THE SUSTAINABLE AMBITION PODCAST
What if you could have more fulfillment, peace, and ease in your professional and personal life — while staying ambitious?
Learn to align your ambitions with what matters most, navigate transitions with adventure and ease, and create sustainable success — without sacrificing your wellbeing or losing yourself in the process.
We’re taught that ambitious careers come with a price: our time, our peace, maybe even our wellbeing. But what if that story is outdated? What if you could pursue meaningful work, advance your career, and still have energy for the life you want to live?
Join Kathy and her guests — experts, authors, and innovators — as they challenge traditional narratives about success and ambition and explore new ways of living and working. While life and work rarely go according to plan, it's never too late to create a life and career that truly work for you.
START HERE:
CAN AMBITION BE SUSTAINABLE?
Host Kathy Oneto talks with experts, authors, and friends with insight on her philosophy about life and work focused on three concepts: Right Ambition, Right Time, and Right Effort. Kathy shares ideas for navigating your career at different stages of life and work. You’ll learn to define your own success. You’ll embrace a consciously ambitious approach to better align life and work. And no matter what you choose to take on, you’ll have the resilience to tackle the challenge and the practices you need to sustain your energy.
Each new person who embraces Sustainable Ambition makes it easier for all of us to thrive in life and work.
152: Dr. Richard Safeer: Keys to Fostering Collective Well-Being in the Workplace
Overview
So far this year, my guests and I have been discussing how we can do things differently through experimentation, creativity, and innovation to optimize our life and work for personal success, satisfaction, and sustainability.
Today’s guest brings another layer to the conversation. I’ve often focused on what we can do individually to ensure sustainability in our life and work, because we can’t rely solely on outside forces to do so. But it’s not either or. As Dr. Richard Safeer points out, we have to take personal responsibility AND we need support from those around us to truly shape a happier, healthier, and more resilient workforce.
Dr. Safeer explains why external support is critical for wellbeing, how to shape a wellbeing culture, why teams are an important focus point, and shares smart, simple tips to move forward as organizations and team leaders supporting a wellbeing culture.
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151: Merideth Mehlberg on Simplification, Imperfect Action, and Evolution for a Sustainable Year
Overview
At the beginning of the year, it can feel like we have to go all-in right away toward our goals. But it’s important, maybe even essential, to pace ourselves.
Which is why I’m treating February as the beginning of the year, and continuing to have conversations about how we can optimize our work for more personal success, satisfaction, and sustainability.
Today, Merideth Mehlberg returns to dive into how we can optimize our work, not with a full steam ahead press, but by stepping into our own knowing, listening to our bodies, simplifying, and embracing ease, experimentation, and evolution. It’s a more sustainable approach to start the year.
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150: Dr. Amy Climer: Transforming Work and Life Through Deliberate Creativity
Overview
We kicked off 2025 with an invitation to rethink, explore new approaches, and be innovative.
I am continuing this theme in today’s episode because if we want our experience of work and life to be different, we have to be willing to find new solutions and do things differently. We have to be able to innovate and evolve.
It’s a process no different than when we’re asked to problem-solve within our organizations, or for clients, or in the development of new products.
I am joined by Dr. Amy Climer to discuss how we can apply that kind of creative thinking and problem solving to designing our work and life. We talk about how we might design work and life in a way that will make it more personally satisfying, successful, and sustainable with deliberate creativity. Creativity is a tool and a resource, if we cultivate it. We need to be deliberate if we want to support teams in finding innovative solutions.
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149. Anne-Laure Le Cunff: Cultivating Curiosity and an Experimental Life
Overview
Many of us want to make a positive impact and gain fulfillment with the work we do. In some cases, pursuing that ambition may require a significant shift in our career and our lives.
Today’s guest pivoted in her career in order to seek more sustainability and more fulfillment in her work and life. Caroline Ouwerkerk is a career and leadership coach who works with people in the social impact space to help them find their purpose and pursue it sustainably.
Making the world a better place isn’t a short-term goal. It’s vital that social impact leaders take measures to make the work more sustainable over the long term.
Caroline shares the structures she has put in place for herself to help her disconnect from work, how she models sustainable leadership, how to think about right-sizing our efforts, and the importance of connecting with community.
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