What does it mean to be truly wise about water? In this episode, host Annyse speaks with Cindy Wallis-Lage, a long-career water sector leader, about indigenous knowledge, the danger of solving the wrong problem, and why water needs to become a want — not just a need.

Cindy chose the Wisdom card and from that single image of waves and flowing water, an expansive conversation unfolded. Drawing on her experience as a former president at Black & Veatch Water and decades working across the sector, Cindy challenges some of the water industry's most embedded assumptions: about how we solve problems, who we invite to the table, and what relationship we want to have with water at all.

From the One Water movement and tribal community knowledge to the importance of vulnerability in leadership, this episode weaves together systems thinking, indigenous wisdom, and a powerful reframe - what if we stopped treating water as an entitlement and started treating it as something worth truly desiring?

Show Notes 

• US Water Alliance – Vision for a One Water Future - US Water Alliance
• True root cause analysis - What is Root Cause Analysis (RCA)? | ASQ
• 5 Whys - 5 Whys - What is it? | Lean Enterprise Institute 

Cindy L. Wallis-Lage, Retired C-Suite Executive

Cindy Wallis-Lage has served in the water industry for over 39 years through a combination of her work at Black & Veatch and service to public, private and non-profit industry organizations. Throughout her career, her focus has been on helping public and private entities successfully develop, enhance and manage their water, wastewater and stormwater infrastructure via a variety of solutions and delivery methods.

Prior to her retirement, she served as Executive Director, Sustainability and Resilience for Black & Veatch to accelerate an enterprise-wide focus on sustainability and resilience solutions to support clients in the water, energy and telecommunications markets. Previously Wallis-Lage served as the President of the company’s global water business between 2012 and 2021 where she was responsible for the leadership and management of the company’s global water business. She also served on Black & Veatch’s Executive Committee and Board of Directors from 2012 until her retirement.

Currently Ms. Wallis-Lage continues to engage in the water industry by serving as a board member for several companies and co-leading ReSoLve, a non-profit focused on empowering and retaining women in the water industry.

Using her position, passion and knowledge, she is a champion of the Sustainable Development Goals and seeks to educate how holistic systems thinking can provide the needed long term human infrastructure to achieve social, economic and environmental sustainability goals.

About this episode

What happens when a sector becomes so good at its job that it makes itself invisible? In this episode, Annyse sits down with Nicole Brown, a nationally recognised water leader, equity champion, and founding Vice President of the Black Water Professionals Alliance, for a conversation that is equal parts practical and profound.

Nicole brings 27 years of experience in the water sector to a question that goes far deeper than infrastructure: how do we build a new story for water - one rooted in abundance, reverence, and belonging - and who gets to be part of telling it?

What we explore in this conversation

• Why Nicole chose curiosity as her word for right now and what it means to choose forward motion over steady state
• The water sector's "invisibility problem" — how decades of operational excellence have disconnected the public from the value, the wonder, and the careers behind their tap
• The scarcity mindset that runs through water conversations and why Nicole is intentionally refusing it
• Robin Wall Kimmerer's The Serviceberry and what an economy of gratitude, reciprocity, and community could look like in the water space
• What it means to be a steward of water and why abundance and reverence are more connected than we think
• The Black Water Professionals Alliance, the Fairmount Water Works, and the power of exposure in building the next generation of water professionals
• Why constructs don't need to be destroyed - they can be dissolved, and something better built in their place

A moment that stayed with us

"The water sector has done a great job at being invisible. We've been so good at what we do that we've made water seem like magic - and when something seems like magic, people stop asking how it works."

About Nicole Brown

Nicole Brown is the Area Growth Lead for the Water Sector at GFT, where she helps utilities align innovation with meaningful public engagement. She is the founding Vice President of the Black Water Professionals Alliance, a non-profit dedicated to workforce equity and community connection in the water industry. In 2024, she received the WEF Mentorship Award for her dedication to growing the next generation of water professionals.

Show notes 

• The Serviceberry – Robin Wall Kimmerer - Robin Wall Kimmerer
• Black Water Professional Alliance Philadelphia - Black Water Professionals Alliance - Home Page
• Philadelphia Fairmount Water Works - Fairmount Water Works – Discover. Connect. Act.
• Epigenetics - Epigenetic Inheritance of Trauma Across Generations: A Review of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Epigenetic Mechanisms, Challenges and Implications for Today’s World | OxJournal

Guest: Kristen Atha | Director of Columbus Water & Power, City of Columbus

About This Episode

In this episode, Annyse sits down with Kristen Atha, Director of Columbus Water & Power for the City of Columbus, a leader who thinks in generations, leads with her whole self and is quietly doing some of the most important infrastructure work in America right now.

Appointed by Mayor Andrew Ginther in May 2022, Kristen leads an organisation of over 1,400 employees and provides essential water, power and water reclamation services to more than 1.5 million customers across Central Ohio and 26 suburban partners. She brings 25 years of engineering consulting expertise to a public sector role at one of the most pivotal moments in her region's history.

This is a conversation about legacy, leadership, humanity and what it truly means to build for people you will never meet. We also learn what being a mother of triplets has taught Kristen about leadership and it is one of the most beautiful stories we have ever heard on this podcast.

We think you will leave this episode wishing Kristen was your boss — or maybe even your mum!

The Big Idea

What if the most important decision you make today won't be fully understood for 50 years?

That is the question at the heart of this conversation. Kristen and her team think about legacy every single day, not as an abstract concept, but as a living, breathing responsibility that shapes every infrastructure decision, every partnership and every dollar invested in Central Ohio's water future.

What We Cover In This Episode

The Clarity Card: Kristen chose the Clarity card and saw in it a stream flowing through a field, a watershed with muddy edges. It sparked a powerful reflection on what clarity means in her work: clarity about water sources, about responsibility, about the legacy her team is creating right now for future generations.

Building for People You'll Never Meet: Columbus is growing at extraordinary speed. Semiconductor investment, data centres, AI and population growth are transforming the region. Kristen takes us inside what it means to plan a $1.6 billion water treatment plant while keeping legacy and humanity at the centre of every decision.

Slowing Down to Speed Up: When Kristen arrived as Director, the organization was in a difficult place post-Covid. Rather than racing forward, she slowed down, grounding her team in the history, care and incredible DNA of the organisation. It was counterintuitive. And it was exactly right.

The Triplets Story: Kristen is the mother of triplets. When her son struggled to breathe after birth, placing him between his two sisters was all it took. She carried that story into her leadership, because we all need each other's presence to feel safe, to function and sometimes literally to breathe.

Everything Happens Through People: A profound exploration of what it means to build cohesion in a team, stitch the past to the present and knit both to the future, consciously and intentionally.

The Circular Water Economy: Kristen's team is exploring how recycled wastewater can serve incoming industries, protecting the drinking water supply for residents while enabling economic growth. In the Midwest, this conversation was unimaginable just a few years ago.

Writing a Playbook That Doesn't Exist Yet: There is no template for how cities handle the water demands of AI and data centres. Kristen and her team are projecting into the future and making educated decisions that will become the new normal for growing cities around the world.

Widening the Responsibility Circle: How Kristen has broadened decision making beyond the utility, inviting in partners, developers and community organisations to share responsibility for stormwater, infrastructure and affordability. Why it is

In this episode of Meaningful Conversations, Annyse sits down with Dr Angela MacOscar, Head of Innovation at Northumbrian Water — a visionary leader with a PhD in physical chemistry and a passion for building cultures where innovation can truly thrive.

Angela chose the Bold card, and from that simple starting point, a rich conversation unfolded around regeneration, roots, diversity, and what it really takes to create lasting change in the water sector.

What We Explore in This Episode

Regeneration as a Leadership Philosophy
For Angela, regeneration is about strong roots and solid foundations. Without purpose and diversity, nothing sustainable grows. It’s about planting the right seeds now for a future we may not immediately see.

The Northumbrian Water Innovation Festival
Now approaching its 10th year, the festival has grown from six design sprints and 900 attendees to:

• 53 sprints
• 3,000+ participants
• 39 countries
• 45 sectors

One early sprint led to the creation of the UK’s National Underground Asset Register, now a government-run platform improving safety and saving billions. Proof that bold ideas, nurtured well, create real impact.

Innovation Is a Contact Sport
Angela shares why innovation must be done with people, not to people. From engaging senior leaders to empowering frontline teams, culture is everything.

With a central team of nine, they’ve built a network of over 200 Innovation Ambassadors across the organisation. Today, innovation is a core pillar at Northumbrian Water, with a measurable goal: 40% of employees actively involved.

Creating the Conditions for Innovation

• Compassionate leadership
• Family-first values
• A four-day working week
• Space for thinking and reflection
• Using AI to remove repetitive tasks
• Psychological safety to ask for help

Angela reminds us that tired, stressed humans struggle to innovate. Space and empathy are not soft extras — they are strategic necessities.

A Wiggly Career Path
From leaving school at 16 to earning a PhD, working at Procter & Gamble, launching a product still on shelves 26 years later, building a lifestyle business, and eventually finding her home in the water sector — Angela’s journey is a powerful reminder that careers don’t need to be linear to be impactful.

Key Themes

• Regenerative leadership
• Diversity as a driver of innovation
• Designing environments where bold ideas can grow
• Stewardship of water and natural systems
• Leaving organisations and people better than you found them

Show notes 

• Northumbrian Water - Northumbrian Water | Supplying water and Sewerage Services in the North East of England
• Northumbrian Water Innovation Festival - The Festival
• Ofwat funding – Water innovation competitions - Ofwat
• Derek Siver, how to create a movement - Derek Sivers: How to start a movement | TED Talk
• National Underground Asset Register (NUAR) - National Underground Asset Register (NUAR), Northumbrian Water Group and a Culture of Innovation – Geospatial Insights

In this episode of Meaningful Conversations, we sit down with Alisha McFetridge, founder of Rainstick, for an honest and timely conversation sparked by one simple prompt: Truth.

Alisha shares an analogy many of us know too well  - coming home from a great vacation and avoiding checking your bank account. In the water sector, we often do something similar: prioritising short-term costs and quarter-by-quarter wins, even when we know those choices carry long-term consequences.

We explore how today’s infrastructure still benefits from leaders who thought 100 years ahead and why returning to cathedral thinking feels both difficult and necessary right now.

This conversation touches on:

• Why real innovation takes time
• How systems change requires education
• Why policy often lags behind what’s possible
• And why bold decisions rarely happen alone

Alisha’s journey building Rainstick offers a grounded reminder that progress doesn’t come from pretending we have all the answers.  It comes from honesty, courage, and collective effort.

There is hope.
 Municipalities are asking better questions.
 Communities are coming together differently.
 And more leaders are willing to say: we need to do better together.

This episode is an invitation to pause, reflect, and create space for the real conversations the future of water demands.

In this episode of Meaningful Conversations, we sit down with Kamakshi Sharma, Director of Marketing & Strategy at Aquatech, to explore what growth truly means for the future of the water industry. Kamakshi leads Aquatech’s global marketing and communications efforts and plays a central role in shaping market and business strategy across the organization.

At a time when climate change, water scarcity, and rapid urbanisation are reshaping our world, water is no longer an afterthought—it’s at the centre of global, industrial, and municipal decision-making. Kamakshi shares why the industry is at a pivotal moment, with unprecedented opportunity to influence how we manage and protect this critical resource.

From the rise of innovative membrane technologies and ZLD/MLD solutions to increased collaboration between industry partners, we discuss how technology, regulation, and co-development are accelerating change. Kamakshi also highlights a powerful cultural shift—greater diversity in the sector and more women entering the industry earlier than ever before.

The conversation goes deeper into water reuse, closed-loop systems, and the growing focus on recovering value from water, not just treating it. Together, we tackle one of the most pressing questions of our time: can we overcome water scarcity in a way that leaves the planet with better water quality for future generations?

This episode offers a hopeful, grounded perspective on where the biggest impact can be made—and why industrial and agricultural reuse will play a critical role in shaping a more sustainable water future.

🌊 A thoughtful and inspiring conversation about growth, responsibility, and what’s possible when water moves to the forefront.

To open Season 2 of Meaningful Conversations, Annyse is joined by Eleanor Allen, CEO of the World Flourishing Organization and founder of Catapult for Change, for a powerful, reflective conversation on leadership, audacity, and what it truly means to flourish at work.

Eleanor’s career spans Fortune 500 companies, nonprofits, and startups across more than 50 countries. She has held senior leadership roles at Arcadis, CH2M (now Jacobs), B Lab Global, and Water For People, and is a registered Professional Engineer and member of the National Academy of Engineering. Across every chapter of her work, a clear thread emerges: tackling big, complex, “wicked” problems through human-centred leadership.

In this episode, Eleanor chooses the Audacious card - a word that deeply reflects her life and leadership. From applying for the Audacious Project while at Water For People, to imagining nationwide water services in Rwanda, to her passion for ultra-distance cycling, Eleanor shares how audacity is where life feels most alive, connected, and purposeful.

Together, Annyse and Eleanor explore Eleanor’s current focus on human flourishing  and why it may be one of the most important frontiers for leadership today. Drawing on insights from the Global Flourishing Study (a five-year study of over 200,000 people across 23 countries), Eleanor shares the six core elements people need to flourish: happiness, financial stability, purpose and meaning, character and virtue, mental and physical health, and strong social relationships, all of which can, and should, be supported at work.

The conversation also dives into:

• Why fear-based systems limit creativity, courage, and impact
• How perfectionism shows up in engineering and leadership cultures
• The importance of psychological safety, consistency, and intention in organizational transformation
• Why the water sector is uniquely positioned to lead the way in human flourishing
• How flourishing can spread — from individuals to teams to entire organizations

A central question we sit with throughout the episode:
What becomes possible when work is designed for flourishing instead of fear?

Because when people flourish, organizations do too.

🎧 Listen now and join us as we begin Season 2 with an audacious invitation to rethink leadership, work, and the future of the water sector.

Mentions in podcast: 

• The Audacious Project - Housed at TED, The Audacious Project is a funding initiative that encourages the world’s greatest changemakers to dream bigger. We shape their ideas into viable multi-year plans and launch them to the world alongside visionary philanthropists.
• Water for People - Water For People exists to promote the development of high-quality drinking water and sanitation services, accessible to all, and sustained by strong communities, businesses, and governments.
• Ultra Cycling
• B-Lab - B Lab is the nonprofit network transforming the global economy to benefit all people, communities, and the planet.
• Global Flourishing Study - The Global Flourishing Study explores six domains valued across countries and cultures. The Secure Flourishing Index (SFI) measures these through targeted survey items, with the first five domains pursued for their own sake and financial stability providing the foundation. When financial stability is omitted, the measure becomes the Flourishing Index (FI), while contextual factors help understand environments where flourishing thrives.
• Gallup workplace study

In the final episode of Series 1 of Meaningful Conversations, Annyse sits down with Kate Brown, Principal Technical Consultant at ERM and former leader of Procter & Gamble’s 2030 Water Positive Future program.

With more than 25 years of experience in global sustainability, Kate has built and led water programs that balance business needs with watershed resilience. In this conversation, she shares why curiosity is her guiding principle and how asking better questions, telling better stories, and slowing down to listen can shape the future of water.

From real stories of ingenuity in communities facing water scarcity, to lessons learned inside global manufacturing sites, Kate brings both professional expertise and deep personal insight into how we can all become better stewards of water.

What you’ll hear in this episode:

💧 Why curiosity is about more than facts - it’s about wonder, empathy, and possibility
 💧 How storytelling can transform the way people see and value water
 💧 Stories from Mexico and beyond that reveal the realities of water access
 💧 The importance of slowing down to listen and how it can dissolve assumed problems
 💧 What watershed resilience means and why long-term thinking matters
 💧 How purpose and diversity of perspectives drive stronger sustainability outcomes

Quote from Kate:

✨ “You’re sometimes just one question away from something very interesting.”

Show Notes 

·        The Thin Book of Trust: An Essential Primer for Building Trust at Work

·        Alliance for Water Stewardship

·        Constructed wetlands 

·        Biomimicry 

What does power really mean in the future of water? Is it about technology, policy, or something more personal — our individual influence and the culture we create?

In this episode, we sit down with Brianne Nakamura, a second-generation water engineer, innovator, and connector with more than a decade of experience in the industry. Currently Global Product Manager at Xylem’s Pure Technologies brand, Bri has also led open innovation at Xylem Innovation Labs and served as Practice Leader of Innovation at the Water Environment Federation. In 2022, she was named WEF’s Outstanding Young Professional.

Together, we explore:
 💡 The “Power” card — and what it reveals about influence and possibility in water’s future
 💡 The importance of mentorship and how intentional team culture can unlock collaboration
 💡 Attracting and supporting the next generation of diverse leaders through WEF’s InFLOW program
 💡 Why innovation in water goes far beyond technology — and how outside perspectives are key
 💡 How reconnecting water to joy, humanity, and storytelling can transform our industry

If you’re passionate about leadership, innovation, and building a more inclusive and joyful water industry, this conversation will inspire and challenge you.

Links:

• Water Environment Federation 
• Xylem Innovation Labs 
• American Waterworks Association 
• Society of Women Engineers 
• WEF Inflow programme 
• Historically Black Colleges & Universities (HBCU)
• Imagine H20
• BlueTech Research  
• WASH 

In this powerful episode, Annyse is joined by Dr. Mirka Wilderer, CEO of AqueoUS Vets, a leader known for scaling organizations and nurturing meaningful innovation in the water industry. Together, they dive deep into the topics of disruption, co-creation, consistency, and trusting the unknown.

Mirka shares her perspective on how the water industry can break free from outdated paradigms by inviting in diverse voices, asking new questions, and creating space for co-created solutions that serve the needs of our evolving world.

This is a must-listen for leaders, changemakers, and anyone passionate about purpose-driven work, inclusive innovation, and the future of water.

In This Episode, We Explore:

• What “Consistency” really means in an industry that needs transformation
• Why innovation is more about application than invention
• How Mirka sees disruption as a creative, trust-building force
• The importance of bringing in non-traditional talent and new perspectives
• Why the next generation’s purpose-driven mindset is critical for the water sector
• How co-creation unlocks unexpected and lasting solutions
• Mirka’s own story of growing businesses, leading through crisis, and finding strength in trusting her team

Key Takeaways:

• Disruption doesn’t mean chaos — it means evolving with intention
• Trust is the foundation of all co-creative processes
• To move from one level of organizational maturity to the next, we need different questions and different voices
• The water industry must evolve to welcome talent from diverse backgrounds and industries
• We don’t need all the answers — we need a willingness to sit with the unknown and allow new solutions to emerge