Step into the Pivot

Today we invite Jessica Porter and Hayley Porter, the duo behind the 401(k) Girls, to talk with us about the pivot they’re helping lead in financial education and 401(k) retirement planning. They share what it’s like to create content while algorithms shift under your feet, why “talking head” explanations still matter even when they don’t always get the reach, and how they’ve learned to communicat...

Today we talk with Brooke Vixamar, a former financial services annuity expert. When a wave of unexpected loss hit her family, the careful language of retirement planning and life expectancy tables turned painfully concrete, and she started asking a sharper question: what do I want my days to actually feel like? We follow Brooke’s pivot from annuities and retirement income conversations into cybers...

Boomers. Gen X. Millennials. Gen Z. They're often described as competing generations. What if they're actually different cultures trying to solve many of the same problems? After delivering a keynote on intergenerational leadership, communication, and the growing influence of Gen Z, Liam Polonijo returns to Step Into the Pivot to share the research, revelations, and surprising insights t...

Monika Herceg is the most awarded young author in recent Croatian history, with more than twenty literary awards for her poetry, plays, and short stories. In this deeply honest conversation, she shares how divorce, motherhood, financial uncertainty, and the decision to choose her own future became catalysts for rebuilding her life one small step at a time.  Monika introduces a beautifully simple p...

A company gets sold and suddenly the career you built for decades is no longer yours to steer. That’s the moment our guest, Laurel Hardt, faced after 34 years in one organization, and it became the pivot that reshaped everything that came next. Laurel breaks down how she diagnoses the real problem behind missed deadlines and blown budgets: no development process, no clear architecture, and no shar...

In today's episode, we sit down with Susan Bradley, founder of the Sudden Money Institute (SMI) and Financial Transitionist Institute (FTI), and a leader in financial transition planning.   Susan draws a sharp line between change and transition: change is the external event, while transition is the internal adaptation that can take years. If you’re navigating a major life transition, sudden m...

Money can make smart, capable people freeze, and it’s rarely because they don’t understand math. We unpack the structural realities that affect women’s finances, including the earnings gap, caregiving interruptions, and the long-term impact on savings and retirement security. Then we zoom in on the relational side: how many couples slide into traditional divisions of labor without meaning to, and...

A lot of careers look great from the outside while quietly feeling misaligned on the inside. We sit down with Tiffany Salzman, founder of Candor Concepts, to talk about a pivot that isn’t just a job change; it’s a decision to build a purpose-driven life and business where leadership, marketing, and community impact all point in the same direction.  We also talk Rotary, service above self, mentorsh...

This episode covers extremely sensitive topics. Listener discretion is advised. Please prioritize your well-being while listening. Your life can change in a single, absurd moment, and sometimes it’s the kind of moment nobody would believe if it weren’t true. We’re joined by Kevin Spaeth to talk about the day he was hit by a car while riding his bike… by his dentist. What follows is a story involvi...

That creeping thought of “I don’t belong here” can turn high performance into a nonstop stress sprint, and the bill eventually comes due in sleep, mood, relationships, and health. We sit down with Zee Clarke, a Harvard MBA and former corporate VP who knows that pressure firsthand, to unpack how imposter syndrome grows and why it so often leads to overworking, anxiety, and burnout. Zee shares her p...

For our Mother’s Day edition, we’re joined by Tami Ledger and her daughter Ana Chavez, a mother-daughter duo who ended up building parallel careers in the retirement plan industry after a major life disruption forced Tami back into the workforce. If you’ve ever had to reinvent yourself, listen, then share this with someone who’s mid-pivot. Subscribe, leave a review, and tell us: what pivot are you...

You can spot the moment someone stops treating money as a mystery and starts using it as a tool, and that’s exactly what unfolds in our conversation with Nina Greenberg on Step Into the Pivot . Nina shares how early financial awareness, shaped by her parents, led her to save and build a life within her means, rather than chasing one beyond it.  A defining pivot came when she left academia in her e...

Our guest Hannah Austin takes us back to the moment she collapsed, the private spiral that followed, and the brutal clarity of realizing that the career she built for 20 years no longer served her mental health, her emotional health, or her life. Hannah shares the core insight behind her book Hello Head Meet Heart, including the gap so many women feel between the “capable leader” everyone sees and...

What if the moment everything falls apart is the moment you finally meet yourself? We sit down with our friend Heather Fox to trace a raw, luminous journey from a “perfect on paper” life through divorce, identity collapse, and fear into sovereignty, capacity, and a quieter kind of power that lasts. Heather opens up about rebuilding from zero, no money, few friends, a new space with slamming doors,...

This episode covers extremely sensitive topics, including grief and death. Listener discretion is advised. Please prioritize your well-being while listening. Kim shares the lived reality of becoming a grandmother guardian after the sudden loss of her daughter. Raising Ruby means carrying grief and love at the same time, navigating invisible labor, chronic stress, and an identity that does not fit...

This episode covers extremely sensitive topics, including grief and death. Listener discretion is advised. Please prioritize your well-being while listening. Kim shares the lived reality of becoming a grandmother guardian after the sudden loss of her daughter. Raising Ruby means carrying grief and love at the same time, navigating invisible labor, chronic stress, and an identity that does not fit...

Kevin Husted’s story unfolds at the intersection of career risk and personal truth. After being abruptly dismissed from a nonprofit for being outed, Kevin faced the pressure to keep providing for his family while deciding how much of himself to bring to work. He shares how finding alignment in senior healthcare allowed skill, humanity, and presence to work together, and why coming out is not a sin...

A rare cancer diagnosis at twenty five forced Ilana into uncertainty and hard choices she never planned for. What emerged was a grounded way forward built on specificity, supportive systems, and boundaries that protect energy.  Guest Bio: Ilana Morris is a systems and operations strategist and fractional COO who helps purpose driven entrepreneurs and organizations streamline operations and scale s...

What happens when you achieve the life you worked hard to build and realize it no longer fits? Matt shares the moment he passed the CFP, looked at a future of safety and respect, and felt only boredom. That realization sparked a different kind of certainty, one rooted in agency, self trust, and the courage to become a beginner again. Guest Bio: Matt Mosich is an executive communication and speaker...

A new year can get noisy with ambitions goals that never get reached, so we chose a more deliberate and sustainable path. In this episode, we focus on clear intentions, values-led choices, and simple actions that actually stick. Instead of chasing balance, Theresa and Ivana show how they plan to work toward integration, guided by one steady theme that keeps decisions honest. We pay attention to th...

What happens when life throws multiple pivots at you simultaneously? Jessica Porter found herself facing this exact scenario when she moved from Texas to Portland, transitioned from the automotive industry to financial services, and became a stepmother to an eight-year-old. All at the same time. Jessica's journey begins with the challenges of relocating to rainy Portland in January, knowing v...

A new child, a global pandemic, and an unexpected two-year isolation—Yolanda Reyes White's journey into motherhood was nothing like she planned. Just weeks after welcoming her daughter in February 2020, the world shut down, transforming what was supposed to be a brief parental leave before returning to daycare and office life into an extended period of family bonding that changed everything....

Have you ever experienced a moment when everything you thought you knew suddenly changed? When Stephanie Neault was 15 years old, her parents sat her down and revealed they were actually her grandparents. This single conversation set off a cascade of questions about identity, belonging, and trust that would shape her life for decades to come. After years of "white-knuckling" through life...

Purpose-driven nonprofit leader Alison Nakamura takes us on her journey of transformation, sharing the pivotal moment at age 30 when she abandoned her successful Manhattan PR career to pursue social work—a decision that seemed financially risky but spiritually essential. With remarkable candor, she reveals how growing up between two parental influences, her nurse mother's service-oriented val...

When Anne Tankersley decided to make 2023 her "self-care year," she had no idea how profoundly that decision would change her life. A mammogram revealed triple-negative breast cancer, launching her into an intense journey of treatments, career transitions, and personal transformation.  With remarkable candor, she describes attempting to maintain her professional momentum through 20 weeks...