I Know I Belong When...

Belonging does not arrive with a new tool, a new title, or a new job. It arrives when people decide to make room for each other. On this episode of I Know I Belong When… , Dr. Steve Yacovelli, known to many as The Gay Leadership Dude®, joins host, Christopher Bylone, for a conversation about courage, identity, and the human side of every change. Steve has spent more than 30 years in leadership and...

A parking lot. A lunch counter. An empty chair. A baby left with somebody who had never met him. Four moments from four lives, with nothing in common except the thing happening underneath all of them. Season four of I Know I Belong When… brought twelve guests through twelve conversations. This recap does what the season could not do in real time. Host Christopher Bylone, Principal Strategist at In...

The room where Julie Pham knew she belonged held none of her credentials. No Cambridge doctorate. No Gates scholarship. No bestseller list. It was a prison, and nobody inside knew who she was on paper. Dr. Julie Pham is the founder and CEO of CuriosityBased, and she joins host Christopher Bylone for a conversation that travels from a refugee family’s naming decision, to a correctional facility, to...

Some people wait for a door to open. Salomão Cunha Lima decided the room needed to be built. In this episode of I Know I Belong When… , host, Christopher Bylone, is joined by Salomão Cunha Lima, founder and CEO of Sal&Co, a Social Architecture Lab in São Paulo, Brazil. The conversation moves through every arena of a life: self, home, community, work, and society. Salomão calls his work social...

Belonging is not a program that gets rolled out at work. It is the durable knowledge that who you are is enough, and it has to hold at home, in your community, and in the wider society, not only in a conference room. In this episode of I Know I Belong When… , Darlene King Turner joins host, Christopher Bylone, for a conversation that refuses to keep belonging inside the workplace. Darlene is CEO a...

Belonging does not begin at work. It begins in the people who hand you a baby at a family picnic and never think twice, in the neighbors who show up when the holidays fall apart, and in the quiet moment you finally let yourself ask for help. On this episode of I Know I Belong When… , host Christopher Bylone welcomes Rebecca Taylor, a people strategy leader who has spent more than a decade in HR sa...

Most people treat a book as a finish line. You write it, you print it, you set it on a shelf, and the work is done. Fabi Preslar spent close to three decades proving that idea backward. In her hands, a book is not where a story ends. It is where a person finally gets seen. In this episode of I Know I Belong When… , host Christopher Bylone welcomes Fabi Preslar, founder of SPARK Publications and th...

Most people treat inclusion like a feeling, something you hope for and revisit once a year. Effenus Henderson spent more than forty years proving it can be something you design. In this episode of I Know I Belong When… , host Christopher Bylone welcomes the president and CEO of HenderWorks, the strategist who convened the international working group behind ISO 30415, the first global standard for...

The most brilliant person in any room may be the one no one thought to hear. Pasha Marlowe has spent more than thirty years changing that. In this episode of I Know I Belong When… , Pasha joins host Christopher Bylone, Principal Strategist, for a conversation about worth, design, and the quiet decision to know you belong to yourself before you ask anyone else to make room for you.  Pasha is a glob...

What happens when a capable person stops asking what is wrong with them and starts asking what is wrong with the room around them? That question anchors this conversation, and it reaches far past any office.  In this episode of I Know I Belong When… , host Christopher Bylone welcomes Grant Harris, MBA, Certified Diversity Executive, neuro-inclusive speaker, human-centered performance strategist, a...

There is a story we tell ourselves about high-performance work: that winning costs you the people, that greatness and humanity cannot share the same room. In this episode of I Know I Belong When… , HR executive, coach, and founder Kate McKinnon shows that the choice itself was never real. Across more than 15 years in human resources, most recently as head of people inside the pressure-cooked world...

Most of us were taught to earn joy. Land the results, hit the numbers, and then maybe you get to feel good. Greg De Koker spent a career proving that this is backward. On this episode of I Know I Belong When…, Christopher Bylone sits down with Greg De Koker, a brand and culture transformation expert, a bestselling co-author, and the mind behind the forthcoming book Joy Squared: The Hidden Power of...

Belonging is bigger than any office. It begins in the quiet knowledge that who you are is already enough, and it follows you into every room you walk into for the rest of your life. In this episode of I Know I Belong When, host Christopher Bylone sits down with Öykü Api, a thought leader in inclusion, change, and leadership whose story stretches across self, home, community, and work. Öykü spent t...

What does it mean to lead so that everyone in the room knows they belong? Our guest has spent more than 25 years answering that question, and his answer reshapes how we think about people, work, and life. Meet Dean Carter. He has served as chief human resources officer four separate times, at Fossil, Patagonia, Sears and Kmart, and Guild, earning national recognition for reinventing the future of...

Belonging is not built at the office. It is built wherever a person is, at the dinner table, inside a circle of friends, in the places we worship and organize, and at work too. Season 3 of I Know I Belong When… proved that twelve times over. In this special season 3 recap, host Christopher Bylone, Principal Strategist at Innovation Unbiased, brings every guest from the season back together to exam...

What happens when you combine a lifelong storyteller, a lifelong protester, and a leader who runs toward the work when everyone else is running away from it? You get Chris Jones. In this episode of I Know I Belong When, host Christopher Bylone sits down with Chris, co-founder of Spectra Diversity and a social justice warrior since 1970, to discuss authentic leadership in turbulent times. Chris has...

What happens when you take fifteen years of startup chaos, a front row seat to the exact moment culture either takes root or falls apart, and a leader who gets excited about the hard conversations most people run from? You get this conversation with Brooke Sullivan, Director of People and Talent at Banyan Software, and a leader building belonging inside fast-moving companies. Brooke has spent her...

Most leadership advice about artificial intelligence promises the machine will solve your people problems. Sarah A. Scala is in the other room telling executives the opposite. Artificial intelligence will expose them, and she is staying long enough to help fix what surfaces. That is the conversation that Christopher Bylone, host of I Know I Belong When, has on this episode. Sarah is an award-winni...

What if everything you have been told about accessibility, inclusion, and the so-called trade-off between doing good and doing well is wrong? In this episode of I Know I Belong When, host Christopher Bylone sits down with Daniel Hodges — lawyer by training, nonprofit founder by calling, and living proof that when someone tells you no road exists, that is simply the opening line of your comeback st...

"What does authentic leadership look like when the person in the corner office decides that the boldest move available is telling the truth about who she is? In this episode of I Know I Belong When, host Christopher Bylone sits down with Katherine Dudtschak, former president and CEO of Home Equity Bank and former executive vice president at RBC, to explore what happens when more than thirty y...

Last week, you met the father. This week, meet the son who did not just inherit a mission. He built his own lane inside of it. In this episode of I Know I Belong When, Christopher sits down with Jake Ross, founder and CEO of Belong Together, banjo player, former COO of an AI startup, and co-author of the second edition of Everyday Bias with his father, Howard J. Ross. Jake holds a bachelor's...

What if belonging is not a program or slogan, but the daily discipline of honoring humanity even when the cultural winds shift against it? In this episode of I Know I Belong When, Christopher sits down with Howard J. Ross, writer, facilitator, meditation teacher, musician, and one of the most influential voices on unconscious bias and belonging alive today. Howard is the author of Everyday Bias an...

What does it really take to create belonging in the workplace when pressure rises, resistance shows up, and silence feels safer than speaking up? In this episode of I Know I Belong When…, host Christopher Bylone sits down with Mike Davis, a global diversity and inclusion executive with nearly three decades of experience navigating the hardest conversations organizations avoid. This is not a surfac...

What happens when a leader walks onto a stage to accept an award and walks off holding a tie because no one imagined a woman could be leading the company? In this episode of I Know I Belong When…, host Christopher Bylone sits down with Simona Scarpaleggia, former CEO of IKEA Switzerland, United Nations co-chair, author, and a leader whose career has redefined authentic leadership when the room was...

What if the clearest blueprint for belonging in the workplace did not come from corporate playbooks, leadership models, or culture decks, but from a global movement rooted in creativity, community, and care? In this episode of I Know I Belong When…, host Christopher Bylone sits down with Manny Faces—award-winning journalist, cultural strategist, TEDx speaker, and founder of the Hip Hop Can Save Am...