The Leadership Story Podcast

After 13 and a half years at one company and more than 18 years in the chief of staff function, Jennifer Hanten learned the hard way that a great role at the wrong company comes with an expiration date. In this episode, Jenn shares what it was like to see a layoff coming, and then to hear “you’ve been impacted” on a call with half the organization. She explains why she now screens companies as carefully as they screen her, why “just network” falls apart once you’re on the outside, and why trust, not location, decides whether remote work succeeds. Her one word is empathy, and the alumni group she started after her layoff, now more than a thousand members strong, shows what that looks like in practice.

Chapters

00:18 The Power of Leadership Stories

01:41 Introduction to Jennifer Hanten

02:27 Evaluating Organizations: Culture, Severance, and the Warning Signs of Change

12:18 The Challenge of Applying for Executive Roles

18:03 Building Relationships and Networking for Success

22:09 Networking, Sponsorship, and the Benefits of Remote Work

23:53 The Benefits of Remote Work

28:11 Leading Women Effectively in Remote Work Environments

34:40 Empathy as a Leadership Quality

Join the Community!

Work with Lisa: 1-on-1 strategy sessions (90 minutes) on leadership, and resilience.

Book your session → https://cal.com/connectblackgirlcollc/strategy-session

Shop the collection:

The BCCo Collection: https://black-girl-co.printify.me/

Connect with Jennifer Hanten

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jennhanten0423

Hanten Woodworking: www.hantenwoodworking.com

Connect with Lisa

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/lisa-jones-mbcp-mbci-57872823

Email: [email protected]

Autopilot makes high-achievers look productive while quietly draining their time, energy, and health. If you are heading into planning season feeling busy but not fully in control, Lisa Jones is asking the question most people skip: what did this year really cost you? Lisa breaks down how easy it is to confuse momentum with intention, especially when your calendar is packed with other people’s priorities, goals set to impress, and yeses you would never choose again. She shows why the real danger is not overworking alone, it is failing to count the hidden price of the wins.

Key Topics We Explored

* Autopilot Feels Like Productivity: Same meetings, same responses, same goals we can’t remember by March.

* Every Yes Is Spent From Somewhere: The extra projects, committees, and quick favors we never planned for, and why no is a full sentence.

* Goals Set to Impress: Why a goal you set for someone else’s approval is the easiest one to walk away from.

* Burnout Lands Hardest on Women: What McKinsey & LeanIn.Org’s Women in the Workplace 2025 report and Gallup’s 2025 data show about burnout and responsibility.

* 4 Questions to Close the Year: Count the costs, find where you went into debt, notice what you wouldn’t do again, and check the balance before you spend it.

Chapters

01:11 Year-End Reflections and Goal Setting

05:58 The Cost of Saying Yes

10:40 Counting the Costs of Accomplishments

Join the Community!

Work with Lisa: 1-on-1 strategy sessions (90 minutes) on leadership, and resilience.

Book your session → https://cal.com/connectblackgirlcollc/strategy-session

• Shop the collection: Tools for The Story is live:

https://black-girl-co.printify.me/

Connect with Lisa

• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/lisa-jones-mbcp-mbci-57872823

• Email: [email protected]

Resources

Companion article from Substack

Before You Plan Next Year, Count What This One Cost You

McKinsey & Company and LeanIn.Org, Women in the Workplace 2025, https://womenintheworkplace.com/

Gallup 2025 leader burnout data, https://www.gallup.com/workplace/702881/women-show-stronger-employee-engagement-amid-higher-burnout.aspx

The same number kept finding Lisa: 90 days. A women’s organization told members to wait 90 days before they pivot. Online ads promised a new life in 90 days. A pastor at a revival said the next 90 days is where it turns. Same number, opposite advice.

In this solo episode, Lisa explains why both camps miss the point. Ninety days isn’t about speed. It’s how long it takes to get a real answer instead of a feeling. She walks through the two ways we get it wrong, leaving too early and staying too late, and why neither one looks at the evidence.

She closes with one assignment: name one thing, give it 90 days, and decide how you’ll measure it.

Key Topics We Explored

* Two opposite rules: Why “transform in 90 days” and “wait 90 days” can’t both be the rule.

* Pivoting too soon: Perfectionism, comparison, and releasing work before the data has time to arrive.

* Discomfort isn’t data: How fear of rejection passes itself off as a strategy decision.

* Staying too long: When holding on looks like commitment but is avoidance.

* 90 days in organizations: How consulting work moves a company from “we want to be” to “we are.”

* Your one thing: Naming it, measuring it, and giving it a real window.

Chapters

00:00 The Power of 90 Days

01:19 Revealing Hidden Insights

01:50 Navigating the 90-Day Dilemma

09:30 The Power of 90 Days in Personal Growth

10:55 Unveiling What’s Hidden

11:22 The Power of 90 Days Commitment

Join the Community!

Subscribe to Substack: leadershipstory.substack.com

· Follow on Instagram: @theleadershipstory

Work with Lisa: 1-on-1 strategy sessions (90 minutes) on leadership, and resilience.

Book your session → https://cal.com/connectblackgirlcollc/strategy-session

Shop the Black Girl Co collection: https://black-girl-co.printify.me/

Connect with Lisa

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/lisa-jones-mbcp-mbci-57872823

Email: [email protected]

Lisa Jones sits down with career coach, speaker, and learning and development facilitator Kay Kirkman to unpack why so many people feel stuck in careers that no longer fit, especially in midlife. Kay shares how her own nontraditional path, broadcast journalism background, and experience getting fired from her dream radio job shaped the way she now helps people reimagine work and reclaim the parts of themselves they set aside.

Key Topics We Explored

* Permission to Dream: Why giving yourself permission matters more than having a practical plan.

* Identity Over Job Title: Why the real block in midlife is identity, not ability.

* Reclaiming Dormant Selves: Reinvention as returning to the versions of you left in the basement.

* Making Time with Intention: Finding the hour a week your dream needs, honestly.

* Framing Your Vision: Kay’s first coaching step, getting quiet before getting a plan.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Leadership and Resilience

03:00 The Journey into Career Coaching

05:52 Permission to Dream

08:34 Breaking the Cycle of Career Expectations

11:40 The Birth of the Gen X Career Show

15:59 Relaunching the Podcast: A New Focus

20:57 Identity and Career Transitions

21:58 Reclaiming Our True Selves

28:14 Finding Time for Personal Growth

35:16 The Journey to Coaching

37:17 Defining Leadership Through Resilience

39:43 Reclaiming Your True Self

Join the Community!

Work with Lisa: 1-on-1 strategy sessions (90 minutes) on leadership, and resilience.

Book your session → https://cal.com/connectblackgirlcollc/strategy-session

Shop the collection: Tools for The Story is live:

https://black-girl-co.printify.me/

Connect with Kay

Podcast: The GenX Career Show https://pod.link/1530650736

Website: www.kirkmancommunications.com

Midlife Reinvention roadmap: https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/2514632/193188166691194183/share

Email: [email protected]

Connect with Lisa

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/lisa-jones-mbcp-mbci-57872823

Email: [email protected]

Burnout does not come from having too little. It comes from gathering more than the day requires.

In this solo episode, Lisa Jones revisits the story of manna and surplus through a resilience lens links it to one word: capacity. She shares how a routine walk helped her identify her own burnout, clarifies the difference from stress, and explains why the surplus we keep carrying has a real cost.

Supported by research on the invisible work women absorb, the hours lost to low-value tasks, and why women are taught to carry more in the first place, this episode gives you the next move after naming your depletion: figure out what today actually requires and stop gathering past it.

Key Topics Explored

* The manna principle: why the rule was not just gather daily, but do not store it up.

* Stress versus burnout: stress is load, burnout is load beyond capacity, and rest is not the answer

* Over-gathering as the hidden load: saying yes to everything you can do without asking whether you have room for it.

* The single point of failure: why the thing you would flag in a client’s assessment is the thing you call reliability in your own life.

* The supply you don’t count: how the small things that fill you are the source of the capacity you spend everywhere else.

* “The No Club”: women spend roughly 200 more hours a year than men on work nobody gets promoted for.

* What just enough is not: sufficiency as a higher standard, not a lower one.

* Employee Assistance Programs: why a wellness program can’t fix a capacity problem.

* The assignment: what does today actually require?

Chapters

0:00 Manna: Not Scarcity, Surplus

2:20 When Burnout Finally Had a Name

4:05 Stress Is Not Burnout

9:48 Over-Gathering and the Cost of Being Reliable

13:30 The Supply You Don’t Count

18:00 The No Club: 200 Hours a Year

21:49 What Just Enough Actually Looks Like

25:10 If You Run a Team

27:21 Stockpiling Is Not Redundancy

28:22 The Assignment: What Does Today Require?

30:30 Work with Me: One-on-One Strategy Sessions

Join the Community!

Work with Lisa: 1-on-1 strategy sessions (90 minutes) on capacity, leadership, and resilience. Book your session → https://cal.com/connectblackgirlcollc/strategy-session

Shop the collection: Tools for The Story is live:

https://black-girl-co.printify.me/

Read the companion newsletter — Strategy, Unscripted: “You Can’t Scale Yourself on Empty“

Connect with Lisa:

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/lisa-jones-mbcp-mbci-57872823

Email: [email protected]

Sources:

Read the companion newsletter — Strategy, Unscripted: “You Can’t Scale Yourself on Empty

Babcock, Peyser, Vesterlund & Weingart, The No Club (research coverage, 2022) https://noclub.com

McKinsey survey on recognition of collaborative work

https://womenintheworkplace.com/2021

Eagle Hill Consulting employee survey, March 2025

https://www.eaglehillconsulting.com/news/workers-say-they-regularly-spend-time-on-low-value-inefficient-tasks/

Elethia S. Gay explains why self-care is a core strategic decision for high performance, focusing on setting boundaries and converting fear into courage.

Originally released earlier this year, and back in the feed for a reason. Elethia makes an argument that reframes the whole conversation: your body is one member. It travels with you into every role, every goal, every promotion — which means health goals and career goals were never two separate lists. They are one vision for who you are becoming.

This conversation sets up the new episode releasing August 17.

Key Topics We Explored

* Why self-care is strategy, not recovery and what it costs to treat it as the thing you get to afterward.

* Your body is one member: why work-life balance splits something that was never actually separate.

* Being in love with yourself; not selfishly, but strategically and how that changes what you bring into a role.

* Why the oxygen mask metaphor breaks down when you have already waited too long to put it on.

* Start with one thing, not seven resolutions, and how to find the one thing that is actually the roadblock.

* Getting to the source rather than the symptom: if your feet hurt, the problem is not your discipline.

* Rest, spirituality, and surrender as the practical foundation underneath sustainable leadership.

* Roots to Wellness and Hiking for Hope: building community and self-expression out of hard seasons.

* The signature question: the one word Elethia uses to define her leadership story.

Chapters

00:00 - Why I Am Bringing This Episode Back

00:57 - Welcome: Self-Care Is Not Separate From Your Strategy

02:16 - Meet Elethia Gay

03:12 - How We Met: A Birthday Party and a Beyoncé Song

04:24 - The Leadership Journey: Training Manager to Wellness Coach

05:49 - Mom, Tony Little, and the Seed That Got Planted

08:29 - Walking Into the Room That Felt Like It Was For Everyone Else

09:24 - The Spin Class Moment: Why Not You?

13:05 - Roots to Wellness: Journaling as Self-Expression

16:03 - Hiking for Hope: Turning Loss Into a Mission

21:36 - The Shift: Why Health Goals and Career Goals Are the Same Goal

22:24 - Your Body Is One Member

24:19 - Be In Love With Yourself

25:09 - Why Women Put Themselves Last

26:12 - Getting Practical: Where to Actually Start

27:05 - Rest, Spirituality, and Surrender

31:16 - Choose One Thing, Not Seven Resolutions

33:31 - “I Do Not Have Time for Self-Care”

35:46 - The Signature Question: Be Unafraid

36:45 - Where to Find Elethia

38:15 - Closing Reflection

Join the Community:

Subscribe on Substack for exclusive content: leadershipstory.substack.com

Now on YouTube: @LeadershipStoryPodcast

Shop the collection: Tools for The Story is live:

https://black-girl-co.printify.me/

Connect with Elethia:

Follow on Instagram: @elethiagay

Website: elethiagay.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/elethiagaycoach

Hiking for Hope: hikes supporting domestic abuse survivors

Book: Roots to Wellness — self-expression journal

Connect with Lisa:

Follow on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/lisa-jones-mbcp-mbci-57872823

Email: [email protected]

Kate Lunger, Director of Workforce Initiatives at the Philadelphia Energy Authority, leads programs that expand equitable career pathways for adult learners, re-entry individuals, and marginalized youth in clean energy. In this conversation, she and Lisa talk about what it takes to lead a young team, providing structure without stifling growth, addressing conflict in real time instead of letting it linger, and teaching people the difference between something being personal and something just being the job.

Kate also opens up about leading as a woman, and specifically as a Black woman, in spaces where her leadership has been questioned or under-valued and what it looks like to keep going anyway. She traces her own path through learning challenges, the sudden loss of someone she loved during undergrad, raising a son through grad school, and a stretch of unemployment, to the leadership style she brings to her team today: direction paired with motivation, real talk paired with real support.

This is a conversation about perseverance that doesn’t sugarcoat the cost of it and about what it means to keep showing up for your people even when no one is asking what you need.

Key Topics We Explored

* Leadership as direction plus motivation: Kate’s approach centers on giving her team clear direction while actively motivating them toward growth, not just task completion.

* Structure in nonprofit spaces: how Kate builds structure and accountability in an environment that can otherwise feel looser than corporate — without losing the flexibility that makes nonprofit work valuable.

* Leading a young team through reactivity: teaching a generation that’s grown up reactive how to pause, document their feelings, and respond intentionally instead of firing off the first email.

* Women leading differently: Kate’s take on how women lead with more compassion and nurture, and the added weight of being underestimated or intimidating as a woman — and a Black woman — in leadership.

* Managing up: what it looks like to lead a team while also having to educate and humble the leadership above you.

Chapters

01:16 Kate Lunger: Leadership and Mentorship

07:05 Women’s Leadership and Nonprofit Culture

15:22 Leading a Young Team with Structure

24:22 Helping a Team Grow and Thrive

28:37 Resilience, Confidence, and Adversity

38:47 Perseverance: Kate’s Leadership Story

43:52 Closing and How to Connect

44:51 The Journey of Perseverance

45:32 Leadership Through Adversity

Join the Community!

Subscribe on Substack for exclusive content:

🚨Now on YouTube: @LeadershipStoryPodcast🚨

Subscribe to Substack: leadershipstory.substack.com

Follow on Instagram: @theleadershipstory

Shop the collection: Tools for The Story is live:

https://black-girl-co.printify.me/

Connect with Kate:

Follow on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/kate-lungerEmail: [email protected]

Connect with Lisa

Follow on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/lisa-jones

Email: [email protected]

You can spend your whole career helping other people through crisis — and still not see your own coming. This is about what happens when the person who builds resilience programs becomes the one who needs them.

In this solo episode, Lisa Jones gets honest about unexpected job loss: the grief no one gives you permission to feel, the pressure to bounce back before you’re ready, and the harder reality facing women over 40 in this market. Part lived experience, part strategy, all real.

This episode first aired in April 2026. It’s the first to land here on YouTube — and there’s more coming this fall. New here? Subscribe so you don’t miss it.

Key Topics We Explored

* The grief of job loss: Why losing a job you didn’t see coming is a real loss — and why you don’t have to be productive in it.

* Managing everyone else’s discomfort: You’re not obligated to perform optimism so other people feel better about your crisis.

* The 2026 market, honestly: What a “low-hire, low-fire” environment means for how you actually search.

* Gendered ageism: What the data says about women facing age bias earlier and harder than men.

* Faith and the hard feelings: Why grief, anger, and belief can live in the same room.

* The first 48 hours: Unemployment, COBRA, and a survival budget before anything glamorous.

* Rebuilding your narrative: A calm, confident answer to “what happened?” — and how to lean on your network without it feeling awful.

Chapters

00:00 Facing Unexpected Job Loss

08:32 Navigating the Job Market Challenges

16:42 The Emotional Impact of Job Loss

24:48 Strategic Job Searching and Networking

32:37 Moving Forward with Resilience

Join the Community!

Subscribe on Substack for exclusive content:

Subscribe on Substack: leadershipstory.substack.comFollow on Instagram: @theleadershipstory

Shop the collection: Tools for The Story is live:

https://black-girl-co.printify.me/

Connect with LisaFollow on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/lisa-jonesEmail: [email protected]

ResourcesLisa’s article “Congratulations, You’ve Been Restructured”

The ground genuinely got less stable, and noticing it isn’t anxiety—it’s an accurate working instinct. In this solo episode, Lisa Jones brings two decades of business continuity expertise to the exact question women leaders are privately wrestling with right now: how do you build career security and survive corporate layoffs when the old corporate promises have quietly expired?

Reframing career instability not as a personal failure but as a system design problem you can solve, Lisa shares how to apply real operational resilience tools directly to your life. Learn how to spot your career’s single point of failure, deliberately build income redundancy, and execute the one career transition planning exercise most professionals avoid.

If you have been over-performing for a deal that no longer exists, this episode provides a strategic, clear-eyed roadmap to stop living in fear and start building a backup plan for your future.

Key Topics We Explored

* The Broken Corporate Promise: Why the Sunday-night hum isn’t fragility—it’s perception.

* Your Single Point of Failure: The systemic risk of running your income, healthcare, identity, and network through one employer.

* Building Career Redundancy: Lessons from Gen Z on managing single-paycheck panic and engineering portable skills.

* The Career Tabletop Exercise: How to walk through a 90-day income disruption on paper so you are never deciding in a free fall.

* The Carer’s Gap: Navigating the predictable, plannable financial exposure that impacts women leaders during peak earning years.

Chapters

00:00 The Broken Promise

02:55 The Feeling You’ve Been Carrying

05:05 Single Point of Failure

07:54 Redundancy

12:18 The Tabletop

18:40 What this Looks Like as a Practice

21:00 Planning for Tomorrow

Join the Community!

Subscribe on Substack for exclusive content:

Subscribe to Substack: leadershipstory.substack.com

Follow on Instagram: @theleadershipstory

Real Women. Real Leadership. Real Resilience!™

Shop the collection: Tools for The Story is live:

black-girl-co.printify.me/

Connect with Lisa

Follow on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/lisa-jones

Resources & sources

Gen Z and multiple income streams:

* Block / Cash App: ~54 million Americans now hold more than one income stream, up from 41 million two years prior; Gen Z drives the growth at roughly five times the rate of Baby Boomers (Bloomberg / Staffing Industry Review, June 2026).

* Deputy “Big Shift” report: Gen Z makes up 55% of all workers holding multiple jobs simultaneously — the highest poly-employment rate in over a decade.

* Fiverr “Next Gen of Work” report: 67% of Gen Z say multiple income streams are essential for financial security; 56% believe traditional employment will eventually become obsolete. Origin of the “single-paycheck panic” framing (Oct 2025).

* Context / nuance: Gen Z switchers’ wage gains have fallen roughly 20 percentage points since 2022 — the old job-hopping playbook returns less now (Fortune, June 2026).

The Carer’s Gap and women’s financial exposure:

* PensionBee: a one-year pause in retirement contributions can compound to nearly $79,000 in lost savings; a five-year break, about $346,000 less at retirement (Oct 2025).

* Women’s earnings track close to men’s early, then diverge during prime career years before narrowing after 55 — meaning women often enter peak earning years with lower lifetime earnings (Carry / BLS, Feb 2026).

* Women’s longer life expectancy leaves fewer resources to stretch over more years (National Partnership for Women & Families).

Stop overthinking and start leading! Most women leaders aren’t missing the answer; they’re missing the move. In this solo episode, Lisa Jones breaks down the leadership strategy to move from analysis paralysis to decisive action.

Learn the decision-making framework Lisa uses to break the overthinking loop with three core questions:

* What’s the smallest version I can test?

* What if it fails? So what?

* What can I control to lower the risk?

If you’ve ever confused more thinking with more progress, this episode provides the tools to get unstuck, improve your leadership mindset, and start moving.

Key Topics We Explored

* Why overthinking feels like diligence but functions as a stall

* What the research says: the 99.5% finding and why women ruminate more

* The belief that quietly feeds overthinking instead of solving it

* The three-question framework for moving from analysis to action

Chapters

00:00 The Journey of Self-Discovery

01:23 Overcoming Overthinking

05:25 Taking Action: The Small Steps

09:29 Moving Forward with Courage

Join the Community!

Subscribe on Substack for exclusive content:

Subscribe to Substack: leadershipstory.substack.com

Follow on Instagram: @theleadershipstory

Connect with Lisa

Follow on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/lisa-jones

Shop the Collection:

🚨“Tools for The Story” is live! Black Girl Co Store

Real Women. Real Leadership. Real Resilience!™