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Marsha-Ann Donaldson is an advocate and mentor helping women find the courage to take up space in their lives and live with purpose and unspeakable joy. Her perspective, however, is not one shaped by a need for perfection. She says that we are all beautifully chipped and broken mosaic tiles, and those fractures are a part of life to be expected and indeed cherished. Through the fractures and brokenness, the muscles of our souls are strengthened and refined. It’s that brokenness and those fractures that spark the need for radical transformation in our lives. Not next week, not next month, not next year, but now! Today.

Yet how do we take that leap of faith to begin the process of change? A lot of prayer and mindfulness. She says, “You have to reclaim your soul. You have to reclaim your life. It’s time to look internally and clean up the messes of our minds and our hearts.” And Marsha-Ann gives us resoundingly clear steps to start this spring cleaning of our beings. We have to take back the power of our voices that we have given away to other people and speak truth over our lives. We have to look at our lives through the lens of lessons learned and not regrets to be mourned over, because even the missteps are a part of the DNA of our lived experiences. And most importantly, if there are people, situations, behaviors in our lives that no longer serve us, we must let them go!

How we accomplish these steps, and much more, is at the core of our conversation this week.

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Kristy Whitford has worked in spa and wellness for two decades, running some of the top spas in the world, including the Beverly Hills Hotel & Bungalows. Not bad for a woman who has faced homelessness, the lack of guidance from her parents in her life and had to fight for all she has achieved. In our conversation, Kristy (now the founder of the thriving hospitality and lifestyle brand The Hotel Club) and I pull back the curtain to give you a peak into the financial complexities, the social power, and the reach of the modern spa industry. A multibillion-dollar industry that is driven by strong personal relationships, and the desire of those who work in this space to give each person coming through our doors a safe place to land. Along the way, Kristy reveals why she took a 1200-mile journey to Coeur d’Alene, ID, and how that car ride and the encounter she had there changed her life… forever.

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You Have to Know the Power and Emotionality of Your Own Voice.

“You cannot please everyone. So you just have to be your own self and believe in your journey and learn about yourself the most. You have to be strong," says internationally acclaimed operatic countertenor Jakub Jozef Orlinski. His singing career is ascendant. His performances have been heralded at the great opera houses of the world – including The Metropolitan Opera in New York, The Royal Opera House at Covent Garden in London, and The Theatre Des Champs-Elysees in Paris. His recitals from Chile to Poland, Germany to the United States are sold out. And his lyrical and emotionally impactful alto voice has earned Jakub the praise of the public AND the critics who have called him “angelic,” and a singer who is making the opera relatable and sexy.

Behind the applause, he is a committed artist who recounts initially being rejected by top music programs globally, rejected for summer internships, and losing first round in competitive vocal competitions. He recalls of his beginnings, “There was constantly a fight for a place. Constantly.” What got him through those rough times and sustains him today in the unrelenting scrutiny of fame and success is focusing on the quality of the art he is making, believing in his journey, and owning and knowing his voice.

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As we launch this third season of At the Podium, I am humbled and excited to share with you our new theme: Legacy. Thank you for joining me as we explore the tangible and intangible impacts we make in the spaces we occupy- our lives, our careers, our relationships, our loves, and our dreams.

The guests in this season are spectacular, dynamic humans, each facing the successes and struggles of their lives to find a space where their talents and passions can shine, where their impact can be felt. I am honored to share this journey with them, and I am sure you will find their words, laughter, and humanity as uplifting as I have.

Among and between these storytellers, scribes and superheroes is a serendipitous weaving of narratives and lessons learned.

• Live without judgment, and only seek the lessons and the blessings of life.
• If you want more from your life, it is found in the discomfort of risk taking; comfortability is not part of the recipe of a life well lived.
• Ask the hard questions, because you can survive the hard answers.
• As you create a way for yourself, remember those upon whose broad shoulders you stand, and create a path for others to come along and beside you.
• Representation matters. Our faces must be seen. Our voices must be heard.
• You owe no one an explanation for the choices you make.
• When life breaks you, it is creating a space for the light to come through and for the healing to begin.

Today, we launch this new season with Regina Bain. If you are new to At the Podium, it has become a tradition to start each season with her wise words and friendship. For the many of you who have been with me on this exploration of humanity from the beginning, Regina once again brings the fullness of herself and her experiences to the ATP microphone. She does not disappoint! Since we last met with Regina, her work as the Executive Director of the Louis Armstrong House Museum and its support of the U.S. Department of State’s Art in Embassies Program have taken her to Bahrain and Germany. Globally, she is spreading the legacy of Armstrong and his music as a function of his genius artistry and activism, but also as a function of diplomacy and statecraft. She is also contemplating the spaces she wants to create where her own artistic life can re-flourish. As she has built buildings and concepts and held space for others’ artistic expressions, she will now build and hold space for herself.

Regina comes to us today with contemplative wisdom derived from intentional living and soul exploration. And she comes with provocative questions that she is asking us and herself. Is your life worthy of being remembered? Is your story worth being told? Are you ready to feel the bumps of life, press up against them and learn from them? Are you ready to search, to ask the questions, to find the answers?

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Kristen McGuiness is a successful author of books such as her memoir 51/50: The Magical Adventures of the Single Life and her debut novel, Live Through This. She has also founded her own publishing company called Rise Books where her mission is to publish what she describes as “radical works of inspiration.” Kristen is also the daughter of Dan McGuiness – one of the largest and most consequential marijuana smugglers of the 1970s and 1980s. She describes him as “one of the architects of the modern drug trade.”

His story and their relationship she detailed in an article for Rolling Stone Magazine called, Learjets, Mistresses, and Bales of Weed: My Dad’s Life as Drug Kingpin. While TV and films often glamourize this existence, Kristen’s life was one of missing a father who existed for her solely in weekend phone calls from the prisons that tried to keep him under lock and key for decades – Dan escaped three times – and the letters he would send home. Her relationship to his story and to his business and how it impacted her life is complex. There are no heroic apologies from Dan to Kristen. He expresses no real remorse for the lives that might have been negatively impacted by his drug smuggling. Kristen herself at times speaks poignantly about how much her dad had her deep love and devotion, and the other times, she labels him a sociopath.

There exists a hard truth that comes through in our conversation and in her writings of what it was like to love her dad so much, even as he loved equally, if not more, the rush he got from being addicted to crime - "the juice" as she describes it. Her views of her life and who Dan McGuniess was are both heartbreaking and provocative; there is not the neat and easy good guy/bad guy trope that we usually expect from this type of story.

Mostly, we find ourselves at the tip of the needle, dancing on a point that pricks our feet while we stay as upright as we can, clinging to dear life.

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The Mind of an Athlete. Show Up and Do the Grunt Work. 

Here we are in February. How are those New Year’s Resolutions going for you? Fortune.com tells us that by the second Friday of January, most people have already missed the mark on their resolutions. It even has a name – “Quitter’s Day.”

Dr. Darian Parker, the 2023 IDEA Personal Trainer of the Year Recipient, is a multihyphenate entrepreneur, athlete, and a man of faith. And he is breaking open myths. On what it takes to be a Division-1 Student Athlete competing at elite levels (he was a sprinter at James Madison University). On the interior work he has to do to be a good father (as he says, “I’m always working on the inner me, so that I can help develop a better inner person for another person.”). On the reality that life is lived at its best and realest without guarantees or known outcomes but is founded on authentic love for our fellow human beings (as a professed man of faith, he is looking to love people authentically). And a question that I have pondered often – do we have to love our jobs, or is something different going on in respect to what we do versus who we are in our souls?

Through his work with clients over the last two decades, Darian has learned that all we can rely on is our ability to build true relationships with one another and to make a commitment to show up every day even when the outcomes are unknown or don’t go our way. In his work as a personal trainer, he won’t promise his clients that they will get that long sought after six-pack or hit that number they are looking for on the scale. Oftentimes, those type of results are based on circumstances that only the client can control – the quality of their sleep, what they are actually eating, how are their personal relationships impacting their lives? Darian will guarantee that he will show up every day and be ready to face the challenge of working out alongside them. The bigger factor in the equation is will they show up for themselves.

In a time when so many seek quick results and instant fame, IG likes and the social media viral moments, Darian believes that one’s life doesn’t bloom under the bright lights of fame, accolades, or ego. Instead, it is a nuanced dance performed in the powerful spaces of the admission “I don’t know.” It is facing, even removing what he calls the Friction Points in our lives. For Dr. Parker, the real champions show up daily and do the monotonous grunt work that is a major and essential part of what we call living.

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In season two of At the Podium, the power of speaking and owning your truth came up in all the interviews of the show. As I asked each remarkable guest about their journeys to finding their own voices and what they wanted to say with the immense platforms they had, they all expressed the need to use their voices to help others, but also to speak truth over their own lives and lived experiences. Perhaps because we live in a time when the truth, when facts, when basic humanity are under threat, the ability to speak and own your truth becomes the ultimate commodity. What a privilege it is for us to speak our truths as a function of our humanity. It is a gift more precious than gold, because for so many of my guests, speaking the truth was the light that led the way to healing the broken places of their lives. And as they spoke their truths, the chains of shame, guilt, regrets fell away. When those stumbling blocks fall, reconciliation can begin. Acceptance can begin. Grace and forgiveness find a home. What a humbling and affirming experience it was for me to sit in fellowship with the incredible people who honored me, honored us with their time, their hearts, and their wisdom.

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Breaking  Bread Together, Building Human Connections & Honoring the Ancestors.

Nina Curtis is a world-renowned Vegan Chef. Her dishes have been savored on the palates of presidents and prime ministers, foreign dignitaries and political powerbrokers, and first grade students. Most recently she made history by becoming the first chef to prepare and serve an all plant-based meal at the White House’s State Dinner for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. When we talk about what led her to a life and a career built on veganism, her somewhat improbable journeys merged on the Venice Beach bodybuilding scene. Where eating a plant-based diet helped her performance and recovery in competitions. But the seeds for her love of food, ingredients and the process of curating and preparing a meal were planted within her by her parents. Her father is a technically trained French Chef, and her mom (whom Nina describes as the best cook she knows), is a formidable cook in her own right. 

Chef Curtis’ ethos today in the kitchen isn’t ego-driven or based upon her celebrity chef status. Instead, her guiding forces are the examples of her father and her mother. And her ancestors. Those black men and women who came before her who did not have the platform, the access nor the reach that she enjoys today, but who took the worst of ingredients they had to make tremendous food for their survival. And more importantly, they used the ingredients of life and food to build a culture. 

It’s the ever-present voices of her parents and the legacies of her ancestors of whom she says, “I’m always working to be quiet enough to hear their whispers and their guidance.” And their whispers tell her to humbly do your work, keep your head down and use food to build ally-hood and brotherhood and sisterhood among people, among governments, among nations. And to remember that the seeds she plants today, will have reverberations for centuries to come. 

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Black Boys Painting with All the Colors of the Rainbow. 

The New York Times called George M. Johnson’s memoir and manifesto All Boys Aren’t Blue “An exuberant, unapologetic memoir infused with a deep but clear-eyed love for its subjects. Johnson lays bare the darkest moments of his life with wit and unflinching vulnerability.” It’s also a book that has been banned in 8 states and 29 school districts for being what its vocal critics call sexually explicit, pornographic and inappropriate for kids. It is a shocking story in many ways. George doesn’t shy away from the rough and unimaginable moments of their life: being molested by a family member at 12 years old and how that colored their views of trust and intimacy throughout their life. What it felt like to get their two front teeth knocked out in a street fight coming home from school and how that thwarted their ability to want to smile growing up. And what it was like to have their first consensual sexual encounters without the knowledge or preparation for what that meant physically and emotionally. 

So, the book is uncomfortable and unexpected for the reader at times. Does it cross over into pornography and inappropriateness? Definitely not. 

If people are so disturbed by the account of George’s life, imagine what George felt living through it. The book is a beautiful and a necessary story, because as George says in our conversation, “All boys aren’t blue because we’re not a monolith. None of us have the same spirit. We all have different struggles we will go through. We all have a different journey. We all have a different path. And trying to force us to all be the same, trying to force us to be blue impedes the path and impedes the purpose of a person’s life.” 

George paints different, nuanced possibilities for black boys, pulling us from the obscurity of self-erasure into a declarative existence. What does it look like if you get to define for yourself who you are? What if you have a family unit that values love for you above all else? What if you find love and brotherhood and companionship with other black men, as opposed to just fearing one another? What if you get to paint with all the colors of the rainbow, not just blue?

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Author Nora Zelevansky and I have a nuanced conversation about Roll Red Roll: Rape, Power, and Football in the American Heartland. A book that she and Nancy Schwartzman wrote based on Schwartzman’s documentary film about a tragic rape that happened in 2012 in Steubenville, OH. The crime gained national attention because it was the first assault broadcast on social media and changed our understanding of what going viral meant in the age of the internet 2.0. It blew the lid off what has been the country’s inability to grapple with our own complicity in creating a culture where young men casually assume the role of predator, and many young women are left to fend for themselves in harms’ way as friends, institutions and supposed trusted systems fail them. Nora and I delve into the intricate circumstances of the case: the concept of the perfect victim not being the perfect victim, how rigid gender roles contributed to the crime, and the phenomenon of slut-shaming. We ask the question is there a role for restorative justice in these cases and determined that if anyone’s child is to be safe, all children must be safe. And lastly, how do we break open the destructive “boys will be boys” mentality in our society that oftentimes rewards or excuses the idea that real manhood is rooted in dominating other people. It wasn’t an easy conversation, but a necessary one where we sought answers and understanding, not blame. 

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