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In this richly layered and deeply moving episode of ABWilson's Heart of the Matter, host Aderonke Bademosi Wilson sits down with Veronica Olalla Love, CEO of Newfield Network, artist, poet and lifelong seeker of meaning. Together they explore what it truly means to be human in today's world, diving into the practices, philosophies and personal stories that shape Veronica's extraordinary life and work. 

From the meaning of attunement and the science of limbic resonance, to a family history forged in the fires of South American political upheaval, to her teenage daughter's breathtaking act of generosity, this episode is a tender and illuminating conversation that leaves you feeling more connected and more hopeful about what we are capable of as human beings.

Veronica opens the conversation by unpacking what it means to be meaning centered, multifaceted and attuned, the three descriptors she uses to introduce herself to the world. Being meaning centered, she explains, is about living in close contact with one's deepest care, allowing that inner compass to guide every interaction and decision. 

Being multifaceted is an embrace of life's full emotional and creative range, from dancing and piano to painting and poetry. And being attuned is a practice of presence, a conscious choice to show up with awareness and care for the people and world around us. She introduces the concept of limbic resonance, the science behind how our breathing patterns and emotional states quite literally affect the biology of those near us, whether we know them or not.

One of the episode's most profound threads is Veronica's invitation to ask what it really means to human better. She shares how Newfield Network, which her father Julio Olalla founded 35 years ago after fleeing political violence first in Chile and then in Argentina, was born from a bone-deep knowing of what happens when human beings stop listening to and caring for one another. 

Veronica's mother's act of covering her two young daughters with her own body during a coup in Buenos Aires is a story of love so fierce it became the seed of a lifetime's work. Newfield now brings together cohorts of ten or more nationalities at a time to do the deeply human work of learning how to show up fully, listen generously and grow together.

Veronica shares a beautiful story of a coaching client who had achieved every external marker of success yet was hollow and lonely on the inside. Through their work together, he reconnected with his own wholeness, pivoted his career toward meaningful work and began showing up in his relationships in an entirely new way. 

This story leads into a rich conversation about the epidemic of loneliness, the power of authentic community and the radical potential of being truly witnessed by another person. Veronica speaks with warmth and clarity about how Newfield creates the kinds of spaces where transformation like this becomes possible and how the ripple effects of that inner work spread into families, communities and organizations.

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In this warm and reflective conversation, host Aderonke Bademosi Wilson sits down with writer and writing practice coach Simone Dalton to explore what it means to build a sustainable, soul-nourishing writing life rooted in rhythm instead of burnout. 

Simone shares how her love of language, her Caribbean roots and her journey through grief and transformation have shaped her creative work and the way she supports emerging writers, especially women of color who are juggling demanding careers and a long-held desire to write.​

Listeners will hear Simone describe what it truly means to be a language lover and story steward, and why she focuses on helping writers develop a writing practice that fits the reality of their lives rather than an idealized image of what a writer is supposed to look like. She explains the tension many writers feel between creativity and busy schedules, and how she guides them to sit with uncertainty, ask deeper questions of their stories and show up for the page with courage and tenderness.​

We travel with Simone back to the panyard in Trinidad where she grew up among steel pan orchestras, women who cared for her as a baby in a car seat on a bench and a community that taught her about rhythm, belonging and women holding one another up. She reflects on how those early experiences with music and community still live in her imagination, shape her sense of joy and inform the work she does today with writers and through her company, Island Scribe.​

Simone also talks about being inward focused and the personal development work she has done over the past 15 years to listen to the stories she holds, question where they came from and gently reframe or release them so she can move forward. She describes integrating mindfulness, embodiment and self-care into her work with writers, helping them separate their inner critic from their inner witness so they can return to the page even when it feels uncomfortable or lonely.​

A rich part of this episode centers on Simone’s coaching work with writers who do not yet feel comfortable calling themselves writers, often because their lives do not match their image of what a real writer looks like. She speaks to the specific challenges faced by women of color in writing spaces, including feeling exoticized or like the only one sharing a particular kind of story and how that disrupts their ability to sit with their questions and develop their work. Simone explains how she walks alongside writers as a story steward, helping them move from chasing validation and external success to cultivating a habit of creativity and a rhythm that lets them live with their writing for the long term.

Throughout the episode, Simone returns to the idea that stories shape how we see ourselves and how claiming our story can quietly shift the narratives of our lives, our leadership and our communities. She invites listeners to see writing as a retreat and a long game, to build confidence instead of chasing validation and to remember that they do not need to be extraordinary to begin. As she reminds us, you cannot edit what you do not write. You just need to begin.​

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Join Aderonke Bademosi Wilson as she welcomes Ari Kamara to ABWilson's Heart of the Matter. Ari, a self-described regular person trying to embody love, unpacks creativity as a daily resistance practice woven into cooking, relationships, art, poetry and filmmaking. They share growing up feeling uniquely weird in Bermuda as an autistic, queer, trans only child from a unique religious background, only to discover everyone's hidden stories create universal connection.​

Ari reveals three surprises: being an only child with sibling energy, homeschooling history and low-dose testosterone transition that eased dysphoria and saved their mental health. Proud accomplishments include winning the British Art in Motion short film contest with "This Woman Does Not Exist" about erased Bermudian abolitionist Mary Prince, and co-leading Canterbury Homeless Outreach's four weekly street outreaches focused on food, hot drinks and genuine listening.​

Key strengths like humility, reliability and passion fuel Ari's impact. Overcoming chronic anxiety through therapy, meds and self-acceptance shifted them from panic paralysis to confident conversations and spontaneous adventures. They urge young people: ignore stigma, seek therapists or meds fearlessly; it doesn't weaken you.​

Self-care rituals include gym weights/climbing, naps sans phone, friend time. Sharing growth ripples self-worth outward. Upcoming: graduating into archives/libraries for accessible heritage, a university radio show "Frequency 52," less winter cold for sunny naps. Joy flows from people, crafts, nature, braiding hair, presence. Current creations: Mary Prince dissertation mirroring the film, winter poetry, monthly poem zines. Book recs: Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar, Bluets by Maggie Nelson, Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler, Shy Radicals by Hamja Ahsan.

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In this rich and reflective conversation, Myra Lee Virgil joins host Aderonke Bademosi Wilson to explore what it means to live a life rooted in steadfast commitment, deep reflection and reliability. She shares how those three descriptors shape her work as founding CEO and managing director of the Bermuda Foundation, her writing life as a memoirist and her relationships with family, colleagues and community.​

The episode opens with Myra unpacking what it means to be steadfast, reflective and reliable in her life and leadership. She shares the long journey of establishing the Bermuda Foundation over more than a decade, including the late nights, uncertainty and commitment required to stay the course. As an introvert who loves being social so she can observe, she reflects on how she thinks deeply about race, privilege, identity and belonging after everyday interactions, and how that reflective practice shapes the way she shows up in relationships and work. She also shares why reliability matters so much to her and how she holds herself accountable to do what she says she will do.​

Myra speaks candidly about being a Black Bermudian Canadian and what it has meant to navigate belonging in Canada, Bermuda and beyond. She describes her manuscript “I Thought You’d Never Ask,” which explores how challenging it can be to belong even where one is supposed to belong, and how racism in Canada, Bermuda and the United States shows up differently. She shares stories about returning to Bermuda, wrestling with what it means to fit into a small community and how an incident with her lunch falling off her bike turned into a meditation on visibility, respectability and belonging.​

Drawing on ideas she attributes to Brené Brown, Myra talks about the exhausting nature of trying to fit in versus the freedom of seeking true belonging. She describes learning to trust that the spaces where she genuinely belongs will welcome her and giving herself permission to stop overworking to fit into places that are not meant for her.​

Toward the end of the conversation, Myra reflects on what brings her joy: seeing efforts pay off, watching others succeed in their dreams and supporting the people she loves and serves as they pursue their potential. She offers book recommendations including “Americanah” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, “Still Alice” by Lisa Genova, and “The Namesake,” highlighting how these stories have stayed with her.​

In her closing reflections, Myra speaks from the heart about loss, the unsettling nature of current events and the preciousness of life. She urges listeners not to risk or waste their lives, to recognize their own gifts and to understand how deeply they are cared for by the people around them. Her words land as a loving appeal to honor our own lives and use our time and talents in ways that matter.

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This episode of ABWilson’s Heart of the Matter with guest Melba Holliday invites listeners into a rich conversation about healing, courage and the wisdom we can learn from horses and nature. 

Melba shares how her early experience of not feeling heard shaped her lifelong commitment to deep, transformational listening, as a mother and as a coach and how she helps clients feel truly seen and understood. She explores the power of partnering with her heart horse Ryder in experiential coaching, illustrating how on-the-ground work with horses helps leaders shift from force to influence, embody shared leadership and become more congruent, compassionate versions of themselves.

Melba also opens up about her journey through depression and burnout during the 2008 financial crisis, how asking for help transformed her life and how movement, time with her horse and listening to her body remain vital self-care practices today. 

Throughout the episode, she weaves in stories of adventurous living, from wild dolphin swims to cross-country moves and high-ropes facilitation, demonstrating how stepping outside our comfort zones can reveal our inner strength and deepen our connection to others and the world around us.

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In this rich and soulful conversation, Janet Harvey shares how being an alchemical visionary shapes the way she invites people and organizations to transform from the inside out. She describes alchemy as a natural process of turning what is into what is possible, drawing on examples from nature, cooking and soil, and explains how this lens led her to name and build her company, Invite Change, over the past 30 years. 

Janet reflects on her corporate journey at Charles Schwab & Company, where she led a massive transformation that successfully moved thousands of people into new roles and locations while retaining 96 percent of the workforce. That experience inspired her to become an entrepreneur and a leader’s leader, working with executives on six continents to widen their lens, listen deeply and access the wisdom that already lives inside their organizations. 

She also shares how she unexpectedly became a coach’s coach, ultimately taking over and rebuilding a coach training school, expanding it into a global center for rigorous coach development and advanced education through Invite Change.​

Throughout the episode, Janet illuminates the profound ripple effect of well trained coaching, introducing her ripple effect formula: "every one hour with a well trained coach can positively impact 1,600 people in 30 days.: She describes coaching as a process of restoring access to a person’s essence, inner authority and personal sovereignty, and she contrasts coaching with therapy, mentoring, consulting and training so listeners can understand when each modality serves best. 

She speaks candidly about trauma, grief and healing, including losing her mother and fiancé on consecutive days and how honoring trauma’s own clock allows people to move through loss rather than around it.​

The conversation also explores intuition and the body’s wisdom. Janet explains how she begins each day with movement, Asian Pilates, strength work and quiet reflection to stay resourced and fully available to others. She describes intuition as into me see, a form of intimacy rooted in noticing energetic and emotional shifts, mirror neurons and subtle changes in the relational field. 

By practicing stillness and patience, she allows clients’ next insights to emerge rather than pushing her own agenda, modeling coaching as deep witnessing rather than problem solving.​

Throughout the episode, Janet returns again and again to joy. She finds joy in everyday moments, from hummingbirds at her window to pulling weeds and watching her beloved Seattle Seahawks play and she reminds listeners that every interaction is an opportunity to be a cathedral builder in someone else’s life. 

She closes with a heartfelt affirmation that every person matters, that we are all more than our hardest moments and that our shared journey toward a regenerative, more compassionate world is possible and already underway.

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This episode of ABWilson’s Heart of the Matter features multi hyphenate artist and Bermudian creative Elena Menendez Sanchez, whose life and work weave together theater, activism and deep self reflection. In conversation with host Aderonke Bademosi Wilson, Elena shares how she embraced being a multi hyphenate artist at NYU, where she trained not only as an actor but also as a director, playwright, sound and light designer, producer, songwriter, poet, and dancer, choosing breadth as a way to honor her curiosity and capacity. She talks about growing up in Bermuda with strong social norms and how creativity, for her, means forming her own path rather than following prescribed rules, even as she navigates the realities of living and working in New York. 

Elena opens up about identifying as hopeful and optimistic even while recognizing moments of pessimism and she describes being a contrarian as a playful and essential way of seeing the other side so she can better understand the full picture.​

Elena reflects on graduating from NYU as a hard won accomplishment shaped by financial strain, culture shock and the challenge of studying in the United States as someone from a predominantly Black country, and she shares how she nearly pursued pharmacy instead, seeing surprising alignment between medicine and art as different ways of helping people heal. 

Her stories from studying abroad in Ghana reveal a profound identity shift, as she grappled with being misread as American, the invisibility of Bermuda in global conversations and the pain and growth that come from feeling like your country “does not exist” in other people’s imaginations. That experience led her to claim her Bermudian identity more firmly, deepen her knowledge of her own culture and see her uniqueness as a superpower rather than a burden. 

She honors the legacy of her grandfather, Bermudian artist and activist Ronald Lightbourne, describing him as the first multi hyphenate in her life and crediting his artistry, anti apartheid activism and interracial marriage with shaping her sense of justice, courage and possibility.​

Throughout the episode, Elena speaks tenderly about friendship, grief and what it means to hold space for others, especially friends who have lost parents, emphasizing kindness, patience and remembering how human we all are. She shares specific self care practices, including a chakra based check in ritual that combines mantras, food choices and mindful grounding, as well as the importance of nourishing relationships, small luxuries and movement. 

Elena also offers a glimpse into her creative future, from assistant directing 12 Angry Black Women at the Billie Holiday Theater, to dreaming of working on London’s West End, to building a theater space in Bermuda where artists can experiment, fail, and grow. 

She talks about her play Kink’s A Good Hair Story, which explores Black women’s hair, identity and the emotional labor of hair care, and shares book recommendations that center queer people of color and invite readers to reckon with change, belonging and self discovery. The conversation closes with Elena’s gentle invitation to listeners: keep dreaming, even if you have to do it in secret for a while, find comfort in yourself when others cannot hold it for you and trust that there is always room for better things ahead.

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This episode of ABWilson’s Heart of the Matter, guest Francoise Palau-Wolffe explores how one person’s conviction, compassion and courage can ripple outward to transform communities. 

From her early inspiration in Avignon, where a political dissident’s story led her to Amnesty International, to her current work as founder and executive director of the Human Rights Education Network (HUREN) in Bermuda, Francoise shares a powerful journey grounded in fairness, human dignity and an unwavering intolerance for injustice. She reflects on being described as principled, caring and a go getter, explaining how speaking up for what is right, even without overthinking the consequences, has guided her activism, teaching and leadership.

Listeners will hear how Francoise helped design and deliver an Intro to Human Rights course with Bermuda College, bringing together Bermuda and Geneva based students and local experts to help participants see human rights as omnipresent in their everyday lives. She tells a moving story of a school based Amnesty International “Write for Rights” campaign where students wrote letters on behalf of prisoners of conscience and witnessed one young man’s release, illustrating the power of one multiplied by millions. 

Beyond her advocacy, Francoise opens up about her love of flamenco dance and the almost spiritual experience of duende, her multilingual path through English, French, Spanish and Quechua, and her deep appreciation for literature, art and nature as sources of solace and joy. Throughout the conversation, she highlights the importance of rest as resistance, the quiet strength of family support and her belief in the passion and leadership potential of Bermuda’s young people, inviting listeners to see their own capacity to build bridges, challenge injustice and make the world a better place from wherever they are.

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In this episode of the ABWilson Heart of the Matter podcast, host Aderonke Bademosi Wilson welcomes leadership expert and Workplace Success Group founder Karen Hinds for a deeply thoughtful conversation about the power of authenticity, courage and cultural awareness in leadership. Karen’s story begins with her Caribbean roots, where community, hard work and resilience shaped how she views influence and responsibility. 

Her journey from the corporate world to entrepreneurship offers a window into what it means to lead with purpose, create inclusive spaces and build teams grounded in trust and belonging.

Throughout the conversation, Karen shares how she helps organizations move beyond diversity checkboxes to create environments where people feel valued and heard. She emphasizes that true inclusion requires courage, the courage to listen, to question and to lead differently. Her insights are practical and soulful, reminding us that leadership is as much about personal growth as professional achievement. Listeners will hear reflections on mentorship, legacy and what it takes to stay grounded while reaching for success.

Karen’s thoughtful approach invites all of us to reflect on the kind of leaders we want to be. She reminds us that leadership is not confined to job titles; it is about actions that inspire others to rise, to participate and to belong. Her words linger as a call to lead from the heart, cultivate empathy and make space for every voice at the table.

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In this inspiring episode of ABWilson’s Heart of the Matter, host Aderonke Bademosi Wilson sits down with Dawnese Openshaw, a self-described change agent, visionary, and impact-maker who brings warmth, clarity, and deep intention to every space she enters.

Dawnese shares a powerful idea that shapes how she leads: she aims to be a thermostat, not a thermometer. Instead of simply reading the energy in a room, she focuses on influencing it by adding value, opening possibilities and supporting people to see themselves differently. 

She reflects on life experiences that helped her develop this approach, including running for public office, serving on community commissions and navigating challenging leadership conversations.

The conversation also explores Dawnese’s work around emotional regulation and co-regulation, including practical ways to pause, name emotions and respond with intention. She explains how being present, leading with curiosity and making requests instead of demands can strengthen relationships at home and at work.

This episode is a thoughtful reminder that meaningful change begins with how we show up, one moment at a time and that personal growth creates ripples far beyond ourselves.

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