Clover: Conversations with Women in Leadership on Visibility, Authority & Owning the Room

From styling celebrities like Selena Gomez for nearly a decade to helping women executives own the room in the boardroom, Basia Richard has built a career around one powerful idea: how you show up matters. In this episode, Basia shares her incredible journey from growing up in Poland to pursuing a career as a professional violinist, reinventing herself in Hollywood as a celebrity stylist, and even...

What happens when a creative mind, a startup operator, a cancer survivor, and a humanitarian all live inside the same person? In this episode of Clover, I sit down with Melissa Wood, founder of Formis and Curate, to explore the winding path that led her from a small town in North Carolina to the startup ecosystem in Austin. Melissa’s story spans early tech startups, design and photography, turning...

What does it mean to build a life rooted in service rather than status? In this deeply moving conversation, I sat down with Dr. Farah Shroff—public health leader, educator, researcher, yoga teacher, and advocate for women's health—to explore the experiences that shaped her work and worldview. From her childhood in Canada after immigrating from Kenya, to watching her mother defy a devastating...

Anna Sizova joins Clover for a conversation that spans global healthcare, leadership, reinvention, and what it really looks like to build a life and career across countries, industries, and identities. Anna shares her journey from growing up in Azerbaijan and becoming a pediatric endocrinologist to leading global clinical trials and eventually stepping into entrepreneurship, mentorship, and health...

In this episode of Clover, I sit down with my friend Kara Mandeville — a powerhouse leader at Microsoft whose career journey is equal parts inspiring, relatable, and incredibly timely. From growing up as a military brat and dreaming of working with horses to leading high-performing teams in the fast-moving world of enterprise tech and AI, Kara’s story is proof that careers don’t have to follow a p...

In this episode of Clover, I sit down with Bree Whitehead; entrepreneur, AI strategist, and someone who has been building long before AI became the conversation. What I loved about this discussion is how grounded and refreshing her perspective is. Instead of fear, she brings clarity. Instead of replacement, she talks about expansion. We get into what it actually looks like to use AI in a way that...

In this episode of Clover, I sit down with Dr. Neema Moore—chiropractor, author of Confidence NOW!, and founder of transformative wellness retreats—for a conversation that feels both grounding and expansive. Dr. Neema’s journey doesn’t follow a straight line. From high school biology teacher to chiropractor to global wellness leader, she shares how one simple idea— choosing happiness —led her to c...

In this episode of Clover, I sit down with Marina Kay, an executive coach and breathwork practitioner who helps women lead, build, and grow their careers without burning themselves out in the process. Marina shares the story of her own career journey, from working in HR consulting and sitting in Fortune 500 boardrooms to experiencing the intense pressure of startup culture while working at WeWork...

In this episode of Clover, I’m joined by Camille Ricketts, now a partner at XYZ Venture Capital and formerly a marketing leader at Tesla, First Round Capital, and Notion. Camille’s career journey has been anything but linear—starting as a journalist at The Wall Street Journal , moving into communications at Tesla, where she worked directly with Elon Musk, then pioneering content marketing with Fir...

This week on Clover, I had the honor of sitting down with Celeste Mergens, bestselling author and founder of Days for Girls, a global movement that has reached nearly 4 million women and girls in 145 countries. Celeste’s story is a powerful reminder that leadership doesn’t always begin with a master plan. She started out wanting to be an electrical engineer. Life rerouted her into motherhood, rais...

In this very first episode of Clover , I chat with Amina Mohamed, founder of Cameras For Girls, an organization using photography and storytelling to help young women in Africa break into male-dominated media spaces. Amina’s story begins with her family’s journey as refugees from Uganda to Canada, a career in film and television, and a life-changing return to Uganda that revealed the inequities fa...

This episode is about a feeling I do not hear discussed very often, especially among women in leadership: having a career that looks successful on paper, but still not feeling settled, finished, or like you have “arrived.” I am not sharing this as a complaint or a dramatic confession. It is an honest observation about how my career has actually unfolded. Over time, I have gained experience, respon...

In this solo episode of Clover, I speak directly to the reality many women leaders are navigating right now. The world feels frightening and unstable. Political volatility, economic uncertainty, organizational upheaval, and an unrelenting news cycle are not abstract background conditions. They affect how people lead, how decisions are made, and how much risk feels possible on any given day. Even l...

In this episode of Clover, I sit down with Rosa Yupari, former Chief Revenue Officer turned fractional CRO and sales advisor, to talk about what actually drives sustainable revenue growth — and why so many companies stall long before they realize it. Rosa shares her journey from engineering into sales, scaling teams to nearly $100M in revenue, and eventually stepping away from corporate leadership...

Being the only woman in the room is rarely just a professional experience. It is a psychological one. In this episode of Clover, we explore what happens internally when women navigate leadership spaces that were not designed with them in mind, and what it actually takes to stay steady inside those dynamics. In this episode, we cover: Why being the only woman in the room creates a constant layer of...

As January begins, many leaders feel pressure to move quickly; setting goals, making plans, defining the year ahead. In this solo episode of Clover, I pause that momentum and turn toward discernment. I share the habits, expectations, and patterns I’m choosing to leave behind, and how releasing what no longer fits creates capacity for clearer leadership. You’ll hear reflections on over-carrying, av...

Between Christmas and New Year, time feels different. The structure disappears, the pressure eases. And for many of us, especially leaders, that quiet can feel both relieving and unsettling. In this solo episode of Clover, I talk about that strange, floaty week we rarely name and why it feels so uncomfortable when the noise finally drops. I explore what happens when our nervous system exhales, why...

More than a decade ago, I wrote The Snow Globe , a middle-grade novel about courage, belonging, and discovering strength you didn’t know you had. I wrote it before I had kids, before many of the leadership experiences that now shape my life. For years, the manuscript sat quietly as my life changed around it. Two years ago, I was ready to self-publish. The book had been edited. The cover was comple...

The latest episode of Clover went live today, and this one is just me, naming something I think a lot of us are feeling, especially in December, but rarely talk about out loud. In this episode, I unpack what I’ve been calling the leadership hangover. It’s not burnout or a breakdown. It’s that quieter, harder-to-explain exhaustion that shows up after a long year of leading, deciding, carrying respo...

In this episode of Clover, I sit down with fellow Austinite, community builder, and multi-pivot queen Heather Trumpfheller for a conversation that hits on career, identity, sobriety, boundaries, and what it really means to build community with intention. We talk about: Her winding career path & permission to pivot Growing up a storytelling-obsessed kid in Dallas, studying broadcast journalism...

In this episode of Clover, I sit down with the brilliant and wildly accomplished Tina Sharkey for a conversation that honestly feels like three masterclasses in one: community-building, career design, and the future of human connection in an AI-driven world. Tina walks me through her very non-linear career path—from hanging out in her mom’s New York fashion office as a teen, to an unexpected pivot...

In this episode of Clover, I sit down with my former teammate Jordan Lea, now VP of Customer Experience at Plum, to talk about bold career leaps, people-first leadership, and building a meaningful career on your own terms. Jordan shares her journey from a tiny town in North Carolina with dirt roads and cornfields to moving to New York City with no job lined up, flying standby for interviews, takin...

In this episode of Clover, I get to catch up with my longtime friend and powerhouse media executive, Tracy Kaplan, and her “hodgepodge” career that turned out to be a masterclass in building a bold, non-linear path in media, tech, and podcasts. Tracy walks us through her journey from WGBH and ABC News to CBS Interactive, SnappyTV, Twitter, TuneIn, Patreon, Tenderfoot TV, and now Courier Newsroom,...

In this episode, I sit down with mortgage industry veteran and coach Carrie Guarrero to trace a three-decade career built on service, community, and relentless growth. Carrie shares how an 11-year-old’s flyer route in her mom’s mortgage office became a billion-dollar origination career—and why the trophies eventually mattered less than the names and stories behind each loan. She opens up about a c...

In this conversation, I catch up with longtime friend and operator, Stephanie Quay—a five-time acquisition veteran who recently launched Five Experts, a platform matching early-stage companies with proven operators to drive value creation in the first five years. We trace her zig-zag path from film school and TV.com (hi, CNET days!) to growth-stage leadership across PE- and VC-backed companies, an...