Her Step Forward

Lauren Popish is founder of The Wave Podcasting, which aims to help womxn tell their unique stories through podcasting. The Wave offers education resources, event-based community, and recording studio space exclusively for womxn. Their first womxn-only recording studio opened in Los Angeles in February 2020. Lauren's passion for creating spaces that inspire comfort and confidence comes from her 10 year career in commercial interior design and real estate. When she isn't helping other womxn create podcasts, she hosts her own podcast, Book Wine Club.

---

Four years ago, in the middle of a routine presentation at work, Lauren Popish had a panic attack. As someone who had always been very comfortable speaking, and even being on stage, the experience was eye opening for her, because it showed her first-hand just how scary public speaking can be for so many people.

Dawn King is an attorney in Massachusetts.  She graduated from Northeastern University in Boston with a degree in Political Science and a minor in Business and holds her juris doctor from New England School of Law.  Dawn worked as an attorney at the City of Boston Law Department for 12 years until recently taking a position with a court in Worcester, Massachusetts.  Dawn has focused her legal career in the public sector, working as a state and municipal attorney.  Dawn has also been a fitness instructor for over 20 years teaching all styles of classes, including Zumba, Indoor Cycling, HIIT and Bootcamp classes.  In her "spare" time she also runs with her dog and does Half Marathons. Dawn and her husband love to be outside with their dog and travel, including visiting National Parks around the country.

---

We like to joke that Dawn King is an attorney by day, aerobics instructor by night, but as she explains, she’s been into fitness longer than anything else in her life, and having a fitness community over the years to lean on and learn from has proven to be an incredible stress reliever.

Most recently, Dawn found herself at a crossroads: continue her life in Boston, in a job she loved for 12 years, but one that limited the options she and her husband would have for buying a home in the congested city with a very high cost of living. Or, consider other career options that would provide more flexible housing options, and give her husband a chance to reduce his lengthy commute. As Dawn explains, it took a while to process the choices, and the job search quickly required a self-check, when the interview calls took longer than she would have guessed, based on her lengthy law career. Reflecting on the lessons learned in her career, and realizing that she needed to stay in the governmental law sector, instead of private, Dawn recently decided to take a leap of faith and leave the world of civil litigation for a new chapter in her law career.

Joining us to share her story, Dawn addresses the stereotype of the “good old boys’ club” in the legal industry, the lessons she learned from being fired early in her career, and the joys of being a fur mom and running partner for her adopted Dachshund-Jack Russell mix, Griffin.

Darcey Hull will soon be starting her residency in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation after slowly winding her way to this point. The arts, cultures, languages, and helping people have always been huge interests of Darcey’s. She has always loved traveling and outdoor adventures, and was always encouraged to explore and express herself by her parents. They took her and her brother hiking in the Rocky Mountains every summer growing up, had exchange students, and extensively traveled and lived abroad before starting a family. Darcey has always believed in and been interested in self-expression, and the positive transformation which it can bring, as a healing modality for all people. This is what kept Darcey interested in the Arts, and then pulled her into teaching yoga, studying Speech Language Pathology, and now into Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation.

Falling in love with the class was easy: it gave an opportunity to use her art skills as she drew and studied her work, and the subject matter was fascinating. After changing her major and finishing classes, Darcey had to decide: what would she do with a neuroscience degree?

Joining us to share her story, Darcey explains her journey from arts to physical medicine, the benefit of social interaction for patients and how she hopes to address that need one day, and the importance of travel, yoga, and meditation when it comes to staying balanced and pursuing the things that bring her joy.

Steph Cartwright is a Certified Resume Writer and the Founder of Off The Clock Resumes LLC. Since 2014, Steph has helped career-focused job seekers present themselves as the best fit for the job they want. She specializes in getting her clients through Applicant Tracking software, maximizing their networks and referral potential using LinkedIn, and eliminating the overwhelm from job searching with actionable job search plans. Steph completed her undergraduate degree in Human Resource Management online at Western Governors University while growing her online business. She's certified by the Professional Association of Resume Writers and Career Coaches and an active member of the National Resume Writers' Association. When she's not working, you'll either catch her lounging lakeside or cuddling her three dogs while watching Disney movies or something a bit nerdy like Harry Potter or Game of Thrones for the hundredth time.

---

Steph Cartwright loves her work. That’s a good thing for many of us, who feel intimidated, stressed out, or just plain frazzled as we sit down and try to make ourselves sound like the best candidate for the job.

As Steph explains it, she never saw resumes as a career path. She just wanted to pick a career that would support her lifelong love of writing - yet she knew that the options of journalism or teaching weren’t in the cards. Over the years, she experimented with all kinds of writing: marketing copy, social media planning, helping professors, and the list goes on. But it was an ad that she found by chance on a job board that would change her career path forever. After completing a very brief training session, she realized that she wanted to learn more about the art of writing great resumes: and the more she learned, the more interested she became in the work that calls for a focus on strategy, creativity, and personal branding.

Joining us to share her story, Steph opens up about the scam job that drove her to become an entrepreneur, growing her business as the job search and application process continually changes, and why it was so important to take a step back from it all and focus on her health.

Amber Marie has been working as a private chef and nutrition educator for about a decade in both South Florida and the Savannah/Hilton Head area where she currently resides. She holds a culinary degree from Johnson & Wales University, an education degree from New York University, and a law degree from CUNY School of Law. Prior to entering the culinary field, she was an attorney for the government in New York City - but her lifelong passion for cooking and a series of health challenges led her to reconsider her priorities. She has studied nutrition extensively to not only regain her own health but to better support her clients, and she seeks to inspire others with her shift from the "employee" mindset to the more creative lifestyle of the entrepreneur - which required her to face her lifelong struggles around vagueness with time and money as well as compulsive busyness.  In her free time, she enjoys writing poetry, yoga, nature photography, music, sailing, travel, pondering the spiritual dimensions of existence...and cats.

---

Being an attorney is often thought of as prestigious work, but as Amber Marie explains, the pressure and stress of the role led her to reconsider. Facing personal health challenges, and seeing how her health improved as she changed her diet, Amber realized that perhaps her true calling was to pursue a culinary and nutrition-focused career.

Shannon Russell has been a sports reporter for 20 years, with stops at The Athletic and The Cincinnati Enquirer. She has been honored with multiple national awards while covering everything from the NFL and Major League Baseball to professional tennis and high school sports. She has spent the last decade covering college basketball.

---

Shannon Russell had recently graduated college (where she majored in creative writing and journalism) and was having trouble finding many job options, until she discovered an opening at a small, local newspaper that was advertising an opening for a news reporter. Excited to have an opportunity, she applied for the job and got the interview - but, imagine her surprise when she learned that the job opening was actually for a sports reporter.

Anna Korosadowicz is an IT professional, currently working as Senior Producer on a popular free-to-play mobile game. In the past she worked as Localization Manager, Team Lead in Data QA, Head of Data Management and Product Manager for companies like Nokia, Apple and Kayak.

Anna is originally from Poland, and in her 20s she decided to pursue her lifelong dream to live a life full of adventures. The number one adventure was to try living abroad. Since then she has lived in Finland and Ireland, and she is currently living in Denmark with her partner.

She's a singer, song writer, traveler, scuba diver, and she is passionate about psychology and linguistics, and a few years ago Anna took up skateboarding. Anna lives strongly by the rule of "riding the waves of life" and giving in into unexpected chances life sometimes throws at us, even if they perhaps divert us from the original plan we already had meticulously put together. You never know what surprises may be waiting for you around the corner. All you need to say is "yes, I'll try that!"

---

Growing up as a child in Poland, Anna distinctly remembers what life was like living behind the Iron Curtain. For one, travel was rare - it was incredibly difficult to get a passport to leave Poland, or to even be able to afford travel. But that all changed when, at 8 years old, Anna and her mom had a chance to visit a friend who lived in Western Germany. She distinctly recalls traveling by bus, that smelled inside of gasoline, for a journey that would take 18-20 hours to complete. It was the moment of crossing from Eastern Germany to Western Germany that left a mark on her: the contrast between the dark, unlit streets of the Eastern block communities, and into a place that was lit with bright lights… the fast cars flying by… and even the different smells in the air. It was an experience that would forever change her and help to shape her way of thinking.

Anna knew from that moment, that she wanted to be able to experience the world. As she explains, when it’s very difficult to go somewhere, it makes you desire the trip even more.

That’s why today, travel for Anna is associated with freedom - her top value in life. After graduating from university in Poland, and not being able to find a job that would sustain a move out of her parent’s home, Anna ended up in Finland, where the laid back and relaxed culture showed her the importance of living a life with little stress.

Joining us to share her story, Anna talks about the role that music plays in her life, living in a country that values and supports men and women equally (Denmark), and the importance of pursuing a life full of adventures.

Dr. Jillian Losh is a Project Manager at the Houston Methodist Research Institute within the Texas Medical Center, the largest medical complex in the world. She currently provides project support to research teams, helping to ensure that future drug, device, and biologic therapies will be available to a variety of patient populations. Jill completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Houston-Downtown, where she majored in Microbiology with double minors in Biology and Chemistry. She then attended the MD Anderson Cancer Center UTHealth Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, earning a Ph.D. in Microbiology and Molecular Genetics. Jill is an enthusiastic supporter of the biomedical sciences, as both a scientist and an administrator. Jill was part of a team who oversaw the development of the first FDA-approved convalescent plasma therapy for COVID-19 and assisted in the therapy's transition to clinical trials. When she's not working, you can find her in Irish dance class, yoga class, or chauffeuring her dog to the park.

There’s so much we don’t know yet about COVID-19, and for those of us who don’t work in the scientific or medical communities, it’s even harder to keep up with the facts. We asked Jill to walk us through some of the basics of the science for the general public: the difference between a therapy and a cure, a closer look at convalescent plasma therapy - including its history and why her team decided to focus on this treatment, the meaning of the name COVID-19, and what’s it’s like to be part of a heavily-female team when the STEM community at large is known for being male-dominated.

Ann Hircshman Schremp considers herself a true dandelion. Born in Staten Island NY in 1946, her earliest activism was with her mom and grandmother supporting women's health choices. Ann skipped 7th grade and spent much of high school at the United Nations. After a year at Wagner College then Bayonne Hospital School of Nursing, Ann then attended University of Miami Family Nurse Practitioner program and has been a NP ever since. She became more involved with protests and activism after she graduated.

Joining us to share her story, Ann opens up about being an activist at all times, the healing power of several different communities coming together in support as she fought breast cancer, and her book idea of life lessons learned growing up in New York.

Christine Bishara, MD, is the founder of From Within Medical, a New York City medical wellness and weight loss practice that places emphasis on the mind-body and gut-brain axis to prevent and manage disease. With over 20 years of clinical experience, time and time again Dr. Bishara has discovered that the connection between these systems plays a significant role in disease prevention, but is not being adequately addressed. She also understands the impact that daily demands and stress place on our bodies and wants to help others learn how to balance a career and family life, while staying as healthy as possible.