Redefining Ambition

Meredith Gertler is the Executive Vice President of Content Strategy & Planning at HBO and HBO Max. After several pivots throughout her time at HBO, this entertainment exec has learned the importance of “being adaptable and flexible to change” while combining her passions for entertainment and marketing. In this episode, Gertler shares how to find “the opportunity in chaos,” the importance of casting “as wide a net as possible when it comes to networking,” how spending time abroad shaped the future of her career, and how she landed her “needle in a haystack” dream job.

Taly Goody is the founder of Goody Law Group and an attorney specializing in business formation, personal injury, and employment law. After spending several years working in art litigation, Goody felt stagnant in her career and decided to pivot to a different area of the law. In growing a TikTok following of tens of thousands of users, Goody utilizes social media as a vehicle to educate and mentor people with aspirations to become a lawyer. In this episode, Goody opens up about early experiences that affected her family and inspired her to pursue law, how to stand out as a law school applicant, and her experience in building an online community during the pandemic.

Leigh Morgan is the Chief Strategy & Operating Officer at Nia Tero Foundation, a Seattle-based non-profit dedicated to protecting and securing Indigenous people’s guardianship of vital ecosystems. Morgan has underscored the importance of community work “across dimensions of difference” throughout her impactful career where she has served in many leadership capacities, including as the COO at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Associate Chancellor at UC San Francisco, and the VP and Global Head of Human Resources at Genentech. In this episode, Morgan emphasizes the importance of building relationships, demystifies what it means to be a leader, shares insight on how Gen Z is changing the world, and discusses the privilege she had in working with Melinda Gates.

Kayla Lebovits is the founder and CEO of Bundle Benefits, a personalized work-life benefit service that supports employees, their families, and their work teams to improve overall wellbeing and productivity. After working in finance for a number of years, Lebovits left her job to pursue grad school - and a more entrepreneurial path. In this episode, Lebovits opens up about how she has adjusted to the challenges of the pandemic while raising a young daughter, the importance of encouraging diversity of thought in the workplace, her definition of effective leadership, and the thought process behind calculated risk-taking.

Sheila Marmon is the founder and CEO of Mirror Digital, a media company focused on helping large, established brands reach multicultural consumers through digital advertising platforms. By taking advantage of opportunities and being able to distinguish risk from fear, Marmon has learned to follow her own “unconventional wisdom” throughout her remarkable career. In this episode, Marmon shares anecdotes relating to the importance of learning from your failures, describes the difficulty of fundraising as a woman of color, and elaborates on how to develop genuine mentor/mentee relationships.

Dr. Marisa Porges, author of “What Girls Need: How to Raise Bold, Courageous, and Resilient Women'' and Head of School of the prestigious all-girls private school, The Baldwin School, has devoted her life to public service and has had a prolific career in many different capacities. After graduating from Harvard with a degree in geophysics, Dr. Porges began her career as an active-duty member of the U.S. Navy, and was later promoted to a Naval Flight Officer. She went on to become a Harvard Kennedy School International Security Research Fellow, Counterterrorism Policy Advisor at the U.S. Department of Treasury, and Senior Policy Advisor on cybersecurity at the National Economic Council in the Obama White House. In this episode, Dr. Porges shares some of her experiences interviewing former members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban (and what it was like to fly naval aircraft), discusses the importance of thinking boldly and taking risk, and reflects on embracing moments of failure - which ultimately led to many of her successes.

Farah Mohamed, founder of G(irls)20 and former CEO of the Malala Fund, has educated and empowered girls and young women around the world throughout a career dedicated to advocacy. In this premiere Season 2 episode, Farah shares the importance of female labor force participation in relation to the global economy and building a reliable network of people, her experience in founding a global social enterprise, her time in working with Malala Yousafzai, and why gender inequality remains a pressing issue.

Jamie Vinick, founder and President of The Women’s Network, chats with Katya Shmorhun about Season 2 of Redefining Ambition, cohosting, and what to look forward to in Season 2’s release.

Bisa Butler is an art educator and award-winning American fiber artist, known for her life-sized quilts celebrating Black identity. Bisa has exhibited at the Smithsonian Museum of American History, the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, amongst other venues; most recently, Bisa was selected as one of the 2021 United States Artist Fellows. In this episode, Bisa discusses the inspiration behind her art, her journey towards becoming an established Black artist, advice she would offer to young Black women, and more.