Leading Through Crisis with Céline Williams

After 25 years in senior operational roles, most recently as a COO leading teams through growth and culture change, Rosi Bremec's career ended with a short conversation and a locked laptop. 

In this raw, honest conversation, Rosi returns to Leading Through Crisis to talk about what happens after the polished LinkedIn goodbye post: the silence, the identity loss, and the slow, unglamorous work of rebuilding a sense of self when the title, calendar, and sense of daily purpose disappear overnight.

Rosi opens up about hitting rock bottom, the "agony of irrelevance," and why she finally decided to write publicly about job loss, redundancy, and executive burnout instead of hiding behind a professional facade. 

She also shares a perspective few leaders admit out loud: what it's like to have been the person delivering layoff news to others, and how experiencing job loss herself changed how she understands the impact of those conversations.

This episode is for anyone navigating career transition, job loss, layoff, or an identity shift after leaving a leadership role. It's also for any leader who wants to understand what's really happening on the other side of the table when someone is let go.

Listen in on my conversation with Rosi Bremec...

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Rosi Bremec is a writer, speaker and operator whose work draws on more than two decades in senior operational and C-suite roles across technology, SaaS and iGaming. Her work explores what happens when business decisions become lived human experiences: the conversations leaders avoid, the responsibility quietly left with HR, the identities people build around work and the stories they carry when that work changes.

Rosi's flagship keynote, The People Part Is Leadership: Confessions of an Operator, grew from her own reckoning with the distance between caring about people and remaining present for the consequences of leadership decisions. The essay behind its central idea reached more than 127,000 people on LinkedIn, entirely organically, and opened a wider conversation among HR and people leaders.

She also writes The Agency Letters, a more personal body of work about identity, shame, agency and the meaning we make from what happens to us.

You can learn more about Rosi and her work at rosibremec.com. Or connect with her on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/rosibremec. 

What does it take to lead when the unimaginable happens? 

In this episode of Leading Through Crisis, I talk with Helen Hynson Vettori – former paramedic, senior medical intelligence officer, and emergency manager who spent from 2005 until her retirement planning and preparing the federal government for biological threats, including pandemics (long before COVID-19 made its mark).

Helen traces her unlikely path from a childhood fascination with first responders to working an active shooter scene as a paramedic, to a career in the Department of Defense's Protective Medicine Branch, to becoming the internationally award-winning author of the Black Swan thriller trilogy. 

We dig into what real leadership looks like in a crisis: why humility and honest communication matter more than authority, how ordinary people become leaders for themselves in moments of chaos, and why community – not individualism – is what actually gets people through disasters.

The conversation also covers practical emergency preparedness and how Helen turned her professional frustrations into fiction.

This episode is incredibly fascinating for leaders and readers alike; a must-listen for anyone drawn to entertaining stories with practical takeaways! 

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Helen Hynson Vettori was born in Washington, DC, and has always lived and worked in the National Capital Region. Her knowledge and experiences gained as an EMT / commended paramedic in the Bethesda-Chevy Chase Rescue Squad and Employee of the Year emergency manager in the Department of Homeland Security enable her to write books with credible and thrilling Black Swan plots. 

A Black Swan event is a catastrophic incident that no one could have foreseen or imagined because of its unprecedented impact. 

The first two books in her Black Swan Trilogy Thriller Novel Series, Black Swan Impact and Black Swan Shock, won the speculative fiction category from the International Impact Book Awards in 2025 and 2026, respectively, and Black Swan Impact won the Publishers Weekly choice for its 2026 fiction category. Both may be found worldwide. The third novel, Black Swan Terror, is in the editing process. 

Vettori lives in Leesburg, VA, with her husband.

Learn more about Helen and her books at helenhynsonvettori.com. Or connect with her on Instagram (@helenhvettori).

Most leaders try to manage a crisis with logic; it rarely works. In this episode of Leading Through Crisis, host Céline Williams sits down with Doug Noll — a former trial lawyer, peacemaker, and author of De-Escalate — who spent over a decade teaching maximum-security inmates how to stop fights before they start.

Leadership advisor and DEI expert Stacey Gordon returns to Leading Through Crisis to explain why diversity, equity, and inclusion should never be treated as a bolt-on "initiative," and why that mistake is exactly why so many companies have abandoned their DEI programs. 

What does trekking 17,000 feet to Everest Base Camp have to do with leading a business or team in today’s world? As it turns out, quite a lot!

In this episode, I sit down with Ketul Patel, a supply chain and business transformation expert and author of A Journey of Elevation, to unpack the leadership lessons forged on the trail to Everest Base Camp.

Ketul shares how the mountain became a mirror for everything leaders face today: constant crisis, the illusion of control, and the pressure to keep moving when the path forward is anything but clear. 

After 30+ years leading organizational transformations and working alongside CEOs and executives navigating relentless change, Ketul found that a 12-day trek through the Himalayas – complete with mudslides, altitude sickness, a failed Plan A, a failed Plan B, and a grueling 19-hour Jeep ride – taught him more about resilient leadership than any boardroom ever could.

Whether you're leading a company through uncertainty, managing a team through change, or simply trying to figure out how to keep going when “the weather” won't cooperate, this conversation will challenge you to rethink what leadership really looks like under pressure.

And, Ketul leaves listeners with a powerful challenge: find your own Basecamp moment. Because growth, clarity, and self-knowledge don't require a mountain. They just require the courage to step outside your comfort zone.

Listen in!

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With a master’s degree from the University of Houston, Ketul Patel has made a lasting impact as both a seasoned corporate leader and a Big Four supply chain consultant, transforming global supply chains across retail, wholesale, and manufacturing. 

As the founder and president of OMIIA Consulting, he serves as a business turnaround specialist and COO for companies seeking profitable growth and striving to scale toward Fortune 500 performance. 

Patel has authored multiple white papers and blogs on supply chain thought leadership and is a speaker at supply chain conferences, known for blending strategic insight with real-world pragmatic execution to drive sustainable business success. 

His debut book, A Journey of Elevation: Lessons for Business Transformation from Everest Base Camp, was released in January 2026.

Learn more about Ketul, or grab the book at omiiaconsulting.com/books or connect with him on LinkedIn.

What does it actually look like to lead people through a crisis — not just manage operations, but truly show up for the humans involved? In this episode of Leading Through Crisis, host Céline Williams sits down with Tracy Nolan, a Fortune 50 Senior Executive and global Board Leader with deep expertise in regulated industries, including healthcare and telecommunications.

The most surprising leadership insights may not be found where you'd expect…

In this episode, Céline sits down with Philip Atkinson, an organizational coach and beekeeper who has spent his career helping leaders around the world become better humans with better skills.

Philip is also the author of Bee Wise: 12 Leadership Lessons from a Busy Beehive, a beautifully written book structured across the four seasons, blending the science of bees with the very human challenges of leading an organization.

Philip and Céline explore why leadership is still so often rooted in command-and-control thinking – a model built for industrial-era machines, not the living, breathing organizations of today.

They dig into what it really means to lead without having all the answers, why "busy" has become a dangerous badge of honor, and how slowing down to sense your environment (the way a beekeeper reads a hive before lifting the lid) can change the quality of every conversation and decision you make.

They also get into the often-broken world of feedback: why so many leaders give it wrong, why the simple question "is now a good time?" is a game-changer, and how the bees' famous waggle dance is actually a masterclass in clear, consistent, repeated communication inside a noisy system. 

If you're navigating constant change, holding your team together, and trying to lead well without pretending you have all the answers, this conversation is for you. Philip's message is simple and grounding: everyone deserves to be led well, and being a good leader starts with being a good human.

Bee Wise is available wherever you purchase books, with all proceeds going to Bees for Development, a charity supporting families in developing countries through sustainable beekeeping businesses. Learn more at beewisebook.com.

Connect with Philip on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/philipatkinsonhivelogic.

In this episode of Leading Through Crisis, Céline Williams sits down with Charles Vogl—leadership advisor, speaker, and author of The Art of Community—to challenge what we think we know about connection, adaptability, and resilience.

What does leadership look like in moments of sustained uncertainty, high pressure, and constant change?

In this episode of Leading Through Crisis, Céline Williams speaks with Iranian human rights advocate Zolal Habibi about what it means to lead with clarity, courage, and conviction, especially when the cost of staying true to your values is high.

Drawing on her personal journey and decades of connection to Iran’s evolving social and political landscape, Zolal reflects on the leadership principles that sustain individuals and movements through prolonged periods of challenge. From the importance of standing firmly in your values to the role of personal responsibility in shaping collective outcomes, this conversation explores how leaders can stay grounded when navigating complexity and uncertainty.

Zolal shares perspectives on resilience, long-term thinking, and the power of purpose, alongside reflections on the role of women in leadership, the impact of lived values versus stated ideals, and how individuals can contribute meaningfully even in the face of overwhelming circumstances.

Together, they unpack questions that resonate far beyond any one context:

This episode is a thoughtful and nuanced exploration of leadership in times of crisis, offering insights for business owners, managers, and leaders navigating change in their own organizations and lives.

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Zolal Habibi is an Iranian human rights activist and a leading voice for justice, democracy, and women’s rights in Iran. She serves on the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), where she works with policymakers, journalists, and international institutions to amplify the call for a free, secular, and democratic Iran. 

For more than two decades, she has been a steadfast advocate for those silenced inside Iran—particularly women, youth, and political prisoners—bringing their stories to global platforms. Zolal’s commitment to this cause is deeply personal. When she was just seven years old, her father, a respected writer and political dissident, was killed by the Iranian regime in the summer of 1988; a summer marked by the massacre of 30,000 political prisoners in Iran. This tragedy shaped her life’s mission: to ensure that such crimes are neither forgotten nor repeated, and that the aspirations of the Iranian people for freedom and democracy are recognized worldwide. 

Through her advocacy, media appearances, and international engagement, Zolal continues to champion the Iranian people’s struggle.

To learn more, visit maryamrajavi4change.com or connect with Zolal on Instagram (@ashrafi4ever) or LinkedIn (linkedin.com/in/zolalhabibi/). 

In this episode of Leading Through Crisis, host Céline Williams sits down with Ernesto Gómez, founder and CEO of Aspen Mindset1 and author of Regrowth: How Organizations Can Overcome Stalling by Unlocking Their People’s Potential.