How do you trust your intuition when you're starving? Ask the first woman to win the survival show Alone.

Woniya Thibeault is a naturalist and ancestral skills teacher. Long before the show, she was bending herself to fit a marriage that wasn't working, no matter how hard she tried. Her body refused. She started to get panic attacks so bad she couldn't run anymore. She left at 27 and learned to treat her body as an ally instead of something to push through. That's what got her through 73 days on Alone Season 6, where she walked off on her own terms rather than let a group of men decide for her body. Woniya went back for Alone: Frozen and won. She'd spent years trying to become a mom, and it only happened once she let go: a surprise pregnancy at 47, her son Hawthorne at 48. Today she's raising him on her own land in her hometown while teaching people to rewild themselves.

🎯 In this episode:

- How to trust your intuition and listen to your gut

- How to listen to your body when your brain says push through

- Is it intuition or fear talking? How Woniya tells the difference

- Why she chose to leave Alone on her own terms

- Surviving the Arctic in handmade buckskin and traditional gear

- Asking trees for permission (and the birch that fed her)

- Becoming a mother at 48, after letting go

▶️ Watch the full episode now.

Subscribe to Heartful Wonders for new conversations every other Tuesday about following your heart when the path isn't clear.

👤 About Woniya Thibeault:

Woniya Thibeault is a naturalist, craftsperson, and ancestral skills instructor whose work helps people live more connected to the natural world. She is best known for her two wilderness adventures on the History Channel's survival show Alone®. She credits her ability to survive long-term in harsh northern climates not to brute strength, but to her commitment to living with the land in a humble, respectful, and reciprocal way. Her debut memoir, Never Alone: A Solo Arctic Survival Journey, tells the story of her weeks alone in the Arctic wilderness during Alone® Season 6. Learn more, order the book, or join her online community at www.woniyathibeault.com.

💻 Woniya can be found:

Website: https://www.woniyathibeault.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/woniya_timelessways

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/buckskin.revolution/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJqeQWXKz7vpLnu8Sde7Xrg

✨ About Vlada Bortnik:

Vlada Bortnik arrived in the U.S. from Ukraine as a refugee at 11. She went on to co-found Marco Polo, a video messaging app that helps people feel close, with over 10 million downloads, 2.5 million five-star reviews, and a Webby Award. The company remains independent and profitable, with no ads. Newsweek named her to its Most Loved CEOs list, and Anthem named her Product Leader of the Year. She built Marco Polo alongside her husband Michał while raising two young children, and she's open about what it takes to do both.

💻 Vlada can be found:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vlada

Substack: https://heartfulwonders.substack.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vladabortnik

Marco Polo: https://www.marcopolo.me/

📎 Resources mentioned:

Never Alone: A Solo Arctic Survival Journey by Woniya Thibeault (Amazon): https://www.amazon.com/Never-Alone-Arctic-Survival-Journey/dp/1960303007

Alone on the History Channel: https://www.history.com/shows/alone

Woniya's Patreon (monthly gatherings + Alone watch parties): https://www.patreon.com/woniyabuckskinrevolution

Episode is produced by:

Mun Yee Kelly: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mun-yee-kelly-769868/

#HeartfulWonders #WoniyaThibeault #AloneShow #AncestralSkills #Intuition #Rewilding #NeverAlone

How do you know if you're making the right decision? Yong Kim picks whichever option scares him most. He says it's always the right call.

Yong Kim is the co-founder and CEO of Wonolo, a workforce platform he's been building for twelve years, and the author of the novel When River Loves Deborah. He talks with Vlada Bortnik about coming to the U.S. from Korea at 15, the night he tried to run away from boarding school, why every major decision in his life has come from picking the scariest option, and the 2 AM journaling habit that became his first novel.

In this episode:

- Coming to the U.S. from South Korea at 15, and the night he almost ran away from boarding school

- The teacher who fought for him, and Yong's case for second chances

- Reading his own essay about racism in front of the entire school

- Leaving a stable Wall Street career with three young kids and a mortgage to start Wonolo

- How to know if you're making the right decision, and the question Yong asks himself at every hard moment

- Why every pivotal decision Yong has made has come from picking the option that scared him most

- The fear of making the wrong decision, and why Yong says there are no what-ifs when the choice is truly yours

- The reframe that all emotions stem from love — hate is soured love, fear is wounded love

- Why suffering can be a sign your heart is online, not a sign something's wrong

- The 2 AM journaling habit that became Yong's first novel, When River Loves Deborah

▶️ Watch the full episode now.

Subscribe to Heartful Wonders for new conversations every other Tuesday about following your heart when the path isn't clear.

👤 About Yong Kim:

Yong Kim was born in South Korea and immigrated to America alone at the age of fifteen. He earned a mathematics degree from the University of Chicago, a master's in statistics from Harvard University, and an MBA from Harvard Business School. He began his career as an economic consultant and investment banker before discovering his passion for entrepreneurship. Today, he is the founder and CEO of Wonolo, a leading workforce solution backed by top Silicon Valley investors. He is also the author of the novel When River Loves Deborah. He is a devoted husband and father of three daughters, splitting his time across Philadelphia, Boston, and San Francisco.

💻 Yong can be found:

- Website: https://wonolo.com

- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yongkookkim/

- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yongkimauthor/

✨ About Vlada Bortnik:

Vlada Bortnik arrived in the U.S. from Ukraine as a refugee at 11. She went on to co-found Marco Polo, a video messaging app that helps people feel close, with 10 million+ downloads, 2.5 million five-star reviews, and a Webby Award. It's still independent and profitable, and it runs with no ads. Newsweek named her to its Most Loved CEOs list, and Anthem named her Product Leader of the Year. She built the company alongside her husband Michał while raising two young children, and she's open about what it takes to do both.

💻 Vlada can be found:

- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vlada

- Substack: https://heartfulwonders.substack.com/

- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vladabortnik

- Marco Polo: https://www.marcopolo.me/

📎 Resources mentioned:

- When River Loves Deborah by Yong Kim (Amazon): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DNFRYHX5

- The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka — the book Yong struggled with in his boarding-school English class (Project Gutenberg): https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5200

#HeartfulWonders #PersonalGrowth #Mindset #EmotionalIntelligence #HealingJourney #Mindfulness #Podcast

Mina Lee had the promotions, the thousand-dollar dinners, the career everyone wanted. And she felt lonely.

Her family invested more than a million dollars in her education, hard-earned immigrant money after everything they owned was taken in China's Cultural Revolution. Mina delivered: BCG, the World Bank, Chief of Staff at Xiaomi. Then she walked away, not toward another job, but toward herself. Today she coaches founders and leads East West Bridge. This is the conversation about how she found her way home.

In this episode:

- Why achieving everything can deepen loneliness instead of fixing it

- Walking away from an elite career (BCG, the World Bank, Xiaomi) to follow your heart

- The immigrant pressure to succeed, and the weight of carrying it

- How desperation became an unexpected gift, and learning to receive after a life of self-reliance

- Improv, music, and living instead of rehearsing your life

- Self-care as melting into awareness

- Letting the body catch up when the heart has raced ahead

00:00 Intro

01:34 A heart that was always there (Sailor Moon)

02:18 Having everything, and feeling lonely

03:30 The loneliness underneath: "I missed myself"

04:59 Improv, music, and no wrong notes

07:15 Rehearsing your life instead of living it

09:06 A perfect life made the emptiness obvious

09:47 Walking away, and her brother's love

11:34 Her father's stroke, and desperation as a gift

16:35 From music to coaching (meeting Joe)

23:22 Tea, energy, and self-care

33:59 Resting as melting into awareness

37:39 Letting the body catch up

▶️ Watch the full episode now.

Subscribe to Heartful Wonders for new conversations every other Tuesday about following your heart when the path isn't clear.

👤 About Mina Lee:

Mina is a coach and facilitator working with founders and teams to live an open-hearted life. Her East–West approach integrates business strategy, somatics, and attachment. She also hosts Chan tea meditation retreats.

💻 Mina can be found:

Website: https://www.minajlee.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/minalee/

✨ About Vlada Bortnik:

Vlada Bortnik is the CEO and co-founder of Marco Polo, the video messaging app designed to help people feel close without sacrificing time, privacy, or wellbeing. A Ukrainian refugee who arrived in the U.S. at 11, she built the company alongside her husband Michał while raising two young children, guided by her belief that technology should strengthen human connection, not exploit it. Today, she leads Marco Polo as a profitable, mission-driven company and speaks candidly about balancing parenthood and entrepreneurship while building ethical technology that scales.

💻 Vlada can be found:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vlada

Substack: https://heartfulwonders.substack.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vladabortnik

Marco Polo: https://www.marcopolo.me/

📎 Resources mentioned:

The Body Keeps the Score (Bessel van der Kolk): https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/313183/the-body-keeps-the-score-by-bessel-van-der-kolk-md/

Art of Accomplishment (Joe Hudson): https://www.artofaccomplishment.com/

Episode is produced by:

Mun Yee Kelly: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mun-yee-kelly-769868/

#HeartfulWonders #FollowingYourHeart #PersonalGrowth #HealingJourney #CareerChange #SelfDiscovery

Tom McAuley spent 15 years building companies and drinking through the pressure, until it all came apart during COVID.

Tom is a social entrepreneur, and in this conversation he and Vlada don't skip the hard parts. They go back to the kid who felt uncomfortable in his own skin, the performance anxiety that started with one missed shot, the years he drank to quiet it, and the collapse that nearly ended things. What he found on the other side wasn't a five-year plan. It was running, sobriety one night at a time, and learning to trust that life is happening for him, not to him.

In this episode:
• Why you can't think your way into feeling better, and what actually shifts it
• Choosing faith over fear as a daily practice, not a one-time decision
• The reframe that changes everything: that life is happening for you, not to you
• Hitting rock bottom, addiction, and the first small steps back to yourself
• Letting go of doing it all, and the relief of trusting life
• How a single moment of performance anxiety can shape decades
• Learning to be seen while building something no one else can see yet
• The "divine irony" of building a conscious alternative to sports betting after his own recovery

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
01:48 The unconscious journey and "the perfection of it all"
05:52 The basketball story: uncomfortable in his own skin
10:48 How drinking became the solution
22:56 Letting go of doing it all
34:53 Hitting bottom and the reframe that changed everything
40:30 His niece, and deciding to change

▶️ Watch the full episode now.
Subscribe to Heartful Wonders for new conversations every other Tuesday about following your heart when the path isn't clear.

👤 About Tom McAuley:
Tom McAuley is the founder of Upside, building a conscious alternative to existing sports betting apps. He's spent 15 years as an entrepreneur, came through addiction and the hardest chapter of his life, and now channels everything he learned into helping people struggling with mental health and addiction.

💻 Tom can be found:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-mcauley-b7942838/

✨ About Vlada Bortnik:
Vlada Bortnik arrived in the U.S. from Ukraine as a refugee at 11. She went on to co-found Marco Polo, a video messaging app that helps people feel close, with 10 million+ downloads, 2.5 million five-star reviews, and a Webby Award. It remains independent and profitable with no ads. Newsweek named her to its Most Loved CEOs list. Anthem named her Product Leader of the Year. She built the company alongside her husband Michał while raising two young children, and she's open about what it takes to do both.

💻 Vlada can be found:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vlada
- Substack: https://heartfulwonders.substack.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vladabortnik
- Marco Polo: https://www.marcopolo.me/

📎 Resources mentioned:
• Rich Roll on Overcoming the Uncertainty of 2020, Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais (the "within struggle lies opportunity" reframe): https://findingmastery.com/podcasts/rich-roll-3/
• Clip: "Within Struggle Lies Opportunity" (Rich Roll x Michael Gervais): https://www.youtube.com/shorts/LbEvMsb7VTs

Episode is produced by:
Mun Yee Kelly: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mun-yee-kelly-769868/

#HeartfulWonders #PersonalGrowth #AddictionRecovery #SpiritualAwakening #FaithOverFear #Sobriety

If you're barely keeping it together, you're probably operating from fear. Rebecca Arora on what to do about it.

Rebecca Arora is an executive coach and the author of Somatic Intelligence. She's a former tech co-founder turned somatic-intelligence coach to leaders at Google, Salesforce, and IDEO. She was in her late 20s when she found herself crying in the office bathroom, building the career she was "supposed to" build. Her body knew before her mind did. She left for Esalen, trained in structural bodywork with William "Dub" Lay, and built a practice around the insight that "keeping it together" is often fear in disguise.

In this episode:

• The 4:35 AM bathroom moment that ended Rebecca's tech career
• What structural bodywork reveals about stored trauma (and why the pain isn't being done to you)
• Three patterns of how high-achievers operate from fear at work
• Why "keeping it together" usually means fear is running you
• Marshall Goldsmith's "what got you here won't get you there," applied to drive
• Living in technicolor versus driven-from-trauma life
• Pace, posture, pliability as everyday somatic on-ramps

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebeccaarora/
• Website: https://www.accessalignment.com/
• Book: https://www.somaticintelligence.com/
• Substack: https://accessalignment.substack.com/

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vlada
• Substack: https://heartfulwonders.substack.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vladabortnik
• Marco Polo: https://www.marcopolo.me/

• Somatic Intelligence (book): https://www.somaticintelligence.com/
• Access Alignment: https://www.accessalignment.com/

Gary Vaynerchuk wrote Sehreen Noor Ali a check after a 5-minute meeting, and President Biden heard her pitch. Sleuth still didn't make it.

Sehreen Noor Ali co-founded Sleuth, a venture-backed pediatric AI platform Fast Company recognized as a World-Changing App in 2024. The startup eventually closed. The reckoning that followed shaped what she now teaches senior leaders through Te Cura Labs about positioning and identity. In this conversation she traces the hospital moment that opened her up, the years of inner work that followed, and the reframe of purpose that emerged on the other side.

In this episode:

• The moment in her daughter's hospital room when she chose meaning-making over collapse
• Why "every cosmic sign said yes" didn't mean Sleuth would succeed
• The reframe: life is more interesting than chasing one purpose
• How anger becomes a teacher when you let it move through you instead of holding it
• The shift from measuring success by what you produce to how present you can be
• Recalibrating to yourself as the filter for what's true, instead of outsourcing it to experts

Derek Haswell co-founded 10% Happier, and even on day 8 of a silent retreat, he was still performing for no one.

Derek built 10% Happier over a decade, working with the best meditation teachers in the world. He'd been doing inner work all along. Eight years ago, sobbing in bed next to his sleeping three-year-old, he saw his own proving-yourself wound already showing up in his son's body. Then in 2020, day 8 of a silent retreat, sitting in the sun and holding his belly in for nobody, the same wound cracked open at a different level. The years that followed reshaped his life: he saw the shield he'd been using in his marriage (a hypothetical husband he was always beating in his head), left 10% Happier to coach mission-driven founders, and a year and a half ago had a five-minute conversation with his wife about what the next nine years should look like. They both already knew the answer was a farm. Their hearts had been pulling them there for years, and now they're building it in Upstate NY together.

In this episode:

• The silent-retreat moment that exposed the unworthiness wound underneath a decade of meditation work
• Why "falling in love with yourself" does what willpower can't (and how a late-night snack proves it)
• The "hypothetical American husband" shield that was recycling the same fights in his marriage
• What he saw in his sleeping 3-year-old that cracked open his parenting frame
• Why awakening doesn't have to look like Eckhart Tolle's bench moment
• The five-minute conversation with his wife that ended with them choosing to build a farm together

Jane Chen founded Embrace, the nonprofit behind life-saving infant warmers that have helped save over a million premature babies in underserved communities. She's also a TED speaker and the author of Like a Wave We Break. In this conversation, Jane traces the childhood violence she didn't connect to her work for a decade, the burnout that forced the reckoning, and what it took to feel worthy of her own life again. They go all the way back to Jane's early-20s career pivot, when one New York Times article moved her enough to quit consulting for unpaid work in central China. From there, the conversation tracks the decade she spent building Embrace, the moment the company shut down, and the healing journey that followed.

In this episode:

• Why high achievers are often running from something they haven't named yet
• The childhood pattern that shapes whose pain you're drawn to fix
• What 13 years of secret beta blockers before every public talk really cost
• The "ideal father" exercise that didn't work, and the photo that did
• Why no one else can give you the words "you are enough"
• The Diana Chapman question that took years to grow into
• Quitting a cushy consulting job for unpaid work in China, and why her body knew first
• Parts work, inner-child healing, and the Indonesia healing journey after Embrace shut down

Eric Ries spent a decade building LTSE. The night it almost died, his body responded like it was dying too.

Eric Ries (author of The Lean Startup and the new book Incorruptible, founder of the Long-Term Stock Exchange) sits down with Vlada to walk through the part of founder life that almost never gets published: what happens to your body when the company you built starts to fail, and how naming what therapists call ego identification changed the work he's done since.

In this episode:

• Growing up in a family of doctors, and the IBM XT computer his father brought home that changed everything• The night LTSE almost died, and what ego identification feels like in the body• The board meeting Eric was sure would end his career, and how it became Lean Startup• Why he calls VC forecasts "a kabuki ritual"• How Costco's founder Jim Sinegal predicted Groupon's collapse with one phrase: "taking heroin"• Cloudflare's "be principled" value and the encryption decision it cost them• Why shareholder primacy isn't actually law, and how one conversation with one friend can puncture it• Eric's zero-courage tactic for changing any company from the inside

Subscribe to Heartful Wonders — conversations about following your heart when the path isn't clear. New episodes every other Tuesday.

👤 About Eric Ries:

Over the last two decades, Eric Ries's ideas about continuous innovation, long-term thinking, governance, and market reform have reshaped company building and management practices. He is the creator of the Lean Startup method, and the author of the New York Times bestseller The Lean Startup; The Leader's Guide; and The Startup Way.

As a founder, he has put his own ideas into practice with The Long-Term Stock Exchange (LTSE); Answer.AI, an AI R&D lab; Virgil, a legal services startup; and IMVU. On The Eric Ries Show, he talks with world-class technologists, thought leaders, and executives building for the long-term. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and three children.

💻 Eric can be found:

Website: https://www.ericries.coLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eries/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ericriesactual/X: https://x.com/ericriesNewsletter: https://news.theleanstartup.com/Podcast: https://www.ericriesshow.com/Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@theericriesshowNew Book — Incorruptible: https://www.amazon.com/Incorruptible-Shape-Companies-That-Stand/dp/B0FWZZBPZB

✨ About Vlada Bortnik:

Vlada Bortnik is the CEO and co-founder of Marco Polo, the video messaging app designed to help people feel close without sacrificing time, privacy, or wellbeing. A Ukrainian refugee who arrived in the U.S. at 11, she built the company alongside her husband Michał while raising two young children, guided by her belief that technology should strengthen human connection, not exploit it. Today, she leads Marco Polo as a profitable, mission-driven company and speaks candidly about balancing parenthood and entrepreneurship while building ethical technology that scales.

💻 Vlada can be found:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladaSubstack: https://heartfulwonders.substack.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vladabortnikMarco Polo: https://www.marcopolo.me/

📎 Resources mentioned:

Answer.AI: https://www.answer.ai/

Mun Yee Kelly: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mun-yee-kelly-769868/

#HeartfulWonders #LeanStartup #EricRies #Founders #MissionDriven

Cheyanne Donald was born on a gold mine in Alaska. Her parents were hippies. Their nearest neighbors lived eight miles away. She grew up skiing under full moons, building a house, and believing there was no wrong decision. Just a decision.

At a young age she moved to California with fifty dollars in a duffel bag and a phone number for a Taekwondo instructor. From there, she built a life that didn't follow anyone's plan. She taught herself bodywork by reading every book her dad threw on a shelf for her. She studied every modality she could find. She raised her daughter alone, worked four jobs at a time when she needed to, and built a 30-year practice entirely by word of mouth. She also became an artist who runs festivals in Santa Cruz under a business she calls White Rabbit.

In this episode, Cheyanne and Vlada Bortnik talk about what it takes to build a life on your own terms. The ego trap of trying to be the magic. The discipline of staying out of your own way. And what changes when you stop treating society's path as the only one.

▶️ Watch the full episode now.

👤 About Cheyanne Donald:

Cheyanne Donald is a Bay Area artist and creative force whose work blends art-making, community building, and thoughtful curation. She is the creative mind behind White Rabbit Social Club, a community-oriented art and vendor collective she built from the ground up to give makers and artists the space, support, and audience she wished she had when she started vending her own work.

💻 Cheyanne can be found:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/white_rabbit_ink_/
• Website: https://wearethewhiterabbit.com/

✨ About Vlada Bortnik:

Vlada Bortnik is the CEO and co-founder of Marco Polo, the video messaging app designed to help people feel close without sacrificing time, privacy, or wellbeing. A Ukrainian refugee who arrived in the U.S. at 11, she built the company alongside her husband Michał while raising two young children, guided by her belief that technology should strengthen human connection, not exploit it. Today, she leads Marco Polo as a profitable, mission-driven company and speaks candidly about balancing parenthood and entrepreneurship while building ethical technology that scales.

💻 Vlada can be found:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vlada
• Substack: https://heartfulwonders.substack.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vladabortnik
• Marco Polo: https://www.marcopolo.me/

📎 Resources mentioned:

• White Rabbit Social Club: https://wearethewhiterabbit.com/