable, comfortable. Until a...