Stand Tall Podcast

She delayed her wedding for a shoe buying job. And she has absolutely no regrets.

Becky Leeson is the founder of Becky's Wardrobe, a personal styling, wardrobe rental and vintage shopping business based in Blackheath, London.

With nearly 30 years of experience at the highest levels of fashion — including Topshop, ASOS, Office, Nobody's Child and most recently as Global Product Director at Speedo — she has spent her career helping women feel confident, seen andcompletely themselves in what they wear.

Her route to founding Becky's Wardrobe was anything but straight. From growing up in Shropshire wearing her mum's heels with multiple pairs of socks tuffed inside, to becoming a shoe buyer at Topshop and ASOS — where she was famously known for pairing socks and heels with a dress — Becky has spent decades learning the deep relationship between what we wear, how we feel and who we allow ourselves to be.

In this conversation, she and Fiorella explore what it means to leave a high-powered corporate career to build something entirely your own — and the very different kind of confidence that requires.

Becky talks about unlearning the need for external validation, the negotiations she had as a buyer quibbling over two pence with suppliers on two phones at once, and why she now refusesto compromise on her price, her value, or her presence.

She also shares the story of the six workshops she co-wrote during COVID called From the Inside Out — pairing internal confidence work with external style — and her loft full of heels she can't bring herself to part with, because every single pair holds a memory.

In this episode: from Topshop to personal styling · unlearning what others think · the confidence you need to go it alone · negotiating as a buyer vs. negotiating for yourself · conscious fashion choices · the women who shaped her · what a kitten heel says about you.

Stand Tall is a weekly podcast by Cheetah Stories — conversations with women who lead with confidence,creativity and conscious values. 🌐 cheetah-stories.com

Teresa Havvas — affectionately known as .T — is an Ideator, published Author, Higher-Education, Fellow (FHEA), www.teresahavvas.com

A Thought Partner, Concept Strategist and Connector, sheserves as Independent Facilitator and Speaker at IED Firenze for "Thoughts in Progress" — a curated seminar series on inner development and future self design.

She is also Course Leader and Brand Collaboration Catalyst for Vogue College of Fashion's short courses in Fashion Branding &Communication and the 5 Days of Fashion Business and Beauty Business programmes in London.

In this conversation, Fiorella and Teresa explore the tension between the spiritual and the material, the difference between a creative and a creator, and what it truly means to wait for the invitation before speaking your vision aloud.

Teresa shares a deeply personal tribute to her late mentor Deirdre Rose Crowley — the woman who first saw her eccentricities as gifts — and reflects on why she oncerejected high heels, what that rejection was really about, and why she is finally ready to reclaim them on her own terms.

This episode is about fashion as identity.

About deconditioning.

About the quiet revolutionary movement happening underground while the noise carries on above.

In this episode: human design and the projector type · the creative vs. the creator · fashion as identity marker · the negotiation with yourself · non-negotiables and energy protection · losing a mentor · heels, authority and reclaiming the feminine.

Stand Tall is a weekly podcast by Cheetah Stories — conversations with women who lead with confidence,creativity and conscious values. 🌐 cheetah-stories.com

This episode has a male guest. A senior investor, international business leader and author who spent decades in boardrooms where stock price ruled and values were a liability.

Stay with us. Because everything he says is something the women in this community already know.

Francesco Pagano — Frank — grew up in southern Italy, surrounded by family telling him "nah, you're not gonna do it." He built a career anyway. Decades of international experience across brand strategy, marketing, M&A, business development and operations. Books on AI, blockchain, money — and the biography of Giorgio Armani. Advisor and shareholder in brands across luxury, watches and innovation. Including Cheetah Stories.

He didn't follow a plan. He followed curiosity. And he did whatever was in front of him as well as he possibly could.

In this episode of Stand Tall, Frank talks about the moment he realised that working for a public company — where stock price is the only KPI — creates a specific kind of poison. About choosing values over a faster career, and what that choice actually costs. About the negotiation he lost that stayed with him longest — not a deal, but a person. About being underestimated by relatives who told him to go back and eat — and the quiet advantage of beating low expectations.

He talks about the women who shaped him: his mother, who raised four children alone; Rita McGrath, Professor of Strategy at Columbia and advisor to two US presidents; Mara Harvey, who is teaching young girls that finance was never a man's subject.

And he talks about his armour — an Armani suit and his parents' watches. He understood ours immediately.

He closes with the thing he's still practicing, decades in: standing tall on a bad day. Not because it's easy. Because life will surprise you if you let it.

Topics: choosing values over a faster career · stock price as a toxic KPI · unlearning 20 years of corporate marketing · the negotiation that costs most · being underestimated and beating expectations · financial education for young women · armour — suits, watches and what we wear to show up · standing tall on the bad days

Stand Tall is a weekly podcast by Cheetah Stories hosted by Fiorella Erni — conversations with women who lead with confidence, creativity and conscious values.
🌐 cheetah-stories.com

Stephen Kilpatrick spent 34 years as a British Army infantry officer. Northern Ireland. The Balkans. Kosovo — where he commanded a Battle Group and was appointed OBE. Tehran. Islamabad. South Sudan, as Chief of Staff of the UN military headquarters. He showed up five minutes early to every meeting. He polished his shoes. He wore his rank, his wings, his brigade flash.

And he was quite dismissive of humanitarians.

Then, in South Sudan, a commander of a non-state armed group told him something he couldn't ignore: the UN was insignificant. The ICRC was not. So he started asking questions — and eventually crossed the fence.

He spent almost eight years as an armed forces delegate at the International Committee of the Red Cross, working in Myanmar and Geneva on one of the hardest problems in modern conflict: reducing civilian harm in urban warfare. His wife, a Canadian journalist he met in South Sudan, helped him with the identity shift. She told him: "People look upon you as largely the source of the problem."

In this episode of Stand Tall, Stephen talks about his first negotiation — a train crash in Bosnia in 1996, facing a mayor with blood on his hands — and what he learned from losing it. He talks about moral courage as the one thing he won't compromise. About what it costs to shed an identity built over three decades. About the women who kept him grounded through all of it.

He also talks about shoes. Polishing them as meditation. The way a uniform is body armour. And why, without it, you have to look people in the eye and earn it differently.

He closes with the line his mother used to write in birthday poems: laughter and the love of friends.

Topics: soldier to humanitarian · shedding a 34-year military identity · civilian harm reduction in urban warfare · moral courage as a non-negotiable · the failed negotiation in Bosnia and the recovery · being underestimated from both sides · uniform vs. civilian clothes as armour · women who changed his trajectory

Stand Tall is a weekly podcast by Cheetah Stories hosted by Fiorella Erni — conversations with men and women who lead with confidence, creativity and conscious values.
🌐 cheetah-stories.com

Christina Bouglass spent 20 years as a marketing director inside multinationals. She was good at it. And then private equity walked through the door and made everything she'd built, toxic.

She didn't just leave a job.

She lost the title she'd organised her entire identity around.

She remembers asking her husband if he'd still love her the same without it.

He said: "I think I will love you more."

What followed wasn't unlearning. Her word for it was better: remembering. Remembering she loved writing. Remembering she trusted her gut. Remembering there was a woman underneath the marketing director, one who did pottery, wrote poems as a child, and had spent two decades suppressing intuition in favour of data.

Today Christina advises impact brands and teaches marketing to the next generation. She built a framework she calls the 4B Impact Journey: bigger, bolder, braver, building communities that believe. And she's on a quiet mission to turn the most powerful tool for overconsumption into the most powerful tool for change.

In this episode of Stand Tall, Christina talks about grieving a corporate identity, why she negotiates brilliantly for her kids and terribly for herself, and why everything in marketing is becoming vanilla and what boldness actually costs.

And about heels. How she wore them every single day for 20 years. And what it means that she doesn't need them anymore.

Topics: grieving a corporate identity · feminine intuition in a data-driven world · the 4B impact framework · marketing as a force for good · remembering vs. unlearning · negotiating for others vs. yourself · what titles really cost us · confidence beyond the office

Stand Tall is a weekly podcast by Cheetah Stories, hosted by Fiorella Erni, conversations with women who lead with confidence, creativity and conscious values.
🌐 cheetah-stories.com

Milena Dold-Scheidegger spent 12 years in finance, private equity, tight deadlines, male-dominated rooms and was very good at it.

Then she had a baby. And everything shifted.

Not because she couldn't perform. But because she realized she was performing on someone else's terms. And that she wasn't willing to do that anymore.

She walked away from a decade-long career and founded IRALIS , a fine jewelry brand built around lab-grown diamonds with transparent origins, grown with renewable energy. Today, 80% of her buyers are women choosing diamonds for themselves.

In this episode of Stand Tall, Milena talks about the unlearning that came with leaving finance: people pleasing, measuring your worth by what your superiors think, always being available.

She talks about the negotiation that changed her most, not a deal she closed, but the internal one between who she had been and who she was becoming. And she talks about what it costs to walk away from an identity you spent 10 years building.

She also keeps different heel heights in her office drawer — one for every level of confidence required.

This is a conversation about ambition that's aligned, performance on your own terms, and what it really means to start over.

Topics: leaving finance to become a founder · lab-grown diamonds and conscious luxury · unlearning people pleasing · the internal negotiation of becoming a mother · building female community · working within your energy · heels as confidence tools

Stand Tall is a weekly podcast by Cheetah Stories host by Fiorella Erni, conversations with women who lead with confidence, creativity and conscious values.
🌐 cheetah-stories.com

Anne has lived more professional lives than most people manage in one career.

Copywriter. Vogue editor. Agency founder. She sold the agency, went independent, and spent 12 years as a brand strategist before becoming a professor of fashion, lifestyle and advertising psychology at Campus University in Munich and Nuremberg.

Today she works with the next generation on identity, belonging, and what it means to show up as yourself.

And through all of it, she kept one rule: respect is non-negotiable. Cross that line once, she'll work with you. Cross it consistently, the conversation is over.

In this episode of Stand Tall, Anne talks about what curiosity taught her that ambition never could, why the most important negotiation of her life happened nowhere near a boardroom, and how she learned to stop seeing the world in black and white.

She also talks about wearing the sequin skirt to the playground. And why there is no perfect moment, only the moment you decide to show up.

This one is full of lines you'll want to write down.

Topics: unlearning the need to say yes to everything · curiosity as a career strategy · the negotiation that changed her · fashion, identity and how we want to be seen · the women who shaped her · heels, height and not being emotionally dependent on your shoes · what it means to stand tall

Stand Tall is a weekly podcast by Cheetah Stories host by Fiorella Erni, conversations with women who lead with confidence, creativity and conscious values.
🌐 cheetah-stories.com

What does it really take to stand up for yourself?

For Cornelia Mattig, it begins with knowing your values—and having the courage to defend them.

In this episode of Stand Tall, Fiorella Erni sits down with the Swiss lawyer, startup advisor and Partner at Herting Law Firm to explore the negotiations that shape our careers, the boundaries that protect our self-worth and why women must learn to make their voices heard.

Together, they discuss why purpose-driven founders often choose a different path to growth, how clarity becomes your greatest negotiation tool, and the moment Cornelia challenged unequal pay, not for the number itself, but for the respect it represented.

They also explore leadership, mentorship, the confidence that comes from setting healthy boundaries, and why the right pair of heels isn't about height—it's about standing eye to eye with the person in front of you.

Because standing tall isn't about being the loudest person in the room.

It's about refusing to make yourself smaller than you are.

Hosted by Fiorella Erni, founder of Cheetah Stories, Stand Tall features conversations with founders, leaders and changemakers exploring the values, decisions and defining moments that shape who we become.

The Courage to Lead with Purpose

Can technology and sustainability grow together?

Dr. Priscilla Johnson believes they can and has spent her career proving it. From leading Microsoft's net positive water strategy to advising organisations on responsible technology, she has built a career at the intersection of innovation, environmental stewardship and purpose.

In this episode of Stand Tall, Fiorella Erni sits down with the engineer, entrepreneur and educator to explore the defining moments that shaped her leadership, the values that guide her decisions, and why real progress begins with the courage to challenge conventional thinking.

Because standing tall isn't about choosing between innovation and responsibility.

It's about building a future where both can thrive.

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🎙️ New episodes every week.

The Courage to Build Your Financial Future

Money shapes the choices we make, the opportunities we create, and the freedom we give ourselves. Yet for many women, financial confidence still feels out of reach.

In this episode of Stand Tall, Fiorella Erni sits down with Nadine Hunkeler, certified financial planner and entrepreneur, to explore how clarity, education and intentional action can transform our relationship with money.

Together, they discuss why women hesitate to invest, how boundaries influence both self-worth and financial wellbeing, and the mindset shifts that lead to lasting security and independence.

Because standing tall isn't about knowing all the answers. It's about having the courage to take the first step toward the future you want.

🎙️ New episodes every week.

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