The Sage Sayers

My guest this week is Kamari Green, a Healthcare Leader + Maternal Mental Health Advocate + Artist, based in North Carolina, USA. Kamari's an interesting story to tell on overcoming and navigating her own health challenges (postpartum depression and depression) in ways which established her career as a healthcare leader. Art, medicine, love, and faith all played a role. Today, Kamari's growing not only as an artist, healthcare leader, but also a keynote speaker where she speaks on mental health topics to audiences in the thousands.

You can follow Kamari on LinkedIn here and see (or purchase) her beautiful art via 983 studio here. Reach out to me, D G McCullough, for group or individual coaching and training on reinventing, communicating, and creating your personal brand. 

Despite time pressures — juggling motherhood with a career in journalism and academia, and now coaching and writing — I’ve maintained art most days. Why? Because art and creativity fuel me, bring peace, calm, and powerful guiding ideas. This week’s essay muses on how I’ve countered judgments and prioritized art — no matter what — and the gifts and opportunities art brings me, which help me at work, too.

Coaching leaders all over the globe reinforces the idea of making time for bliss, no matter what. (When stressed, we need this release even more!) This week's essay, published as digital content first on Medium, and read here on the Sage Sayers, offers one woman's journey as to how. 

My guest this week is Sathya Sethuraman, a financial Services and insurance industry strategist and thought leader who's served as a trusted advisor to Fortune 100 global insurance and financial service firms. He finds that insurance provides a safety net for the health and wellbeing of every individual, hence making this industry his home for 20+ years.   

In our interview, Sathya shares the gifts and opportunities he's found with communicating in a land far away from his motherland of India, home to the world’s largest diaspora. We hear how he's navigated U.S. business culture, one placing a premium on brevity, when he loves long-winded delivery, history, and involved storytelling. We also speak to the gifts that professionals in the U.S. can learn from foreigners (in this case, an Indian and a New Zealander) and the parts of our language and culture we won't give up, no matter what, because we find these approaches benefit us and our audiences.

You can reach Sathya on LinkedIn here.   Reach out to me, D G McCullough, for insights on my group coaching and training packages and individual packages on reinventing, promoting, and using your voice through refining the written word. 

James Woodruff, District Field Manager at the Federal Aviation Administration, has learned leadership skills so many places: The FAA where he’s served many years. The Navy. And as a high school teacher. And yet his best leadership lessons (he believes) came from a job he landed as a teenager managing the bussers and servers at a thriving country club in his Kansas rural community.  Hollywood stars and musicians of the day came there to dance and dine.

In our interview, we hear from James, who’s entering into a leadership training role with the FAA, how clear communication becomes key as we lead. Also, the best lessons and training cam come from the funnest, most nostalgic times of our youth.

You can join the discussion on LinkedIn here, and reach out to James here.  Reach out to me, D G McCullough, for insights on my group coaching and training packages and individual packages on reinventing, promoting, and using your voice through refining the written word. 

My guest this week is Fernanda Noronha, a multi-cultural finance and strategy leader who's worked with international conglomerates across three countries and two continents for almost two decades. Currently, she helps lead finance at Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), a Fortune number 38 leader in the nutrition industry.

In our interview, we learn about Fernanda's journey from Brazil to Great Chicago, Illinois. We learn how she stayed agile and adaptable in new settings, roles, and cultures, even now speaking to large crowds and mentoring others to feel more comfortable. She found gifts through cultural challenges--like Americans' love for feedback. Any discomfort she first felt with communicating within an American business culture has largely gone.

You can join the discussion on LinkedIn here, and reach out to Fernanda here. Reach out to me, D G McCullough, for insights on my group coaching and training packages and individual packages on reinventing, promoting, and finding your voice through refining the written word.

Interested in more episodes on foreign cultures and business? An earlier interview/episode with Luca Dondi, a cultural leadership coach, on navigating foreign cultures lives here. 

Some of the best and the brightest fret about small talk lately and I think I know why. Some started their jobs as remote workers having completed their studies in remote ways. Others must now return to work in the office after years of working from home. Meanwhile, few trust their colleagues and worry they’ll say something that might threaten  their livelihood. Overwork breeds fatigue, anxiety, and with that, a loss for words when forced to connect.

But we need not fret when it comes to small talk as some simple tactics can connect us in powerful ways. Reading from this week’s article on Medium, which you can find here. These tips I’ve cultivated over several years from backpacking through Asia solo, moving to new states, continents, and teaching live classes and workshops at universities and corporations.

Connect with me about your group's communication challenges via my LinkedIn profile and website. I'm taking bookings for coaching and training workshops to help build confidence, courage, and clarity in our written and spoken word. I'm all about us becoming braver communicators. 

My guest this week is one familiar to me and one I’m excited to introduce to you. His name is Dotun Ayeni. He’s an animal scientist by profession, a sound engineer by passion and works as a business development manager in an Australian lift Manufacturing company in Nigeria, his motherland. Dotun’s also my sound engineer.

I’ve brought Dotun to my show this week because he’s an expert on the spoken word and he’s also part of a larger trend of holding two jobs (or several jobs) vs. one. Like many of my listeners, Dotun’s reinvented himself when and as needed. His sound engineering work came to him when well-paid work as an animal scientist did not.

If you'd like to work with Dotun (and I recommend that you do), find him on Fiverr under Titan32. And here's the first episode he ever edited for me, one of my favorites.

Connect with me, Coach Debbi McCullough, about your group's communication challenges via my LinkedIn profile and website. I'm taking bookings for coaching and training workshops to help build confidence, courage, and clarity in our written and spoken word. I'm all about us becoming braver communicators. 

My guest this week is Madhu Chawla. She's a manager of global implementation in global commercial services at American Express and is based out of Phoenix, Az. Madhu's an interesting story to tell about a communication challenge which, for some part of her life, got in her way of confidence and being the thriving professional she always wanted to be. Madhu developed a stutter as a girl which continued through her school and college years and then into her corporate life.

But Madhu never let her stutter, which became more pronounced with strangers and external clients, define how she thought about herself nor how she intended to live her life. Today, Madhu has no stutter at all and her way of navigating this unique communication challenge will inspire other communicators with their own challenges, small or large.

Reach out to Madhu Chawla via LinkedIn by clicking here.

Connect with me, Coach Debbi McCullough, about your group's communication challenges via my LinkedIn profile and website. I'm open for hosting training workshops or group coaching geared towards building confidence, courage, and clarity in our written and spoken word. I'm all about us becoming braver communicators. 

If leaders have prodded you to add story to otherwise dry and stodgy data and topics, you’re not alone! Many communicators I coach hear this feedback when doing dry-runs on high-stakes presentations and within performance reviews, too. But how do we tell story around numbers? This becomes our theme for this week’s Medium post, which you can find here, and which I read and add to in this week's Sage Sayers podcast.

We have tackled data and storytelling in the past with a delightful interview with Godswill Mhlanga, a finance expert who must make the numbers sound engaging all the time. You can find our interview here.

Connect with me, Coach Debbi McCullough, about your group's communication challenges via my LinkedIn profile and website. I'm open for hosting training workshops or group coaching geared towards building confidence, courage, and clarity in our written and spoken word. I'm all about us becoming braver communicators.