Dr. Sara Taylor has spent her career advancing opportunities for women of color in leadership. As a leadership development strategist and equity-centered practitioner, she operates at the intersection of systems, power, and people.
This conversation does not shy away from what is happening right now.Dr. Taylor speaks candidly about the national backlash against DEI and inclusion work, the fear organizations are carrying, and what it means to stay committed to equity when the language itself has become political. She talks about how she meets companies where they are, without letting them abandon their values, and how internal messaging matters more than ever when employees are watching every policy change and wondering if any of it was real.We also go deeper.
Dr. Taylor reflects on her own leadership evolution. The wounds that go unspoken in organizations. The unintentional harm of a hands-off style. The hard conversation of hiring a close friend and what accountability actually required of her. She is clear that leadership development cannot only face outward, and she models what it looks like to turn that lens inward.
We talk about the fractures between women. Colorism. Unspoken competition. The wounds we carry into workplaces and the healing circles beginning to name them. The allyship work that is no longer optional. And the Women of Color Summit's Ally Institute, a brave space being built intentionally for everyone ready to show up and learn.The conversation moves into AI, workforce disruption, and the disproportionate impact on women. Dr. Taylor holds space for both the fear and the possibility, and she does not pretend either side is simple.Her closing message is simple and direct.

Want more.

Show up in spaces where no one you know is going.
Go for yourself. Expand your horizon.
Do not wait for others to come aboard.
This is what courageous leadership looks like in real time.

Recorded at ROC Vox Recording & Production Studios Rochester, NY www.rocvox.com

Aubre Fox builds rooms where ambition becomes visible. As CEO of A Fox Interiors and founder of the Next Level Collective, she brings ambitious women together to grow, collaborate, and stretch beyond the limits they once placed on themselves. In this conversation, Aubre reflects on the moment she stopped writing resumes and started designing her own path. She realized she was not just good at her work. She was a problem solver who loved building systems, creating solutions, and leading teams. She shares a simple leadership philosophy that shaped her approach to entrepreneurship. You can lead without being the MVP. Leadership is not about knowing everything. It is about building the right team and trusting people to do the things you do not need to master. We also talk about confidence and visibility. Aubre noticed a pattern among many women she worked with. If they felt uncomfortable in their bodies or worried about how they looked on camera, they hesitated to step onto stages, into interviews, or behind microphones. Their ideas were strong. Their voices still mattered. Motherhood, chronic illness, and a journey through autoimmune disease also reshaped Aubre’s leadership. Studying neuroplasticity helped her retrain her mind through chronic pain and develop a deeper empathy for what women carry while building businesses and families. This conversation explores confidence, leadership, and the courage to be seen.

Recorded at ROC Vox Recording & Production Studios Rochester, NY www.rocvox.com

Constance Mitchell Jefferson grew up at the center of Rochester’s civil rights movement. Her mother, Connie Mitchell, was a pioneering political leader who helped establish Action for a Better Community and worked inside government to expand access and opportunity. Their home was filled with community leaders, organizers, and difficult conversations about justice.Constance grew up listening.

She watched policy debates unfold at the dinner table. She saw the courage required to stand for change when systems resist it. She also experienced the cost. Bomb threats against her family home. The tension of carrying a public legacy while trying to build an identity of her own.

Those early experiences shaped the work she would later lead inside city government.
As the City of Rochester’s MWBE officer and procurement leader, Constance stepped into the systems that determine how public dollars move through a community.

• Contracts. 

• Purchasing.

• Infrastructure.

The mechanics that quietly shape economic opportunity.

She studied the system closely before changing it.Instead of treating equity as a symbolic commitment, she redesigned procurement structures to make accountability measurable. Supplier diversity requirements. Compliance systems that ensured subcontractors were paid. Processes that expanded access for minority and women owned businesses.

Her work helped transform Rochester into one of the most respected supplier diversity models in New York State.In this conversation we explore what equity looks like when it becomes operational. What integrity costs when you challenge entrenched systems. Why accountability is the backbone of real change.Constance also reflects on the unfinished work of the civil rights generation. Housing. Education. Economic opportunity. The same issues her parents fought for decades ago still shaping communities today.Real change requires courage, structure, and leaders who are willing to choose what is right over what is popular.

Recorded at ROC Vox Recording & Production Studios Rochester, NY www.rocvox.com

There is a moment in a woman’s life when she realizes no one is coming to save her.
For Maisha, that moment came after her mother exhaled for the last time. She felt the oxygen leave her body and had to remember how to inhale on her ownEverything shifted from there.
In this episode, we talk about what it means to become your own protector. To stop managing other people’s perceptions. To release the need to prove your integrity. To use your voice because it is yours.Maisha shares the surrender that changed her life. Letting go of attachment to what others think. Allowing relationships to complete without bitterness. Accepting betrayal without allowing it to live in her nervous system. Refusing to betray herselfWe move through conversations most women whisper about:

• Advocating for your health
• Mammograms and medical literacy
• Menopause and hormone therapy without shame
• Boundaries that honor your evolution
• Forgiveness that frees your body
• Letting seasons close with dignity
• Holding grief and joy at the same time
• Spiritual expansiveness without confinement

She speaks about being Cheryl’s daughter with reverence and strength. About becoming her own mama bear when her greatest protector transitionedShe speaks about consciousness and the responsibility that comes with awareness. About recognizing your people by frequency. About loving across spiritual traditions without narrowing the Divine to one expression.

Recorded at ROC Vox Recording & Production Studios Rochester, NY www.rocvox.com

Growth starts with the leader.Jill Peterson, founder of Clover Insights and creator of the Four P’s Pathway, works at the intersection of people, process, profits, and purpose. Her work centers on one belief: if the leader is unclear, the organization will carry that confusion forward.In this conversation, we go straight to the root.

We talk about hyperachievement. About the pressure to perform. About being conditioned to lead a certain way and realizing it no longer fits. Jill shares how she had to unlearn directness that was shaped early in her career and how she rebuilt her leadership voice without losing authority.

We explore why so many successful executives still feel restless. Why “doing more” becomes the default answer. Why rescuing your team feels productive but quietly limits growth.Jill brings depth to the idea of mental fitness through Positive Intelligence. She breaks down how our internal saboteurs influence decision-making, culture, and communication. She speaks candidly about tying self-worth to performance and the freedom that comes from interrupting that pattern.

We also get practical.

How values clarify decisions.

How process removes fear instead of creating it.

How profit becomes directional when leaders stop avoiding the numbers.

How rest strengthens creativity.

How joy belongs in serious business.This episode is about responsibility.

Before you scale your team.

Before you optimize your systems.

Before you chase the next milestone.

The work begins with you.

Recorded at ROC Vox Recording & Production Studios Rochester, NY www.rocvox.com

Cheryl Letray has spent more than three decades building financial freedom through real estate. As an investor, educator, and founder of Freedom by Design, she approaches wealth as something structured, intentional, and deeply personal.

Her journey began long before the success.Becoming a single mother of seven reshaped everything. She renovated apartment units with her children alongside her. 

She paid contractors extra to teach her sons how to build. She brought them into entrepreneurship classes. She turned long workdays into life lessons. What she was building extended far beyond property.

In this conversation, Cheryl reflects on the inner dialogue that drove her for years. The pressure to prove that her family could be successful. The desire to give her children more than she had. The belief that pushing harder would eventually create balance.

A defining reset came in 2020 when she realized she was striving to demonstrate success that her children had never required from her. That pause changed her relationship with work, worth, and joy.

We talk about guilt spending and the emotional weight behind it. We talk about values written in 2003 that still guide her decisions today. We talk about writing your own eulogy as a compass for how to live now.Cheryl shares the three affirmations that anchor her life:

I am whole.
I am full.
I am free.

She speaks candidly about learning to say “I love you” to herself in her fifties and how that shift transformed her prosperity consciousness more than any business plan ever did.There is wisdom here for single mothers carrying invisible pressure. For women who tie productivity to worth. For anyone building wealth while trying to build a life they actually enjoy.Freedom, in Cheryl’s world, is designed.

Legacy is intentional.
Worth is internal.

Recorded at ROC Vox Recording & Production Studios Rochester, NY www.rocvox.com

Melissa Suchadolski is the President of USC Builds, a woman- and minority-owned construction firm in Rochester, and the first woman and first person of color to chair the Builders Exchange of Rochester. In this conversation, Melissa speaks openly about surviving childhood sexual abuse and how hypervigilance, overachievement, and hyper-independence became the traits that shaped her leadership.

Those qualities helped her build a successful business and earn respect in rooms that were not designed for her. Over time, she began to recognize the cost.We talk about what happens when productivity becomes protection. When being needed becomes identity. When control feels safer than collaboration. Melissa shares how stillness became part of her leadership practice. How faith grounded her when anxiety and reactivity were running the show. How sitting in silence felt like warfare before it felt like freedom.We explore the subtle shift from doing to being. From carrying everything to building empowered teams.

From leading through armor to leading through awareness.There is honesty in this episode about ego, about letting go, about leaving the meeting and trusting the process to work without you.There is also wisdom about peace not being the absence of chaos, but something cultivated in the middle of it. Unlearning survival leadership is uncomfortable. It requires humility, stillness, and trust. Melissa offers a grounded, embodied example of what that evolution can look like in real time.

Recorded at ROC Vox Recording & Production Studios Rochester, NY www.rocvox.com