I Am Wiser Podcast with Dr. Laura Purdy

At 2 p.m. on a Friday, three days after finishing his neurosurgery fellowship, Dr. Stacey Podkovik got an email asking him to cover the Fourth of July. His family had planned a trip for six months. They canceled it, and on his first day as an attending, he saved a four-year-old's life.

On this episode of the I Am Wiser Podcast with Dr. Laura Purdy, Dr. Laura talks with Dr. Stacey, a pediatric neurosurgeon, about leaving the academic track nobody trains you to leave. When the jobs were in other states, he chose to stay in Miami and build a different kind of career: credentials at six hospitals, coverage for rural surgeons with no backup, and a new group practice.

They also get honest about the cost, how his field has received it, and what it takes to make room for two careers where your time is never fully your own.

The line to carry: "If there isn't a job, either you move or you kind of create one."

Connect with Dr. Stacey Podkovik: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stacey-podkovik-do-0909571a/?isSelfProfile=false
More episodes and show notes: https://iamwiserpodcast.health/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=audio&utm_campaign=stacey-podkovik&utm_content=show-notes

Oleh Pylyp was nearly finished cooking Ukrainian dumplings when he noticed the eggs still on the counter. The AI that translated his recipe had left them out, and when he asked, it apologized: they went in at the beginning.

Oleh is a business developer at Inveritasoft, a software development company with offices in Lviv, Kraków, and Medellín. On this episode of the I Am Wiser Podcast with Dr. Laura Purdy, he shares what founders learn the hard way when they build software with AI and no engineering team: glitchy demos and simple bugs nobody caught, right when investors and clients are watching.

Dr. Laura asks what most of us would. Can AI really build a working product? How much should you trust an AI agent? Can you tell when a website was built with AI? They also talk about where AI is headed and his favorite learning tool, NotebookLM.

Oleh Pylyp once followed up with a prospect forty times without a reply. When they finally talked, he knew there was a project there, and that client is still growing the team. Oleh does business development for Inverita, the software company building Venture's EMR. He and I talk about earning trust without pressure, why an honest quote beats a vendor who builds forever, and how my first "we can't afford this" turned into a 24-month roadmap.

Oleh also shares the story of his father, Vasyl, who was killed serving in Ukraine. We dedicate this episode to him.

Michelle Dore was a surgical ICU nurse in Rochester, New York. Then burnout and a medical leave pushed her to rethink everything. Almost nine years later, she runs TinyTox Collab, a clinic that's fun and funky up front and serious about compliance behind the scenes.

On this episode of the I Am Wiser Podcast with Dr. Laura Purdy, Michelle talks about why a medical director you never talk to isn't a perk. She also explains why the "boring stuff" has to be in place before you open your doors, and how a type A founder learned to stop micromanaging. A brutally honest office manager helped, and so did three words from Mel Robbins: "Let them," followed by "let me."

Kevin McCullough's guiding phrase is blunt on purpose: don't die stupid. Not about intelligence, but about refusing to keep bumping into the same wall twice. 

He and I talk about what it means to treat failure as an unfinished success rather than a verdict, and why the people around us, not the results we chase, are actually our most valuable resource. 

His wisdom is simple: show up, stay diligent, and treat the people in your life like they're the source of everything you actually want out of it. 

Justin Smith's marriage ended the way a thriller plots itself — years of quiet planning behind a smile he never saw coming.

What he learned rebuilding his life afterward became the foundation for Cray, an app built to help people recognize the patterns of concerning behavior before they get hurt by them.

His advice: don't let people who don't share your vision talk you out of it — and if there's an imbalance anywhere in your life, someone will eventually see it as an opportunity.

🔗 Learn more about Cray:
Website: https://cray.app
About Justin: https://cray.app/about
Cray for Campuses: https://cray.app/campus

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If you have something in your life that someone could exploit — your money, your trust, your dependence on them — you are at risk of exploitation. Subscribe for more conversations on the human stories behind the ideas and people changing how we live and relate to one another.

In this episode of the I Am Wiser Podcast, I reconnect with Dr. Colin Zhu, a double board-certified physician in family and lifestyle medicine, plant-based chef, and founder of TheChefDoc.

Colin’s path has never been a straight line. He became a physician, went to culinary school, became a health coach, practiced lifestyle medicine, built a public platform, and continues to evolve his work around health, food, and education.

But underneath all of that is a much bigger lesson: we don't have to choose just one version of ourselves.

In this episode of the I Am Wiser Podcast, I sit down with Angela Gennari, founder and CEO of Titan Global Enterprises and host of the Pretty Powerful Podcast. Angela has built a successful security and event services company in a traditionally male-dominated industry, but her journey has been about much more than business.

Angela shares that imposter syndrome once made her question whether she belonged in rooms filled with people who seemed more experienced or qualified. But over time, she realized something important: her voice mattered long before she believed it did.

You don’t have to become someone else to earn your place. You don’t have to compete by playing someone else’s game. And you don’t have to compromise your values just to win.

Sometimes the wisest thing you can do is trust yourself enough to keep going as yourself.

In this episode, I sit down with Tom Barberio, Chief Information Officer at Thinc Forward, to talk about healthcare data, cybersecurity, privacy, and the risks that businesses often don't see coming.

But this conversation isn't really about technology.

It's about awareness.

Tom explains why healthcare data is so valuable, why even small organizations can be targeted, and why trusting the wrong person with too much access can create serious vulnerabilities.

His advice is surprisingly simple: educate yourself.

You don't need to become a cybersecurity expert. But you do need to understand what you're protecting, what risks exist, and where your vulnerabilities may be.

In this episode, I sit down with Richard Kaufman, known as the Comeback Coach, to talk about resilience, identity, purpose, and what it means to rebuild after profound loss.

After a military career of more than two decades, Richard was medically discharged after losing 80% of his vision. In a matter of days, he went from being Sergeant Kaufman to wondering who he was without the identity he'd spent most of his life building.

His answer wasn't to pretend everything was okay.

It was to accept where he was, allow himself to grieve, and eventually make a decision about what would come next.

Today, Richard's philosophy is simple:

It's okay not to be okay. And today, I decide.