The Leader's Commute Podcast

HOST: Jess Villegas, ACUITY Business Consulting

Tara Hamberger is the Founder & CEO of RootedCare+, an AI-native, SMS-first care coordination platform supporting care recipients and the caregivers who stand beside them. A developer and technologist with 14+ years building systems for nonprofits and healthcare organizations, Tara built the RootedCare+ platform herself — including Roo, an AI care companion, and RootedMemory™, a patent-pending context engine that turns everyday text conversations into care intelligence, surfacing risk and social needs like housing, food, and isolation. The platform grew out of Tara's own caregiving experience with her grandmother and now powers rural health programs across multiple states.

Tara Hamberger Links:
Website: www.rootedcare.plus 

Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/taraliana/

Jess Villegas: [email protected]

HOST: Jess Villegas, ACUITY Business Consulting

My guest today is  Lex Sisney, author of the books Organizational Physics - The Science of Growing a Business and Designed to Scale - How To Structure Your Business For Exponential Growth. 

Lex helps CEOs and their leadership teams align around a new organizational design—one that drives greater sales, coordination, and innovation. He specialize in companies making the leap from "Nail It" to "Scale It." Clients include the global Inc 5000 in fintech, adtech, manufacturing, health care, energy, and consumer goods. His methods are based on timeless and universal laws of physics, cutting-edge management theory, and first-hand experience starting and scaling fast-growing companies. To learn more and get in touch, visit http://organizationalphysics.com.

Jess Villegs: [email protected] 

HOST: Jess Villegas - ACUITY Business Consulting

THIS IS THE FIRST OF A 2-PART EPISODE

Lisa Earle McLeod is a writer, executive coach, and keynote speaker who has worked with clients like Hilton, Roche, LinkedIn, Hootsuite, Volvo, and Dave & Busters. She is a regular contributor for The Harvard Business Review and over 2 million learners have taken her LinkedIn Learning courses. She has authored five books, including the global bestseller, "Selling with Noble Purpose”.

Lisa Earle McLeod Website

https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisaearlemcleod/

Jess Villegas Email: [email protected]

Jess Villegas Website

Jess Villegas Linkedin Profile

HOST: Jess Villegas - ACUITY Business Consulting

THIS IS THE 2ND OF A 2-PART EPISODE

My guest today is Lisa McLeod. She is a writer, executive coach, and keynote speaker who has worked with clients like Hilton, Roche, LinkedIn, Hootsuite, Volvo, and Dave & Busters. She is a regular contributor for The Harvard Business Review and over 2 million learners have taken her LinkedIn Learning courses. She has authored five books, including the global bestseller, "Selling with Noble Purpose”.

Lisa Earle McLeod Website

Lisa Earl McLeod Linkedin Profile

Jess Villegas Email: [email protected]

Jess Villegas Website

Jess Villegas Linkedin Profile

HOST: Jess Villegas - ACUITY Business Consulting

My guest today is Lisa Scheinkopf—author, consultant, and educator, is someone who worked closely with Eli Goldratt, author of the iconic book The Goal, to help codify what eventually became the Theory of Constraints thinking process. She later advanced her thinking on this in her  book Thinking For A Change. In it, Lisa did not simply cover the operational side of constraints, but the deeper idea underneath it all: That human beings and organizations alike often spend enormous amounts of energy solving the wrong problems because we’ve unknowingly anchored ourselves to assumptions we’ve stopped questioning. It was therefore natural for the conversation to become about not only how to improve systems, but also how to think more clearly inside them. Please enjoy my conversation with Lisa Scheinkopf.

Lisa Scheinkopf Website: Jenrada.com

Jess Villegas Website: ACUITY Business Consulting

Jess Villegas Email: [email protected]

HOSTED BY:  Jess Villegas, ACUITY Business Consulting

Sometimes the most dangerous disruptions in life are the ones nobody else can see. My guest today, Steve “Moby” Leitch, knows something about disruption. After the collapse of his businesses, marriage, health, and identity, he began rebuilding his life—not just externally, but internally. What followed eventually led him into the world of ultra-distance open-water swimming and the Ocean Seven challenges. But beneath those achievements is a deeper story about surrender, purpose, discipline, and learning how to build a life on something more durable than performance.

Website: https://stevemobyleitch.net
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-moby-leitch/
Amazon Documentary: https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B0D4RR6FFM/ref=atv_dp_share_cu_r
Book: https://www.amazon.com/Against-Current-Created-Purpose-Miss/dp/B0CSBJPQ7P
Email: s[email protected]

Jess Villegas: [email protected]

HOST: Jess Villegs - ACUITY Business Consulting

Most leaders understand the importance of planning. Fewer understand what planning is actually for. In this Reflection episode, High Noon, Full Moon: Plans Fail, Preparation Endures, I relate a story about preparation, uncertainty, and what happens when circumstances abruptly separate us from the plans we carefully constructed.

What began as an ambitious hike through the Grand Canyon eventually became something much more meaningful: a lesson about adaptability, resilience, and the difference between having a plan… and becoming prepared.

Jess Villegas: [email protected]

HOST: Jess Villegas - ACUITY Business Consulting

My guest today is Marc A. Pitman, founder and CEO of Concord Leadership Group. Over the past 20 years, he has trained more than 27,000 leaders across North America, Europe, Mexico, and New Zealand, and personally coached over 130 CEOs and senior executives through periods of significant disruption—including the dot-com bust, 9/11, the 2008 recession, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

He’s a Certified Speaking Professional, a Certified FranklinCovey coach, and the author of The Surprising Gift of Doubt – Use uncertainty to become the Exceptional Leader You Are Meant To Be . His work bolsters our efforts at leadership, influence, and real-world application by helping leaders of all stripes to  navigate complexity without losing clarity.

In this conversation, Marc and I explore the role of doubt, not with the goal of eliminating it, but as something to interpret because in many of the situations that matter most, there is no GPS—only a direction and how we choose to navigate it.

Concord Leadership Group https://concordleadershipgroup.com/

The Leadership Doubt Zapper https://concordleadershipgroup.com/zapper

The Leadership Styles Quiz https://concordleadershipgroup.com/style

Marc A Pitman LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcapitman/

ACUITY Business Consluting ACUITY Business Consulting

HOST: Jess Villegas - ACUITY BUsiness Consulting 

Every system has a moment where something gets exposed, not necessarily a failure, but a signal. When this happens it is likely a tension exist between how things are done, and what happens when someone operates outside of that.

In Season 1, I told stories and drew conclusions. In Season 2, I’m slowing that down. These Reflection episodes are about observing the system before interpreting it because what we often call issues with personality or conflict is usually structure and feedback at work.

Today’s story—Life, Liberty, and Layups—is about a pickup basketball game.

But more specifically, it’s about What happens when two different cultures collide…
and one of them doesn’t adapt.

Jess Villegas: [email protected]

HOST: Jess Villegas, ACUITY Business Consulting

Today’s guest, Rick Albertini, understands that the things we tend to label as ‘glitches’—the disruptions, the detours, the sudden recalibrations—are often the very moments shaping who we become. Not as failures or malfunctions, but as invitations to pay attention. 

Rick is the President of Phenix Truck & Van, Southern California’s largest and most complete truck body and van equipment manufacturer and distributor. His work at Phenix has been an exercise in building not just a strong organization, but a compassionate one—where people matter, where culture is intentional, and where long-term thinking replaces short-term reaction. So today’s conversation isn’t just about business, trucks, or operations. It’s about how a life—over years, over decades—reveals who we are, what we value, and how we choose to lead.” Please enjoy and thank you for listening.

Rick Albertini: [email protected] 

Jess Villegas: [email protected]