Ruby Love defines courage as stepping out in faith. She talks with Suzanne about how her upbringing during the civil rights movement shaped her values, the importance of learning to take risks (and the greater risk we all face when we don’t say yes), and how our lives change when we tap into courage to unlearn destructive practices.
Ruby Love is the Principal of Love Resource Development Group. Based in Seattle, she is a transformational business leader, entrepreneur and strategist advocating for socially responsible business and community organizations.

Always at the intersection of business, design and technology, Carmen Cano has led teams and organizations in product, innovation and design. She’s currently the SVP of Product Design at Seismic and is passionate about solving problems by creating a vision that enables everyone to do their best work. Her motto: “Leave it better than you found it.”
Carmen shares her story about love inspiring her move to the US from Madrid, what her “no regrets” mantra has brought to her life and work, and how fear of failure is what holds us back from learning and innovation.

Michelle Grover is Chief Technology Officer of Slalom, a global management consulting firm headquartered in Seattle.  She’s been named by Business Insider as one of the 100 People Transforming Business in Emerging Tech, is a member of the Greycroft and Sierra Ventures Technology Councils, and dedicates her time to mentoring high school young women and people of color in the technology field.
Michelle shares how she broke away from expectations to launch a career in technology as a black woman, her work mentoring young people to open up fresh perspectives, and why she values not being able to give advice to her younger self.

J.R. and Suzanne anchor their conversation on the topic of passions – they discuss seeing the macro view to ensure we’re pursuing what matters most to us and J.R. shares his recurring self-review process where he tests what he “loves, likes, can’t, and won’t” do. He also touches on how empowering it is to hide self-view on video calls (a smaller but still courageous act!) and what opens up when you stop hiding behind the work of others.
J.R. Siegel is a sustainability strategist, writer, and business leader based in Seattle. He’s the Senior Director of Product Innovation of Higg (a Series B Sustainability SAAS Company), a member of the scientific and technical advisory committee for the Tom Ford Plastic Innovation prize; and the author of Bright Spots, a newsletter that unpacks good news about the climate that you may have missed.

Organizational development leader Julie Pham, PhD and Suzanne discuss the role courage plays in communicating with others: the ways it’s challenged by our speed of work, the trend of self-censoring becoming more common, and how trusting our intuition surfaces the ability to stay true to ourselves. Dr. Julie Pham is the founder and the CEO of CuriosityBased, an organizational development firm based in Seattle.  She’s been recognized with numerous awards for her community leadership, and has applied her community building approach to creating strong, collaborative and curious teams. Her books include 7 Forms of Respect: A Guide to Transforming Your Communication and Relationships at Work (2022) and Their War: The Perspectives of the South Vietnamese Military in the Words of Veteran-Émigrés (2019).

Mellicia – a self-proclaimed iconoclast – talks about tapping into courage to make new memories (bikini included!), the power of claiming your authentic style, and how having a child allowed her to make more intentional choices for the life she creates for herself and her family.
Based in Seattle, Mellicia Marx is the founder of Poplin Style Direction, a boutique personal styling consultancy in Seattle. Since 2013, Mellicia has helped hundreds of cis and trans women across the country look and feel their best through personalized, one-on-one style mentoring.

Lia talks about how she grew into being an empathetic leader and advocate through her own personal and professional struggles.  She and Suzanne touch on compassionate workplaces, doing what’s right when it’s not easy, and the importance of cultivating supportive networks.
Lia De Feo is a brand builder, revenue-generator and innovation leader who has brought thousands of products and many successful partnerships to life.  She’s proud to be an empathetic manager, collaborator and mentor who leads product and business development for Uncommon Goods and is the founder of Fly Bravely, an NYC-based consultancy dedicated to normalizing infertility. 

Troy shares a story with Suzanne about the loss of a relationship that turned his world upside down, and how getting “pushed off a ledge” brought him to a place of freedom and choosing new ways.
After a career as an executive in museums, mental health care, and public health, Troy Livingston focuses on helping people and organizations narrow the gap between their current reality and their ideal world. Today he’s a management consultant focused on organizations that need to solve complex problems they’ve been unable to solve on their own.