Step into the Pivot

For Breast Cancer Awareness Month, we bring together five women from the Step Into the Pivot community for a conversation unlike any we have had before.

Ami Hindia, Kim Kelleher, Andrea Anita, Ann Tankersley, and Theresa Conti return to reflect on their experiences with breast cancer, this time using Courage Cards as prompts for an open, unscripted conversation.

The cards lead us through five powerful themes: Open to Learning. Radiate Harmony. My Way Is Okay. Course Correct. Full Body Yes.

Along the way, the women talk candidly about the shock of diagnosis, learning to advocate for themselves, finding support, working through treatment, making deeply personal choices about their bodies and recovery, and accepting that the plan may change many times along the way.

They also reflect on what can become clearer after cancer: what deserves their energy, what no longer does, when to say no, and how differently each person may choose to move through the experience. As Theresa puts it, no two journeys are the same.

The conversation closes by connecting health, work, and money. As women working in financial services, the group explores why both cancer and finances can be difficult subjects to talk about, and why curiosity, education, asking questions, and advocating for yourself matter in both.

A deeply personal conversation about resilience, perspective, choice, community, and the freedom to find your own way through.

And one final reminder from the group: if you are due for your mammogram, please schedule it.

If this resonates, share the episode with someone who needs steady voices in a scary season, and please subscribe and leave a review so more listeners can find it!

Connect with Ami:
LinkedIn

Connect with Andrea:
LinkedIn

Connect with Anne:

LinkedIn

Connect with Kim:

LinkedIn

Connect with Theresa and Ivana:

Theresa, True Strategy Consultants: tsc-consultants.com
LinkedIn @treeconti, Insta @tscconsultants

Ivana, Courageous Being: courageousbeing.com
LinkedIn @ivipol, Insta @courbeing

SITP team, Step Into The Pivot: stepintothepivot.com
LinkedIn @step-into-the-pivot, YouTube @StepIntoThePivot

Today we invite Jessica Porter and Hayley Porter, the duo behind the 401(k) Girls, to talk with us about the pivot they’re helping lead in financial education and 401(k) retirement planning.

They share what it’s like to create content while algorithms shift under your feet, why “talking head” explanations still matter even when they don’t always get the reach, and how they’ve learned to communicate with more clarity, more brevity, and more humanity.

Subscribe, rate, and share this podcast with a friend who needs a confidence boost with their 401(k)! Thanks for listening!

Guest Bio:

The 401(k) Girls is a financial education platform founded by financial planners Jessica Porter and Hayley Porter to make retirement planning and investing simple, approachable, and fun for younger professionals and clients.

Securities and investment advisory services offered through 𝗢𝘀𝗮𝗶𝗰 𝗪𝗲𝗮𝗹𝘁𝗵, Inc. member FINRA/SIPC. 𝗢𝘀𝗮𝗶𝗰 𝗪𝗲𝗮𝗹𝘁𝗵 is separately owned and other entities and/or marketing names, products or services referenced here are independent of 𝗢𝘀𝗮𝗶𝗰 𝗪𝗲𝗮𝗹𝘁𝗵

Jessica Porter is a Financial Advisor, Partner at BPG Wealth Management, and co-founder of The 401(k) Girls. Growing up in a blue-collar family where money wasn't openly discussed, she developed a passion for helping people feel more confident and informed about their finances. Today, she works with business owners, retirement plans, and families to simplify complex financial decisions and create practical strategies for long-term success. When she's not talking about retirement plans, you'll likely find her on a long road trip, discovering new food, or spending time with her husband, step-daughter, and dog, Daisy.

Hayley Porter is a Financial Advisor with BPG Wealth Management and co-founder of The 401(k) Girls. She specializes in helping business owners, employees, and families navigate retirement and financial planning with confidence - minus the confusing jargon. Her mission is to make financial education approachable, practical, and empowering. Outside of work, she enjoys traveling, gardening, biking, and exploring the outdoors with her husband.

Connect with The 401(k) Girls: 

The 401(k) Girls: LinkedIn
Jessica Porter: LinkedIn
Hayley Porter: LinkedIn

Connect with Theresa and Ivana:

Theresa, True Strategy Consultants: tsc-consultants.com
LinkedIn @treeconti, Insta @tscconsultants

Ivana, Courageous Being: courageousbeing.com
LinkedIn @ivipol, Insta @courbeing

SITP team, Step Into The Pivot: stepintothepivot.com
LinkedIn @step-into-the-pivot, YouTube @StepIntoThePivot

Today we talk with Brooke Vixamar, a former financial services annuity expert. When a wave of unexpected loss hit her family, the careful language of retirement planning and life expectancy tables turned painfully concrete, and she started asking a sharper question: what do I want my days to actually feel like?

We follow Brooke’s pivot from annuities and retirement income conversations into cybersecurity and identity management, where she now works in product marketing. 

Thanks for listening! Remember to subscribe, share, and leave a review. Let us know what success at work means to you in the comments!

Guest Bio:

As a product marketing leader, my focus is on deeply understanding the industries, pain points, and boardroom pressures of our buyers to connect the right solutions to the right problems. I've spent my career helping identity, security, and growth leaders find solutions that actually move their business forward. Solutions that deliver measurable outcomes their board cares about: reduced fraud losses, faster customer onboarding, lower operational costs, successful digital transformation.

Connect with Brooke: 

LinkedIn

Connect with Theresa and Ivana:

Theresa, True Strategy Consultants: tsc-consultants.com
LinkedIn @treeconti, Insta @tscconsultants

Ivana, Courageous Being: courageousbeing.com
LinkedIn @ivipol, Insta @courbeing

SITP team, Step Into The Pivot: stepintothepivot.com
LinkedIn @step-into-the-pivot, YouTube @StepIntoThePivot

Boomers. Gen X. Millennials. Gen Z. They're often described as competing generations. What if they're actually different cultures trying to solve many of the same problems?

After delivering a keynote on intergenerational leadership, communication, and the growing influence of Gen Z, Liam Polonijo returns to Step Into the Pivot to share the research, revelations, and surprising insights that reshaped how he thinks about work, leadership, and collaboration.

Thanks for listening! Remember to subscribe, share, and leave a review. Let us know what success at work means to you in the comments!

Guest Bio:

Liam is an avid inner work practitioner. Through committed daily practice of Inner Bonding, transcendental meditation and general healthy lifestyle, he has upleveled his leadership, communication, organization, time-management skills, and navigation of personal and professional transitions. Liam serves as Generation Z Consultant to Courageous Being, providing valuable input across the center’s varied services. He studies Psychology and Business at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Connect with Liam: 

LinkedIn

Connect with Theresa and Ivana:

Theresa, True Strategy Consultants: tsc-consultants.com
LinkedIn @treeconti, Insta @tscconsultants

Ivana, Courageous Being: courageousbeing.com
LinkedIn @ivipol, Insta @courbeing

SITP team, Step Into The Pivot: stepintothepivot.com
LinkedIn @step-into-the-pivot, YouTube @StepIntoThePivot

Monika Herceg is the most awarded young author in recent Croatian history, with more than twenty literary awards for her poetry, plays, and short stories. In this deeply honest conversation, she shares how divorce, motherhood, financial uncertainty, and the decision to choose her own future became catalysts for rebuilding her life one small step at a time. 

Monika introduces a beautifully simple practice: keeping a "Diary of Tenderness" to notice how we care for ourselves, honor our needs, quiet the inner critic, and make room for rest. This warm, candid episode is a reminder that tenderness is not weakness. Sometimes, it is the bravest pivot we can make. 

Subscribe, share, and leave a review telling us what your next pivot might be!

Guest Bio:

Monika Herceg is one of the most recognized contemporary literary voices from Croatia. Her work has been translated into more than twenty languages and honored with numerous international awards. Her poetry and plays explore themes of womanhood, intergenerational memory, science, tenderness, freedom, and human dignity, while her advocacy work focuses on feminism, scientific literacy, and human rights.

Her book Closed Season (Lovostaj) is an award-winning 2019 poetry collection by Croatian author Monika Herceg, exploring themes of female experience, patriarchal violence, and war through a unique blend of physics and politics. The English translation was recently published and is available for purchase online.

Connect with Monika: 

Website, LinkedIn, Closed Season

Connect with Theresa and Ivana:

Theresa, True Strategy Consultants: tsc-consultants.com
LinkedIn @treeconti, Insta @tscconsultants

Ivana, Courageous Being: courageousbeing.com
LinkedIn @ivipol, Insta @courbeing

SITP team, Step Into The Pivot: stepintothepivot.com
LinkedIn @step-into-the-pivot, YouTube @StepIntoThePivot

A company gets sold and suddenly the career you built for decades is no longer yours to steer. That’s the moment our guest, Laurel Hardt, faced after 34 years in one organization, and it became the pivot that reshaped everything that came next.

Laurel breaks down how she diagnoses the real problem behind missed deadlines and blown budgets: no development process, no clear architecture, and no shared way of working. 

We close by connecting those same change management principles to today’s AI in the workplace conversation: how leaders can reduce fear, evaluate impact job by job, and use automation to free people for higher-value work. Subscribe, share this with someone facing a pivot, and leave a review with the biggest change you’re navigating right now.

Guest Bio:

Laurel Hardt began her career at Fred Meyer at age 18, eventually building a remarkable 34-year career that took her from cashier to Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer. Along the way, she became the youngest department manager in Fred Meyer history, developed strong teams, and helped create and lead several trailblazing roles that shaped how the company conducted business. After leaving Fred Meyer in 1999, Laurel spent 14 years consulting in areas including process improvement, leadership development, personnel development, performance management, and organizational development. Outside of work, she treasures her family, her 46-year marriage to George, time at the Oregon coast, creative projects, and her current study of Stoicism, which she connects to modern leadership and management wisdom.

Connect with Theresa and Ivana:

Theresa, True Strategy Consultants: tsc-consultants.com
LinkedIn @treeconti, Insta @tscconsultants

Ivana, Courageous Being: courageousbeing.com
LinkedIn @ivipol, Insta @courbeing

SITP team, Step Into The Pivot: stepintothepivot.com
LinkedIn @step-into-the-pivot, YouTube @StepIntoThePivot

In today's episode, we sit down with Susan Bradley, founder of the Sudden Money Institute (SMI) and Financial Transitionist Institute (FTI), and a leader in financial transition planning.
 
Susan draws a sharp line between change and transition: change is the external event, while transition is the internal adaptation that can take years.

If you’re navigating a major life transition, sudden money event, or a hard choice you cannot unsee, listen through and take notes. Subscribe, share this with someone in a season of change, and leave us a review with the one word guiding your next chapter.

Guest Bio:

Susan Bradley, CFP®, CeFT®  the founder of the Sudden Money® Institute which began 24 years ago as a community of practice seeking to better serve their financial planning clients by developing processes and tools for the personal side of money and for clients going through transitions. This Think Tank created the Certified Financial Transitionist® (CeFT®) designation and a division for training and certification called the Financial Transitionist® Institute. Susan has served on the FPA’s National Board of Directors, the National Football League’s Players Association’s Financial Education Advisory Board, and she serves as the Dean of Transitions for the Council of Deans of the Purposeful Planning Institute. She is seen and heard frequently in the national media, including NBC’s Nightly News, CNN, NPR, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times.

She is the author of Sudden Money: Managing a Financial Windfall (Wiley 2000), and she is also the recipient of the Insiders Forum Iconoclast Award 2017.

Connect with Susan: 

LinkedIn

Connect with Theresa and Ivana:

Theresa, True Strategy Consultants: tsc-consultants.com
LinkedIn @treeconti, Insta @tscconsultants

Ivana, Courageous Being: courageousbeing.com
LinkedIn @ivipol, Insta @courbeing

SITP team, Step Into The Pivot: stepintothepivot.com
LinkedIn @step-into-the-pivot, YouTube @StepIntoThePivot

Money can make smart, capable people freeze, and it’s rarely because they don’t understand math.

We unpack the structural realities that affect women’s finances, including the earnings gap, caregiving interruptions, and the long-term impact on savings and retirement security. Then we zoom in on the relational side: how many couples slide into traditional divisions of labor without meaning to, and how that can leave women unprepared during unexpected life transitions.

Thank you for listening! Please subscribe, share this with a friend who needs the nudge, and leave a review so more pivoters can find this conversation!

Research: Women's Pay Gap, Motherhood and Career Progression, Family and Finances

Connect with Theresa and Ivana:

Theresa, True Strategy Consultants: tsc-consultants.com
LinkedIn @treeconti, Insta @tscconsultants

Ivana, Courageous Being: courageousbeing.com
LinkedIn @ivipol, Insta @courbeing

SITP team, Step Into The Pivot: stepintothepivot.com
LinkedIn @step-into-the-pivot, YouTube @StepIntoThePivot

A lot of careers look great from the outside while quietly feeling misaligned on the inside. We sit down with Tiffany Salzman, founder of Candor Concepts, to talk about a pivot that isn’t just a job change; it’s a decision to build a purpose-driven life and business where leadership, marketing, and community impact all point in the same direction. 

We also talk Rotary, service above self, mentorship, and what it means to invite a new generation into community leadership. Finally, we use the Rotary Four-Way Test as a practical lens for decisions, boundaries, and burnout prevention, with a reminder to include yourself in “all concerned.”
 
Subscribe, leave a review, and tell us: what pivot are you stepping into next?

Guest Bio:

Tiffany Salzman is the Founder and Chief Strategist of Candor Concepts, a women-led marketing collective in Portland, Oregon. With 25+ years of experience working with purpose-driven brands, she helps leaders build marketing momentum — and movements. She's also a longtime Rotarian, incoming District Governor for 2028-2029, and a firm believer that the best ideas happen when everyone grabs a marker and contributes to the big picture.

Connect with Tiffany: 

LinkedIn

Connect with Theresa and Ivana:

Theresa, True Strategy Consultants: tsc-consultants.com
LinkedIn @treeconti, Insta @tscconsultants

Ivana, Courageous Being: courageousbeing.com
LinkedIn @ivipol, Insta @courbeing

SITP team, Step Into The Pivot: stepintothepivot.com
LinkedIn @step-into-the-pivot, YouTube @StepIntoThePivot

This episode covers extremely sensitive topics. Listener discretion is advised. Please prioritize your well-being while listening.

Your life can change in a single, absurd moment, and sometimes it’s the kind of moment nobody would believe if it weren’t true. We’re joined by Kevin Spaeth to talk about the day he was hit by a car while riding his bike… by his dentist. What follows is a story involving a subdural hematoma, a coma, emergency brain surgery, and a recovery that tests a teenager’s confidence in the most public way.

Kevin explains how he learned to prize every day without living in fear, why he got back on a bike, and how “make hay while the sun shines” shapes his parenting and love of the outdoors in the Pacific Northwest. We even get to meet Bub, his beloved dog, and talk about savoring time when you don’t know how much you have left.

Subscribe, leave a review, and tell us: what pivot are you stepping into next?

Guest Bio:

Since 1997, Kevin has dedicated his professional career to working with ERISA plans, focusing on helping small businesses help their employees prepare for retirement. Originally from New Jersey, he relocated to California in 2001. In 2017, he moved up to live on the Oregon/Washington border.  In his spare time, Kevin enjoys spending as much time as possible with his wife and three kids exploring the Pacific Northwest.  He's also a competitive chili chef with several wins under his belt.

Connect with Kevin: 

LinkedIn

Connect with Theresa and Ivana:

Theresa, True Strategy Consultants: tsc-consultants.com
LinkedIn @treeconti, Insta @tscconsultants

Ivana, Courageous Being: courageousbeing.com
LinkedIn @ivipol, Insta @courbeing

SITP team, Step Into The Pivot: stepintothepivot.com
LinkedIn @step-into-the-pivot, YouTube @StepIntoThePivot