Building Legendary Leaders

Juan Longoria has led operations at scale that most people can’t even imagine. From managing 7,000 outsourced telecom representatives to leading customer service and business operations across eight business lines inside a rapidly scaling real estate tech company, he’s learned something most leaders eventually discover the hard way: Everything is change management. Juan Longoria and Jim Saliba bre...

AI isn’t replacing leadership. It’s exposing it. In this episode of Building Legendary Leaders, Jim Saliba sits down with Chon Chua to unpack why so many AI initiatives fail long before the technology does. The real breakdown usually happens somewhere between trust, fear, culture, and leadership alignment. Chon shares lessons from leading large-scale enterprise transformations across global teams,...

AI is making it easier than ever to ship products fast. The problem is, it’s also making it easier to ship bad decisions at scale. In this episode of Building Legendary Leaders, Nathalie Criou joins Jim Saliba for a sharp conversation about the hidden risks of AI acceleration, false confidence inside organizations, and why the fundamentals of leadership matter more now than ever. Nathalie shares l...

There’s a point where experience starts working against you. Not because it’s wrong. But because you stopped questioning it. That’s the muscle memory mirage. You keep doing what used to work even when the context has changed. In this conversation, Jim sits down with Itai Karelic to unpack what it really looks like to lead through that moment—when your playbook quietly becomes the bottleneck. They...

Some companies fail because the market changes. Others fail because leaders avoid the truth. In this conversation, Jim Saliba sits down with turnaround CEO Don Hammond to unpack what really happens when leaders step into broken systems: culture drift, weak hiring decisions, leadership vacuums, and the slow decay caused by delayed honesty. Don shares the hard-earned frameworks he has used to transf...

Hiring is rarely treated like a leadership system. Most teams still rely on resumes, gut feel, and unstructured interviews, then wonder why churn stays high and performance never compounds. In this conversation, Jim sits down with Neil Smith, VP of Technical Support at Iterable, to break down the hiring flywheel that helps leaders build high-retention, high-performance teams. Neil shares how struc...

Some leadership lessons only come from the moments that test your values. In this conversation, Jim Saliba sits down with former KFC International executive, H&R Block president, and leadership coach Kip Knight to unpack one of the hardest realities in leadership: how to lead up when your boss is the problem. From surviving hostile leadership environments to rebuilding trust after a damaged st...

Leadership gets harder when the scope widens. Moving from functional leader to CEO isn’t just a promotion—it’s a complete shift in how you make decisions, evaluate talent, and operate without fast feedback. In this conversation, Laura Burkhauser shares what actually changes when you own the whole system—from longer feedback loops to higher-stakes decisions and building a team you can trust. This d...

What does philosophy have to do with artificial intelligence? More than you'd think. Robert Matney, Chief Evangelist at Primer.ai, didn't start his career in tech. He started with epistemology and rhetoric—the study of how we know what we know, and how language shapes everything. Turns out, that's exactly the foundation you need to build AI that actually works for people. In this conversation, we...

Most leaders don’t struggle with effort. They struggle with originality. At some point, copying competitors starts to feel safe. Benchmarks look comforting. Best practices feel responsible. And quietly, innovation dies. This conversation with Jono Bacon pulls that pattern apart. We talk about why breakthrough ideas rarely come from dashboards, how community and human behavior reveal opportunity fa...

AI isn’t breaking teams. The way leaders are rolling it out is. This conversation goes straight to the part that most AI discussions avoid: the human cost of speed. Fear disguised as silence. Burnout is hiding behind productivity. And the quiet damage that shows up when leaders treat AI like a software upgrade instead of a cultural shift. Paul Chaney has been working in digital transformation long...

Leadership doesn’t break when strategy fails—it breaks when people stop believing in the direction. This conversation is about what happens before execution: trust, shared vision, coaching, and the discipline required to build culture across radically different backgrounds. From scaling founder-led companies to uniting global teams, Marne Martin shares how real performance is unlocked when leaders...

Most leaders focus on processes and technology because they're easy to see and measure. But what if the real competitive advantage lies in something completely different? Olga Violett, Vice President of Operations turned Product Management and CX Principal, shares why creating workplace happiness isn't soft skills—it's strategic leadership. She reveals how trust accelerates results, why vulnerabil...

What happens when you walk away from being the expert and step into a role where credibility isn’t guaranteed? This conversation explores what leadership really looks like when titles don’t carry authority, KPIs can either help or hurt, and progress depends more on listening than speaking. From engineering and quality to product marketing and P&L thinking, Warren Bryant shares what it takes to...

Speed isn’t just a metric; it’s a leadership advantage. In this episode, Chris Nelson breaks down how urgency, tighter feedback loops, transparency, and empowered decision-making reshape culture and accelerate execution. From shifting away from command-and-control structures to creating a cadence teams can rely on, this conversation reveals what it takes to build momentum inside fast-moving organi...

Bridging two brands, two cultures, and two ways of working isn’t for the faint of heart—but it’s where growth truly lives. In this conversation, Lauren McTiernan, Senior Director of Customer Operations & Fulfillment at Crocs, breaks down what it really takes to align fast-moving teams, build shared priorities, experiment your way forward, and keep people energized when customer expectations ne...

A conversation that cuts through the noise and goes straight to the part most people avoid—self-trust. Not the motivational-poster version, but the kind that forces you to sit still long enough to hear your own voice instead of the one telling you you’re not enough. Sir Shefik Macauley shares how he navigated a 30+ year career spanning mass communications, Olympic tech, music, television, NASA Spa...

What does it take to lead when you don't have the title? Julia Elliott, Director of Product Strategy and Operations at Google, shares her unconventional path from electrical engineering to enterprise product leadership. In this episode, you will discover: • How an engineering mindset translates to business leadership • The art of influencing without authority across startups and big tech • Why und...

What does it take to build a telehealth empire from scratch? Dr. Pamela Ograbisz, VP of Clinical Operations at Locum Tenens, shares the unfiltered truth about hiring, firing, and leading teams through explosive growth. In this comprehensive episode of Building Legendary Leaders, Dr. Ograbisz takes us behind the scenes of building a multimillion-dollar-per-month telehealth division that now serves...

Welcome to the very first episode of Building Legendary Leaders! In this special debut episode, host Jim Saliba gets put in the hot seat as producer Nick asks the questions. Discover the inspiration behind the podcast, Jim's unique approach to leadership development, and the personal journey that shaped his philosophy on building legendary leaders. What You'll Learn: • The Leadership Impact Ladder...

Building Legendary Leaders is a leadership podcast for executives who want to stop firefighting and start leading strategically. Hosted by executive coach James ‘Jim’ Saliba, the show brings candid conversations with leaders of leaders who have faced high-stakes challenges and learned how to lead with clarity, presence, and purpose. Each episode turns real leadership moments into frameworks and ac...