Episodes

Have you ever worked with someone who just didn't get you, not because they were difficult, but because you were wired completely differently? In this episode, Lori sits down with Enneagram expert Joey Schewee to unpack why understanding motivation, not just behavior, is what actually transforms how teams work together.

Joey has spent decades helping thousands of employees and hundreds of teams understand each other through the Enneagram, and her new book, When Working Together Doesn't Work, di...

Most people enter venture capital as a founder, an angel, an LP, a GP, or an ecosystem builder, usually without a roadmap. Lolita Taub has been all five. She calls the hidden cost of building without inherited networks the "access tax," and she says it shows up everywhere: in every country, for founders and investors and leaders alike, and most people never even name it.

What if everything you've been taught about managing performance was built for a workplace that no longer exists? Dr. Edie Goldberg returns to A World of Difference to unpack the research behind her new book, revealing why the system most companies use to drive performance is quietly working against them.

Topics Covered

Why “coercive control” — carrots, sticks, and fear-based motivation — is the hidden operating system behind most performance management, and why the research says it doesn't wo...

What if your AI transformation isn't stalling because of the technology, but because of the culture, trust, and leadership behaviors you've built (or failed to build) around it? Shaara Roman has spent years inside global enterprises watching AI initiatives launch with fanfare and quietly fall apart, not because the software failed, but because the people strategy was missing.

In this episode:

Why AI should be treated as a team member, not just a tool

The six pillars of AI change management: s...

From Cameroon to Berkeley: Marie-Ange Eyoum Tagne on Failing, Faith, and Finding Purpose in Silicon Valley

What does it cost to keep climbing when you're not sure the ladder is leaning against the right wall? Cynthia Lai spent two decades in multinational banking before a health warning sign forced her to ask that question, and to walk away from a role that looked successful from the outside.


In this conversation, Cynthia, a governance advisor, leadership educator, and ICF certified executive coach, joins Lori to talk about:



Why high achievers so often ignore the warning signs their bodies are...

What if the systems built to help people are quietly deciding who gets to heal and who feels safe enough to even ask? Janelle Miller Moravek has spent 26 years inside that system, and she's not just naming the problem. She's rebuilding it from the ground up.

Topic bullets:

Why the U.S. behavioral health workforce doesn't reflect the communities it serves, and how decades of low reimbursement rates created the gap

The difference between being fluent and being bilingual in therapy, and why cult...

The AI race is real. So is the hidden cost. Lori introduces the Speed Tax, the Culture Architecture Framework, and a free 5-question diagnostic for HR leaders. 6th anniversary solo episode.

Picture two fish swimming in a bowl. One asks the other, how's the water? The second fish replies, what's water? That's culture, says Maria Angela Calmet, and it's exactly why so many leaders never notice the assumptions shaping how their teams communicate, decide, and trust one another.

In this episode

Why cultural competence is now ranked among the World Economic Forum's top future-of-work skills

The tree analogy: why cultural conflict happens at the roots, not the visible leaves and flower...

What if the traits that get someone labeled difficult in one workplace are exactly what makes them extraordinary in another? Tara May, CEO of Aspiritech, a technology company where more than 90 percent of the team is autistic, joins us to talk about what she calls the ROI of kindness, and why building for neurodivergent talent makes every workplace better.

In this episode

Why Tara calls it “the ROI of kindness,” and what that means for the bottom line

The “spiky cognitive profile” reframe: wh...

Karen Tay built a peer-support program for women navigating workplace bullying and burnout, ran it through Princeton research, and found something a lot of managers don't expect: the problem usually isn't a lack of effort. It's a lack of support.

In this Leading Through Change encore, Karen and Lori unpack what Karen's Princeton-backed research found about workplace adversity, why women in the senior-manager to senior-director range are most likely to drop out of the workforce, and what actually helps.

AI is changing every part of how leaders communicate, and Allison Shapira has a warning worth hearing: don't outsource your voice to it. In this conversation, we get into her framework for using AI to amplify authentic leadership instead of replacing it, and why she insists the human isn't just in the loop, the human is the loop.

In this episode

Why “the human is the loop, not just in it” reframes how leaders should think about AI

The AI Authenticity Loop, Allison's framework for using AI wit...

One week ago, twin earthquakes tore through the Venezuelan coastline Lori Adams-Brown grew up on. In this solo episode, recorded live and shared here as this week's show, Lori reports what's actually happening on the ground, draws on her firsthand experience coordinating relief after the 2004 Indonesian tsunami, and gives you a vetted list of where to send help right now.

The scale of the disaster: two quakes thirty-nine seconds apart, the strongest Venezuela has felt in over a century, and a d...

Staying isn’t always strength, and walking away isn’t always failure. Sally J. Clarke, co-author of Walk Away: Step Out to Step Up, joins Lori Adams-Brown to unpack why high-performing leaders so often wait for a crisis before giving themselves permission to leave.

Why a role can look right on paper, title, compensation, trajectory, while quietly stopping to fit, and how to tell a structural misalignment from a personal failure

The story behind the research: 40+ interviews with women across fi...

What if the most sophisticated leadership framework you've ever encountered was grown in a vineyard?

In this episode, Lori sits down with her longtime friend Susie Lipps, founder of Conversations in the Vineyard, for a conversation that is equal parts practical wisdom and personal depth. Susie spent decades leading in international organizations before settling in Sonoma County, California, where the rhythms of the vineyard became her lens for rethinking what it means to flourish. The result is a framework as grounded as it is timely.

What happens when an organization says all the right things about culture, puts the values on the wall, launches the initiative, and nothing actually moves? Carlee Wolfe has spent more than two decades inside that gap, and her answers will challenge how you lead.

Carlee Wolfe is Associate Vice President of Leader Development and Organizational Effectiveness at Hyatt Hotels, where her work sits at the intersection of global leadership, talent strategy, and culture. Her perspective is shaped not only by the boardroom but by two decades of coaching volleyball and volunteering with the Olympic and Paralympic movement, including adaptive sports.

What if the silence in your meetings has nothing to do with confidence and everything to do with culture? Organizational psychologist Neelu Kaur joins Lori Adams-Brown to decode the invisible operating systems shaping how professionals communicate, advocate for themselves, and lead across cultures and organizational hierarchies.

IN THIS EPISODE:
- What the "self-trust recession" is and why it matters for global leaders right now

- The paradox at the heart of corporate America: individualistic ...

What happens when you spend 18 years building a company to $5 million in revenue across 80 countries, finally sell it, and then wake up with no idea who you are without it? Fiona Macaulay knows that moment intimately, and what she built from it is changing how thousands of accomplished women think about what comes next.

In this episode, Lori Adams-Brown sits down with Fiona Macaulay, founder of The Wild Network, co-author of Aim High and Bounce Back, and creator of the Next Chapter Accelerator,...

What does it mean when the only HR professional in a room of 6,000 AI innovators refuses to stay silent? Anju Choudhary attended HumanX in San Francisco, looked around, and decided that was not a coincidence. It was a calling.

In this live conference conversation recorded at HumanX, Lori Adams-Brown sits down with Anju Choudhary, a seasoned Chief Human Resources Officer, to talk about what it really means to keep humans at the center of one of the most consequential shifts in how we work. Anju's message is clear: people leaders do not belong on the sidelines of the AI conversation. They belong at the head of the table.

In this episode, you'll hear:

Why Anju was the only HR professional among 6,000 attendees at a major AI conference, and what that signals for the profession
The mindset shift every people leader needs right now: from "human in the loop" to "human in the lead"
How building her first AI agent in under two minutes changed the way she talks about AI adoption
Wha…

What if the life you have been imagining could actually begin somewhere else?
At Move Abroad Con in San Diego, at the Hard Rock Hotel, Lori Adams-Brown stepped onto the conference floor to have three honest conversations with people living and breathing the conference about the expat life. Each one brought a different perspective. All three pointed to the same truth: the world is more open than most people think.



Why people from all walks of life, and all stages of life, are reconsidering wh...

What if executive presence has nothing to do with how you look in a room and everything to do with how aware you are in your own body? Presence-based leadership coach Bradley McDevitt joins Lori Adams-Brown to explore why trust is built somatically, not just strategically, and why the discomfort you feel in a meeting might be pointing you directly toward your greatest growth.

In This Episode:

Why executive presence has shifted from gravitas to availability and agency

How trust is built throug...

What happens to your identity when the system that formed you was built to erase it? In this deeply personal and clear-eyed conversation, New York Times bestselling author Tia Levings returns to A World of Difference with her new book, a survivor's guide that meets you wherever you are on the road to recovery. Whether you were raised in high-control religion, are navigating the aftermath of leaving, or are simply trying to understand why you still silence yourself in rooms where it feels unsafe ...

What if the resistance you're seeing in your organization isn't defiance, it's information? What if the way you're talking about change is the very thing blocking it?

Episode Summary
In this episode of A World of Difference, host Lori Adams-Brown sits down with Jeff Wetherhold, founder of the Sustainable Change System and MI for Health, to unpack why 88% of organizational changes produce no lasting results, and what evidence-based leaders can do differently. Drawing on more than 20 years of exp...

You were trained for almost everything. Nobody trained you for this.
In this solo episode, Lori Adams-Brown draws on her extraordinary career of working in civil war zones, surviving riots targeting American citizens, leading evacuations, and navigating genuine life-or-death threats across multiple countries to name the one threat most leaders are completely unprepared for: the workplace bully.

Research tells us these individuals spend approximately 80% of their time watching, planning, and str...