The First Rung Is Broken: What’s Stalling Women’s Careers
The biggest inequality in the talent pipeline isn’t at the top. It’s at the very first promotion to manager where careers either accelerate, or quietly stall. That’s the central finding from McKinsey’s landmark Women in the Workplace research, and it’s what brought me into a deeply important conversation with Kweilin Ellingrud, senior partner at McKinsey […]
What Every Leader Needs to Know About Menopause at Work
A conversation with Kacy Fleming, CEO & Founder, The Fuchsia Tent 51% of the population will go through menopause. And yet, in most workplaces, it remains one of the least understood, least supported, and least discussed transitions a person can experience. Why should organizations care? That is the question I brought to Kacy Fleming, CEO […]
Why You Can’t Lead Well on an Empty Tank
What neuroscience and 25 years of workplace wellbeing research teach us about micro-recovery and why leaders who ignore it are leaving their best thinking on the table. I want to share a story that has stayed with me. Jessica Grossmeier has spent nearly three decades studying what makes people truly well at work. She knows […]
International Day of Happiness: You Were Born for This
What if happiness isn’t something that happens to you? What if it’s something you’re already capable of, something that, with the right practices, you can choose, build, and grow every single day? That’s not wishful thinking. That’s neuroscience. Here’s the foundational insight that changes everything: our brains are neuroplastic. They are not fixed. Every thought […]
What If Work Felt Like Your Best Conversation?
When was the last time you left a meeting feeling genuinely energized? Not relieved it was over. Not just productive in a checkbox kind of way, but actually lit up by the quality of connection, thinking, and collaboration that happened in the room? For many leaders I work with, that experience can be rare. And yet […]
The Leadership Work Nobody Talks About
I’ve spent years studying what makes people and organizations truly flourish. I’ve pored over the neuroscience, the psychology, the organizational research. I’ve worked with many leaders across industries. And yet, some insights continue to deepen my ways of thinking. Recently, I sat down with Beck Sydow, Founder of HumanKind Business Leaders, former CEO of Sticker […]
Is Your Workplace Making People Sick?
I recently had a conversation with Jacqueline Oliveira-Cella that brought together two threads I’ve been exploring: how our brains are hardwired for connection and flourishing, and how the systems we design at work either support or sabotage that wiring. Jacqueline isn’t your typical wellness expert. She’s an actuary with over 25 years of experience who […]
Signs of Workplace Burnout: When Balance Backfires
Your best manager just submitted another request for PTO. The third one this quarter. You remember when they first joined your team three years ago—how they’d light up the room in every meeting, how they’d stay late not because they had to, but because they genuinely cared about mentoring their direct reports. They were the […]
Why Work Shouldn’t Be a Source of Suffering
I sit on the London Underground sometimes and watch people’s faces. Jean Moncrieff, CEO of the Small Giants community, described it perfectly in our recent conversation: “Almost looking like zombies. They can’t wait to get out of work. They hate Monday.” Beneath that visible misery lies an even darker reality. This week, I learned that […]
Why Working Mothers Need Permission to Flourish
When Mary Sheehan, marketing leader at Adobe and Founder of Propel Yourself, told me that guilt is the number one struggle working mothers face, I felt it in my bones. Not because I’m a working mother, I’m not, but I’ve witnessed this pattern over and over again. The guilt Mary describes isn’t occasional. It’s relentless. […]