Clover: Conversations with Women in Leadership on Visibility, Authority & Owning the Room

In this episode of Clover, I sit down with Bree Whitehead; entrepreneur, AI strategist, and someone who has been building long before AI became the conversation. What I loved about this discussion is how grounded and refreshing her perspective is. Instead of fear, she brings clarity. Instead of replacement, she talks about expansion.

We get into what it actually looks like to use AI in a way that supports your life, your work, and your growth—without losing what makes you human in the process.

In this episode, we cover:

• Bree’s journey from early entrepreneurship to building and exiting a media company and how she found her way into AI
• Why AI is an amplifier, not a replacement, and how it can actually restore our humanity
• The shift from reactive work to strategic thinking by removing friction and mental overload
• The invisible “context load” women carry—and how AI can help redistribute that weight
• What it looks like to build your own “life operating system” and stop waiting for permission to evolve

Resources & Tools Mentioned:

• Bree on LinkedIn
• JustBreeK website
• Anthropic Claude – Bree’s primary AI tool for day-to-day use
• Google Workspace + Gemini – an accessible ecosystem for running work with AI
• AI agents – task-specific “team members” to streamline workflows
• Conversation transcripts – capturing context to improve how AI supports you
• Binaural beats + AI-generated affirmations – Bree’s personal approach to mindset and self-audit

In this episode of Clover, I sit down with Dr. Neema Moore—chiropractor, author of Confidence NOW!, and founder of transformative wellness retreats—for a conversation that feels both grounding and expansive.

Dr. Neema’s journey doesn’t follow a straight line. From high school biology teacher to chiropractor to global wellness leader, she shares how one simple idea—choosing happiness—led her to completely pivot her career and build a life centered around healing, confidence, and impact. What stands out most is how much of her path came not from a rigid plan, but from saying yes to what felt aligned… even when it was uncomfortable.

We talk about what she sees every day in high-achieving women: the burnout, the pressure, the “holding it all together” on the outside while their bodies are telling a different story. From chronic stress and exhaustion to the deeper emotional weight women carry, Dr. Neema breaks down how success without self-connection shows up physically—and what we can do about it.

This conversation also goes deeper into:

•  Why driven women are actually the most at risk for burnout 
•  The importance of creating space to reconnect with yourself (and why retreats can be so transformative) 
•  What it really takes to build confidence—and why it only comes after you take the leap 
•  Letting go of waiting for permission and stepping fully into your own authority 
•  How to stop minimizing your accomplishments and start owning your story 

Dr. Neema shares powerful insight from her own life and her work with women around the world, including the mindset shifts that help you move from survival mode into alignment, clarity, and confidence.

If you’ve ever felt like you “should” have it all together—but inside you’re questioning everything—this episode is a reminder that you’re not alone… and that the next version of you is on the other side of one brave step forward.

And yes—Beyoncé makes an appearance, because confidence has a soundtrack. 💫

In this episode of Clover, I sit down with Marina Kay, an executive coach and breathwork practitioner who helps women lead, build, and grow their careers without burning themselves out in the process.

Marina shares the story of her own career journey, from working in HR consulting and sitting in Fortune 500 boardrooms to experiencing the intense pressure of startup culture while working at WeWork during its rise and fall. Along the way, she began noticing the toll that chronic stress and anxiety were taking on her body. What started as a search for relief eventually led her into yoga teacher training, health coaching, and ultimately the work she does today helping women build nervous system resilience.

We talk about the many ways anxiety and stress show up in the body, including signals many women overlook or normalize, like brain fog, poor sleep, digestion issues, and constant mental pressure. Marina explains how these patterns develop and why so many high-achieving women end up operating in survival mode without realizing it.

We also dive into the power of breathwork and nervous system regulation. Marina shares how she introduces these practices to founders, executives, and high-performing professionals who are used to operating in high-pressure environments. She also walks through a few simple breathing practices that anyone can use during the workday to calm their nervous system and regain focus.

This conversation is about more than stress management. It is about learning how to listen to your body, reconnect with yourself, and build a career and life that do not come at the cost of your well-being.

Resources & Mentions

• Women Who Breathe – Marina’s website and online community with breathwork resources, practices, and courses
• Women Who Breathe Community – Free access to guided breathwork recordings, somatic practices, meditations, and nervous system tools
• Marina Kay on LinkedIn – Connect with Marina professionally
• Women Who Breathe on Instagram and TikTok – Breathwork education, nervous system tips, and community updates
• In-person Austin breathwork session on March 10th - use code FIESTA for a discount on tickets
• March 25th free virtual session for any women who want to experience breathwork from home.

In this episode of Clover, I’m joined by Camille Ricketts, now a partner at XYZ Venture Capital and formerly a marketing leader at Tesla, First Round Capital, and Notion.

Camille’s career journey has been anything but linear—starting as a journalist at The Wall Street Journal, moving into communications at Tesla, where she worked directly with Elon Musk, then pioneering content marketing with First Round Review, and later scaling community-led growth at Notion. Today, she brings that breadth of experience to her work in venture capital, helping founders and startups thrive.

We cover:

• What it’s like to pivot when the path you’ve been working toward isn’t the right fit.
• Lessons from building Tesla’s early communications team and learning from Elon’s leadership style.
• How Camille created the First Round Review, one of the most influential startup content platforms.
• What it takes to scale community and user-led storytelling at Notion.
• Why understanding which “stage” of company you thrive in is essential to building your career.
• How Camille defines success today—by helping others rise and giving credit away.

Camille’s story is a reminder that careers aren’t ladders—they’re winding, evolving journeys built on curiosity, adaptability, and purpose.

Related links or mentions within the episode:

• Communities / Resources:
  • Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers, and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets (book)
  • 'Give Away Your Legos' and Other Commandments for Scaling Startups (article)
  • Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead (book)
• Social Media / Links:
  • Twitter/X: @CamilleRicketts
  • LinkedIn: Camille Ricketts

This week on Clover, I had the honor of sitting down with Celeste Mergens, bestselling author and founder of Days for Girls, a global movement that has reached nearly 4 million women and girls in 145 countries.

Celeste’s story is a powerful reminder that leadership doesn’t always begin with a master plan. She started out wanting to be an electrical engineer. Life rerouted her into motherhood, raising six children, and later completing two master’s degrees. Celeste is also the author of The Power of Days, where she shares the extraordinary story behind the global movement she founded. What she models so beautifully is that nothing is wasted; every season prepares you for the next.

Days for Girls began with a moment of awareness in rural Kenya. Celeste discovered that girls were missing school because they lacked access to menstrual products—and in some cases were being exploited just to obtain one. What began as 500 handmade kits sewn by volunteers grew, step by step, into a global movement.

In this conversation, we explore:

• Why menstruation remains one of the world’s most persistent taboos
• How silence around women’s bodies shapes power and opportunity
• What happens when girls reclaim authority over their biology
• The power of invitation over imposition in global leadership
• Why listening—not telling—has been central to Days for Girls’ impact
• What it means to trust the next step without seeing the full path

What struck me most is that this isn’t just about menstrual equity. It’s about dignity. It’s about rewriting a narrative that has labeled women’s bodies as shameful or untouchable—and choosing instead to see them as powerful.

Celeste didn’t set out to build a global organization. She followed invitations. She paid attention. She acted when she saw injustice. And she held a vision bigger than what felt “measurable and achievable.”

Without periods, there would be no people.

This episode is about shifting from silence to celebration—and what becomes possible when we’re courageous enough to talk about what the world told us not to.

Resources

Days for Girls - Website

Celeste Mergens - LinkedIn

The Power of Days - Book

In this very first episode of Clover, I chat with Amina Mohamed, founder of Cameras For Girls, an organization using photography and storytelling to help young women in Africa break into male-dominated media spaces.

Amina’s story begins with her family’s journey as refugees from Uganda to Canada, a career in film and television, and a life-changing return to Uganda that revealed the inequities facing girls denied education and opportunity. That experience inspired her to launch Cameras For Girls in 2017, which has since grown to serve cohorts of young women in Uganda and Tanzania, with a vision to expand across Africa.

We talk about:

• How Amina turned a late-night idea into a movement that’s changing lives.
• The importance of community-led solutions vs. imposing outside fixes.
• Navigating cultural and societal barriers with respect while pushing for change.
• Why mental health support and mentorship are just as critical as technical training.
• The ripple effect of one girl gaining skills and confidence—and teaching others.

Amina’s mission is bold: to impact 30,000 women across seven African countries by 2030. Her journey is proof that listening to your heart—and refusing to let fear win—can transform lives.

Related links or mentions within the episode:

• Communities / Resources:
  • Vital Voices (global women’s leadership community)
  • Nonprofit Hive (Canadian-run platform for nonprofit professionals)
  • We Are For Good (podcast + community, includes “Impact Uprising” events)
• Social Media / Links:
  • Website: Cameras For Girls
  • LinkedIn: Amina Mohamed
  • Instagram: @camerasforgirls

Want to support Cameras For Girls?

• Monthly or One-Time Donors
• Donate Used Cameras or Electronic Equipment

This episode is about a feeling I do not hear discussed very often, especially among women in leadership: having a career that looks successful on paper, but still not feeling settled, finished, or like you have “arrived.”

I am not sharing this as a complaint or a dramatic confession. It is an honest observation about how my career has actually unfolded. Over time, I have gained experience, responsibility, and perspective, but the moment I assumed would come—the one where everything feels certain and secure; never really did. What showed up instead was continued curiosity, change, and growth.

In this episode, I reflect on how that pattern formed and what it has taught me about leadership, ambition, and stability, including:

• How starting my career during the dot-com boom and bust in San Francisco taught me to operate in ambiguity long before I realized it
• The difference between ambition and restlessness, and why nonlinear growth is often misunderstood; especially for women
• Why choosing fit over optics can be one of the most confident leadership decisions you make
• How repeated market disruptions reshaped my understanding of stability, loyalty, and what leadership actually requires

If you thought you would feel more certain by now, or more finished, this episode is for you. You are not behind, and you are not failing to figure something out that everyone else has mastered. Some careers are not designed to arrive at a final destination.

They are meant to unfold; through recalibration, second acts, and choices that prioritize alignment over appearance. That belief sits at the heart of Clover, and it is why this show exists.

In this solo episode of Clover, I speak directly to the reality many women leaders are navigating right now.

The world feels frightening and unstable. Political volatility, economic uncertainty, organizational upheaval, and an unrelenting news cycle are not abstract background conditions. They affect how people lead, how decisions are made, and how much risk feels possible on any given day. Even leaders with long track records and strong résumés are operating inside systems that feel far less predictable than they did not long ago.

This episode names that fear without dramatizing it and without asking listeners to push past it. It acknowledges how deeply uncertainty seeps into leadership meetings, career decisions, and internal narratives, particularly for women who were taught to read signals, wait for alignment, and move once clarity arrived.

I share a grounding framework I return to during moments like this, shaped by personal experiences with layoffs, systemic collapse, and leadership without guarantees. The conversation examines why uncertainty so often gets internalized as self-doubt, how leadership strategies that worked in stable environments can fail in unstable ones, and why waiting for certainty or consensus can quietly erode authority.

The focus of the episode is agency. It offers practical questions that help leaders orient themselves to what is real, what is available, and what can still be decided, even when the broader system feels out of control.

In this episode, I cover:

• How political and economic instability changes the conditions of leadership
• Why uncertainty is often misread as a confidence problem, especially for women
• Three grounding questions that restore agency when clarity is not coming
• What it means to claim responsibility and make decisions without consensus or guarantees

You do not need certainty to lead. You need grounding, self-trust, and the willingness to decide where you stand.

In this episode of Clover, I sit down with Rosa Yupari, former Chief Revenue Officer turned fractional CRO and sales advisor, to talk about what actually drives sustainable revenue growth — and why so many companies stall long before they realize it.

Rosa shares her journey from engineering into sales, scaling teams to nearly $100M in revenue, and eventually stepping away from corporate leadership to build a practice rooted in mentoring, coaching, and real-world strategy. This is a candid, tactical conversation for founders, revenue leaders, and women navigating high-stakes leadership roles.

In this episode, we cover:

• Why small behaviors — not big strategy shifts — often determine whether revenue scales or stalls
• How “family culture” can limit sales performance, and what healthy collaboration really looks like
• The biggest mistakes founders make with early sales hires and enterprise expansion
• What strong sales leadership looks like in tough markets — and how managers actually motivate teams
• How AI is changing the way sales leaders analyze deals, coach teams, and stay strategic

Being the only woman in the room is rarely just a professional experience. It is a psychological one.

In this episode of Clover, we explore what happens internally when women navigate leadership spaces that were not designed with them in mind, and what it actually takes to stay steady inside those dynamics.

In this episode, we cover:

• Why being the only woman in the room creates a constant layer of self-monitoring and internal labor
• How awareness can quietly drain your energy when it gets turned inward as self-criticism
• The survival strategies many women develop, and how over-adaptation slowly erodes self-trust
• How to stay grounded before, during, and after high-stakes meetings in non-neutral rooms
• Practical ways to manage mixed signals and stop internalizing structural inconsistency
• What power actually looks like when you are outnumbered, and how to build it over time

If you have ever left a meeting feeling unsettled, questioned your readiness despite strong performance, or wondered whether you were imagining the dynamic, this conversation will resonate.

You are not too early. You are not too much. And you do not need to contort yourself to belong. I'm glad you're here.