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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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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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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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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Overview

At this time of the year, many of us are taking time to reflect, consider what we’ve learned, and determine what to take with us into the new year. 

In this episode, I share two major themes that I’ve been coming back to throughout 2024. As I worked more deeply with these topics over the course of the year, I embraced opportunities for new learning and insights, uncovered resources that were new to me, and was challenged to rethink common narratives.

I offer my reflections on embracing uncertainty and complexity and how both can benefit us on our journeys of Sustainable Ambition. I also share questions for you to consider as you look back on 2024 and where embracing uncertainty and complexity might take you in 2025.

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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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Overview

How can we sustain our engagement in our work and make our careers regenerative?

Continuing the series of conversations about managing our work ambitions over time and at different stages of leadership, I’m joined today by Aybala Şimşek Galpin, CEO of the Turkish bank, Şekerbank.

As I’ve been introducing more perspectives about work-life integration and ambition from around the world, Aybala’s story illustrates a key point about how our environment and cultural context shape our ambitions and the pursuit of what we want for ourselves. Her career path also shows that alignment of meaning and motivation can sustain us even through periods of intense effort.

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Overview

Learning to embrace leadership and think intentionally about the kind of leader we want to be is important, regardless of where we are in our careers. It’s relevant whether we’re leading a whole team or just ourselves.

As part of an ongoing series of conversations about managing our ambitions through different phases and stages of our careers, Pete Steinberg and I dig into what it means to be a leader and to step into that role.

We talk about citizenship within organizations and how that invites us to step into agency, no matter our role. Pete also shares his concept of leadership shock, and how to recognize when you’re experiencing it.

If you’re stepping into a new leadership role at work, it may be time to rethink your leadership approach and consider the kind of leader you want to be in order to make it a more satisfying, sustainable position of authentic leadership.

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Overview

Today’s episode kicks off a series of conversations about managing our work ambitions over time and at different stages of leadership. 

If you’re feeling stuck, unsure of what’s next for you, and seeking more fulfillment from your work, this conversation is definitely for you.

Master coach Merideth Mehlberg introduces common traps that keep us feeling stuck and dissatisfied at work, shares what gets us to the point where we can take action for change, plus offers reassurance that finding more fulfillment in our work isn’t as arduous as it may seem at the outset.

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Overview

If you are a workaholic or have workaholic tendencies, you are not alone. Many of us struggle with overwork and assessing the right amount of effort to put towards our ambitions and priorities, without going overboard.

Today, Dr. Malissa Clark, author of Never Not Working: Why the Always-On Culture Is Bad for Business—and How to Fix It, joins me for a conversation about workaholism and overwork, what drives it, why more people are struggling with it, and what organizations and individuals can do about it. 

Workaholism is a nuanced topic, and it isn’t solely about the number of hours we devote to work. Hopefully, the next time you call yourself — or someone calls you — a workaholic, you can give yourself grace as you adjust to make sure you’re working hard on the right things, in the right way.

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Overview

What is work? And what is its role in our lives?

For many Americans, work is a primary source of meaning and identity. But what if you embraced a more holistic identity? What ambitions would you nurture for your life as well as your work? How would they impact how you manage your career? How would the role of work shift if you were pursuing better work-life integration?

These are complex questions. The answers are deeply personal, and they will shift and evolve over time. In our journeys of life and work, we are always in the process of finding and living into our stories.

Today, I’m in conversation with Simone Stolzoff, author of The Good Enough Job, about his research and reporting on the roles of work in our modern lives and how work became such an enmeshed part of our identity for so many Americans. Simone invites us to embrace more sides of ourselves as we write our stories and, through a broader lens on identity, be more intentional about the role of our work and the ambitions we pursue.

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Overview

If you live and work in the U.S., you might have daydreamed about finding better work-life balance by moving to another country with different cultural norms and government structures around work. 

But what if the challenges of navigating life and work in the modern world are more pervasive than we think? What if the structures that need to change run much deeper than government policy and programs?

To explore these questions, I’m joined by coach and consultant Sandra Fillaudeau, who lives and works in France and whose work tackles questions of work-life integration, gender balance, and sustainable living.

We dig into what challenges French professionals typically face with work-life integration, how those issues are reflected cross-culturally, and what shifts individuals and organizations can make to help us better navigate the dynamic nature of our lives with work in the modern world.

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Overview

Sustainable Ambition is aspirational. It’s a practice and a journey that is ever-changing. I’m always learning along the way, just like all of you, and each of our journeys is unique to us.

In this episode, I reflect on the Summer Book Series, how I was impacted by the concepts I shared in those episodes, and what I have been learning about Sustainable Ambition over the last several months.

I also want to share updates on where I am in my own journey of Sustainable Ambition, not just based on the books, but a view of how I am doing with sustaining my ambition over time and not sacrificing my life or myself in the process.

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Overview

Part of pursuing Sustainable Ambition is examining how we go about achieving our goals without sacrificing our lives or ourselves. 

My guest today has an interesting perspective on how we can live our lives more fully, and with more purpose.

Speaker and author, Jodi Wellman, calls us to look death in the face in order to become more alive. And while this might sound dour or heavy, it really isn’t.

Jodi shares her philosophy for crafting a life well-lived, and it doesn’t always require us to make huge changes in our lives. Small things, done in service of our needs, preferences, and goals, really do add up when we stop procrastinating and start living.

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Overview

We hear a lot about resilience these days. We say people who overcome obstacles and challenges in life and work must be so resilient. But is that the only way to build our resilience muscles? What does it mean to build resilience in practice?

Today I’m joined again by Luis Velasquez to dig into how we build the resilience that allows us to face challenges and not only survive, but thrive.

Building resilience as Luis defines it is essential to Sustainable Ambition, both to grow in and navigate our careers over time, and to create the lives we desire and sustain ourselves in the process. It’s about taking small steps, right now, to develop our ability to tolerate discomfort and uncertainty, so that we can see obstacles as opportunities, rather than challenges.

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Overview

Over the months of June and July, I’ve been sharing books that have delighted me. Some of them have been written by past guests, while others are new books that have inspired me to think more deeply about sustainability. 

My hope in sharing these books with you is that you will be inspired, as I was, and will want to think differently about how you operate this summer. Through this summer book series, perhaps you’ll start asking important questions, like, “What do I really want? What is enough? What is worth it? Where might I be settling? Where and when can I allow myself to choose sustainability?” 

Today’s episode is the last in the series and this is for the explorers and the questioners, and those who are looking for a break.

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