The Conversation Podcast

My next Guest, my friend Chris Bainbridge. A storyteller, writer, and Vice President of Production at Bclip Productions in Asheville, North Carolina. With a master’s degree in journalism and experience across every stage of video production, he helps people and organizations turn their ideas into engaging, memorable stories.

His love of storytelling began early, writing his first book at just six years old. Today, he brings that same curiosity to his creative work, along with a steady presence and an ability to find clarity in complex situations.

Outside of production, Chris enjoys theater, Chicago sports, mountain trails, and time with his family. He also volunteers to advance equity in his community.

My next guest, and our first guest of Season 2, is Zsané Jhé, pronounced “ZHAH-nay JAY.”

An actress, writer, and poet originally from East St. Louis, Illinois, Zsané studied civil engineering at North Carolina A&T State University before pursuing her creative career.

You may recognize her as Officer Jessica Sims in Rebel Ridge (2024) or Tiffany Williams in Black Lightning. Her other credits include The Underground Railroad, Watchmen, David Makes Man, Good Trouble, and The Resident.

I’m looking forward to exploring the person behind the performances, the choices that shaped her journey, and what it means to find and trust your own voice.

Follow Can I Ask? The Conversation for the episode announcement and more from Season 2.

My Next Guest Itiyopiya Ewart, MSW, LCSW, ASAT, is an Associate Sex Addiction Therapist who works with individuals navigating chronic stress, compulsive sexual behaviors, pornography use, secrecy, shame, and the emotional patterns that often sit beneath them.

Her approach blends somatic therapy with evidence-informed clinical practices, helping clients better understand the connection between past experiences, internal distress, core beliefs, and present-day behavior. Her work focuses not only on changing patterns, but on helping people develop greater emotional steadiness, self-awareness, accountability, and trust in themselves.

Grounded in a healing-as-justice framework, Itiyopiya creates space for the complexity of each person’s experience while encouraging honesty, stability, and personal alignment. Her work recognizes that meaningful healing requires both compassion and accountability, particularly when shame and secrecy have become part of someone’s story.

With a Master of Social Work and specialized training in sex addiction therapy, Itiyopiya brings a clinically grounded, thoughtful, and deeply human perspective to conversations about sexuality, behavior, trauma, shame, relationships, and what it means to build a healthier relationship with ourselves.

Pamela is an Asheville-based writer and communications strategist who spent much of her career in television news as a writer, feature reporter, and weather anchor. Her work took her across the lower 48, where she covered the weather and got to know the people living through it.

Today, she helps people and organizations tell their stories and shares reflections on her own life through her Substack, Living in Wright Relationship. At the heart of her work is a curiosity I share: What makes people who they are, and what might we learn if we take the time to know them?

Learn more, read more, and join the conversation with Pamela on Substack.

My next Guest, I’m joined by someone who understands that stories are more than words on a page. They can be a bridge, a reflection, a place of belonging, and sometimes, a way of finding ourselves.

Tamara Olmedo is a proud Latina, the owner and co-founder of Cuentos y Cafe, a local pop-up and online bookstore dedicated to highlighting the voices and stories of BIPOC and BIPOC LGBTQIA+ authors.

Tamara has called Asheville home for 15 years, and throughout that time, she’s worked alongside organizations and businesses to make resources more accessible within her community, particularly for the Latino community, where language can sometimes become a barrier to essential services.

But what I found especially interesting about Tamara is that her work isn’t simply about books.

It’s about people.

It’s about who gets to tell their story, who gets to see themselves reflected in someone else’s, and what can happen when we create spaces where people feel recognized and connected.

And today, I wanted to go beyond the bookstore, beyond the work, and talk to Tamara about the woman behind it all. About identity, motherhood, culture, community, and the stories we carry with us as we become who we are.

We talk about motherhood, identity, culture, community, and the things we sometimes don’t realize are missing until we stop long enough to ask.

What’s missing?

Full conversation coming soon.

Preston Blakely is a dedicated public servant and community leader with deep roots in Fletcher, North Carolina. Born in Asheville to Jonathan and Namurah Blakely, he grew up in a family that instilled in him a strong sense of service and community engagement. His upbringing in Western North Carolina shaped his passion for advocacy, equity, and governance.

Preston attended Asheville High School before earning a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and African American and African Diaspora Studies from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He then pursued a Master of Public Affairs at Western Carolina University, where he worked as a graduate assistant in the Public Policy Institute. His capstone project focused on creating performance metrics for the City of Hendersonville’s Public Works Department, and he was recognized as the Outstanding Public Affairs Student in Public Management upon graduation.

Preston Blakely’s passion for public service took shape early, leading him to pursue a career dedicated to advocacy, fairness, and civic leadership. In 2019, he was elected to the Fletcher Town Council, representing District 2. Two years later, in 2021, he was elected as the Mayor of Fletcher and is currently serving a term that expires in 2026. His leadership is defined by a commitment to rural communities, economic development, and disaster recovery, particularly in response to Hurricane Helene, which devastated parts of Western North Carolina.

In addition to his public service, Preston is a manager at his family’s business, Quality Janitorial Group, which was founded by his parents in 1990 and has remained a pillar of the local business community. Preston is actively involved in several boards and commissions, ensuring that his leadership extends beyond the local level. He serves on the AdventHealth Hendersonville’s board, the Board of Delegates for the Land of Sky Regional Council, and the Governor’s Recovery Office for Western North Carolina (GROW NC) Advisory Committee.

Preston Blakely’s commitment to public service and his ability to create meaningful change have earned him numerous recognitions. In 2023, he was named the North Carolina Early Career Public Servant of the Year by the North Carolina Public Administration Alliance, highlighting his dedication to governance and policy solutions. That same year, he received North Carolina Attorney General’s Dogwood Award for his leadership and advocacy. His work has also been recognized nationally, as he was selected as a National League of Cities Centennial Under 40 Impact Award Winner. Additionally, he was chosen as a Hunt Policy Fellow, joining the second cohort of the prestigious leadership program that focuses on innovative public policy solutions.

In this conversation, we’ll talk beyond Preston the mayor, but also Preston the man: identity, leadership, community, and what it means to be a Black man navigating public life while still figuring out leading with intention beyond the title.

My Next guest is Brandy Mills. Her story is one of self-leadership, impact, and the legacy that becomes possible when we learn to face who we are, lead ourselves through what life brings, and use what we’ve learned to make a difference for someone else.

Long before she had language for that, Brandy was the woman people called. The one they trusted with their struggles, their decisions, their dreams, and sometimes the parts of themselves they weren’t quite sure what to do with. Her own journey through fear, rejection, self-doubt, and questions of worth eventually inspired Woman Strong, a movement created to Engage, Uplift, Equip, Empower, and Transform women. She later put that same philosophy on paper as the self-published author of Woman, You Are Strong: A 21-Day Face It So You Can Fix It Journey, and now brings it to life through The Room Where We All Faced It, where women gather for honest conversations, guided by sections of the book, about what they’ve had to face, and what it takes to fix it.

But Brandy’s ability to pour into others was being shaped by her own unlikely journey. The first in her family in decades to graduate from high school and the first to attend college, she found pride, culture, and possibility during her undergraduate studies at Winston-Salem State University. From the emergency room to travel nursing, a college professor, to healthcare leadership and executive operations, Brandy spent more than two decades learning people, leadership, and what it means to be responsible for impact beyond yourself.

Then she walked into entrepreneurship, blindly as she’ll tell you, with a brick-and-mortar business, a willingness to learn, and no idea that the lessons ahead would eventually help shape Brandy Mills Consulting. Today, her work brings those experiences together as she challenges conventional thinking and says out loud some of the things others have only been thinking.

Brandy has received numerous honors, but those closest to her soul say more about who she is than what she has achieved: the Spirit of Martin Luther King Jr. Award, presented during a celebration keynoted by Dr. Maya Angelou, honored her character and service; the Nexstar Remarkable Woman Award reflected the impact of Woman Strong; two Tzedek Social Justice Impact Awards and the Our Turn to Play Trailblazer Award recognized her community impact; and the Together We Are More Humanitarian Leadership Award honored her leadership through the pandemic.

Today, Brandy can look back at the nurse, the professor, the leader, the entrepreneur, the author, the woman who has had to face some things herself, and the woman others continue to trust with theirs, and finally name the thread connecting it all: It was self-leadership all along. She now uses what each chapter has taught her to create impact beyond herself, and for her, that’s where leadership becomes legacy.

My next guest is Jessica Campbell, a Western North Carolina native, mother, advocate, and nonprofit professional whose journey is deeply connected to both her personal experiences and her passion for helping others.

After spending more than twenty years working in healthcare, primarily in long-term and skilled nursing care, Jessica found herself on a new path after her family began navigating a Duchenne diagnosis. Through organizations like Jett Foundation, she and her family found support, resources, and community. Those experiences would eventually inspire Jessica to continue her education in social work and become part of the work that supports other families navigating similar journeys.

Jessica is also a self-proclaimed lover of gardening, random clearance plants, and all things snow. And yes, she can say the alphabet backwards!

Join me as I sit down with Jessica Campbell to talk about family, advocacy, purpose, lived experience, and what happens when the journey you never expected becomes part of the work you are called to do.