Written by Samka Keranovic, Certified Holistic Life Coach, NLP Practitioner, and Neuroscience Coach Samka Keranovic is a certified life, NLP, and neuroscience coach and co-founder of Desert Roots Wellness, whose work has appeared in Fast Company. With 16 years of private coaching experience, she specializes in helping high achievers overcome burnout, people-pleasing, and indecision. You haven't taken a day off in four months. You answer emails at dinner. You say yes to things you hate. You fall into bed exhausted every night and wake up already behind. You have been running on empty for so long you've started to think this is just what adult life looks like. Your teenagers are watching all of it. They are taking notes. What are they actually learning? Not what you tell them. What you show them. You tell them their needs matter. Then you spend every evening managing everyone else's. You tell them to set limits with people who drain them. Then you take the call from the person who always drains you. You tell them rest is important. Then you apologize every time you sit down. Children, especially teenagers, who are in the exact developmental window where they're deciding who they want to become, don't learn from what parents say. They learn from the pattern of what parents do when no one is watching. A client came to me at 42, exhausted, unable to say no to anyone, completely disconnected from anything she actually wanted. In our first session, she said, "I've been this way my whole life. My mom was the same." She wasn't criticizing her mother. She was describing inheritance. Why this generation of teenagers is struggling Teen anxiety, depression, and burnout are at record levels. There are many factors. But one that doesn't get named often enough is this: most of these kids are growing up in homes where they have never seen a functioning adult model of what it looks like to honor yourself. They have seen productivity. They have seen sacrifice. They have seen parents run themselves into the ground for careers, for families, for everyone except themselves. What they haven't seen, in many cases, is a parent who has a real boundary. Who says no without falling apart. Who protects their own energy without guilt. Who has a life that is visibly, genuinely theirs. So teenagers arrive at adulthood with no template for that. They know how to perform. They know how to overgive. They know how to tie their worth to their output. They have no idea how to exist without proving something. We are not raising an anxious generation by accident. We are raising the children of burned-out adults who never learned to come home to themselves. What does burned-out parenting actually look like? Not neglect. Not absence. Often the opposite. It looks like a parent who is physically present but emotionally hollow. Who gives and gives until there's a tightness in every interaction that the teenager can feel but can't name. Who says "I'm fine" with a tone that communicates the opposite. Who is so exhausted that patience runs out faster than intended, and guilt fills the gap. Teenagers are exquisitely sensitive to the emotional texture of their home. They may not be able to articulate what they're picking up, but they feel the difference between a parent who is present and a parent who is performing presence. One client's teenage daughter told her therapist: "I feel guilty any time I ask my mom for anything. She always says yes, but she looks miserable." The mother had no idea. She thought she was being a good parent. She was. She was also disappearing in front of her child, and her child was learning to feel responsible for it. The most counterintuitive parenting advice I give Stop sacrificing yourself for your kids. Not because your needs matter more than theirs. Because a parent who has genuinely returned to themselves, who has a life that fits them, limits that hold, and reserves that aren't perpetually depleted, is a categorically different experience to grow up around. When you stop performing martyrdom, your teenager stops feeling guilty for existing. When you actually rest without apologizing for it, you give your child permission to rest without earning it first. When you say no to something that costs you too much, and you hold it calmly, you teach something no worksheet, no therapist, no school curriculum can teach: that it is possible to honor yourself and still be loved. This is what breaks the cycle. Not the conversation about boundaries. The demonstration of one. Your teenager doesn't need a perfect parent. They need a real one, someone who is visibly, imperfectly, working out how to live a life that actually fits them. That is the most generous thing you can give a child who is trying to figure out how to become a person. "The exhaustion you're carrying isn't just yours to fix. It's being inherited." Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Samka Keranovic Samka Keranovic, Certified Holistic Life Coach, NLP Practitioner, and Neuroscience Coach Samka Keranovic is a certified holistic life coach, NLP practitioner, and neuroscience coach who spent two decades in corporate leadership before building the coaching practice she once needed herself. As co-founder of Desert Roots Wellness, she works with high achievers and business owners who are successful on paper but quietly exhausted, helping them break free from people-pleasing, burnout, and indecision. Her work is grounded in 16 years of private coaching experience and the belief that real transformation comes from lived experience, not theory. Samka has been featured in Fast Company, Authority Magazine, and CHRO Daily, and works with clients internationally from Scottsdale, Arizona.

Written by Nathalie Cabart, Life Coach and Energy Healer Nathalie is a Life Coach and Energy Healer and a former global qualitative researcher with 30+ years of experience working with women leaders worldwide. She blends cross-cultural insight, deep emotional work, and energy healing to help women in business change their inner narrative and step into their full radiance. High performers are remarkably good at keeping going. They adapt, push through, deliver, and reassure themselves that things will calm down eventually, but the body often starts communicating long before we are ready to listen. Here are seven signals we tend to override, and what might change if we started treating them as information instead. Burnout rarely starts with burnout We often imagine burnout as the moment when someone can no longer continue, but long before reaching that point, there may be smaller signals. A body that feels unusually tired. A knot in the stomach before a meeting. Irritation that appears more easily. A Sunday evening that suddenly feels heavy. A growing inability to switch off. None of these signals, individually, means someone is heading towards burnout, but they can be invitations to pay attention. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines burnout as an occupational phenomenon resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. It is characterised by exhaustion, increased mental distance or cynicism towards work, and reduced professional efficacy. What interests me as a coach is what happens before we reach that stage, because high performers are often particularly skilled at overriding discomfort. It’s just a busy period. I’ll rest when this project is finished. Everyone is tired. I can handle it. Usually, we can, until handling everything becomes part of the problem. 1. You’re tired, but being tired has become your normal It is not necessarily the tiredness itself that is the signal. It is how quickly you dismiss it. You wake up depleted, get moving, and reassure yourself that you will recover later. High performers are often remarkably good at functioning while tired. They compensate. They organise. They push through. Which means the question “Can I still do everything I need to do?” may not be particularly useful. Of course you can. A more revealing question might be, "When did feeling depleted become normal?" What would happen if, instead of explaining your tiredness away, you treated it as information? 2. Your body reacts to things your mind says are “fine” There is nothing particularly wrong with that meeting. That colleague is difficult, but manageable. The workload is intense, but you’ve handled worse. Your mind has a perfectly reasonable explanation for everything. Yet, your stomach tightens before a particular call. Your shoulders rise when a certain name appears in your inbox. Your jaw clenches during a meeting. Your breathing changes when you think about Monday morning. Your mind says, I’m fine. Your body seems to be saying something else. In my previous Brainz article, Why the Future of Leadership Requires Somatic Intelligence, I explored the idea that our physical sensations are not necessarily inconvenient interruptions to our thinking. They can also be valuable information. They don’t necessarily give us the answer, and they shouldn’t automatically dictate our decisions, but they can give us something worth exploring. What does my body seem to know that my mind hasn’t acknowledged yet? 3. You’re still performing, but you’ve stopped feeling alive This may be one of the easiest signals for high performers to miss, because nothing is actually going wrong. You meet your deadlines. You contribute in meetings. People can rely on you. Your performance reviews may still be excellent, but something has quietly disappeared. Curiosity. Enthusiasm. Pleasure. That little spark you used to feel when a new idea emerged, or an interesting project landed on your desk. Work hasn’t necessarily become unbearable. It has simply become flat because you are still functioning perfectly well, there is no obvious reason to stop and question it. We tend to notice when performance drops. Perhaps we should also pay attention when aliveness drops while performance remains intact. Instead of only asking, “Am I still doing my job well?” try asking, "How do I feel while I am doing it?" 4. Small things have started feeling strangely big An email irritates you more than it should. Someone asks a perfectly reasonable question, and you feel immediately annoyed. A minor change of plan feels disproportionately difficult. You get home, and the smallest request makes you think, "Can everybody just leave me alone?" Then comes the guilt. Why am I reacting like this? Perhaps the more interesting question is, "How much space do I have left?" When our internal capacity is already stretched, another request does not necessarily feel like one small thing, it feels like one thing too many. Rather than immediately judging the reaction, become curious about what sits underneath it. Sometimes irritability is not telling us that the people around us have suddenly become more irritating. It may be telling us that we have been carrying too much for too long. 5. Rest starts making you uncomfortable You finally have an afternoon with nothing planned, and within minutes, you find something useful to do. You check emails on holiday, answer the message that could easily wait, or sit down and almost immediately think of something you should be doing. We often interpret this as drive. Sometimes it is, but sometimes our inability to stop deserves curiosity, too. For many high-performing women, doing has become deeply connected to identity and value. Being productive feels good, being needed feels reassuring, and being useful feels familiar, which can make doing absolutely nothing surprisingly uncomfortable. Try noticing what happens the next time you stop. Not what you do, but what you feel. Restlessness? Guilt? Anxiety? The urge to become useful again? Then ask yourself, "Who am I when I am not producing anything?" 6. You keep saying yes while your body is saying no Someone asks, "Could you just...?" and before you have even thought about it, you reply, "Of course", but somewhere inside, something contracts. Your stomach tightens, your energy drops, and perhaps there is a tiny flash of irritation before you suppress it. Your words say yes, but your body says no. This is where somatic intelligence becomes very practical. Listening to your body does not mean obeying every sensation or refusing everything that feels uncomfortable, it means including that information before making the decision. Try inserting one sentence between the request and your response, "Let me check and come back to you." Then notice what happens inside when you imagine saying yes, and what happens when you imagine saying no. The answer may still be yes, but there is an important difference, this time, you were included in the decision. 7. You have become excellent at knowing what everyone needs, except you You know what your team needs, what your client expects, and what your family needs. You know what needs organizing, what needs fixing, and what needs doing next. You anticipate, you adjust, and you take care of things. You are extraordinarily good at reading the room, but if someone suddenly asked, "What do you need right now?" would you know? Perhaps this is the quietest signal of all. Not exhaustion, and not overwhelm, but gradually disappearing from your own field of attention. Your days become organized around questions like, "What needs to happen? Who needs something? What comes next?" Meanwhile, the questions directed toward yourself slowly disappear, "How am I? What do I need? What feels right for me? What is my energy telling me?" This disconnection rarely happens overnight. It happens one ignored signal at a time. What if we treated our bodies like businesses treat weak signals? For more than 30 years, I have worked in international qualitative research, helping organizations understand people and identify emerging changes in behaviors, expectations, and culture. In business, we pay enormous attention to weak signals. It might be a small change in consumer behavior, an unusual comment repeated across interviews, or a subtle shift in language. It is something that does not yet constitute a trend but makes us curious enough to investigate, because we know that what looks insignificant today may reveal something important about tomorrow. Today, in my coaching practice, I am struck by the parallel. Our bodies produce weak signals, too, the tension that keeps returning, the exhaustion we explain away, the meeting we inexplicably dread, the loss of enthusiasm, or the repeated yes that feels like a no. Yet while organizations invest resources in detecting weak signals in markets, we can be remarkably skilled at ignoring the weak signals within ourselves. Perhaps it is time we became equally curious about both. The goal is not to diagnose, it is to notice earlier. None of these seven signals means, on its own, that you are experiencing or inevitably heading toward burnout. The purpose of noticing them is not to label ourselves, but to rebuild a conversation with ourselves. Instead of asking, "Can I keep going?" try asking, "What is this telling me?" Instead of immediately fixing the tension, ask, "When does it appear?" Instead of overriding the tiredness, ask, "What might I need?" Instead of automatically saying yes, ask, "What happens inside me when I consider saying no?" These are small questions, but they change our relationship with the information our body is constantly giving us. Perhaps we do not always need more resilience. We talk a lot about resilience at work, and resilience matters. However, I sometimes wonder whether our admiration for the ability to bounce back, adapt, and keep going can unintentionally reinforce the very behavior that gets high-performing individuals into trouble. Perhaps the next step is not simply becoming better at enduring, perhaps it is becoming better at noticing. That means noticing when our energy changes, when something repeatedly contracts inside us, when enthusiasm disappears, or when our body is quietly asking for our attention because the body rarely starts by shouting, first, it whispers. One of the most valuable skills we can develop as professionals, leaders, and human beings may be learning to listen while it still can. If this reflection resonates with you, you can read my previous Brainz Magazine article, Why the Future of Leadership Requires Somatic Intelligence, where I explore why listening to the body deserves a place alongside analytical and emotional intelligence in the way we work and lead. If you would like to explore how you can reconnect with your own signals, energy, and inner clarity, you can learn more about my work through Flowernflow. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube for more info! Read more from Nathalie Cabart Nathalie Cabart, Life Coach and Energy Healer Nathalie is a Life Coach and Energy Healer with over 30 years of experience as an international qualitative researcher. After decades spent working with leaders of major global brands and listening to consumers across cultures, she now helps women in business shift their inner narrative, reconnect to their worth, and step into their full radiance. Through a blend of deep listening, emotional insight, and energy work, she guides women to lead their lives with clarity, confidence, and authenticity.

Zachary Greene grew up in Philadelphia's foster care system before being incarcerated as an adult, where he lost close family members and watched life continue without him. Determined to rebuild his life, he turned to the prison library and taught himself the fundamentals of the stock market, despite the dense, technical material. That journey inspired him to write "Becoming of a Wolf," a beginner-friendly guide that breaks down investing concepts like common stocks and economic trends using plain language and relatable examples. Today, Zack is the founder of All Handz On LLC, a publishing company focused on financial literacy, with several titles now available on Amazon. His story is one of turning hardship into a mission to help others gain confidence and control over their financial futures. Zachary Greene, Owner of a Pennsylvania-based publishing company What inspired you to build All Handz On LLC around practical education? I decided to build All Handz On LLC around practical education because it focuses on acquiring knowledge through hands-on experience, direct application, and skill development rather than just reading or listening to lectures. I figured if I could learn this way, I wonder how many others could benefit from the same experience. You taught yourself the stock market while in prison. What helped you turn complicated financial concepts into lessons anyone can understand? I was able to understand the complex sections and figured I would break them down in normal language. Everyone was not given the opportunity to learn what schools were teaching back in 2003, and even today many people still have not had that opportunity. Why was it important for Becoming Of A Wolf: Wall St. Edition to be written for readers with no investing experience? It was important because most publications on the subject are very lengthy. Someone might not have the time or willpower to understand an 800-page textbook-style publication. What do you think traditional financial education gets wrong when trying to reach first-time investors? Finding a way to make sure people who were never taught the information are given an opportunity to learn the same beneficial knowledge. What connects all of your publishing projects under one mission? All Handz On LLC is selling clarity, structure, direction, and informative publications. Why not give people a variety to shop from? First step for overwhelmed investors? Do not quit. Take the time you need to fully understand what everything is about. Eventually, with my publication, you should be able to navigate like a seasoned investor. How can self-directed learning rebuild confidence? Self-directed learning means taking responsibility for your own education. Life is full of self-directed learning, so use your hardships as motivation to change instead of staying stuck. What belief guided your rebuilding journey? I know I can do better and help create positive change in other people's lives. Structure trumps motivation every time because structure is there even on a bad day. One lesson you hope readers take away? No matter what happens in life, there is always an opportunity to turn things around as long as you are still living. Do the deep soul-searching, find your niche, stay dedicated, and the fruits of your labor will eventually show. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Zachary Greene

Written by Yann Dang, Executive Leadership Coach for Women Yann Dang is known for her work in women’s leadership, helping accomplished women turn frustration into influence and impact in high-pressure, male-dominated environments. A former global finance leader, TEDx speaker, and Forbes contributor, she hosts The Balanced Leader Podcast. You can be accomplished, confident, and completely prepared, then walk into one high-stakes meeting and become a different version of yourself. You overexplain, lead with data instead of clarity and confidence, soften your position, or say less than you intended. Then you leave wondering, “Why didn’t I just say what I wanted to say?” If you recognize yourself in that moment, the answer may not be that you need more confidence, better communication skills, or another script. Something else may be happening. Why do women shrink around powerful people? The women I work with don't lack confidence. They already lead teams, make consequential decisions, build businesses, advise executives, manage significant budgets, and carry enormous responsibility. That is precisely why these moments can be so confusing. You know who you are until, in one particular room, around one particular person, or with one particular thing at stake, you temporarily lose access to the woman you know yourself to be. Imagine walking into a meeting knowing exactly what you want to say. You’ve done the work, you know the business, and you understand the numbers. Then a senior male leader pushes back. “Are you sure about that?” His tone is harsher than you expected, and something in you changes with it. It’s a subtle shift. You are still professional, but you are accessing less of your power. You start talking too much. You overexplain a point that was already clear. You reach for more data instead of trusting the recommendation you came into the room prepared to make. Or maybe you do the opposite. You soften your position, agree when you don’t agree, or wait for the “right” moment. Then the meeting ends, and you know exactly what you wish you had said. I know this experience personally. I spent two decades in global leadership, often as the only woman in rooms where high-stakes decisions were being made. Today, I coach accomplished women navigating power, visibility, pressure, identity, and what happens when leadership becomes deeply personal. I see the same contradiction again and again. A woman can advocate fiercely for her team and struggle to advocate for herself. She can confidently present a strategy and start overexplaining when someone more powerful challenges it. She can make multimillion-dollar business decisions and hesitate to ask for the compensation she wants. We often call this a confidence problem. I don’t think that goes deep enough. The question I’m more interested in is: What happens to your relationship with your own authority when something feels at stake? It’s not necessarily a confidence gap. Sometimes it’s a calibration gap. I often use the driving metaphor. You can be an exceptionally skilled and confident driver, but put yourself behind the wheel of a semi-truck and the conditions suddenly change. Your existing capability has not disappeared. You are being asked to operate at a different level. Leadership works the same way. When women don’t recognize the new level and recalibrate, they often do more of what made them successful in the past. They work harder, prepare more, gather more data, or turn against themselves and conclude they must lack confidence. But just as an athlete trains for the race she is about to run, a woman has to recognize the new game she is playing and build the capacity to lead at that level. What happens to us under pressure? Imagine that senior leader pushes back aggressively. Intellectually, you know where you are. You are an accomplished adult sitting in a conference room. You have years, perhaps decades, of experience. You earned your seat, and you know your subject. But something about the interaction feels strangely familiar. Maybe his tone reminds some part of you of sitting at the dining room table with your father when you were five years old and knew not to challenge him. You are not five, but suddenly the powerful woman who walked into the room becomes harder to access. You shrink, appease, start proving, bury your point under data, become defensive, shut down, or become much harder than you intended. I have had women describe these moments afterward by saying, “I don’t even remember exactly what happened.” They knew what they wanted to say before the conversation, and they know what they wish they had said afterward. Something happened in between. That is the space I became fascinated by. What is activation? Under perceived threat, stress and self-monitoring can consume cognitive resources. When something is perceived as threatening, protective responses can become more dominant. Threat doesn't have to mean physical danger. In leadership, what feels at stake might be rejection, disapproval, status, reputation, being publicly wrong, being labeled “difficult,” losing an opportunity, or simply letting someone see how much you want something. This does not mean every difficult interaction is rooted in childhood, or that every woman responds to pressure in the same way. It means there may be more happening in that moment than a lack of confidence. Research on stereotype threat helps explain what may be happening. In a landmark review published in Psychological Review, researchers Toni Schmader, Michael Johns, and Chad Forbes found that stereotype threat can involve physiological stress, increased performance monitoring, and efforts to regulate unwanted thoughts and emotions. Together, these processes can consume executive resources needed for working memory and complex cognitive and social tasks. Read the peer-reviewed research: “An Integrated Process Model of Stereotype Threat Effects on Performance”. One experiment reviewed in the paper is particularly striking. Women who were told they would take a math test as the only woman in a room of men subsequently showed significantly lower working memory capacity and poorer math performance than women in the control condition. The researchers found that the reduction in working memory helped account for the performance difference. In other words, part of your cognitive capacity can become occupied with monitoring the threat instead of simply doing the thing you already know how to do. That distinction matters because telling a woman to “speak up” when she already knows how to speak is not particularly useful. Neither is telling her to “be more confident” when she is already confident in most areas of her life. The more interesting question is what happens to her access to that confidence and authority when something meaningful feels at stake. What are Survival Masks? I call the protective patterns that can emerge in these moments Survival Masks. They are not personality types. They are protective responses. Through my work with women leaders, I have identified six recurring Survival Masks: the Ghost, Good Girl, Lone Wolf, Fixer, Ball Buster, and Ice Queen. When women first encounter the Survival Masks, they often have an immediate moment of recognition. “That’s why I start explaining.” “That’s why I become so agreeable around him.” “That’s why I suddenly feel like I have to prove everything.” “That’s why I shut down even though I know the answer.” With that recognition can come relief. The behavior you have spent years judging may not mean you lack courage, confidence, or leadership ability. It may be a protective response. What makes these patterns particularly difficult to recognize is that some of them may have contributed to your success. Overpreparing may have made you exceptional. Fixing may have made you indispensable. Being agreeable may have helped you navigate powerful people. Extreme independence may have earned you a reputation for competence. Hardness may have protected you in environments where vulnerability felt dangerous. The strategy worked until the strategy started making decisions for you. Some of these protective strategies can make you overly passive. Others can make you overly aggressive. Neither is the same as being grounded in your power and leading from COMMAND State. In those moments, the protective response is leading. You aren’t accessing your best leadership. Where does your power go? One way I recognize these patterns is by listening for how the internal conversation changes. You enter the room thinking about your purpose: What do I believe? What do I want? What decision needs to be made? Then something feels at stake, and the questions change. Do they think I’m competent? Was I too direct? Is he angry? Do I need more data? Should I explain it again? What if they say no? What if I’m wrong? What if they don’t like me? What if I make myself too visible? Think about how much leadership capacity those questions consume. Your power isn’t necessarily missing. It may already be fully allocated toward proving, pleasing, protecting, reading the room, managing other people’s reactions, and trying to make yourself impossible to criticize. For many women, it's a relief to see it differently. If your power has not disappeared, the question becomes how you regain access to it when you need it most. What is executive presence? Executive presence is often described by how someone appears to others: confidence, gravitas, communication, polish, or composure. I define it differently. Executive presence is the capacity to be in the here and now, emotionally and mentally, while moving toward an intentional purpose. Executive presence is not the absence of fear or emotion. It is not looking unbothered, and it is not having the perfect response ready. It is having enough access to yourself to remain present when the stakes rise, recognize what is happening, and choose how you want to lead. This is where something becomes available that can disappear when we move automatically into protection: choice. What is a COMMAND State? I call that return to intentional leadership the COMMAND State. It is not a script, and I don't teach women the “right” thing to say when someone challenges them, because leadership rarely works that way. Sometimes leadership means speaking. Sometimes it means listening, holding a boundary, asking for help, or saying, “I don’t know.” Sometimes it means taking a calculated risk or moving before you feel completely ready. The intentional response depends on what the moment actually requires. COMMAND State is about having enough access to yourself to discern what that moment requires, trust yourself enough to choose, and have your own back after you make that choice. A Survival Mask is the automatic protective response. COMMAND State is the intentional leadership state. The work is learning to recognize the difference and developing the capacity to return. Seeing this pathway can shift how you understand yourself. But knowing a framework intellectually and being able to access it when your reputation, compensation, career, or relationships feel like they are on the line are two very different things. That is where practice matters. What becomes possible when you stop abandoning your authority? This is the part of the work that excites me most. Imagine walking into the same room and still feeling the activation, but no longer automatically surrendering the decision. You notice the urge to overexplain and remain clear. You feel someone’s disappointment without immediately changing your answer. You do not have every piece of data, but you trust your judgment enough to make the recommendation. You hear “no” without interpreting it as evidence that you should never have asked. You make your ambition visible, hold the boundary, take the calculated risk, or move before you feel completely ready. You do not become fearless. You become more practiced at staying with yourself. That is why I believe the next level of leadership doesn't just require the courage to step into your power. It requires the capacity to stay there. Do women need to become less emotional to become more powerful? Women are often taught, directly and indirectly, that becoming more powerful means becoming less emotional. I disagree. Emotion is information. I spent years working alongside senior male leaders, and they used emotion all the time. Some emotions are simply more accepted in leadership than others. Women, meanwhile, are often warned about being “too emotional,” which can lead us to judge our emotions or disconnect from them entirely. But emotion is part of leadership. As you rise, the stakes get higher. The conversations become more consequential. The reactions around you can become more intense. Developing the capacity to feel emotion, understand what it is telling you, and choose how to use it is part of executive maturity. Anger may tell you a boundary has been crossed. Fear may tell you something matters. Discomfort may appear because you are moving beyond what is familiar. Vulnerability may show up precisely because you are finally allowing someone to see what you actually want. The goal is not to eliminate those emotions. It is to develop enough capacity for emotion to give you information without automatically driving the leadership decision. You don’t stop feeling. You stop abandoning yourself when you do. Why isn’t awareness enough? I learned this personally. Earlier in my career, I was in a conversation about my expanding role and responsibilities. This was my opportunity to say, “My responsibilities have increased, and I want my compensation to reflect that.” Instead, I asked for two contractors. I redirected the conversation toward what the business needed instead of asking for what I wanted. For years, I interpreted moments like that as something about my character. Why could I advocate for businesses, budgets, teams, and other people but struggle to advocate for myself? Eventually, I understood the moment differently. I did not need another negotiation script. I knew what to say. What I had not developed was the capacity to hold what might happen after I said it: the exposure, the possibility of hearing no, the discomfort of making my ambition visible, and the uncertainty of what would happen once the ask left my mouth. It was easier in that moment to return to my Good Girl and Fixer Survival Masks than to stay with the discomfort of stepping more fully into my power. I wasn’t incapable. I was unpracticed. There is enormous possibility in that distinction. Something you have not yet practiced is very different from something you are incapable of becoming. Why am I sharing this now? Until now, I have taught Survival Masks and COMMAND States through my paid leadership workshops and programs. I have watched what happens when accomplished women finally have language for something they have experienced for years but could not explain. For the first time, I am opening this teaching publicly at no cost. I am doing that because I feel called to get this work into the hands of more women. I want more women heard in the rooms where decisions are being made. I want more women trusting themselves, backing themselves, making their ambition visible, asking for what they want, taking calculated risks, holding their boundaries, and moving before they're certain everything will work out. Not by becoming louder or harder, and not by memorizing another script. By becoming more practiced at staying connected to yourself when something is at stake. How can you learn more? On September 24 at 12 PM ET, I am leading a free live masterclass, How to Be Heard in a Room Full of Men. For the first time publicly, I will take you deeper into the Survival Masks and COMMAND States that I have historically taught through my paid leadership work. We will explore what may actually be happening when you know how to lead but lose access to your authority under pressure, and what becomes possible when those protective patterns no longer have to make the decision. My intention is not for you to leave with another list of things you should be doing better. I want you to see yourself differently, recognize patterns you may have spent years judging, and begin to understand what becomes possible when you have greater access to your own authority. If you can join me live, I would love to have you in the room. If you cannot attend live, register anyway. Everyone who registers will receive the replay. If you recognized yourself anywhere in this article, I want you there. Register for the free live masterclass, How to Be Heard in a Room Full of Men. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Yann Dang Yann Dang, Executive Leadership Coach for Women Yann Dang is known for her work helping accomplished women turn frustration into influence and impact, especially in high-pressure, male-dominated environments. A former global finance leader, TEDx speaker, and Forbes contributor, she brings firsthand experience to her work on power, cultural conditioning, self-trust, and the hidden dynamics that shape how women lead. She created COMMAND™, a six-month leadership accelerator for women, and hosts The Balanced Leader Podcast. Her work challenges women to spend less power proving, pleasing, and managing perception, and more creating the influence and impact they want.

Ankur Nagar is the founder of Saarva and a consumer insights specialist with more than two decades of experience advising organisations across markets, working as an outsourced insights partner that starts from the client’s business problem rather than a predefined offering. In this interview, he discusses which long-held assumptions about the Indian consumer are losing their usefulness, what Saarva’s Gen Z research reveals about the limits of traditional segmentation, the signals startups mistake for readiness to scale, and how becoming a founder changed the advice he now gives others. Ankur Nagar, Founder & Principal Consultant at Saarva After more than two decades advising organisations, what made you decide to build Saarva as your own consulting platform? After more than two decades in consumer insights, research, and consulting, I felt there was a gap in how businesses were supported. Organisations often don’t need another research report or a traditional consulting engagement. They need someone who can work closely with them, understand the business problem, challenge their thinking when required, and stay with them as they turn insights into action. That is the kind of relationship I wanted to build through Saarva, more of a trusted advisor and partner than a conventional consultant. Traditional research and consulting models can become sticky, with firms trying to fit client problems into predefined offerings. Saarva was therefore born from a simple belief: the starting point should be the client’s problem, not the consultant’s offering. The approach should adapt to what the business actually needs. When you step in as an outsourced consumer insights partner, what do you look at first to understand where an organisation needs support? I usually start with two things: the business objective and the information already available within the organisation. The first question I ask is, “What decision are you trying to make?” Rather than immediately discussing a research methodology, I want to understand the business challenge, the expected outcome, and the decision leadership needs to make. The second step is to understand what the organisation already knows. I look at existing customer or consumer data, past research, sales information, feedback, and other relevant inputs. Often, organisations already have useful information, but it sits in different places and has not been brought together to answer the issue they are facing. Only after that do I identify the real gap. Sometimes the answer is new research. Sometimes it is better use of existing data. And sometimes the organisation simply needs an outside perspective to connect the dots. That is where an outsourced insights partner can add real value. You have built research systems across markets and significantly improved turnaround times, so what makes an insights process both faster and more reliable? I don’t think faster should mean cutting corners. In fact, a well-designed process can make research both faster and more reliable. One of the biggest improvements I have made was through automation and standardisation. Instead of starting every report from scratch, I helped create templates where almost 80% of the report structure was already in place, so that the remaining effort could go into the story, interpretation, and implications. Automation also removes repetitive manual tasks and reduces the scope for human error. But technology alone is not the answer. The important part is knowing what should be standardised and what should remain open to human judgment. Process, formats, and repetitive tasks can be systemised, but interpreting consumer behaviour still needs human thinking. For me, the ideal insights process is structured enough to be efficient, but flexible enough to think. Speed comes from removing unnecessary work, while reliability comes from the right checks and giving people more time to focus on what the data actually means. Which traditional assumptions about the Indian consumer are becoming least useful for brands today? I think three assumptions are becoming less useful. The first is that Indian consumers are primarily price-driven. Price still matters, but consumers are increasingly willing to pay more when they see value in the experience, convenience, quality, or meaning behind a product. The second is the idea that a consumer has one consistent persona. In reality, the same person can be value-conscious in one category, premium in another, traditional with family and different with friends or online. The third is the assumption that Tier 2 and Tier 3 consumers are simply following the metros. Increasingly, these consumers are developing their own aspirations, preferences and consumption patterns. The Indian consumer is becoming more complex, but that complexity is also an opportunity. Brands need to move away from broad labels and understand the context behind the behaviour. The question is no longer just “Who is the consumer?” but also “What is happening around the consumer when they make this decision?” Saarva’s Gen Z research shows that young Indians can present different sides of themselves across family, work, friends, and digital spaces, so what does that mean for traditional customer segmentation? One interesting finding from our Gen Z research was that young Indians want two things that may initially seem contradictory: they want to stay connected with parents, family, and friends, but also strongly value privacy. This tells us something important about segmentation. We often put people into neat boxes: age, income, occupation, city, or lifestyle. But behaviour does not always fit those boxes. A young person can be close to family yet want independence, and can present one side with parents, another with friends, and another online. None of these personas is necessarily fake. They are different sides of the same individual responding to different contexts. For brands, this means traditional demographic segmentation alone may not be enough. We need to understand needs, situations, motivations, and context. The opportunity is to move from asking, “Which segment does this person belong to?” to asking, “What need or situation is driving this behaviour right now?” What is one signal that startups often mistake for proof that they are ready to scale? One of the biggest mistakes I see is confusing early traction with product-market fit. A startup may have a few hundred or even a few thousand customers, good initial feedback, or strong growth over a short period. That can be encouraging, but it does not necessarily mean the product has found a scalable market. Before scaling, founders need to understand whether there is a genuine, repeatable need; who has it; what problem they are solving; and whether customers will keep choosing and paying for the solution. I would rather see a founder spend more time understanding the market than spend heavily and discover later that the proposition is not strong enough. Scaling amplifies whatever is already there. If you have product-market fit, that can be powerful. If you do not, scaling simply makes the problem bigger and more expensive. For me, the real signal is not just “Are people buying?” It is “Do we understand why they are buying, and will that reason continue to hold as we grow?” When customer feedback, Net Promoter Score (NPS), and behavioural data point in different directions, how should leaders decide what deserves the most attention? I would resist the temptation to immediately decide which data point is “right.” When feedback, NPS, and actual behaviour disagree, I see that as a signal that we do not yet understand the full story. If there is a clear disagreement between what consumers say and what they actually do, I would usually look more closely at the behaviour first. But I would also try to understand the context behind that behaviour through additional conversations, immersions, or qualitative work. People do not always behave exactly as they say they will, and that does not necessarily mean their feedback is wrong. Practical constraints, emotional factors, habits, or circumstances may be influencing the decision. An insights leader's role is not to pick one dataset and ignore the others. It is to connect the dots and understand why the numbers and the human story may be different. Data tells us what is happening, consumer understanding helps us get closer to why it is happening. How has becoming a founder changed the way you think about the advice you once gave other businesses? Becoming a founder has changed my perspective in ways I did not fully appreciate when I was advising other businesses. The first is how much it matters not to decide on incomplete information. As a consultant, you can recommend a course of action based on what is available. As a founder, you live with the consequences, so I have become more deliberate about gathering relevant information before making important calls. The second is my understanding of risk appetite. Starting something of your own makes you realise that risk is not abstract. You have to make decisions when there is no guarantee of the outcome, while being thoughtful about what you are willing to risk. And perhaps most importantly, I have learned the art of saying no. There is always a temptation to take on an opportunity. But if I do not believe I can genuinely deliver what a client needs, I would rather say no than make a promise I cannot keep. For me, that's part of being a trusted partner. After 20 years in consumer insights, what do you understand about people and decision-making today that you did not understand at the beginning of your career? After more than 20 years in consumer insights, what I understand better today is that people rarely make decisions in isolation. Their choices are shaped by context, emotion, habit, constraints, and the moment. Early in my career, experience gave me the confidence to believe I could find the right answer. Today, it has taught me something more valuable: to stay curious when the answer is not obvious. Every business, every challenge, and every new chapter brings a different human context, and that context often changes the decision. Starting Saarva has reinforced that feeling. In many ways, I have gone back to being a learner again: questioning things I thought I knew, looking at familiar problems differently, and staying open to new possibilities. That is probably the biggest lesson I have taken from the last two decades: experience should give you confidence, but it should never take away your curiosity. In insights, the moment you believe you already know the consumer is often the moment you stop seeing them clearly. If the last two decades have taught me anything, it is that the best insights still begin with the humility to ask one more question. Follow me on LinkedIn and visit my website for more info! Read more from Ankur Nagar

Yevheniya Shalimova is an International Coaching Federation (ICF) Professional Certified Coach (PCC), executive coach, and founder of The Shalimova Method™, partnering with accomplished leaders to close the gap between outward success and inner fulfillment. Her work brings together brain coaching, emotional resilience, and whole-person integration through the lens of Coherent Leadership. In this interview, she explores what happens when resilience and self-reliance are no longer enough on their own, how leaders can recover access to their inner compass, and why sustainable change requires more than awareness. Yevheniya Shalimova, Executive Coach for Coherent Leadership What does coherent leadership mean to you in practice? Coherent Leadership begins with self-leadership long before it becomes visible in a boardroom or in the way we lead a team. For me, it is the visible expression of a person who is learning to live and lead as a whole–Spirit, Soul, and Body–without repeatedly sacrificing one part of themselves to satisfy another. That does not mean every part of us always agrees. Our reasoning may say one thing while our emotions or body register something different. Coherence means that none of those signals has to be silenced. Values, facts, emotions, embodied information, responsibility, and deeper convictions are allowed into the same conversation before we choose. In practice, this requires the courage to pause under pressure, notice what is automatic, listen honestly, and discern rather than simply react or push through. It creates more room for conscious choice without promising certainty or ease. I think of Coherent Leadership as the keel of a sailing vessel. It is not the part that catches the wind or attracts attention. It is the largely unseen structure beneath the surface that helps keep the vessel steady when conditions change. It begins within the leader. What first led you to develop The Shalimova Method™? The Shalimova Method™ did not begin with a model. It began with a question that would not let me rest. Over thirty years of Christian leadership, mentoring and pastoral work, and later as a military chaplain, I met people with extraordinary resilience. When I moved into professional coaching, I recognised something similar in accomplished leaders. They could be highly capable, disciplined and successful, yet still experience a profound gap between what they had achieved and how fulfilled they felt within it. My own experience of rebuilding my life in another country brought that question even closer. What challenged me most as a coach was seeing that insight did not always become lived change. Clients could gain genuine awareness and report meaningful results, yet under pressure some familiar patterns returned. This troubled me enough to question whether the work I was doing went far enough. My deeper study of neuroscience, neuroplasticity, positive psychology, and leadership gave me new language for what I had been observing. Awareness matters, but awareness alone is not transformation. The Shalimova Method™ grew from that search. Coherence Architecture became the wider journey toward whole-person integration, with the BRAIN Method supporting the rewiring work within it. How do you recognize when a successful leader is performing well externally but struggling internally? The issue is often not that performance has collapsed. The issue is that performance is still working. I have listened to accomplished leaders describe remarkable achievements almost as facts on a balance sheet: the next peak reached, the next impossible problem solved, the next responsibility carried. There is confidence and rightful pride, but sometimes surprisingly little sense of having actually received or inhabited the success. The shift often comes when the conversation moves from what they have achieved to who they have become in the process. What has this success required of you? Which values have become clearer? When did you last feel fully present in the life you have built? Sometimes the first response is silence, and I have learned not to rush to fill it. A pause, a change in tone or body language, is not a diagnosis. It is simply information to explore with care. What may emerge is not a lack of competence, but a growing distance between outward performance and the person carrying it: emotions deferred, relationships repeatedly postponed, a body kept in push-through mode, or decisions shaped more by expectation than inner clarity. That is often where the real coaching conversation begins. Why can self-reliance become a limitation for leaders who carry significant responsibility? Self-reliance is not the problem. Over-reliance on self-reliance is. For some leaders, self-reliance was learned long before leadership. It may have protected them, strengthened competence, and contributed significantly to their success. The limitation appears when “I can carry this” quietly becomes “I must carry this alone.” When a strategy works repeatedly, it can become entwined with identity. Being capable, having the answer, or being the person others can depend on may begin to feel inseparable from who the leader is. Then delegation, receiving feedback, allowing a different perspective, or accepting support can feel less like ordinary leadership and more like surrendering something important. The consequence is not only personal. A leader can gradually become indispensable to a system that also needs to develop capability beyond them. Coherence does not ask leaders to abandon self-reliance. It asks whether the pattern is still serving the whole person and the people they lead. Healthy self-reliance preserves responsibility while restoring choice. I can carry responsibility without believing I must carry everything alone. What do conventional approaches to resilience often misunderstand about leadership under sustained pressure? Resilience is essential. It helps us withstand pressure, adapt, and recover. The misunderstanding begins when resilience is reduced to enduring more, recovering faster, and returning to the same way of functioning. I learned very early to associate strength with endurance, adapting, carrying on, and not allowing circumstances to defeat you. That capacity has served me enormously. But I also learned that we can become exceptionally resilient while parts of ourselves remain unheard. This matters for accomplished leaders because resilience can strengthen our capacity to function within a pattern. It does not necessarily change the pattern itself. A leader may recover quickly and return to high performance while the deeper questions of values, meaning, relationships, or inner alignment remain untouched. Coherence asks something different. Not only “How do I get back to normal?” but “Is the normal I am returning to still coherent with the whole person I am becoming?” Resilience and coherence are not competitors. Resilience is a capacity within the wider journey. Resilience keeps you standing. Coherence asks where, and as whom, you want to stand. What is one sign that a leader has lost touch with their inner compass? One sign I pay attention to is when a leader keeps reopening a decision that has already been honestly examined, not because meaningful new information has appeared, but because external expectations keep becoming louder than internal conviction. Inner Compass is not a gut feeling or intuition alone. I use it to describe a capacity for discernment in which reason, facts, experience, emotions, embodied signals, values, faith, responsibility, and context are allowed into the same conversation. No single signal gets the final word. Losing touch with it does not always look dramatic. It can look highly responsible: one more opinion, one more piece of evidence, one more round of self-persuasion before acting. Of course, hesitation is not automatically misalignment. Sometimes more information, time, or careful risk assessment is genuinely required. But when nothing materially new is being discovered, and the internal negotiation simply continues, I become curious. A question I often return to is, “Am I still gathering information, or am I gathering permission to postpone what I have already examined honestly?” Inner conviction is not repeated self-persuasion. It becomes clear when fear, conditioning, urgency, and other people’s expectations stop speaking louder than everything else. How can leaders begin rebuilding trust in themselves and others without feeling they are giving up control? Trust and control are not simple opposites. Healthy control has a legitimate place in leadership, standards, accountability, oversight, and feedback matter. The question is whether control serves responsibility or becomes the only way a leader feels secure. This connects with self-reliance. For some leaders, competence and aloneness have become quietly linked. Rebuilding trust begins by separating the two. That can happen through small, calibrated experiences, delegating with clear boundaries, listening before correcting, testing assumptions, allowing another perspective, or noticing an internal signal long enough to examine it. Trust in others does not require abandoning judgement. Trust in self means becoming more reliable to oneself, less dependent on performed certainty, and more willing to acknowledge what is actually known and what is not. One practice I use is simple. After an important meeting or decision, write one private sentence: “What I’m actually not sure about here is...” No one else needs to see it. The leader remains fully responsible. But the habit of precise self-honesty strengthens discernment and real self-trust. Trust is rebuilt one coherent choice at a time. What did rebuilding your life in Norway teach you about the kind of resilience you now bring into your coaching? When I rebuilt my life in Norway, I learned a new level of resilience. I learned Norwegian, found work, continued my coaching practice and education, and kept moving forward. From the outside, much of the rebuilding was working. Inside, however, I became less fulfilled the longer I simply endured. Eventually I understood that resilience was a bridge, not a destination. On long prayer walks through the forest and along the fjord, I began asking questions resilience alone could not answer: Is this the life I want to keep building? Who am I within it? What has happened to my calling? I had to listen not only to my thoughts, but also to emotions I had managed well, body signals I had overridden, my values, and my faith. Faith gave me meaning and orientation. Daily discipline translated that conviction into choices. Gradually, coherence became lived rather than theoretical. That experience changed my coaching. I respect resilience deeply, but I no longer mistake someone’s capacity to endure for evidence that endurance should remain the destination. Resilience can carry us through disruption. Coherence asks whether the life we are rebuilding is one we can truly inhabit from within. What would you want an accomplished leader who feels successful but unfulfilled to understand first? Your success is real. So is the inner signal telling you that something essential may be missing. One does not cancel the other. Feeling unfulfilled does not automatically mean you built the wrong life, chose the wrong career, or need to dismantle what you have created. Nor is it another problem to solve. First, it is information that deserves your attention. I believe we are created for more, but by more, I do not mean more achievement, status, or output. I mean more of you present in the life you have already built, your values, relationships, faith or deepest convictions, your body, your inner voice, your capacity to receive what you have achieved and to recognise what truly matters now. The first movement is simple: pause before forcing an answer. Ask, “What is actually happening within me that my ability to keep moving forward may have made easier to overlook?” Coherence begins there, not with accusation, but with return. Legacy is not only what you leave behind. It is what your repeated choices are creating now. You do not have to invalidate the life you have built in order to become more fully present within it. Follow me on LinkedIn and visit my website for more info! Read more from Yevheniya Shalimova

Written by Nella Mehissou, Transformation & Leadership Coach Nella Mehissou is a PCM®-certified Transformation & Leadership Coach specializing in embodied and intercultural leadership. Shaped by a journey through Benin, the U.S., Niger, Germany, and France, she founded Beyond ("au-delà des possibles," beyond what's possible) and teaches intercultural leadership at KEDGE Business School. Picture a manager reviewing their team. One name comes up, and the word used is "potential," as in, not there yet. Another name comes up, and the word is "leadership," as in, obviously there. Nobody in the room questions the labels. But few stop to ask where those labels actually came from. In my work across leadership development, organizational culture, and coaching, I've seen this pattern again and again, across industries and continents: what gets called a "lack of competence" is often a lack of opportunity, context, or permission. The capability was already there. It simply never had the space to be seen. Why we misdiagnose potential Four patterns show up again and again when leaders underestimate the people around them, often without knowing it: They mistake their own style for the only right one. A leader who thinks out loud may see someone who works quietly as disengaged. A leader who leads with data may see someone who leads with relationships as "not strategic enough." Neither reading is fair. They're just different styles, judged against the wrong benchmark. They confuse discretion with lack of skill. Culture plays a bigger role here than most organizations realize. In many cultures, you're expected to show competence quietly, through results, not through self-promotion. When someone doesn't announce their expertise, it's easy, and wrong, to assume it isn't there. They treat confidence as a threat instead of a strength. This one is subtler and more damaging. When someone shows up with clear self-assurance, especially someone who doesn't fit the usual profile for that confidence, it can be read as "too much." The feedback becomes "tone it down," when what's really being asked is: take up less space. They need control, so they leave no room for gray areas. Many leaders don't trust other people's judgment because trusting means letting go of control. So they stay inside a narrow box, their own way of seeing things, and shut out anything that doesn't fit: blind spots, gray areas, other points of view. But changing how you see a person, or a situation, takes more than one angle. It takes several. When there's no room for that, trust breaks down, and possibility shrinks with it. Many leaders today don't just fail to believe in someone's potential, they genuinely don't see it, because in their mind, potential only counts if it's obvious. Anything less than obvious gets filed under "not there." Three signs you might be underestimating someone Take a moment: think of the last time this happened, either to you or to someone on your team. Who was it? What did it look like? Here are three patterns worth watching for: They're never the first person asked, even about their own area of expertise. If someone knows a topic well but is always the last to be brought in, or never brought in at all, that's not about their skill. It's about who gets trusted by default. Their confidence gets called "too much." Watch for the moment a leader's confidence is treated as a problem instead of a strength, especially when the same confidence, coming from someone else, is called "leadership presence." They have to prove themselves twice to get half the credit. When one person is simply believed, and another has to prove the same thing over and over before anyone trusts it, that gap matters. It rarely looks like open bias. It just looks like a pattern, over time. How to actually create the space Seeing the pattern is the first step. Changing it takes real, repeated action. Let the expert speak first, not last. Instead of turning to the usual voices, ask directly: who here actually knows this? Then let them speak before everyone else shapes the conversation. Say what potential you see, out loud, before it's "proven." Waiting for someone to prove themselves before you recognize their potential puts all the pressure on them. Naming it early and being specific shows you're already paying attention. Check your own reaction to other people's confidence. Before calling someone's confidence "too much," ask a harder question: too much for what? Is it really getting in the way of the work, or is it just unfamiliar to you? That difference matters, and most leaders never stop to think about it. Revelation, not addition The organizations and individuals I work with most closely tend to arrive with the same idea: that growth means adding something, a skill, a certification, a new behavior. Often, it doesn't. Often, growth means removing what's been standing in the way of something that was already there. Leadership, at its best, isn't about deciding who has potential and who doesn't. Most of that decision gets made quietly, by habit, by culture, by comfort, before anyone even thinks about it. The real work isn't to add capability to people. It's to stop blocking the space where their capability was already trying to show up. The point isn't that everyone is equally good at everything. It's that everyone is good at something, and the real work of leadership is using what people already do well while helping them grow safely in the areas where they don't. Bottom line: potential is universal. Opportunity isn't. Not everyone gets handed the chance to show what they're capable of. So here's the real question: what happens when you stop deciding, in advance, who has potential and who doesn't? What happens when you stop filtering people through one narrow lens, and start looking through several? Some of what changes will be visible right away. Some of it won't show up on any dashboard, at least not yet. But the impact of finally seeing what was already there, in people you'd stopped looking at closely, could be bigger than anything you can currently measure. You won't know until you stop doing the thing that's been blocking it. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Nella Mehissou Nella Mehissou, Transformation & Leadership Coach Nella Mehissou is a PCM®-certified Transformation & Leadership Coach working at the intersection of safety leadership, organizational culture, and intercultural leadership. Her path has taken her from Benin to the United States, Niger, Germany, and France, and beyond, shaping a career built on choice, coaching, and impact. She is the founder of Beyond ("au-delà des possibles"), a bilingual coaching, training, and consulting practice built on one conviction: it's not tools that transform people, it's clarity and conversations. She also teaches intercultural leadership to MBA students at KEDGE Business School. Her mission: she lights the way, helping people see differently so they can choose differently.

Corey Hunt spent years traveling the country as an IBEW member, working with different locals on jobs that stretched as far as California. Most people who take that kind of work do it for the paycheck and the hours. Corey took something else from it too: a mental list of what he would do differently if he ever ran the show. That list became Rocky Coastal Electric, the company he launched in Lewiston, Maine, in March 2023. Watching how different crews solved the same problem Every IBEW local runs a little differently. Corey saw crews in different states approach the same type of job with different tools, different sequencing, and different ways of managing a client relationship. Some of it was regional habit. Some of it was just how a particular foreman liked to run a site. He started paying attention to which approaches actually saved time and which ones just felt busy. That kind of comparison is hard to get any other way. A person who works for one company in one region only ever sees one way of doing things. Corey saw many, back to back, over several years. The idea that stuck: Build for the customer relationship, not just the job The biggest thing Corey carried home from his travel years wasn't a wiring technique. It was an idea about how electrical work should feel from the customer's side. On union jobs, the electrician often never meets the person who owns the building. The work gets specified, scheduled, and inspected through layers of people. Corey noticed that this distance sometimes let quality slide in small ways nobody higher up would catch. He decided that if he ever ran his own company, the person doing the work and the person answering for the work would be the same person, as often as possible. That idea is baked into how Rocky Coastal Electric operates today. Corey stays close to the jobs his company takes on, rather than treating the business as something to manage from a distance. Turning a license into a company Getting the Master Electrician license was the technical requirement. Starting the company was the harder step. Corey had two young children by the time he made the decision, and travel work was no longer something the family could build a life around. Rather than staying in the union system and looking for more local assignments, he chose to start something of his own in the Lewiston-Auburn area, the region where he grew up. That choice meant trading a steady structure for one he had to build from nothing. Applying the road lessons at home Once Rocky Coastal Electric was running, the ideas Corey picked up on the road started showing up in daily decisions. He built the company around being reachable and accountable, the two things he felt were missing on some of the bigger jobs he had worked. He also kept the standards he'd seen from the best foremen he worked under, even on small residential jobs where nobody was checking his work against a blueprint. Three years in, Corey describes the business as steady and growing. He credits a lot of that to sticking with the idea that shaped the company from day one: do the work as if the person paying for it is standing next to you, because eventually, on a small local company, they usually are. Where the idea is headed next Corey has stayed interested in solar work and EV technology since his early years in the trade, and he expects both to shape where electrical work goes in Maine over the next decade. He treats ongoing learning as part of the job description, not an extra. That habit traces back to the same years on the road: an electrician who only knows one region's methods has fewer tools than one who has seen a dozen different crews solve the same problem a dozen different ways. For Corey, the value of those travel years wasn't the mileage. It was the chance to collect ideas from people he never would have met if he'd stayed local, and the discipline to bring the best of them home.

A radiology room is a place where small details matter. A patient may need to move slightly to get into the correct position, an instruction may need to be explained differently, or someone who is uncomfortable may not be able to move as expected. Before producing a useful medical image, the technologist has to think about the patient, the equipment, the procedure, and all the details that connect them. For Nivia Fontanez, that combination of technical work and human interaction has become a familiar part of her career. The Bronx-based radiology technologist works with X-rays, CT scans, and bone density studies. She holds a New York State radiologic technologist license and is also qualified to administer contrast for CT studies. The career brings together technical knowledge, attention to detail, and regular interaction with patients. It is also very different from the career she imagined when she first went to college. Fontanez's first degree was in computer science. She later worked in finance, bartended while attending school, became a certified nursing assistant, and eventually returned to college to study radiology. Her professional life did not follow one carefully constructed plan. Instead, she learned what suited her by working, changing directions, and being willing to become a student again. Choosing a career before you know what work feels like Fontanez grew up in the Bronx and graduated from Jane Addams High School in 1999. She continued her education at SUNY Cobleskill, where she earned an associate degree in computer science in 2001. At the time, computer science was the direction she had chosen, but it would not become the field where she ultimately built her career. She later worked in finance. Like many people who enter the workforce after college, Fontanez was gaining something that is difficult to have when choosing a degree as a teenager: experience with what working every day actually feels like. A career can sound appealing in a classroom or on paper and feel very different once someone is living it. That experience can lead to uncomfortable questions. Do I want to keep doing this because I genuinely enjoy it, or am I continuing because I have already invested time in it? Would changing direction mean that my previous education was wasted? Is it worth becoming a beginner again when I already have experience somewhere else? For Fontanez, changing direction eventually became more appealing than staying on a path simply because she had already started down it. Going back to school meant becoming a beginner again Career changes often sound much cleaner when they are described years later. Someone says they left one industry, returned to school, and found a new profession. That summary leaves out much of what happens in between. Fontanez's transition required her to continue working while pursuing another education. She bartended to help get herself through school and also became a certified nursing assistant. Returning to college was different from enrolling immediately after high school because she now had other experiences and responsibilities competing for her time. There were practical trade-offs involved. Continuing along an established professional path would have been easier in some ways. Pursuing radiology meant investing additional time in school and accepting that she would have to learn a new profession from the beginning. It also meant trusting that changing her mind about her career wasn't the same as admitting everything she had done before was a mistake. Fontanez continued with the new direction and earned her bachelor's degree in radiology from Concordia College in 2020. By then, her background included computer science, finance, bartending, nursing assistance, and radiology. Those experiences may look unrelated on a résumé, but several of the skills she developed along the way became useful in unexpected ways. What bartending can teach someone who works with patients Bartending and radiology are very different professions, and the responsibilities involved should not be confused. However, working behind a bar teaches a person quite a bit about dealing with different personalities. A bartender may interact with someone who wants to have a conversation and then immediately serve another person who barely wants to speak. Customers can be patient, distracted, impatient, friendly, or frustrated. Meanwhile, the bartender must juggle multiple responsibilities and keep paying attention to what is happening around them. Those interpersonal skills did not disappear when Fontanez moved into healthcare. As a radiology technologist, she also encounters people with very different personalities and needs. A patient may be nervous about a CT scan, uncomfortable because of an injury, or confused by an instruction that seems straightforward to someone who works in medical imaging every day. The setting is completely different, but one basic lesson remains useful. The same approach doesn't work for everyone. Recognizing that can make communication easier, especially in an environment where a patient may already be dealing with stress or uncertainty. Medical imaging requires more than operating equipment Fontanez's earlier education in computer science also takes on a different meaning when viewed alongside her current career. Radiology is a technology-heavy field, but working as a technologist involves much more than operating imaging equipment. Fontanez must consider positioning, image quality, patient communication, safety requirements, and the specific study being performed. Her CT work can include additional responsibilities, including administering contrast when appropriate under established procedures. Experience helps many of these responsibilities become more familiar, but familiarity creates its own challenge. A procedure that a technologist has performed many times may be completely new to the patient. Something that takes up a small part of Fontanez's normal workday could be an appointment the patient has been thinking about for several days. That difference in perspective is one reason communication matters. Patients do not need to understand every technical detail behind their imaging, but they do need to understand what is being asked of them. A machine can produce an image, but it cannot recognize when a patient is confused by an instruction or needs something explained another way. A career does not have to make perfect sense in reverse In 2025, Fontanez received a Best Technologist Award, recognizing a profession she hadn't originally planned to enter when she graduated from high school. It would be easy to look back from that point and create a neat story in which every earlier experience somehow prepared her for radiology. Her career was not that carefully planned. Her computer science degree was not secretly the first step toward medical imaging, and working in finance was not part of a strategy to eventually enter healthcare. She bartended to get through school. Those experiences still mattered, even without fitting into a larger plan. Computer science gave Fontanez an early technical education. Finance exposed her to a different professional environment. Bartending required her to communicate with many kinds of people. Becoming a certified nursing assistant gave her experience closer to patient care. Radiology eventually offered a career where technical responsibility and human interaction could coexist. People may feel pressure to explain away past choices after changing careers, especially when they invested years of education or work in another field. Fontanez's experience offers a more practical perspective. An earlier career doesn't have to be a mistake just because it wasn't permanent. People sometimes discover what fits them by first discovering what does not. An education can remain valuable even when someone eventually works in another field, and skills learned in one job can become unexpectedly useful years later. Nivia Fontanez did not leave high school knowing that she would eventually become a radiology technologist. Her career took several turns before she found the combination of technical work and patient interaction that suited her. Rather than making those earlier chapters irrelevant, the change in direction gave her a wider range of experiences to bring into the work she does today.

James K. Record has spent much of his career studying one complicated subject from several different perspectives: how criminal law works when it leaves the textbook and enters the real world. Professor Record is an attorney and criminal justice educator whose career has included prosecution, criminal defense, advanced study in criminal law, and law school as well as university teaching. In January 2027, he will begin his next chapter as an Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at Quincy University in Quincy, Illinois. The move into higher education might seem like a significant change for an attorney. For Professor Record, however, teaching is closely connected to the work that came before it. “I have had the opportunity to see criminal justice from several different perspectives,” Professor Record says. “When you have tried felony cases in front of juries, and then step into a classroom, you start thinking about what students need to understand beyond the complex concepts in a textbook.” That relationship between legal theory and practical experience has become a recurring theme throughout his career. From New Jersey to a career in law Professor Record grew up in Elmwood Park, New Jersey, as the youngest of five children. At Elmwood Park Memorial High School, he excelled as a student athlete. He Varsity Lettered in four sports and became a Bergen County champion in the 3,200 meters as well as First Team All-League in Cross Country. He graduated in 1980 before attending Stonehill College from 1980 to 1984. A few years later, Professor Record entered Thomas M. Cooley Law School. He studied there from 1986 to 1989 and earned his Juris Doctor. While attending law school, he interned at the Ingham County Prosecutor's Office. Becoming an attorney gave Professor Record the opportunity to move from studying legal theory to actively participating in how those principles interact with real people, evidence, and life-altering consequences. Criminal law and criminal procedure soon became central to his professional life. How Attorney James K. Record built experience in criminal law Professor Record served as an Assistant Ocean County Prosecutor, an experience that put him directly inside the criminal justice process. The work required more than knowing the law. Prosecuting criminal cases involves disputed facts, evidence that must be evaluated, procedural requirements that must be followed, and decisions that can carry serious consequences for real lives. “You learn that the details matter,” Professor Record says. “A legal rule may look straightforward when you first study it. Applying that rule to a real set of facts can be much more complicated, and preparation is the key to success.” Professor Record later gained experience in criminal defense, including through the Law Offices of James Kane Record, P.C. He became certified by the New Jersey Supreme Court as a Criminal Trial Attorney and handled serious felony cases throughout the state. Working in criminal law from different perspectives broadened the questions he was asking about the justice system. Instead of considering only what the law required, Professor Record became increasingly interested in why certain procedures existed and how they affected cases as well as people in practice. Those questions eventually led him back to law school. Why James K. Record pursued advanced criminal law studies By the mid-1990s, Professor Record was already an attorney with extensive practical legal experience as both a prosecutor and criminal defense attorney. He could have simply continued along the same path. Instead, he returned to school to broaden his understanding of criminal law and criminal procedure. From 1995 to 1996, Record attended SUNY at Buffalo Law School, where he earned an LLM in Criminal Law with Honors. The timing was important. Professor Record was no longer approaching criminal law only as a student preparing to become a lawyer. He studied it after seeing the justice system firsthand. “Practice gives you questions you may not think to ask when you are first in law school,” he says. “Returning to advanced study gave me a chance to look at criminal law with experience behind those questions.” Rather than separating academic study from legal practice, Professor Record began to see how the two could strengthen one another. That idea would eventually shape the next stage of his career. Taking legal experience into criminal justice education Professor Record later became an Assistant Professor at California University of Pennsylvania. Moving into higher education changed the immediate purpose of his work. Instead of preparing for the next legal matter, he was helping students prepare for careers of their own. His years as both a prosecutor and criminal defense attorney offered a unique perspective. Students can learn the elements of an offense or memorize a rule of criminal procedure. The harder task is learning what happens when the facts are incomplete, two principles appear to conflict, or evidence raises questions without an immediate answer. “A textbook gives you a foundation, but you must build critical thinking along with excellent communication and problem-solving skills,” Professor Record says. “ Criminal justice rarely presents issues in a neat package.” That approach has allowed Professor Record to connect criminal law, criminal procedure, and broader criminal justice education rather than treating them as isolated subjects. In January 2027, he is scheduled to continue his passion for teaching, mentoring, and advising students as an Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at Quincy University. Where criminal law and forensic science meet Another part of Professor Record’s professional interests sits at the intersection of law and forensic science. Professor Record is affiliated with the American Academy of Forensic Sciences through its Jurisprudence section. He has had papers accepted and has been a speaker at several Conferences. He also has an active license with the Washington, DC Bar and the United States Supreme Court Bar Association. Forensic evidence presents a particular challenge in criminal law because it is always evolving and scientific evidence must still operate within legal standards. A laboratory result may appear definitive at first glance. A lawyer, however, may need to consider how the evidence was collected, what a particular test can actually establish, whether the methodology has limitations, and how the evidence should be presented and evaluated in court. It must be testified to by an accepted expert, and the findings entered into evidence so a jury may consider it. “The important question is not simply whether something is described as scientific evidence,” Record says. “You have to understand what the evidence can support and where its limits are.” For someone whose career has moved between legal practice and education, that intersection is an ever-evolving area of interest. James K. Record’s next chapter at Quincy University Professor Record’s career has not followed a straight line from law school into one type of legal work. Instead, each stage has built on the one before it. His experience as an attorney brought criminal law out of the classroom. His work in prosecution and criminal defense exposed him to different parts of the criminal justice process. His LLM allowed him to return to criminal law with advanced knowledge and experience. Teaching gives him a way to turn those experiences into lessons for others. Outside his legal and academic work, Record has also remained involved in service. He volunteers as a member of the American Legion and participates in Sons of the American Legion and American Legion Riders. Now, Quincy represents the next stage. “I have spent a large part of my career learning how criminal law works from different points of view,” Professor Record says. “Teaching gives me the opportunity to bring those perspectives together and help students understand both the law and the ethical responsibility that comes with working in criminal justice.” For James K. Record, becoming a professor is not a departure from a career as an attorney. He believes it to be the perfect way of putting that career to work.

Big projects rarely go exactly as planned. Schedules shift, costs change, contracts need to be reviewed, and unexpected problems can affect months of work. For Andrew S. Dutil, those moments have shaped a career built around solving complex problems and helping teams keep moving forward. Based in West Palm Beach, Florida, Dutil is a civil engineer, Project Management Professional, and independent consultant. His work spans project controls, scheduling, estimating, contract administration, earned value analysis, and claims support. Before becoming an independent consultant, he spent more than a decade with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in roles across Florida and Europe. How did Andrew S. Dutil build his career? Dutil grew up in Bristol, Connecticut, where responsibility became part of his life early. He served as an altar server in the Catholic Church, became an Eagle Scout with Troop 425, and spent summers working at Lake Compounce Theme Park. After graduating with honors from St. Paul Catholic High School in 1998, he attended Norwich University. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Architectural Studies in 2002 and a Master of Architecture in 2003, graduating cum laude with both degrees. His background also includes service in the U.S. Army. Dutil is a combat veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom II and graduated with honors from the U.S. Army Officers Basic Course. Those experiences helped shape the way he later approached professional challenges. When asked what helped him overcome obstacles, his answer was direct: “Hard work and perseverance.” Why project scheduling became a core part of his work Dutil entered commercial construction as a project scheduler with Kraft Construction. His responsibilities included developing proposal schedules, creating baseline schedules after projects were awarded, tracking progress, and building recovery plans when work fell behind. He later joined MOCA Systems as a program scheduler and consultant supporting the Guam Program Management Office. There, he maintained schedules across 15 business areas connected to major infrastructure projects. The work required more than maintaining dates on a calendar. Schedules had to reflect real activity across areas such as contracting, environmental work, real estate, surveying, and project delivery. That experience became a foundation for the larger contract and project-control responsibilities that followed. What did Andrew S. Dutil do with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers? Dutil joined the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 2011 and went on to hold several roles involving scheduling, claims, estimating, civil engineering, and contract administration. In Florida, he reviewed contractor schedules, assessed delays, supported negotiations, processed contract modifications, and worked with legal and contracting teams. He later moved to Wiesbaden, Germany, where he served as Claims & Scheduling Manager. That role placed him at the center of complicated contract issues across projects in Europe. He reviewed requests for equitable adjustment, claims, schedule impacts, and contract modifications while working with engineering, construction, contracting, project management, and legal teams. One of the career experiences he points to involved “the negotiating of large, unanticipated change orders while providing for minimal impacts of project completions.” The situation captures an important part of his approach. A change cannot always be avoided, but its effect can often be managed. What makes complex project management work? After his time in Europe, Dutil returned to Florida and continued with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as a civil engineer and contract administrator. His work included large civil projects involving pump stations, canals, dikes, and cutoff wall construction. He reviewed payment requests, helped develop contract modifications, coordinated project funding needs, supported negotiations, and reviewed Primavera schedules when needed. For Dutil, good project management depends partly on understanding what might happen next. He identifies “technical proficiency, experience, [and the] ability to perceive future issues” as important professional qualities. That ability to look ahead is especially important when several teams, deadlines, contracts, and budgets are connected. Dutil also sees project work as a team effort. His definition of success is “the ability to bring people together to accomplish goals which otherwise could not be reached.” Why Andrew S. Dutil moved into independent consulting In late 2025, Dutil began working as an independent consultant. His current work brings together many of the areas he has worked in throughout his career, including project controls, scheduling, estimating, contracting, earned value analysis, and project closeout. Rather than viewing each part of a project separately, his experience has taught him to look at how they affect one another. A schedule issue can become a contract issue. A contract change can affect cost. A delay can influence the path to closeout. His approach to priorities is equally practical. He sets goals “based on the critical or non-critical status of the deliverable,” allowing attention to be directed toward the work that matters most at a given point. After years of working around deadlines, contracts, construction projects, and competing priorities, Dutil also keeps career success in perspective. When asked about balance, he summed it up simply: “It all contributes towards a well-lived life.”

For Rabbi Steve Karro, work has never been separated from meaning. His career as a rabbi, scribe, artist, and teacher has grown from one central idea: use what you know to help others and leave something valuable behind. Born in Russia, Karro moved to Jerusalem at the age of 10. That move placed him in an environment where Jewish learning, the Hebrew language, and tradition became part of his everyday life. Over time, those early lessons developed into a career built around scholarship, craftsmanship, teaching, and service. How did Rabbi Steve Karro begin his career? Karro began studying in Hebrew school after arriving in Jerusalem. At 13, he continued his education at Yeshiva Ponovich in Bnei Brak, where he focused on rabbinic studies and Jewish tradition. By age 19, he had earned his rabbinic certificate and diploma. During those same years, he was also developing his abilities as an artist and learning the detailed work of Hebrew calligraphy and sacred writing. Those interests eventually came together. Karro became a sofer, or Jewish scribe, while also continuing to paint and create Judaica art. Rather than viewing these as separate paths, he saw them as connected forms of responsibility. Each required patience, focus, respect for tradition, and a commitment to doing the work carefully. “My faith and people believe in me,” Karro says. That support became especially important as his career expanded beyond one role or location. What does a Jewish scribe do? Karro’s work as a scribe includes writing and checking Torah scrolls, mezuzot, and tefillin. He has also become experienced in restoring older Torah scrolls and preserving sacred texts that may have been used for generations. The work is highly detailed. A mistake can matter, which means the process demands concentration, technical skill, and a strong understanding of the religious standards involved. Karro has travelled internationally as part of this work, checking and restoring sacred writings in different communities. For him, the value is not simply in repairing an object. It is about keeping a tradition usable for the next generation. That mindset also shapes how he approaches productivity. “Every situation, I ask what the Creator expects from me,” he says. Instead of measuring a day only by how many tasks are completed, he considers whether the work has served a meaningful purpose. How art became part of his work Art has remained another important part of Karro’s career. He works in Judaica, Hebrew calligraphy, oil painting, canvas, and parchment, often combining artistic skill with themes rooted in Jewish history and tradition. His experience as both an artist and scribe gives his work an unusual combination of structure and creativity. Sacred writing requires precision, while painting allows for greater interpretation. Moving between the two has helped him develop a career that depends on both discipline and imagination. Karro’s work also shows how traditional skills can remain relevant in a modern world. Ancient forms of writing and craftsmanship may take time to learn, but they still have a place when people are willing to study them seriously and pass them on. “Teach what I learned so more people will be able to do good for our universe,” he says. What has helped Rabbi Steve Karro stay productive? Karro does not describe productivity only in terms of output. He connects it to family, faith, responsibility, and the effect a person has on others. When self-doubt appears, he thinks beyond himself. “If not for me, do it for my family and friends that they need me more,” he says. That way of thinking has helped him continue through difficult periods. Karro has spoken about facing challenges that left him feeling publicly embarrassed and personally tested. Rather than allowing those experiences to stop his work, he returned to the beliefs and responsibilities that had guided him for years. “I’m still standing and going with my G/D and what I always believed in,” he says. His approach is not about pretending that challenges do not exist. It is about deciding that difficult experiences do not have to determine what comes next. When success means helping others grow Karro’s definition of success is closely tied to impact. “When I make a happy difference in people’s lives,” he says, describing what success means to him. He also believes that positive actions become more valuable when they encourage others to act in similar ways. His goal is not simply to complete good work himself, but to create an example that others can continue. “To duplicate my good actions when others are as strong and continue believing that they are also important and will make good changes,” he says. That idea connects many parts of his career. Whether he is restoring a Torah scroll, teaching Jewish tradition, practicing calligraphy, creating art, or supporting someone around him, the purpose remains similar. Karro believes people should care about the effect they have and trust that their contributions matter. As he puts it, “Need to care and believe my making good changes is important.” After decades of study, teaching, art, and sacred writing, that belief continues to guide Rabbi Steve Karro’s work. His career shows how a traditional craft can become a lifelong practice of learning, purpose, and service.