Authentic Leadership for Everyday People

Memorial Day Week edition - Part 1 of Best of Business Jargons That Drives you Crazy. This includes excerpts from episodes published between July and December of 2024. Here are the featured speakers. Maggie Olson Patrick Heron David West Giovanni Vacchi Lily Zheng Bryan Adams Christian Muntean Damon Lembi Claudia Scott Jesse Friedman Marques Ogden Ali Cox Carlos Williams John Torrens Jim Schleckse...

Rick Culleton is a serial entrepreneur who built multiple businesses across industries, from electronics to hospitality, and is currently splitting time between Austin and Costa Rica. Rick shared how growing up watching his father transform from a struggling employee to a happy entrepreneur shaped his own journey. He talked about building businesses out of necessity, learning tough lessons from ad...

Jolynn Ledgerwood is the founder of Elevate Your Talent and host of the Play for Performance podcast. When she was diagnosed with a learning disability in nursing school, she made a courageous pivot to build a thriving career in corporate learning and development, moving from hospitality to cybersecurity and eventually launching her own business. In our conversation, we explored how her early chal...

Today's guest is is Delaney William, the founder of Elevated Tech, a company that helps people grow their remote income through job search automation and career strategy within the framework of the controversial but increasingly relevant concept of job stacking. In our conversation, we talked about what it means to build a career — and now a company — that challenges the norms of corporate loyalty...

Paige Lopez, is CEO and founder of Awaken 180, a weight loss company. In our conversation, Paige shared her journey from aspiring neurosurgeon to entrepreneur, the emotional challenges of pivoting from a traditional career path, and how she built a business with intentionality and deep connection to her mission. We also explored her transition from hands-on coaching to CEO leadership, how she and...

Jennifer Langton is the former Senior Vice President of Health and Innovation at the NFL, where she led all initiatives to improve player safety. Her work has played a major role in reducing concussions and transforming how the NFL approaches health, safety, and performance. But Jennifer’s story starts long before. As a star lacross athlete at the University of Virginia, in her sophomore year, she...

Elitzur Bar-Asher Siegal is a professor, linguist, and leader based in Israel. In our conversation, we explored two extraordinary initiatives he is leading in response to the ongoing crisis in Israel and Gaza. The first is Humanitas , a coalition of all the humanities deans in Israel working together to reimagine the role of universities and the humanities in shaping engaged citizens. The second i...

Greg Larkin is am entrepreneur, author, and founder of the executive community Punks & Pinstripes, a curated executive community that gathers people who, as he says, are trying to climb their second mountain. Greg’s view of what defines success is a little different. And it is heavily shaped by his personal history. He found success very quickly, by being the first person to predict the 2008 s...

Today's guest is Ron Browning, the CEO of IntelliBright, a performance-based digital marketing agency. Ron’s career is characterized by entrepreneurship, digital innovation, and a fierce commitment to accountability. We talked about his unique journey—starting with his first business while still in grad school, diving into the early days of the dot-com boom (and bust), and ultimately launching Int...

Natasha Braginsky Mounier is currently the co-chair of Girls Are Investors, a UK charity, and is a member of several boards. Prior to that, she had a remarkable career in investment management, covering Russia and emerging markets at Capital Group, where she retired from as a partner. We talked about her unique journey. She emigrated to the US from the Soviet Union and  went on to become a le...

Rishad Tobaccowala is one to the visionaries in the world of marketing and advertising – he founded some of the early digital marketing agencies and has covered several C-level roles for Publicis. Today, he comes back to discuss his latest book, Rethinking Work. In our conversation, we dive into the five seismic shifts reshaping the workplace, how technology—including AI—is redefining the nature o...

Joseph Rainone is the CEO of Ubique Group, a private equity owned furniture company. Joseph has spent over 30 years working in consumer product companies, making his way from a analyst to manager all the way to CEO. In our conversation, Joseph shares invaluable insights on leadership, including his “Three H’s of Leadership” framework—Humble, Hungry, and Happy—a powerful approach to building high-p...

Dina Denham Smith, is an exectuive coach with an extensive background in leadership, spanning private equity, consulting, and high-growth startups, and she has a deep passion for the intersection of business and psychology. In our conversation, she shares her journey from management consulting to private equity and eventually to coaching. We also discuss her upcoming book, *Emotionally Charged: Ho...

Haley Forest is a renaissance woman at the intersection of leadership, creativity, and neuroscience. Haley’s career path is anything but traditional—she spent two decades in hospitality, where she developed a deep understanding of human behavior, before transitioning into the world of innovation and business strategy. Now, as she completes her doctorate in leadership psychology, she’s focused on t...

This episode is a selection from the original 2020 interview with Rishad Tobaccowala. Rishad Tobaccowala, is an author, speaker and known as a visionary in the advertising industry. He was the founder of two of the early interactive digital agencies in the early '90, and  covered several leadership positions at the Publicis Group, including Chief Strategy and Growth Officer for the whole grou...

A couple of weeks ago, our guest was Robyn Bolton, founder of Mile Zero , an innovation consulting firm. In that episode, we focused primarily on Robyn’s career journey. Since she is publishing a book on innovation, I asked her to come back for a second episode to cover that topic, and she said yes. The book is called Unlocking Innovation, so as you can easily imagine, today’s episode is all about...

Suzanne Dean had a long career first as a musician and composer, then as a music educator, and finally as the founder of a grassroots non profit. In our conversation, we focused on the first and the last part of her career. We started with her experience as a musician and the journey to figure out exactly in which part of the industry Suzanne wanted to operate. And then we talked about how she con...

Robyn Bolton is the founder and Chief Navigator of Mile Zero, an innovation consulting firm. Robyn’s story is a perfect illustration of the core belief that is at the core of this podcast: if you go through the process of intentionally defining your true values and make decisions accordingly, you will not only be happier but find the right professional success. Robyn’s career started on a very tra...

Today we feature my appearance on The CEO Project Podcast, where I discussed the topics of Authentic Leadership and Branding. The host, Jim Schleckser, had been my guest on the podcast a few weeks before this session, so this conversation started from there. We talked about how I work with leaders to help them be more authentic. Specifically, we discussed how to create definitions of values that c...

Today's guest is Ricardo Regalado, a serial builder and entrepreneur. Ricardo launched 5 companies and is a partner in a 6th. His ventures are in different industries, but his main two companies are all grounded in his deep expertise in the commercial cleaning industry. Rozalado Services, the first business he launched – a cleaning services company, and Route, his latest business, is a specialized...

Today's guest is Justin Buonomo, founder of Journey to Financial Freedom, a company specialized in personal financial education. During our conversation Justin had a very honest discussion on the trauma that he went through in his youth and then talked about some of the key experiences that shape his mindset from being a Division One college athlete and learning how to play hurt to bringing the ri...

We celebrate the end of the year by sharing some of the NFL conversations we had in the 2024 season. First, my analysis of the leadership lessons from the fall of Bill Belichick. Then my conversation with Greg Bedard, founder of the online sport magazine Boston Sports Journal , where I asked him a few hypothetical questions. And finally, from my recent conversation with former NFL player Marques O...

In this episode Dino Cattaneo presents a selection from his previous interviews with Lily Zheng and Claudia Scott on the topic of Equity and Inclusion. Today's guest is Contact Dino at: dino@al4ep.com Websites: al4ep.com Additional Guest Links: Contact at: LinkedIn: Instagram: Twitter: Authentic Leadership For Everyday People / Dino Cattaneo Dino on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/dinocattaneo Podcast I...

Today's guest is Marques Ogden, host of the Get Authentic With Marques podcast and inspirational keynote speaker, coach and consultant. In our conversation he shared the leadership lessons he got from a life in football: Marques played Division I football at Howard University, and was then drafted in the NFL where he played as an offensive lineman for the Titans, Bills, Ravens and Jaguars. This ep...

Kathryn Valentine is the Founder of Worthmore Strategies, a research based firm aimed at advancing women in the workplace by partnering with companies to deliver negotiation training to women. Kathryn developed her approach to leadership in the years she spent at McKinsey and at a couple of apparel companies. In this conversation we discuss her journey, her leadership style, and she shares a numbe...