Leading self comes before leading anyone else, and executive coach Parker Gates spends this episode of Leadership That Shines proving exactly how. Parker walks host Natalie Davis through a leadership journey that started by accident, running a deli kitchen at nineteen, moved through two decades in corporate IT, and landed in a coaching practice built around three daily practices: journaling, meditation, and movement.

Parker traces the moment that changed everything, a week at Stanford's design school where he encountered a level of psychological safety and belonging he had never experienced in corporate America. That week led him to quit his job, build a company around design thinking, and eventually start teaching senior leadership teams why smart people in a room don't automatically make a good team.

In This Episode:

● Why personal development and professional development are the same work

● How psychological safety became the missing ingredient on every team Parker built

● The three daily practices Parker uses with C-suite clients: journaling, meditation,

movement

● How a recovery concept called "taking inventory" became a leadership tool

● Why "never skip day two" matters more than any single day of discipline

Parker also opens up about twenty-four years of recovery, the friend he lost to cancer that led to his first real meditation practice, and the repair work he now teaches leaders to do when they fall short with their teams. This conversation moves through self-awareness, humility, and the practical steps behind showing up as a better leader every day.

Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. New episodes drop every Wednesday.

Subscribe to the Flamingo Files newsletter on LinkedIn for a deeper dive into this conversation, published every Monday.

Contact: [email protected] | leadershipthatshines.com Guest: Parker Gates,

executive coach | parkergates.com | Free practices video: parkergates.com/watch

Purpose-driven leadership does not come from a clean story. For Blake Cooper Griffin, it came from bullying in South Carolina, conversion therapy at 16, an agency that told him to hide who he was, and a moment at 22 years old with no money, no representation, and a decision to make about who he was going to be on the other side of all of it. 

In this episode of the Leadership That Shines Podcast, host Natalie Davis sits down with Blake Cooper Griffin, actor, author, activist, and founder of Brainworks Team, an educational mentorship consultancy helping students build academic growth, confidence, and purpose through service-based learning. Blake's career spans television, film, writing, entrepreneurship, and nearly two decades of advocacy work. His book, The Story of You: A Life Rewritten, available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble, is a framework for anyone who has ever needed to rewrite the narrative they inherited and build one worth living instead. 

This conversation moves between the deeply personal and the practically applicable. Blake talks about the moment his representation called him in and told him to stop bringing his partner to industry events, the decision he made in that crushing moment to reframe the mountain he had already climbed, and how that single shift in perspective became the foundation of every leadership and business principle he now teaches. 

In This Episode: 

• Why purpose larger than personal success is the only thing that sustains a leader through the seasons when nothing is working and the dark moments feel permanent 

• How Blake reframes rejection and setback as evidence of mountains already climbed, and why that reframe removes the defeat of feeling like you are starting from zero 

• The three-step passion project framework Blake uses with students at Brainworks Team: educate yourself on the real need, make practical impact, then multiply it by educating your community 

• Why Blake's mother's saying, everybody's somebody and everybody counts, became the lens through which he approaches every room, every role, every relationship, and every business decision 

• What it means to write the story of you intentionally, and why the creative capacity every human being carries is not limited to one career, one identity, or one chapter 

Blake Cooper Griffin has been navigating the intersection of identity, purpose, and leadership for decades. This episode is for every leader who has ever been told to make themselves smaller to fit someone else's comfort, and who is still deciding whether to believe it. 

Connect with Blake Cooper Griffin: 
Book: The Story of You: A Life Rewritten, available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble 
Company: Brainworks Team, educational mentorship and consultancy 
Connect with Blake directly through his professional platforms 

Connect with Natalie Davis and Leadership That Shines:

Email: [email protected]

Website: https://leadershipthatshines.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leadershipthatshines?igsh=Z3JkNGZsbTU5bnIy

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/1J9yZRGaiW/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Substack: https://lovejoyandnatalie.substack.com/

Subscribe so you never miss an episode. New episodes drop every Wednesday.

Resilience in Leadership: Hilary Momberger Powers on Healing Trauma, Finding Joy, and Leading From the Inside Out

Resilience in leadership does not start with a strategy. For Hilary Momberger Powers, it started at the bottom of everything, and the climb back up became the curriculum she now teaches.

In this episode of the Leadership That Shines Podcast, host Natalie Davis sits down with Hilary Momberger Powers, coach, keynote speaker, trauma recovery advocate, and 40-year sobriety veteran, for one of the most honest conversations the show has ever aired. Hilary grew up as a child actress in Los Angeles, voiced cartoon characters, appeared in over 150 commercials, and performed inside a household defined by alcoholism, abuse, and a mother whose ego was never satisfied. By 21, she had hit every wall available. What happened next is the foundation of every coaching conversation she has had since.

Hilary has worked in the film industry for decades with over 300 movie credits as a continuity supervisor. She is now a full-time coach and speaker whose work sits at the intersection of trauma recovery, spiritual identity, and the specific kind of resilience that does not come from grit but from genuinely learning to lead yourself from the inside out.

This is not a conversation about tactics. It is a conversation about what happens when a human being finally stops performing wellness and starts living it.

In This Episode:

• Why the three trauma responses most people cycle through, people pleasing, isolation, and control, are not character flaws but survival strategies, and what it takes to stop needing them
• The difference between happiness and joy, why happiness is fleeting and joy is the permanent hard drive already inside every leader, and how to stop chasing the wrong one
• How Hilary's moment of forgiveness on a beach below Pacific Coast Highway cracked open a perception shift that changed every area of her life including her income
• Why leading from the outside in always ends in emptiness, and what it looks like to finally flip the direction from the inside out
• The body, mind, spirit framework Hilary uses with every coaching client and why skipping the spirit piece is the reason most personal development work does not hold

Hilary Momberger Powers does not deliver a polished redemption arc. She delivers the real one, with all the detours, the mess, and the moments that only make sense in hindsight. This episode is for any leader who has been performing fine for long enough that they have started to believe it.

Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Amazon Music, and iHeart Radio. New episodes every Wednesday. Subscribe now so every episode lands directly in your feed.

About Hilary:

Hilary Momberger Powers
Connect with Natalie Davis and Leadership That Shines:
Website: leadershipthatshines.com
Email: [email protected]
Newsletter: The Flamingo Files, published weekly on LinkedIn

Real estate team leadership looks completely different when you stop building for production numbers and start building for the person you are becoming. 

In this episode of the Leadership That Shines Podcast, host Natalie Davis welcomes someone she has known and coached for over six years: Adam Touni, Silicon Valley real estate leader, attorney-turned-agent, and co-founder of a beehive team structure that has produced over 700 million dollars in sales in one of the most competitive real estate markets in the country. This is not a conversation about tactics. It is a conversation about what it actually costs to build something at that level, and what it costs even more to build yourself alongside it. 

Adam's story spans 16 years in real estate, a law school background that sharpened his ability to issue-spot and anticipate, a business partnership built entirely on complementary strengths, and a personal journey through burnout that finally forced him to put himself first. What came out of that journey, sobriety, daily meditation, a non-negotiable morning routine, and the practice of saying no, became the foundation his business could actually stand on. 

Natalie and Adam have the kind of conversation that only six years of real coaching relationship makes possible. Direct, specific, and deeply honest about where the gaps were and what it took to close them. 

In This Episode: 

• The beehive team model: why Adam and his business partner Kat Carroll built a team where every person has a specific role rather than a pool of generalists, and why that structure outperforms traditional team setups 

• Why knowing where your strengths end is as important as knowing where they begin, and how Adam's decision to stay out of operations freed him to do the work only he can do 

• The burnout that finally broke the pattern, and how building a daily non-negotiable morning practice changed everything about how Adam shows up for his team, his clients, and his family 

• Why the ability to say no is a muscle and how to build it starting today, even if the first few reps feel like they are going to cost you everything 

• What it means to be nimble as a leader, why Adam sought out leaders who moved quickly and stayed open to change, and why that same quality is the one most leaders lose the moment they start succeeding 

Adam also shares what meditation actually is when you strip away the ritual, why he is more proud of his personal growth than any production milestone, and what he tells every agent asking how to retain their value in a market that keeps shifting: start by asking whether you love yourself, because the answer tells you everything about whether you are ready to ask for what you are worth. 

The Leadership That Shines Podcast brings you real conversations about the whole leader, not just the professional one. This episode is for any leader who has been building the business and quietly losing themselves inside it. 

Connect with Adam Touni: 
Real estate team based in Silicon Valley, Bay Area, California 
Searchable across professional platforms 

Connect with Natalie Davis and Leadership That Shines:

Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠leadershipthatshines.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Email: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Newsletter: Flamingo Files on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Substack ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Listen & Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Amazon Music, and iHeart Radio.

New episodes every Wednesday.

*Natalie Davis is a licensed real estate agent with Keller Williams Downtown, LLC.

Immigrant entrepreneur leadership is built differently. When you arrive with no language, no money, and no roadmap, the only option is to build the skill set that no setback can take from you.

John Azar arrived in the United States from Syria at 16 years old without speaking English. His family had lost nearly everything. What he brought with him was a mentality his father had embedded early: as long as you have the right education, the right experience, and the right spirit, no one can take anything from you. Decades later, John is the founder of Peak 15 Capital, a private equity platform operating in commercial real estate, president of the board of directors for the college that gave him his first academic foothold, and a leadership coach who works with entrepreneurs, executives, and business leaders across industries.

In this episode of the Leadership That Shines Podcast, host Natalie Davis sits down with John for a conversation that moves between personal story and practical framework with the ease of someone who has spent years translating lived experience into usable leadership tools. John does not sugarcoat. He does not deal in five-year plans that measure success in dollar figures. He asks a different question entirely: who are you becoming, and what are you doing right now to show up as that version of yourself?

In This Episode:

• Why John's first coaching question is never about revenue or business size, and what he asks instead to get to the answer that actually changes someone's trajectory
• The reverse engineering framework that helps entrepreneurs and executives start showing up as their future selves today, before the business catches up to the vision
• What the liminal space between finishing one chapter and launching the next actually requires of a leader, and how to stay anchored inside the uncertainty
• Why self-discovery is the only real prerequisite for growth, and what it means to be open to finding out parts of yourself you do not like
• How John went from losing everything in the 2008 financial crisis to building a multi-billion dollar private equity portfolio, and what that rebuild taught him about resilience, timing, and knowing which road to take when it shows itself

John Azar also shares why some of the biggest opportunities in business show up not despite downturns but because of them, what he means when he says he wants to lead through inspiration rather than perspiration, and why the best network you could build right now is one you have no reason to think you deserve yet.

The Leadership That Shines Podcast exists to bring you real conversations with leaders who have done the hard work, not just the visible work. This episode is a masterclass in what it looks like to lead yourself first so you have something worth offering the people around you.

Connect with John Azar:
Company: Peak 15 Capital
Connect with John for coaching, mentorship, and private equity inquiries through his professional network

Connect with Natalie Davis and Leadership That Shines:

Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠leadershipthatshines.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Email: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Newsletter: Flamingo Files on ⁠⁠⁠⁠Substack ⁠⁠⁠⁠and ⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠

Listen & Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Amazon Music, and iHeart Radio.

New episodes every Wednesday.

*Natalie Davis is a licensed real estate agent with Keller Williams Downtown, LLC.

Discover how doubt can be a powerful signal for growth and leadership transformation. In this episode, Martin Watts shares his inspiring journey from instability to building multiple successful businesses, emphasizing the importance of authenticity, core values, and cultivating a positive culture in leadership.In this episode:

• Martin Watts’ story of overcoming childhood trauma and embracing his entrepreneurial spirit
• The role of doubt as an intelligent emotion signaling instability and guiding decision-making
• How to distinguish between lag and lead indicators of doubt
• Practical ways to measure and shape organizational culture through everyday actions
• The importance of authentic leadership rooted in core values and personal integrity
• Strategies for building healthy teams and fostering a culture of safety and trust
• The impact of humility, celebrating wins, and intentionality in leadership
• How to leave a legacy as a leader who listens and confirms the potential within others

Connect with Natalie Davis:  

[email protected]  

Leadership That Shines

Instagram

Facebook

Substack

Structural burnout is about diagnosing the problem at the right level. Therapist, former arts executive, and founder of Meaning in Practice Ashley Gibson joins Natalie Davis on the Leadership That Shines Podcast to introduce the clinical framework she has built to help organizations finally understand what is actually driving burnout and what leaders are perpetuating without realizing it. 

What You Will Learn In This Episode: 

• Why wellness spending is up 400% and burnout is still rising, and what that tells us about where we are diagnosing the problem 

• The Maladaptive Organizational Copy Process: what it is, where it comes from, and why it explains patterns that individual interventions cannot touch 

• The two axes of Ashley's framework: affiliation and interdependence, and why the "we're all a family here" culture often scores hostile on both 

• How the nervous system shapes organizational culture , and why leaders model more than they know 

• Why patterns, not one-offs, are what every leader needs to be examining in their team culture right now 

• The questions Ashley's free ten-minute assessment asks, and what the answers reveal about where structural burnout is hiding in your organization 

Timestamps: 

• 00:00 — Welcome and introduction to Ashley Gibson 

• 01:15 — Hamilton, arts management, and the first lesson in intent vs. impact 

• 05:16 — Why the people who care the most burn out the fastest 

• 08:21 — The career pivot: from executive to therapist and why it made perfect sense 

• 11:01 — You cannot outgrow a broken system — what that statement means and where it came from 

• 15:30 — Pattern-level assessment: what your org says it rewards vs. what it actually rewards 

• 17:21 — The connection between organizational culture and structural burnout 

• 18:19 — Nervous system science and how co-regulation shows up in team culture 

• 23:35 — The Maladaptive Organizational Copy Process explained: affiliation, interdependence, and introject 

• 25:19 — The "we're all a family here" trap and why it scores low on both axes 

• 34:31 — Why the leader sets the behavioral pattern — even when they do not mean to 

• 44:39 — Pattern recognition: when is it a bad day vs. a structural problem? 

• 49:17 — Closing reflection and what leaders can actually do from where they stand 

• 51:10 — How Ashley wants to be remembered as a leader 

  
  

Connect with Ashley Gibson:  

Substack: Meaning in Practice, Ashley C. Gibson  

Free assessment

Connect with Natalie Davis:  

[email protected]  

Leadership That Shines

Instagram

Facebook

Substack

Subscribe so you never miss an episode. New episodes drop every Wednesday. 

Leading from your center is not a mindset shift. It is a nervous system skill most leaders never learn, and the cost of skipping it shows up everywhere from the boardroom to the home.

In this episode of the Leadership That Shines Podcast, Natalie Davis sits down with Natalie Bouchard, mindset coach and former Bob Proctor consultant, for a conversation about what happens when a high-achieving leader's external life collapses and what becomes possible on the other side of that collapse. After three decades of personal development work, twelve healing designations, and a thriving consulting practice, Natalie Bouchard lost a long-term relationship, hundreds of thousands of dollars in a business scam, and her health, all within the same season. What she discovered underneath the wreckage became the foundation of the work she does now.

Natalie Bouchard's central distinction is the difference between knowledge and participation. You can study leadership, regulation, and personal development for years and still be fundamentally disconnected from your own internal authority. This episode unpacks what that disconnection looks like, why it shows up disproportionately in high-performing women, and what it actually takes to return to center under real pressure.

In This Episode:

• Why holding space without making the moment a problem is the skill that separates leaders who stay grounded under pressure from leaders who fragment

• The difference between knowledge and participation, and why decades of personal development work did not protect Natalie Bouchard from disconnection

• What fragmentation looks like in a leader, where it shows up first, and why it often goes undetected for years

• How Natalie Davis's own event was hacked mid-session and the real-time example of holding space versus reacting from fragmentation

• Why transparency with the people you lead, including your own children, is one of the most powerful tools for breaking inherited patterns

This conversation moves between the personal and the practical, and listeners walk away with language for something many high-performing leaders feel but have never been able to name.

Connect with Natalie Bouchard here.

Free resource: Be Unfuckwithable, a free three-day experience

Connect with Leadership That Shines:

Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠leadershipthatshines.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Email: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Newsletter: Flamingo Files on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Substack ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Listen & Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Amazon Music, and iHeart Radio.

New episodes every Wednesday.

*Natalie Davis is a licensed real estate agent with Keller Williams Downtown, LLC.

Community-driven leadership is not a tagline for Harrison Beecher, it is the operating system behind everything he does. From co-founding Coalition Properties Group, which has served over 2,000 families and surpassed one billion dollars in sales across seven years, to serving as President of the DC Association of Realtors and Vice Chair of the NAR Young Professionals Network, Harrison has built a career on one core belief: nothing bad happens when you make your road bigger.

In this episode, Harrison sits down with Natalie Davis to talk about what it actually takes to lead across multiple arenas simultaneously, a growing brokerage with three equal partners, 37 agents, and five full-time staff; a deeply engaged local community in Washington DC; and a national stage inside organized real estate. He does not make it sound easy. He makes it sound worth it.

The conversation covers the origins of Coalition Properties Group, the nine-month process of vetting a three-partner structure before signing, and what happened when the 2022 and 2023 markets forced a hard reset. Harrison shares the daily huddle cadence he resisted before he saw it working, the blind copy system that brings his entire team along on real client conversations, and the framing skill he calls his leadership superpower.

In This Episode:

● Why Harrison calls community a "hack" for accomplishing more, and how to reduce the friction that keeps people from building it

● The origin story of Coalition Properties Group: how a Georgetown friendship, a chance meeting at a bar, and a nine-month vetting process became a billion-dollar team

● What three equal partners actually looks like in practice: the strengths, the challenges, and how they make decisions when two of three say it's time to move

● The daily huddle Harrison resisted and now credits with changing the trajectory of his newer agents

● How blind-copying his entire sales team on real client emails has transformed how he trains without adding time to his schedule

● What he means when he says his leadership superpower is framing and contextualizing; and where he is still working to get better

● How Harrison wants to be remembered as a leader

About Harrison Beacher

Connect with Leadership That Shines:

Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠leadershipthatshines.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Email: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Newsletter: Flamingo Files on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Substack ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Listen & Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Amazon Music, and iHeart Radio.

New episodes every Wednesday.

*Natalie Davis is a licensed real estate agent with Keller Williams Downtown, LLC.

Belonging in leadership is not a policy, it is a practice. And Chrysta Bairre has spent over a decade building the evidence for that, first through her own story as a late-diagnosed autistic, disabled, queer woman who grew up in poverty, and now as the founder of She Goes High, a speaker, and an author working to help women and non-binary leaders show up fully in every room they enter.

In this conversation, Chrysta and Natalie go deep on what authentic leadership actually requires, not as a buzzword, but as a daily, sometimes uncomfortable commitment. Chrysta shares what it cost her to mask for years in professional spaces, what changed when her body made masking no longer possible, and what she now knows about the cognitive and human toll of hiding parts of yourself in order to be accepted.

This episode is for any leader who has ever left a piece of themselves at the door before walking into a room and for anyone in a leadership role who wants to understand what it truly takes to create an environment where others do not have to.

In This Episode:

● Why masking and code-switching drain cognitive resources that belong to your growth and your work

● The two qualities, vulnerability and curiosity, that every leader needs to build genuine psychological safety on their team

● How a leadership fail with a high-performing employee taught Chrysta that curiosity is always the first move, never assumption

● Why imposter syndrome and burnout are predictable outcomes of performative leadership and how to interrupt that pattern

● Chrysta's challenge to every listener: identify the part of yourself you have been hiding, and find one room this week to let it be present

Connect with Chrysta Bairre:

She Goes High Community

Live Love Work

Connect with Natalie Davis and Leadership That Shines:

Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠leadershipthatshines.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Email: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Newsletter: Flamingo Files on ⁠⁠⁠⁠Substack ⁠⁠⁠⁠and ⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠

Listen & Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Amazon Music, and iHeart Radio.

New episodes every Wednesday.

*Natalie Davis is a licensed real estate agent with Keller Williams Downtown, LLC.