Yuliana Kim-Grant's Phoenix Tales

Honoring the Fragility of Life with Jimin Han Today Yuliana is joined by Jimin Han, the author of the novel, A Small Revolution . Born in Seoul, Korea, Jimin grew up in the United States, eventually attending Cornell University and earning an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. Her writing can be found in a number of publications, and A Small Revolution , her first novel, has appeared on many ‘Best F...

Welcome to the Phoenix Tales Podcast Show Notes:  Welcome to the premier podcast episode of Phoenix Tales, a show about women overcoming challenges in their lives, and, like the Phoenix, being reborn with their lives reimagined. Joining our host, Yuliana Kim-Grant , this week is Ginger McKnight-Chavers, author of In the Heart of Texas . A graduate of Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service and...

Expressing the Fullness of Who You Are with Kim Thai Joining our host, Yuliana Kim-Grant, this week is Kim Thai, an Emmy-award-winning producer, writer, activist, and mindfulness teacher. She is the founder of GaneshSpace, a community organization dedicated to creating spaces to dismantle internalized oppression and explore identity through the lens of intersectionality. Kim shares her Phoenix Tal...

Love, Pain, Grief, and Learning How to Overcome with Cat Partheniades On this week's episode , Yuliana welcomes Catherine ‘Cat’ Partheniades to the show to talk about the moment she found out she was adopted. She was 30 when this happened, and shortly after this discovery, both of her adoptive parents passed away. Today she chats with Yuliana about reckoning with her parents’ lies, experiencing re...

Finding Peace and Purpose in a Journey through Healing with Dana Heller Holistic self-care specialist Dana Heller joins Yuliana today to share her inspiring story with listeners. From the life changing doctor’s visit where she found out she had a brain tumour, to her experiences going through multiple surgeries, Dana has come out the other side to help others going through what she did and helping...

Thriving After Illness with Dr. Susan Lovelle Functional medicine practitioner, Dr. Susan Lovelle, joins Yuliana today for a truly fascinating conversation. Currently the Founder and CEO of Premiere Wellness, Dr. Susan spent 14 years as a professional ballet dancer after which she became a physician specializing in plastic surgery. In her current role with Premiere Wellness, she is thrilled to now...

Embracing and Preserving Democratic Values with Tzveta Raynova This week, Yuliana is joined by Tzveta Raynova, a media executive in New York City and former international student from Bulgaria, who shares her journey of overcoming the difficulties of obtaining a student visa in the US, especially after the events of September 11th. Tzveta highlights the complexities of immigration policies and the...

Lifting Yourself Up and Starting All Over Again with Hourig Messerlian On the show today, Hourig Messerlian, Senior Director of IT Business at Computing and Information Services - The City University of New York,  joins Yuliana to tell her remarkable and truly inspiring story of how she got to where she is today. Starting with how she fled a country ravaged by Civil War, crossing continents a...

Life Lessons Learned through Immense Loss with Judy Glassman How does the death of a parent redirect the course of one’s life? Judy Glassman joins Yuliana on today’s episode as she recounts the painful experience of losing her mother to brain cancer, the joy of finding yoga, and transitioning into a new career at a later age for a meaningful life. Judy begins the conversation by describing the cha...

Rising Above Life’s Challenges to Follow a New Passion with Kathy Casey Kathy Casey sits down with Yuliana today to share her own phoenix tale of how she reinvented herself and followed her passion after losing a part of herself to her divorce and forced retirement. Both of these life events naturally had significant impacts upon Kathy and the path her life was following, Through courage and compa...

Starting Life Over with Ellen Greenberg Today’s guest is Ellen Greenberg. a designer and the owner and director of Quick Culture, a global, art tour and cultural travel company. Among her other roles, Ellen has also been an instructor at the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising, has guest lectured at UCLA, holds Docent Program certificates at both The Getty Center and LACMA, and is the...

Guided by Something Greater than Yourself with Rhonda Powell In this episode of Phoenix Tales, Yuliana has the pleasure of interviewing Rhonda Powell, a leading attorney in the media landscape who has faced not one but two health crises that nearly took her life. As you will hear today, through these challenges Rhonda has emerged with a deeper focus on what is truly important in her life and she c...

Emerging from Challenges with Courage and Resilience with Roni Jackson Roni Jackson, Co-Founder of Red Flag Mania, joins Yuliana today to share her inspiring phoenix tale. Roni identifies and expands upon two inflection points in her life that altered her trajectory considerably. The first, losing her mother at a young age, and the second, being forced to give up her long time career, both had sig...

Today on the show, Yuliana is joined by Ji Young, the founder of the Tide Film Festival. An attorney turned non-profit executive, producer, writer, speaker and facilitator, Ji is the Founder of DreamMaker DreamDoer DreamSupporter, inc, - 3D, and is the creator, producer and host of the web series ‘Not Your Average’ for KoreanAmericanstory.org. as well as the founder, co-creator, former co-producer...

Today, Yuliana introduces Gabriella Barnstone, a certified yoga therapist, and together they talk about the pivotal moment that redirected the course of Gabriella’s life. For her, it was her father’s mental illness and eventual suicide that changed everything. As she says, everything in her life was leading up to that moment of the untimely death by suicide of her parent. She reflects on these hea...

This week on the Phoenix Tales podcast, Yuliana welcomes Helen Dellheim, a former attorney of law and currently a real estate executive. After going through the untimely death of her mother, nothing was ever the same for Helen. Although tragic, this event turned out to be a pivotal turning point in her life, giving her the courage to make dramatic changes and grow through these pivotal moments on...

On today’s episode, Yuliana welcomes Penni Feiner to the podcast to talk about her brother’s entry into inpatient drug rehab, why it forced her to confront her own cocaine addiction, how she has managed to stay 25 years sober, and why yoga and mindfulness helped save her.  As  a lifelong feminist, executive director, and yoga enthusiast, Feiner has come a long way way since that young gi...

Today Yuliana welcomes nonprofit executive and leadership development coach, Loretta Turner, to the Phoenix Tales podcast to chat about the importance of community, code switching, and embracing authenticity.  As a young black girl growing up on the East Coast, Turner felt like she almost had to live a double life: one that felt true and family-centric and another filled with fear, caution, a...

On this episode of the Phoenix Tales podcast, we get to hear another inspiring story from yet another courageous Phoenix. Joining Yuliana today is Maryam Banikarim, a Purpose-Driven Marketer and Co-Founder of NYCNext. Maryam takes us through her seminal moments in life, from surviving the revolution of 1979 in Iran and moving across the globe to having to deal with her father’s death at a young ag...

Joining Yuliana today is Kate Tellers, a staff member of The Moth and a co-author of How to Tell a Story: The Essential Guide to Memorable Storytelling . Kate shares her phoenix tale today of how she lost her mother at the young age of 28 and how this shaped her life. She shares how lessons she learned from her mom set her on the path to storytelling and how these lessons continue to echo even tod...

Yuliana welcomes Berny Serrão, the c0-owner of Paraiso Escondido, an eco-friendly sanctuary in Portugal. Berny shares her courageous tale, one filled with the ups and downs of being a nomad her entire life, seemingly not belonging anywhere. She also recounts feeling like an outsider before searching within to create her happiness and how she extends that warmth and love to her guests and others. G...

Joining Yuliana today is Geri Topfer, the founder and president of Kula For Karma and co-founder of BeStill. Geri shares her phoenix tale involving her sobriety and how she gained strength to look inwards into her life and not just observe as an outsider. Geri recounts the feeling of being armored in her marriage due to past abandonment issues, and also how becoming sober propelled her to not just...

On this week's episode , Yuliana welcomes Catherine ‘Cat’ Partheniades to the show to talk about the moment she found out she was adopted. She was 30 when this happened, and shortly after this discovery, both of her adoptive parents passed away. Today she chats with Yuliana about reckoning with her parents’ lies, experiencing resentment, and her intense periods of drinking to repress the emotions...

Therese Murphy joins Yuiliana on the show today to share her courageous phoenix tale. Therese worked as a former nonprofit development manager and found herself unemployed during COVID. She recounts how this propelled her to get a job as the hostess at a restaurant where she was faced with the duality of human nature and how her experiences taught her valuable lessons that continue to impact her l...

Yuliana welcomes opera singer and teacher Natalie Wilson to today’s Phoenix Tales episode to discuss Natalie’s decision to abandon her opera career and how this choice, coupled with a divorce not too long after, marked a rather poignant moment for her.  Having felt that she’d wasted decades of her life embarking on a career path that she no longer desired, Natalie notes that she suffered from...