TrailBlazers Impact

Building dynamic teams and helping individuals reach their maximum potential is a life calling for Laura Piening. Her expertise and vision in transforming organizations was honed through a 30-year career in the business and nonprofit world, where she broke through several barriers, including becoming one of the first women to work in international banking on Wall Street. She served as one of the f...

Today’s college students are entering an economy that demands an entrepreneurial mindset. Briana Weisinger, the startup advocate for the University of California, San Diego, wants students to be prepared for a future where independent work is the norm. University research indicates more than half of students now in college will be independently employed in the next 15 years. Along with preparing s...

Kimble Bosworth approaches life with a sense of fun-loving curiosity. When she was 15, she had a near death experience after almost succumbing to toxic shock syndrome. She remembers being at the doorway of what she believed was heaven, tempted to enter but instead willing herself back to life after hearing her mother’s voice in the hospital room. Since that experience, there’s nothing to fear. Whe...

Betsy Muller is a self-described science person, with a degree in chemistry and an MBA. It makes her an unlikely advocate for the Emotional Freedom Technique, a form of alternative therapy. Yet as a master trainer, she’s a passionate advocate about using it to help others recover from traumatic experiences and achieve wellbeing. Muller credits the technique with helping her husband in his recovery...

In this fast-paced interview, Retired Lieutenant Colonel Valarie R. Austin shares her life lessons on achieving four college degrees and serving in a combat zone while living in a Middle Eastern country with different cultural expectations for "women." In her interview, Valarie discusses her career as a military officer as well as life-after her military service, in particular, pursuing her passio...

Valentina Vitols has had a varied career, moving between politics, photography, app development, and the world of startups. Now an angel investor in Seattle, she mentors women founders to equip them for the journey of entrepreneurship. In helping others, she draws on the many ups and downs she has experienced. Her first company failed, though from the experience she learned that it’s critical to s...

Gina Goree Hitchens wants women to create a life of their calling. A major component is a firm financial foundation, and it’s what she helps clients develop through her practice GHG Financial Consulting. Hitchens empowers women with financial skills and knowledge to prepare for the uncertainties of life. Hitchens believes in getting to know her clients and helping them develop a vision for the fut...

Lisa N. Alexander details the personal and professional journey to becoming The Marketing Stylist™. The owner of PrettyWork Creative LLC and PrettyWork Studios, Alexander is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and marketing expert. Through her consultancy work, she helps small business owners grow their operation with strategic marketing and branding strategies. Alexander shares the challenges...

Linda Vines Bright has devoted her career to children. She’s passionate about supporting learners with special needs, using her methods to address and support many different learning styles. As a child she was very active, quickly finishing her work and wanting to help other students — but this behavior at the time was considered disruptive. When building out her career she wanted to support child...

As Founder of the Cleveland Women's Journal, a digital and print magazine,  Barbara knows what it takes to start a new business after being in another field for many years. Barbara and Nan talk about entrepreneurship, women's health and well-being, spousal abuse, sex trafficking, and dealing with breast cancer and death of a spouse.  As a woman who knows who she is and where she's going, Barbara's...

Vanessa’s approach to life’s challenges and stresses is to reignite your creativity with play. She gives you her recipes which include hot yoga, silent discos, and fires on the beach with your girlfriends. And to remember there’s always a chance for failure and that’s OK. Her company’s mission is to unlock clients’ potential with improv, helping businesses achieve happier and healthier teams. With...

Rosemarie Harris has maneuvered effectively through the ins and outs of corporate life, spending 22 years at a large company before starting her own. Her only regret — not making the leap to launching a business sooner. Charting her path has been the right move. Secured Systems Consulting helps clients nationwide with regulatory compliance in the affordable housing industry. Her joy comes from hel...

Advocacy started early for Lisa Kleissner. During her high school days in Hawaii, she pushed for environmental causes, earning the ire of school administrators when bringing in scientists and activists who challenged prevailing wisdom. Kleissner’s desire for change continued throughout her life, culminating in her founding of the KL Felicitas Foundation. Together with her husband Charly, she suppo...

Sherese Brewington Carr delivers her professional insights into the world of migrant farm work, the criminal justice system, and what it takes to help both veterans and ex-offenders transition successfully into the contemporary workplace. She shares her foundational beliefs established as a childhood "farm girl" who benefited from the larger culture of rural community activism and a world-class ed...

Design is about more than aesthetic choices for Carnela Renee Hill. It’s building relationships and new opportunities for strengthening others.  Hill shares her journey of tackling each day as it comes, relying on belief that God will guide her in what she sees as her ministry. Her design business accelerated in 2015 when she was invited to help decorate the White House at Christmas for an HGTV sp...

Carena Lemons can seemingly do it all, with a successful law practice and an acting career. In this episode, Lemons explains how career choices are often intertwined, lending strength from one to another. Her Raleigh, N.C.-based law firm, which she’s worked hard to build over the last 13 years, is strengthened by her knowledge of the entertainment industry. With that experience, Lemons has done co...

The joy of entrepreneurship was instilled in Jewel Burke Solomon at a young age. Growing up in Mobile, Alabama, she was inspired by the pride her parents had in their business and the sense of respect the community showed them. Her childhood was filled with warm memories of international travel and a passion for the arts. An entrepreneurial drive set in early, as she sold her own paintings while i...

Linda Dupre Hull, age 67, provides powerful insights into a childhood where at age 12 she became a partner with her father in developing the family budget and managing the family finances out of the necessity of ensuring the family could survive off of his earnings. She shares the backdrop of being a life-long resident of New Orleans; a city defined by its history of segregation and poverty, and c...

Growing up in a society where gender bias was prevalent, Rocio Cavazos always found that she was attracted to professional industries where women were few and far between. She started out as an engineer then later transitioned into finance where she worked on Wall Street for 12 years in another male dominated industry. Being passionate about empowering women and wanting to create an impact through...

Teri Ljeoma shares her 4 secrets to trading in the stock market. Her interest in the stocks market started when she was in high school, and she worked on Wall Street to learn the trade. She credits her mother and her grandmother for her success today, her drive to persevere and that motivation to keep going. Creating her course "Trade and Travel" has been one of her major contributions, teaching i...

Jennifer gives her thoughts on the journey of raising four boys, much of the time by herself as a single parent. She has struggled with depression, thinking that depression equals sadness and when people aren’t exhibiting sadness, she felt they must be pretending. She talks about her real love, writing, and her transition, starting with journalism, to becoming an award-winning freelance writer. Su...

Ellen Walsh reflects on a childhood filled with the joy and discoveries of living in Hawaii, Japan and Iran, along with the pain-filled memories of living in Mississippi in the mid-to late-1950s; a state where segregation was the "law of the land" and witnessing her mother's pain as a brown skinned Polynesian married to a white Portuguese engineer. Her mother was directed to the "colored door" whi...

Donna Miller founded a company called Purse Power, providing everyone an opportunity to purchase from women-owned businesses, including businesses with 20% women on the board. Knowing that one out of four women is impacted by domestic violence, she wanted to accomplish two goals: provide more shelters for abused women while giving more economic power to women to make choices to support other women...

Working for Catholic Charities as a homeless advocate, even into retirement, she still represents the organization's priorities in homelessness at the State Legislature. She provides an insight into the reasons and magnitude of homelessness. She talks about Housing First as the best, but expensive, program and provides an example of how this worked for a chronically homeless mentally disabled indi...

Debbie grew up in an environment of helping others and was a creative entrepreur as a child. She talks about her Jewish heritage and living in Israel for a year during a particularly tumultuous time politically. We went on to talk about children and gun violence, including her fears for her own children. She discusses living her convictions and staying close to her authentic self at all times. We...