Endings and beginnings...In this last episode of Season 2 of the podcast, Dori sits down, in Brooklyn, with Anne Pope — in her new home in Portugal — to discuss the intricate art of reinvention. Together, they explore what it means to pivot—intentionally and unexpectedly—and the practices that make growth and transformation possible. Happy New Year to all. Whatever's to come in 2025, we have each other. If you've taken anything from this season of the show, I hope it's in the very precious and distinct value community has on our individual and collective lives.

Some Takeaways:

• Redefining Identity: The hardest part of any pivot is letting go of an old identity to embrace a new one. Anne and Dori discuss the emotional and psychological challenges of this process.
• The Role of Curiosity: Professional reinvention thrives on flexibility and curiosity. Staying open to learning and exploration can turn uncertainties into opportunities.
• Coaching as a Tool: Anne shares how coaching helped her uncover new perspectives and develop skills that supported her personal and professional evolution.
• Growth as a Practice: Reinvention isn’t a one-time event—it’s a consistent effort. Personal growth requires discipline, mindfulness, and a willingness to try again.

Why You Should Listen:

This episode is a must-listen for anyone navigating a significant change in life or career. Anne and Dori share actionable insights and candid reflections, offering listeners a roadmap for turning life's twists and turns into opportunities for transformation.

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Follow Life Changing with Dori Fern on your favorite podcast platform and leave a review to help us reach more listeners on their reinvention journeys.

What do YOU Think?
What has been the hardest part of your pivots in life or career? Share your thoughts with Dori on Instagram @dorifern.

Curious About Coaching?
Meet with Dori, for free! Get a taste of her coaching style and find out how working together can help you navigate your own pivots and transitions and move more freely toward your goals. Set up time for a call at https://dorifern.com

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Dori talks with writer and music storyteller Piotr Orlov, exploring themes of identity, the immigrant experience, and the transformative power of community. Piotr, whose grandmother was a classical musicologist and father, a prominent, American basketball-loving sportswriter, came here from Leningrad to New York at 7-3/4 years old, fully bought into the American Dream story. He shares how his cultural background shapes his perspective and how that lens has changed over time. His first, indelible (and timely!) New York City memory proves how the truth we see isn't always THE truth. The discussion delves into the significance of community in music, the challenges of building new institutions when the ones that formed us are no longer sustainable...or relevant, and the legacy we leave through our stories.

Piotr's writing has appeared in New York Times, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, and the Village Voice. He was director of special projects at AFROPUNK, senior editor at NPR Music, and editorial director at MTV.

He helped produce the Red Bull Music Academy in New York. He is an adjunct teacher of writing and history at NYU's Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music and at Columbia University. Peter is also the founder of Dada Strain, a platform grounded in rhythm, improvisation, and community.


Subscribe to Dada Strain to get Piotr's weekly, mostly independent, mostly jazz,  electronic and house music event picks in the NYC area -- with a heavy Brooklyn focus.

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Instagram: @dorifern
LinkedIn: Dori Fern
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In this episode, Dori talks with music industry veteran and activist Vickie Starr about the importance of empathy, productive conversations, and navigating the messy path of personal and societal change. Together, they reflect on Vickie’s career in music PR, the industry's evolution, and what it means to have difficult, transformative discussions, including a notable, mind-changing exchange with rap icon Ice-T. Vickie shares stories about growing older in an evolving field, learning from unexpected places, and finding joy and connection through community, dancing, and reinvention.

Highlights:

• Handling tough conversations with empathy
• The evolving role of women in music
• Personal reflections on aging in a dynamic industry

Chapters

00:00 Setting the Stage for Deeper Conversations
02:54 The Journey of Vicky Starr in Music
05:52 Navigating the Music Industry: PR and Marketing Evolution
12:03 The Shift to Artist Management
17:47 Cultural Connections in Brooklyn
20:07 Modeling Difficult Conversations
25:57 Empathy and Understanding in Family Dynamics
29:45 Aging in the Music Industry
36:11 Legacy and Living in Joy

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Instagram: @dorifern
LinkedIn: Dori Fern
Email me: [email protected]

Visit https://dorifern.com for more about Dori's coaching services and to sign up for a complimentary call.

In this episode of Life Changing with Dori Fern, Dori talks with longtime friend, colleague, and fellow nerd, Ken Gibbs Jr., a digital media consultant with a distinguished career at companies like Spotify and BET Networks. They share stories that both align and diverge in striking ways, beginning with two very different family tales—told a decade and a world apart—connected by fireworks and fathers. They geek out over podcasting and hip hop, with Ken sharing intimate family memories and his experiences with suburban dad life. Dori and Ken also reflect on the impact the late Reggie Ossé, aka Combat Jack, had on their lives and careers. The conversation explores the importance of personal growth, his Art of Storytelling series, and the hope for more inclusive societies driven by cross-cultural communication. They also discuss the lasting influence of parental choices, personal evolution, and the idea of "winning" through life experiences.

00:00 Introduction to Season Two

00:39 Meet Ken Gibbs Jr.

01:52 Nerds Unite

02:44 Welcome to Life Changing with Dori Fern

04:35 Ken's Earliest Family Memories

17:35 The Impact of Reggie Ossé, aka Combat Jack

25:34 Reflections on Fatherhood and Life

29:51 Hopes for the Future and Final Thoughts

32:33 Closing Remarks and Credits

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Instagram: @dorifern
LinkedIn: Dori Fern
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Visit https://dorifern.com for more about Dori's coaching services and to sign up for a complimentary call.

Dori's long-term consulting job had ended and her next-door neighbor Khori Petinaud's Facebook post about the urge toward negative thinking as her show, Lempicka, was closing struck a chord. Khori talks about choosing faith over fear, a lesson that took Dori years and a coaching certification to learn. 

Khori shares her journey to becoming a Broadway dancer and performer, from her traditional ballet roots to the experimental world of downtown dance during her NYU days and the instability inherent in an artist's career, insights that resonate with Dori's childhood dreams to be a musical theater performer. 

She reflects on her single mother's influence, a woman who pursued her dreams in cosmetics with relentless ambition, shaping Khori's views on success and parenting. Khori also opens up about the challenges she faced as a 
Black ballet dancer, about her struggles with body image and disordered eating and how she's developed a healthier relationship with food. 

The episode explores the courage it takes to chase dreams, even as they change, the shaping of a balanced life, being an artist in NYC, and how, in trusting the process, new connections are made.


Follow Khori  
X @khorirpetinaud | Instagram @kmr8787 



TW: This episode contains a discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know is struggling, please listen with care. In the United States, the suicide help line to call is the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. You can reach them by dialing #988

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Connect with me!
Instagram: @dorifern
LinkedIn: Dori Fern
Email me: [email protected]

Visit https://dorifern.com for more about Dori's coaching services and to sign up for a complimentary call.

Dori and Jennie Baird talk about resilience, grief, and the role of timing in their lives. Jennie works as the Chief Product Officer at BBC Studios and is also a certified mental health first aid and volunteer suicide bereavement support facilitator, among her many professional and personal roles and pursuits. 

They reflect on their childhoods and the influence their parents played, particularly their fathers. And Dori updates listeners about what happened to her father after this interview with Jennie was recorded. 

They talk about their time at Aol, when Jennie hired Dori in 2006 for her first job after a decade as a stay-at-home mom, producing a branded contest sponsored by Dove called Chief Everything Officer. She shares the five words she looks for in all job candidates. Jennie also reminds Dori what she learned from our host about cooking. In admitting that she is not much for looking back and evaluating the past, Jennie reveals much about herself, yes, but also about resilience itself. This is an episode you won't want to miss.  


From Dori:

This episode is dedicated to the too many fathers my family and friends lost in 2024, many in this year's very challenging summer. I name some but, in my community alone, there were more. Too many. Much love and care to those in the complex, life-changing process of grief and mourning. 





TW: This episode contains a discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know is struggling, please listen with care or consider skipping this episode. In the United States, the suicide help line to call is the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. You can reach them by dialing 988 

Text Me!

Connect with me!
Instagram: @dorifern
LinkedIn: Dori Fern
Email me: [email protected]

Visit https://dorifern.com for more about Dori's coaching services and to sign up for a complimentary call.

Season 2 of Life Changing with Dori Fern opens with an intimate conversation between Dori and James Beard Award-nominated food writer, Nicole Taylor, the author of cookbooks including the modern Juneteenth classic, Watermelon & Red Birds. Dori and Nicole met around 2010 at BK Swappers, a popular Brooklyn-based food swap that helped put the borough's foodie-ism on the map and paved the way for today's social food culture. They talk about that time and Nicole shares surprising details about her life and journey in the food industry, including the role timing, intuition, and confidence played in her path. The Georgia native also discusses the activism that has shaped her life and opens up about her family, including her relationship with her incarcerated brother. At its heart, this is a conversation between two very different, self-defined outsiders in food media: one (Taylor) who still sees herself that way even from the inside, and the other (Fern), who no longer works in the food industry but has come to peace with where she -- and it -- fits into her life. This is what community looks like.

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Instagram: @dorifern
LinkedIn: Dori Fern
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Visit https://dorifern.com for more about Dori's coaching services and to sign up for a complimentary call.

Life Changing with Dori Fern returns for season 2! Hear what Dori has been up to and what she has in store for this new season.

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Instagram: @dorifern
LinkedIn: Dori Fern
Email me: [email protected]

Visit https://dorifern.com for more about Dori's coaching services and to sign up for a complimentary call.

Ep 12: It's a full-circle moment here at Life Changing with Dori Fern. For this last episode of Season 1, I interviewed fellow life changer, Danny Palestine -- who once interviewed me on his podcast --  about navigating his own messy middle following a layoff, some major health news, and the birth of his son at the start of the pandemic. We talk about his sometimes-rocky career pivot, how he leans on his professional network for support,  and how hobbies soften rejection and empower him in the face of personal challenges. Find out what he has learned as someone navigating life at a very different stage of it from Dori.

Dori lets you in on some job news and coaching program updates, and she bounces around some ideas for Season 2. Reach out to share your own thoughts and what you might like to hear more or less of moving forward. Links to contact Dori on social media or via email are in the footer below.

Thanks for listening to Life Changing with Dori Fern!

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Instagram: @dorifern
LinkedIn: Dori Fern
Email me: [email protected]

Visit https://dorifern.com for more about Dori's coaching services and to sign up for a complimentary call.

Ep 11: Following a month of anxiety navigating finances and trying to stay calm in her end-of-summer search for work, a tectonic shift happened that brought about much change and a narrative shift.  It got Dori thinking about what is true and what is truth and how not conflating the difference takes an easy kind of discipline that she is still learning how to navigate.  Knowing the difference between an experience and her perception of it, she realizes, comes with the potential for powerful rewards.

This is the second-to-last episode of Season 1 of Life Changing with Dori Fern. Look for Episode 12 in a few weeks and, in the meantime, please do share this podcast, rate, and -- if you like -- review it where you can. 

Text Me!

Connect with me!
Instagram: @dorifern
LinkedIn: Dori Fern
Email me: [email protected]

Visit https://dorifern.com for more about Dori's coaching services and to sign up for a complimentary call.