Overview

Today I’m joined again by friend, mentor, and business colleague Philip VanDusen for Part 2 of our conversation. Philip was one of my first guests in Episode #6, and I ran out of time with him. As I mentioned then, he is one of my favorite people to talk to, and I seek him out often for his wisdom, so I wanted to have him back.

In this episode, I wanted to explore Philip’s thoughts on burnout, the issue with confidence that many, especially creative people, are experiencing during the pandemic, which he’s been witnessing amongst his community, and how he has sustained his own ambition over time. We also touch on how to maintain focus and discern between intentional use of time and procrastination. Philip would say, "Stop puttering!"

Philip has held esteemed roles in his creative career, such as VP Design at Old Navy and Pepsico, as well as serving as an Executive Creative Director on the agency side. After Corporate life, Philip went out on his own and now runs his own branding agency, as well as fosters a creative community. Philip offers a lot of free content to creatives and entrepreneurs, has a community to help reduce isolation and build confidence, and offers courses, which I encourage you to check out.

Philip—thanks for all you do in sharing your learning with all of us and showing us the way towards building sustainable, rewarding careers and businesses!

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Overview

I was excited to speak with Cathryn Caruthers, an executive coach who specializes in working with senior and emerging leaders in navigating major career transitions.

In this conversation, Cathryn offers great tips for managing a sustainable career, dealing with impostor syndrome (or she’d call it impostor phenomenon), which most of us experience even high performers, and paying attention to what might lead to burnout.

This is a great episode for people at all stages of one’s career, as Cathryn offers tips that apply from the time you’re in college to what we should all prioritize to sustain us throughout our careers and support our ambition, the foundational elements of staying healthy physically and mentally and taking care of our relationships.

I also found Cathryn to be an inspiration for us all to really think about sustainability when we think about our careers and making choices that consider both what we want personally and professionally. What impresses me about Cathryn’s journey is how she has been so attuned to herself and paid attention to how her career needed to support the kind of life she wants to live.

I loved this conversation, Cathryn! Thank you for sharing your own career journey and your smart guidance for us all to navigate our career transitions with more confidence and ease and building more sustainable careers.

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Overview

In this episode, I’m joined by Laila Tarraf, a senior human resource executive who is currently the Chief People Officer of Allbirds, a sustainable footwear and apparel brand, and the author of the recently released book, “Strong Like Water: How I found the Courage to Lead with Love in Business and in Life.” In this beautifully written book, Laila is generous with her own vulnerability in sharing her personal story so that we all can learn through her experiences of both loss and growth.

Together we talk about becoming a heart-based leader, what being “soft but strong” and “firm yet kind” looks like, and the power of leaning into discomfort. Laila shares what she learned at Peet’s Coffee about what it takes to create an environment where employees feel like they can bring their full selves to work and offers tips on both how to strengthen one’s heart as a leader and how to build Sustainable Ambition for oneself. We close by talking about the power of taking pauses, and Laila shares a favorite quote by Brother David Steindl-Rast (which I loved, too!): “You know the antidote to stress is not necessarily rest.... The antidote to stress is wholehearted living.” Amen!

I encourage you to pick up Laila’s beautiful book. Not only is it a wonderful read, it will leave you feeling inspired to lean into your own growth journey.

Thank you so much for being in conversation with me, Laila!

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Overview

I was so excited to speak with Christine Bader and Eva Dienel about their important work at “The Life I Want.” Christine and Eva are both idealists and writers in their own right, and with this storytelling project they are telling rich stories to reframe the discussion about work in our lives.

It all starts with “The Life I Want,” not work.

And in this episode, we hear what brought each of them to reorient their own work to support their lives vs. living to work, taking them to Bali and Australia, respectively, for a period of time, as well as homesteads in Oregon.

For them, the future of work requires that we change our relationship with work, as individuals and as a society, so more people can live happier, more fulfilled lives. There are four pillars that frame their working model: 1) individual, 2) employers, 3) community, and 4) government, and we speak of each of these in this episode. While we talk about how in today’s model you need a super power to pull yourself towards working to live as opposed to living to work, finding more fulfillment for all can’t be only on the individual. They advocate that we also need safety nets to make it possible, such as employers stepping up and realizing that the work they provide employees is a product in itself, leaning on our communities, and government programs and legislation.

In this conversation, we also touch on the idea of creating your own measurements of success, the importance of valuing care in our society, and that the answers lie in fixing work for the most marginalized, as those solutions will likely work for us all.

If you want to be inspired to create a life you want and want to hear how to start to rethink what it would mean to take an alternate path, listen in and check out Christine and Eva's work at The Life I Want: https://www.thelifeiwant.co/ to read their beautiful stories of others who are showing us the way towards a brighter future of work that will work for all.

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Overview

Mala Singh is the Chief People Officer (CPO) of Electronic Arts. I had the pleasure of working with Mala when she was Chief People Officer at Minted, and I couldn't wait to speak with her in this episode, because she's is one of the wisest people I know. Not only did I want to learn more about Mala's own career journey from British Guyana to the U.S. to a global career in HR, I also knew Mala would have great insight to share from her own experiences and from her role as a CPO on the executive team of a world class, creative organization that has had to manage through this pandemic with 25 offices around the world.

We cover a lot of ground in this conversation starting with Mala's own career, which I would say she guided by defining success for herself and making decisions that didn't necessarily always propel her upward but resonated with her desire to have certain experiences, like a global career, and to grow. Such decisions took her to places like Paris, so I myself don't think that was a bad trade-off! She offers tips on what to think about managing your career at each decade, shares how EA has cared for its employees during the pandemic, offers her forecast on whether or not we'll be going back to offices, encourages us all to be allies, and gives us tips on how to manage a full, ambitious personal and professional life.

I love what Mala had to say on all these topics. Listen in to hear her wisdom!

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Overview

On this episode, I’m in conversation with Bridget Jones, a finance coach and founder of Smart Sister Finance. Prior to Smart Sister, Bridget worked in finance and was an executive leader at several leading food companies where she held finance and operations leadership roles at companies like Clif Bar and Whole Foods Market.

I wanted to chat with Bridget, because finances is directly tied to work-life integration and managing our careers from decade to decade. While salary is not an intrinsic motivator, meaning the core thing that gets most of us excited about our work, the reality is our jobs pay the bills! They support our lives. And so, being wise about one's finances is important to facilitating Sustainable Ambition.

And impressively, Bridget was so good with her own finances, she met and exceeded her goal of being able to retire by the age of 50. Now, that's someone I want to talk to!

I love all the insights in this conversation about how work and finances are intertwined in creating a sustainable life. We talk about Bridget’s own career journey, why she had a goal of retiring by 50, and what surprised her most after she had downtime and recharged. We explore the importance of setting financial goals and tying those to your overall life goals - what are you working and saving for? We advocate embracing planning for what you want in your life, focusing on the big rocks and accepting that it is iterative. And, we close by covering just how important it is to talk about money. From Bridget's perspective, it’s powerful to set an intention, because it will then likely manifest.

Thanks for being on Bridget! Such an important topic and appreciate you sharing your own story and tips for people to find freedom by getting smart about their finances!

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Overview

On another solo episode, I share some thoughts on a topic that has come up a lot over the last year during the pandemic… And that is the concept of living in not knowing. What does “living in not knowing” even mean? It means living in uncertainty. Not being clear on a path, say, or having the answer. It’s a weird liminal state. The challenge is that we are wired to want to know. We want certainty. And, when we don’t have that, it causes consternation and stress.

Why is this important to the concept of Sustainable Ambition? Because I talk about the idea of crafting a career to support your life from decade to decade, which implies we will go through many transitions over the course of our adulthood. And it’s in transitions, that we live in moments of uncertainty and not knowing. During such times, we can often feel unmoored and unclear.

In this episode, I share 15 lessons on what I’ve learned through my own experiences to survive and thrive during uncertainty and growth stages. I hope my sharing of these insights and tools that have provided me with guidance and relief can help you in finding some peace, as well as enrichment and joy, as we all wade through this time of uncertainty. Because in the end, while periods of not knowing have been some of the toughest for me, they’ve also been some of the most enriching of my life. I wish the same for you.

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Overview

In this conversation, I welcome Lisa Lewis Miller, career change expert, author, and founder of Career Clarity, a company helping individuals step into the careers they've been dreaming of. If you are someone who exclaims, “I don’t know what I want to do with my life!,” then this is the episode for you! Lisa offers a foolproof way to uncover your internal wisdom, because as she shares, you are the only one who knows. The answer isn’t “out there” or with anyone else. And a key theme of our conversation is permission—to explore what’s possible, to go for what you want, and to embrace our desire to learn and grow throughout our career.

And if you are feeling unhappy with your job during the pandemic and not listening to that voice in your head, or as Lisa would advise listening to what your body is telling you, because you feel like you should just be grateful to have a job, listen to Lisa to find encouragement and hope that there are still opportunities out there for you to find your career fulfillment.

I had so many more questions I could have asked Lisa, so I encourage you to explore her book and podcast. Find more in the detailed show notes!

Thanks for being on with me, Lisa, and sharing such deep, empowering perspectives!

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Overview

This is my first solo episode! I thought I’d share with you just what I mean by Sustainable Ambition and why I think it’s an important concept for us to consider when managing our careers, especially in today’s world. I’ve been working on this concept for the last 5 years and likely have been living it all my adult life without realizing it until a few years ago.

So, for grounding, at a high level, Sustainable Ambition is about crafting a fulfilling career to support your life from decade to decade… with the end goal being to experience more fulfillment in your professional and personal life with more ease, while still being ambitious.

In the episode, I talk about what inspired the model, some high-level thoughts on Sustainable Ambition, and then go deeper into the model. The Sustainable Ambition Method has 3 pillars: Right Success, Right Aspiration, and Right Effort. I discuss each pillar and share how they are about: defining Personal Reward, creating a Regenerative Career, and building Work-Life Resilience, respectively.

Thanks for being with me for my first solo episode, everyone! I hope you find it helpful to learn a bit more about Sustainable Ambition. Cheers!

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Overview

Joining me on this episode is friend, author, and traveler David Brown. David and I met working in the marketing and branding world, but we also have another thing in common. We both took time off and traveled. Shhhh! Don't tell anyone!

David and his wife, Alexandra, took a year off traveling the world and then chronicled their journey and learning in a beautiful book, “A Year Off: A story about traveling the world—and how to make it happen for you.”

I wanted to talk with David about his experience of taking time off, in addition to talking about general career satisfaction and walking your own path. In the end, David shares more about the impact of what he learned from traveling and shares wonderful insights for those of us who follow more non-traditional career paths.

David talks about the importance of paying attention, being present to your life and experiences, and that it’s okay to carve your own path leaning into who you are. He states so beautifully, “There really isn’t a sustainable option other than to be yourself.”

Now, I know that during the pandemic, we’re all not traveling. But I think David shares good lessons regardless of how you travel (meaning daydreaming or side jaunts!), and I think at this moment in this pandemic we could all use a little dreaming about what a pause might look like. Also, David and Alexandra’s book includes beautiful photography throughout, so I encourage you to pick it up to carry you abroad now while we’re hunkered in place.

A final thing I will note, as I ran out of time to discuss this with David, is the lasting impact that travel has. Dr. Rick Hanson talks about building resilience by having an experience and embedding it within you. I love his advice and I know for myself, I consistently go back to my memories of my extended travel, and it sustains me and fills me up. I still call upon my travels and its reserves. It is the gift I have given myself that keeps on giving. David also shares, “It was such a good decision. I loved it!”

And, David - I loved our conversation and so appreciate your wisdom! Thanks for being on with me.

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