Work From The Inside Out

Megan Leatherman is the founder and director of A Wild New Work, an ecological career development agency-based in the Pacific Northwest. As a career coach, mother, writer, podcast host, and amateur ecologist, Megan has helped thousands of professionals reconnect to their strengths and to what deeply matters to them. She has aMaster’s degree in conflict resolution, and a background in Human Resourc...

As far back as he can remember Travis Scott has always called himself a plant nerd. Growing up in a small town in Indiana, he loved spending time outside in nature and in the public library where he would pour through books about plants and science. Travis thought he would pursue a career in landscape architecture but in college, he decided to major in environmental science.  Travis’ career has be...

As Deepa Purushothaman grew up, she always felt different. Being one of a few students of color amongst the 500 in her school in White House Station, New Jersey, she felt challenged to belong. Each summer, Deepa would go to India to visit family, and she didn’t fit in there either, because she was ‘very American’. At home, race was not discussed. She had an inner drive and a competitive spirit, th...

Shari Leid’s life started out “a little messy” as she refers to it. Born in Seoul, South Korea, she was abandoned as a baby and has never known her actual birth date, birthplace, or birth name. After being moved to approximately four different locations, Shari was adopted by a Japanese American couple from Seattle. They were older parents, both had been interned in camps during World War Two. Shar...

The oldest of four sisters, AnwinMbahalways thought she should set the example as the responsible one. Growing up in a sheltered diplomatic household, her father worked for the Cameroonian embassy and her mother was a homemaker, who received a stipend to run the household wherever they lived across the globe. Anwin shared that her parents slotted her and each of her sisters into four careers. She...

Janine MacLachlan is on a mission to get ideas heard. She’s a communications strategist with deep experience in brand positioning and business storytelling. Janine works with executives and aspiring leaders in the areas of executive visibility, thought leadership and essentially helps them get out of their own way. How many of us would like a little help with that? Growing up in Saginaw, Michigan...

Gaurav Bhatnagar and Mark Minukas are the founders of Co-Creation Partners, a firm that advises, consults, and coaches senior leaders and their teams on how they can design improvement programs and harness the talent and creativity of their people to achieve better business results. They focus on how people show up, communicate, problem-solve, and lead to determine how large the gap is between str...

Eric Vernsten was a kid when the OJ Simpson trial was on TV. He and his older brother would watch it daily and on Friday nights, along with his family, he consumed a lineup of crime programs, such as Dateline. Eric was a talker. He liked to tell jokes and argue with people too. It occurred to him that law school might be in his future, but as he moved through high school, and then college, he turn...

Devon Harris is a founding member of the first Jamaican bobsled team, which competed in the 1988 Olympic Games in Calgary, Canada. Their exploits inspired the Disney movie Cool Runnings . Devon competed again in 1992 and 1998 as captain of the Olympic teams.  His very early years were spent in rural Jamaica with his grandmother, an amazing storyteller. Her stories had a great impact on him, especi...

designer, creating and facilitating engaging and interactive career development learning experiences to help workplaces build cultures of connection and inclusion, and students and professionals build careers of meaning.  As a former senior manager at Salesforce, she brought more than one hundred employees together from two internal teams by blending their unique strengths to create a training app...

Do you remember your first job? Darcy Eikenberg wins the prize for having one of the most unusual first work experiences. During the holidays in her central Illinois hometown, she was a talking mailbox at her local shopping mall. Imagine how a job like that would have made her resume stand out in her early career pursuits! Darcy has roots that run deep when it comes to her relationship with work....

Jens Heitland is an entrepreneur, connector, innovation culture expert, business adviser and the CEO of Heitland Innovation . In 2019, he stepped out of his role as Global Head of Innovation for IKEA Centres with the goal to find ways to empower people to innovate in large organizations. Jens founded Heitland Innovation on the basis that it would not be the usual consulting company. His mission is...

Dr. Ruth Gotian is one of the most interesting women I have ever gotten to know. I could tell you about her extraordinary academic and professional accomplishments, and you might agree with me, but I am not even referring to that. What really strikes me is how she describes her grandmother and the profound impact their relationship has had on her life.  Even though they were two generations apart,...

Ron Carucci has spent his whole career holding up mirrors to leaders and organizations to ask them to be more honest with themselves, with the story that they're telling about who they are and what they're doing. He is the author of nine books, including Rising to Power, and the recently released, To Be Honest, Lead with the Power of Truth, Justice, and Purpose .  This is Ron’s second visi...

Yesterday I did something BIG. I launched my first book!  Ok, enough about me … let me tell you about the book.  It's titled Work from the Inside Out: Break Through Nine Common Obstacles and Design a Career That Fulfills You. The book highlights twenty-two real-life stories of career transitions, many of which are from my podcast guests. The stories profile people who made meaningful professio...

The moment I met Judy Schoenberg and Linda Lautenberg, the co-founders of EvolveMe something clicked within me. It actually gave me goosebumps. I was inspired by the synchronicity of how they met, and the way they blended their strengths to create EvolveMe. The impact they are having on the careers and lives of mid-career women is tremendous.  EvolveMe is a multi-faceted program for mid-career wom...

As far back as she can recall, Melody Wilding remembers feeling different. She was always very observant and tuned into her environment, feeling affected by all the stimuli around her while other kids seemed unfazed by most of it. Melody was an excellent student all the way through to college where she was valedictorian of her class, yet she still felt disconnected most of the time. As a corporate...

Dr. Carol Parker Walsh’s early life was split between two narratives. Her parents divorced when she was twelve, then Carol and her mother moved from Menlo Park, California to the south side of Chicago. Carol described her father, with whom she remained in close contact, as “a feminist before his time”. He encouraged her to seek a vocation she loved and not let anyone else make choices for her. Her...

Dr. Kim Cantergiani has been called Unstoppable Kim for her consistent ability to turn tragedy into triumph. An expert in human behavior and transformation, she “walks the walk” of overcoming obstacles, putting strategic and massive plans into action.  Born to teenaged parents, Kim ran away from her chaotic home life at 15. By 18 she was a divorced mother of two children. What followed were fearfu...

When Dr. Bob Nelson was in sixth grade, he was living in France, where on January 6 they celebrate Three Kings’ Day by eating a cake that has a special trinket hidden in one piece. That year, Dr. Bob got the piece with the trinket, making him king for the day. He remembers feeling important and that everything he did that day seemed extra special. Reflecting on that experience he says reminds him...

Roxana Radulescu grew up in Bucharest, Romania when it was in the communist bloc. She said that meant you couldn't be who you wanted to be because you had to conform to a way where everybody was supposed to be equal. As we know from the novel 1984 , some were more equal than others ... a different definition of equal.  Roxana was a painfully shy kid. Her kindergarten teacher sent a report to h...

When Dr. Isabel Hunsinger was five, her mother gave her the game Operation. We talked about the buzzer sound that occurred if the game’s tweezers touched the sides of the openings in the “patient”. And the nose would light up in red too. It was either a game you loved or found unnerving. Isabel loved it. Isabel had an uncle from Cuba who was an anesthesiologist and she absolutely adored him. She s...

Susanna Harkonen grew up in Finland and close to the Russian border. It was a time when there was limited exposure to the outside world unless you knew someone who was traveling. Susanna’s father traveled for work and he would come home sharing stories, wonderful gifts, and an openness to the world. At a time when people did not hop on planes so easily, she found herself eager to travel and explor...

Leslie Ehm told me she came into the world kicking, screaming, and was “a lot of human”. She was a challenge from day one, didn't like to follow the rules, and was precocious, doing everything early and fast. Fortunately, Leslie had an amazing mother who encouraged her to embrace her energy, passion, creativity, and wild child nature. And Mom never talked to her about the benefits of putting h...

At 15, Kathy Oneto was going through those big, thick college guides trying to figure out what she wanted to do with her life. Now, she thinks she was just trying to understand herself. Yet, how many of us started on that path thinking we had to figure out what direction we wanted to go in, what major to declare in college, or even what we were passionate about? Kathy told me,   “I don't think...