Words from the Wise Podcast

Send us Fan Mail One missed cutoff score almost sent Enrique Acosta Gonzalez down a completely different life, but a walk into the Navy office next door opened a door he didn’t even know existed. From a chaotic childhood in the South Bronx to finding structure through Junior ROTC, Enrique’s story is a raw look at how discipline gets built when life doesn’t hand you stability. We talk about the emo...

Send us Fan Mail I didn’t realize it at the time, but my early 20s were a pressure cooker that forced me to grow up fast. I’m Gary Wise, a 25-year Navy veteran and current educator, and I’m taking you back to the season when I left a ship, walked into recruiting duty, and discovered what “independent discipline” really means when nobody is there to save you. You’ll hear the real story of arriving...

Send us Fan Mail If leadership feels heavier than it used to, you’re not imagining it. The breakneck speed of change, the endless noise of social media, and the rapid rise of AI are pushing both teams and their executives into survival mode. In this episode, Gary Wise sits down with Fay Niewiadomski—world-renowned culture transformation strategist and CEO of ICTN—to get brutally honest about what...

Send us Fan Mail Sleep can fall apart quietly, then everything else follows: mood, focus, discipline, relationships, and the ability to handle stress without blowing up or shutting down. That’s why this conversation with Tim Thomas from Breathwork In Bed hits so hard. We get real about what drains us, what restores us, and how the smallest daily practices can create a massive return when life gets...

Send us Fan Mail You can hear it in my voice when I tell this one. The USS Belleau Wood out of Sasebo, Japan was my first command, and it took a kid with a GED, a chip on his shoulder, and a lot of bad habits and forced him to grow up fast. I’m talking steam ship life in the pit: heat, watch rotations, casualties, sarcasm, pride, and that brutal reality that nobody cares how tough you act if you c...

Send us Fan Mail A single DNA match can turn a lifetime of questions into one hard choice: do I really want to know the truth? I’m Gary Wise, a Navy veteran and high school NJROTC teacher, and I’m continuing my adoption journey with the part that shook me most, finding my biological father after reconnecting with my biological mother. After years of searching, I learn there are two possible father...

Send us Fan Mail A calm sea story is never the real sea story. One heavy roll can turn a ship’s mess decks into a wrecking yard, and the next minute you’re welding tables together because hundreds of people still need to eat. That’s the energy Rob McDaniel brings to this conversation, raw Navy truth with the kind of humor you only earn after you’ve lived it.  Rob is one of my former shipmates from...

Send us Fan Mail This is the 100th Episode for the Words From The Wise Leadership Podcast!  A lot of people think a military career starts with a plan. Androcleas  "Lefty" Eleftheratos's starts with survival. He’s a rural North Carolina kid who drops out of high school, works to help his mom keep four kids afloat, gets into trouble, and then takes the one off-ramp that can reset a l...

Send us Fan Mail The moment you retire, the pace changes and not in a gentle way. One day you are moving at Navy speed with a mission, a watchbill, and a team that needs you. Next, the calendar opens up, the phone goes quiet, and you have to figure out who you are without the title. We sit down with retired Command Master Chief Jason Brown to talk about that whiplash and what he wishes more milita...

Send us Fan Mail He signed up chasing a straightforward goal: become a firefighter, earn college money, and build a future. What he got instead was a 36-year journey that ran through the Army National Guard, Navy boot camp in San Diego, damage control maintenance on small ships, a pre-commissioning build, a destroyer deployment in a world that was rapidly changing, and eventually the kind of senio...

Send us Fan Mail A single Google search at midnight finally returned what years of searching never did: a post titled “Baby Boy Leishman,” written by the birth mother who never stopped wondering. Gary Wise and Teri Leishman share the full adoption reunion story from both sides, including the reality of a closed adoption in the 1970s, the fears that come with reaching out, and the moment a photo on...

Send us Fan Mail She started beauty school at 16 to get out of high school. Then life hit hard: a family breakup she never saw coming, a teen pregnancy, and an adoption that left scars nobody around her knew how to talk about. And somehow, Teri Leishman still kept moving forward. In Part 1 of this two-part conversation, we walk through the real mechanics of reinvention: the messy choices, the lone...

Send us Fan Mail He joined the Navy to stop sitting in classrooms, then the Navy sent him to years of school anyway and that’s where the real story starts. I’m back with my shipmate and one of my favorite Chiefs, Nick Riggs, to walk through a full Navy career arc: high school uncertainty, choosing the service, surviving the training pipeline, and learning what “ready to roll” really means when you...

Send us Fan Mail She shows up in Maryland at 21 with big dreams, a Tanzanian upbringing, and a problem a lot of immigrants recognize instantly: the U.S. system does not always “translate” your education the way you expect. Nelle Kigembe turns that moment of confusion into action, and within months she’s taking the ASVAB, shipping to Great Lakes, and learning English while learning Navy language. T...

Send us Fan Mail A three by five card was all my parents got when they adopted me: teenage mother, premature baby, three and a half pounds, and almost nothing else. I grew up loved, but I also grew up with a quiet, constant message ringing in my head: you’re different. That one word can shape how you attach to people, how you handle conflict, and how hard you chase belonging, even when you can’t e...

Send us Fan Mail Your body can be exhausted while your mind keeps sprinting. That gap is where stress turns into insomnia, jaw clenching, doom thinking, and feeling disconnected from the people right in front of you. I’m Gary Wise, and I sit down with Tim Thomas, a veteran of the Australian Armed Forces who worked alongside special forces teams and spent time in the early underground era of mixed...

Send us Fan Mail A single phone call can reroute your entire life, especially in the Navy. We share the true story behind how I got handpicked orders to the USS George Washington, the forward-deployed nuclear aircraft carrier in Yokosuka, Japan, and why the road there started with a major shipboard fire and a deep-dive investigation. From my years at Afloat Training Group San Diego, I learned how...

Send us Fan Mail 55% of adults are struggling and not receiving treatment, and the scariest part is how easy it is to miss the moment when someone needed us to lean in. I’m joined by Justin Goodman, an insurance industry leader and mental health advocate, for a grounded conversation about what it really takes to support people without pretending we’re clinicians or having the perfect words ready....

Send us Fan Mail Judas is one of the most recognized names in history, yet most of us never stop to ask a simple question: if the crucifixion is essential to Christianity, was Judas Iscariot destined to betray Jesus, and if so, what does that mean for free will, guilt, and redemption? We wrestle with that tension alongside Ocala author Steve Marks, whose faith-based fiction novel Judas Otherwise r...

Send us Fan Mail Ocala is growing fast, and the veteran community is changing with it. That sounds like opportunity, until you realize how many veterans still fall through the cracks between “here’s a number to call” and actual help that shows up. We sit down with Navy veteran, father, nonprofit builder, and serial entrepreneur Chad Walker to talk about what happens after the uniform comes off and...

Send us Fan Mail Trust is getting harder to hold onto, and it’s not just because people disagree. In 2026, AI-generated content, deepfakes, and polished “thought leadership” have made a lot of listeners wonder: is any of this real, and who is actually behind the message? I sit down with Gabrielle Dolan, a global authority on authentic storytelling and the author of Story Intelligence: The Craft of...

Send us Fan Mail A Hollywood career can look like the dream while quietly draining the life out of you. We sit down with Preston Zeller, an award-winning filmmaker and growth leader, to talk about the moment he realized the “successful” path wasn’t making him whole and what it took to rebuild his faith, his work, and his sense of purpose. Preston walks us through growing up with music and storytel...

Send us Fan Mail He helped test the hardware that made Mars landings possible, then turned around and started helping leaders land the hard stuff in their own minds. We sit down with John Mollura, a former NASA contractor and test operations engineer who spent years in mission-critical environments, including testing the giant airbags used to land Mars exploration rovers. John shares what that wor...

Send us Fan Mail Coaching sounds simple until you try to turn it into a real post-military career. Ronnie Netter comes back on the mic to talk with us about life after service, finding a calling, and what it looks like to take years of Navy mentorship and translate it into civilian coaching, leadership development, and consulting without feeling fake or salesy. We get straight into the hard parts:...

Send us Fan Mail She wanted overseas orders and got Camp Lejeune. She wanted aviation and landed in engineering utilities. And somehow, that’s exactly why this conversation works: it’s an honest look at how a young Marine turns disappointment into direction without losing her edge. We’re joined by Ashley Smith aka "Smitty", one of my former NJROTC cadets, calling in from Marine Corps sch...