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 fin...
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 i...
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 so...
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 professionThe 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 adoptionWha…
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 where ...
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 through f...
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 expe...
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...
What if the blueprint for thriving in the AI era has been buried for centuries, inside the civilization that built the pyramids? Organizational psychologist Christine Mikhail joins Lori Adams-Brown live from the Transform Conference in Las Vegas to unpack one of the most urgent (and under-discussed) challenges in the modern workplace: we're racing to implement AI, but we're forgetting the humans doing the work. In this episode, you'll discover: Why Christine coined "compounded change" and why yo...
What if the reason you're exhausted isn't because you're doing it wrong — but because you're doing too much? Nell Derick Debevoise Dewey (Nell3D) is here to challenge the most dangerous assumption in modern leadership: that progress always comes from piling more on. In this episode, we unpack: Why high-capacity, values-driven leaders are drowning in ambition — not lack of it The Leading in 3D Framework: aligning Me, We, and World as a stable, sustainable triad — not a trade-off What Nell learned...
Live from the Transform 2026 conference floor in Las Vegas, Lori sat down with Daria Maneche , founder of The Working Optimist, for a candid, neuroscience-backed conversation about what it actually takes to build human connection at work, and why the stakes for getting this right have never been higher. Daria brings a deeply personal why to her work: after years of her own struggles and many forms of support that fell short, it was understanding the neuroscience of the brain that finally changed...
What do you do when the title is gone, but the work isn't finished? In this solo episode, Lori Adams-Brown pulls back the curtain on the past six months: the beach day that changed everything, the blank bio she couldn't write, and the Italian word that finally gave shape to what she was building. This is the origin story of Brava Global Advisory , and a masterclass in the kind of self-leadership most leaders never talk about out loud. What you'll hear in this episode: The moment at Santa Cruz th...
What does it look like to build a life from scratch, not once, but again and again? Nuray Krein Yilmaz has done it more times than most people ever will, and her story is one of the most quietly extraordinary ones we've shared on this podcast.Nuray grew up in a small farming village in eastern Turkey, the eleventh of twelve siblings, in a community where girls' futures were largely pre-written. She lost both parents to cancer before she turned 13. She taught herself to dream inside boarding school libraries and across chess tournaments — and she never stopped.In 2018, she moved to the United States through a cultural exchange program with limited English, no safety net, and an enormous amount of courage. Today she is a content analyst in tech, a published author, and the founder of What If You Can — a community for people navigating immigration, grief, career transitions, and the question of whether they belong.
What if the way we’ve been thinking about brains at work is fundamentally broken? What if accommodations aren’t about fixing people, but about unlocking talent we’ve been filtering out for decades? In this powerful episode, Lori sits down with Dave Thompson to explore how neurodiversity is the biggest shift in human capital in a generation, and why the companies that get it right will lead the future of work.
What if the key to innovation in your workplace isn't finding people who fit your culture, but transforming your culture to unlock brilliance that's been overlooked? Tara May , CEO of Aspiritech , has spent her career proving that when organizations create truly neuro-inclusive workplaces, everybody wins. In this conversation, Tara opens up about her personal journey, including raising an autistic son and her own OCD diagnosis in her 40s, and shares the practical frameworks any organization can ...
You're highly capable. So why does your next move feel so unclear? For senior leaders at a career inflection point — whether navigating a layoff, a values misalignment, or a long-overdue pivot — the problem is rarely a lack of skill. It's a lack of perspective. In this episode, executive coach and strategic advisor Karen Kunkel Young joins host Lori Adams-Brown to talk about what high-performing leaders consistently miss when they're standing at a crossroads — and what it actually takes to move ...
What do you do when the doors you’ve worked for keep closing because of factors you can’t control? In this episode, Rebeca Lopez Valerio shares how she turned “no” into fuel, built opportunities from scratch, and learned to lead with coraje, heart-forward courage rooted in identity, resilience, and values.Rebeca’s story is powerful and deeply human. Born in Mexico with Indigenous roots from the Oaxaca/Puebla region, she immigrated to the U.S. at age four and navigated life as a first-generation student, while also carrying the realities of being undocumented during key years of her education and career journey. Together, we talk about what it really takes to keep showing up when the stakes are high, and how community can be the difference between feeling stuck and finding your way forward.
What if the very conversations you’re avoiding are the ones that could change everything? In this episode, we explore the hidden cost of silence, and how choosing “peace” over honesty can slowly erode trust, connection, and even joy. Many of us were taught to keep the peace, smooth things over, or stay quiet especially when the stakes are high in families, partnerships, and leadership roles. But as today’s conversation reveals, avoiding hard conversations doesn’t actually protect relationships. ...
What happens when faith communities quietly replace women’s leadership with unpaid, invisible labor? In this powerful Best of most downloaded episode of 2025 re-release, historian and bestselling author Dr. Beth Allison Barr joins Lori Adams-Brown to unpack how the role of the “pastor’s wife” became a substitute for women’s ordination—and the deep harm that followed.Drawing from her book Becoming the Pastor’s Wife, Beth combines rigorous historical research with lived experience to show how a once-fluid vision of women’s leadership in Christianity narrowed dramatically in the late 20th century. What emerges is a sobering picture: women expected to perform the equivalent of multiple full-time jobs for free, while being told their obedience—not their gifts—is God’s highest calling.Together, Lori and Beth explore how this shift didn’t happen gradually, but almost overnight, during the Southern Baptist Convention’s fundamentalist takeover. They discuss the psychological toll on wo…
Some conversations stay with us because they name what we’ve been living but haven’t had words for yet. This episode is one of those moments, a reminder that gratitude does not require us to deny our pain, and authenticity does not demand perfection. As we revisit this Thanksgiving message, one of the most downloaded and shared episodes of the year, Lori reflects on what it means to hold multiple truths at the same time . In a year marked by layoffs, uncertainty, grief, and global upheaval, this...
Ever started a new job and realized the “real work” isn’t just the work. It’s learning the culture, the decision-making rhythm, and what success actually looks like? In this re-released best-of conversation, Dr. Shweta Miglani breaks down the small, practical moves that help you ramp faster, build credibility, and grow your career without burning out.Dr. Miglani shares how her journey began in journalism, pivoted through learning science and instructional design, and expanded into global talent management and organizational development—supporting leaders across industries and countries. Together, we talk about what separates professionals who thrive quickly from those who stay stuck: proactive communication, stakeholder mapping, clear expectations, and learning how to lead with both strategy and humanity.You’ll hear actionable guidance for your first 90 days, how to make your one-on-ones count, and why emotional intelligence and cultural intelligence matter even more as AI tra…
