Connect with Katherine Dudtschak

Website: Sincerely Inc.

LinkedIn: Katherine Dudtschak

Instagram: @kdudtschak

Connect with Florence Shaffer

Website: Florence Shaffer

LinkedIn: Florence Shaffer

Instagram: Florence Shaffer

Florence Shaffer: Coming back to yourself before the warning lights force you to stop

Florence Shaffer is the founder and CEO of Becoming, which she describes as the first strategic advisory for human flourishing: a diagnostic across the mental, emotional, physical, spiritual, and social dimensions of a person, matching leaders with world-class experts for an immersion so that success no longer erodes the life it was meant to serve. She has spent more than twenty years leading technology and transformation across BMW, Lucasfilm, Burberry, and Estée Lauder, and founded Becoming four years ago to hand others a way to reroute from a performative way of being onto a coherent and regenerative one.

In this conversation, Florence and Katherine walk the full arc of a life built in pursuit of human potential. Florence traces the thread from a third-culture childhood shaped by a South Korean mother who built ferocious love into every sacrifice, and a South Dakotan physicist father who earned a PhD out of pure curiosity, through Harvey Mudd's creative sandbox, and into the twenty-year career that gave her everything the game promised. They talk about the "slip," Florence's name for the moment when success and joy begin to diverge, and about fragmented optimization. They build a new language for boundaries together, moving from the image of a wall to protecting the sources of energy that feed you. And they sit with what it means to make decisions from coherence rather than from the accumulated noise of performing a self.

This episode is for anyone who is winning by every external measure and losing the creativity, energy, and joy that made the winning worth it. Florence offers the recognition that the invitation to reroute arrives before the wheels come off, and that the body has been speaking long before we choose to listen.

Key Moments

- The "slip," Florence's name for the point where success keeps climbing but enjoyment begins to separate from it, and the dissatisfaction that follows people from wardrobe changes to new therapists without ever being resolved.

- Florence and Katherine build a shared language for boundaries in real time, moving from the image of a fence or a wall to protecting the sources of energy that feed you.

Quotes to Remember

"When you start to realize that you feel so coherent in who you are and how you show up that you're not really doing anything and somehow you're giving other people permission to just show up as who they want to be."

"You actually get out of the water and you start to surf, and you start to realize: wait a second, I don't have to surf every wave. I'm with the environment because I am grounded. I'm anchored."

Reflection for Listeners

What stayed with me most from my time with Florence is the moment she described coherence as a kind of radiation. When you are settled in who you are, you are simply being. And in that, you give the people around you permission to show up as who they want to be. I have spent a lot of years thinking about what leadership from the inside looks like, and Florence handed me a way of holding it I had not had before. I hope you will sit with it too.

About the Host

Katherine Dudtschak is the founder of Sincerely, host of The Sincerely Show, and author of Sincerely, Katherine. She writes and speaks about leadership, service, and the interior life.

Disclaimer

This conversation is for reflection and perspective only and should not be relied on as therapy or professional advice. Please seek qualified support where needed before making any decisions based on the information you learn through this conversation. This content is also subject to our full Terms and Conditions, which you can review on our website at sincerelyinc.com.

Connect with Katherine Dudtschak

Website: Sincerely Inc.

LinkedIn: Katherine Dudtschak

Instagram: @kdudtschak

Connect with Tom LeNoble

Website: Tom LeNoble

LinkedIn: Tom LeNoble

Book: My Life in Business Suits, Hospital Gowns, and High Heels

Tom LeNoble: Every Storm Leaves Fertile Ground to Plant

There is a question Tom LeNoble asks the people who come to him. He asks it after he tells them about the storm. Every storm, he says, leaves fertile ground to plant. The storms in our lives do the same. What are you going to plant?

Tom is a confidential advisor to founders, executives, and nonprofit leaders, CEO of the Academy for Coaching Excellence, an award-winning bestselling author of My Life in Business Suits, Hospital Gowns, and High Heels, a professional speaker, and host of the podcast Opening Pathways. He names himself, above all, a philanthropist, and what he means is not a name on a building or a seat at a gala. He means a smile. A hello. Sitting with someone in need, without expectation of anything in return.

This conversation walks backward through the chapters that made him: a one-bedroom Florida shack, a curious child his grandfather nicknamed Varmint, a corporate career from MCI to Facebook, a healing wheel of his own design, and three diagnoses that each gave him six months to live. He is 71, and retired from being retired to be inspired.

Key Moments

- Tom opens with the philanthropic mindset: the teaching that a smile, a hello, or sitting with someone in pain, offered without expectation of return, is a philanthropic gesture available to every one of us right now.

- He unpacks the title of his book: the business suits, the hospital gowns, the high heels, and why who we are today is the sum of every part we have ever been, including the parts we kept private.

- Katherine gathers his essence aloud, naming him fiercely curious, expressive, sensitive, courageous, and an artist. Tom receives it and says: everything she named is exactly what he uses to do his work.

- The closing teaching: when you see someone who cannot reach the knot, hold their hand so they can reach it themselves. That, Tom says, is what the Haystack method is built on.

Quotes to Remember

"What the storm does, just like the storm from the sky, is creates fertile ground to plant. The storms in our lives create the same fertile ground. When I ask people, what are you going to plant?"

"Your smile, a hello, sitting with someone that's in need or in pain is a philanthropic gesture. You don't have to have your name on a building, write a check or go to a gala."

Reflection for Listeners

What stays with me is the moment Tom described going back to work after receiving a diagnosis that would have stopped most people entirely. He drove to his car, spoke to the thing that had just entered his life, and then started the engine. There was no performance in the telling of it. It was just the next thing he did. I have been thinking about what it means to choose to be alive in a moment so completely that the choosing itself becomes the act of service. Tom did not offer me a framework for that. He just showed me what it looks like from the inside.

About the Host

Katherine Dudtschak is the founder of Sincerely, host of The Sincerely Show, and author of Sincerely, Katherine. She writes and speaks about leadership, service, and interior life.

Disclaimer

This conversation is for reflection and perspective only and should not be relied on as therapy or professional advice. Please seek qualified support where needed before making any decisions based on the information you learn through this conversation. This content is also subject to our full Terms and Conditions, which you can review on our website at sincerelyinc.com.

Connect with Katherine Dudtschak

Website: Sincerely Inc.

LinkedIn: Katherine Dudtschak

Instagram: @kdudtschak

Connect with Master Mingtong Gu

Website:  Master Mingtong Gu

LinkedIn:  Master Mingtong Gu

Book: Coming Home to Embodied Awakening

FREE CHAPTER HERE

Master Mingtong Gu: Coming Home to the Body, the Ground of All Healing

Partway through this conversation, Master Mingtong Gu stops talking and reaches for a song. He has not prepared it. He says so, and then he invites Katherine and everyone listening to close their eyes, to place a hand on the heart, to feel the heartbeat underneath the palm. He sings three lines, over and over, each one a truth about the body he has spent a lifetime returning to.

Master Mingtong Gu is the founder of Wisdom Healing Qigong and the Southwest Sanctuary near Santa Fe, where he leads people through month-long and longer retreats, teaching them to reconnect mind and body. He has been teaching full-time for twenty-five years and has just released a new book. He introduces himself first as a whole human being: a playful inner child, an artist, a devoted teacher.

This conversation moves through the philosophy of the body as home; the missing piece Mingtong adds to Descartes and the Buddha ("I feel, therefore I am"); the three truths he sings into the room; the medicine-less Qigong hospital in China where he lived for close to two years and found what he had been searching for; the ancient grandmother trees of the sanctuary and the glacier Katherine watched calve into the Arctic ocean; and the wish he sends out at the close: that every human being discover the deepest connection of their own mind and body, because that one reconnection can change everything else.

Key Moments

- "I feel, therefore I am": the missing piece he adds to the inherited Western story of thinking as the ground of being.

- The shared song-meditation: Mingtong sings the three truths, Katherine and listeners repeat the words with hands on the heart, and afterward Katherine names what she felt: shivers, tears of love, peace, and honor.

- The moment at the medicine-less Qigong hospital when his teacher's wife touched his shoulder and said, "Now you have found your home," and he ran to the hill and screamed it to the world.

- The 500-year-old grandmother tree at the sanctuary answering his question during the pandemic: the earth does not need us; we need the earth.

- The closing wish: the deepest connection of mind and body is the one change that changes everything else.

Quotes to Remember

"In that moment, I realized the home is here. This body is my home. This is my home. That's what I've been missing."

"Healing is about recovering yourself to the wholeness. It's about realizing yourself to the truth of who you are. And that's everything else come as a side effect."

Reflection for Listeners

After the song, Mingtong asked me how I felt, and I told him the truth: shivers, all the way through, from the moment it started, and tears of love and peace and honor. What moved me was the recognition. Three simple lines about the body, and something in me remembered. That is what this conversation gave me, and I hope it gives you the same.

Sincerely,

Katherine.

About the Host

Katherine Dudtschak is the founder of Sincerely, host of The Sincerely Show, and author of Sincerely, Katherine. She writes and speaks about leadership, service, and interior life.

Disclaimer

This conversation is for reflection and perspective only and should not be relied on as therapy or professional advice. Please seek qualified support where needed before making any decisions based on the information you learn through this conversation. This content is also subject to our full Terms and Conditions, which you can review on our website at sincerelyinc.com.

Connect with Katherine Dudtschak

Website: Sincerely Inc.

LinkedIn: Katherine Dudtschak

Instagram: @kdudtschak

Connect with Jem Fuller

Website: Jem Fuller

LinkedIn: Jem Fuller

Instagram: @jemfuller

Facebook: Jem Fuller

Jem Fuller: Coherence Architect, Bringing Love Into the Workplace and Living From Essence

Jem Fuller has spent the last decade helping very senior leaders build something most leadership programs never reach: inner alignment first, then coherence in their relationships, then coherence across every system they are responsible for. He coaches one-to-one with leaders running organisations of significant scale, runs conscious leadership retreats in the Himalayan mountains, Bali, and Australia, writes award-winning books, and founded the Centre of Love, a non-profit building an education sanctuary in Northwest India and gathering twelve founders of global movements fuelled by love into an alliance aiming to touch 150 million lives. He recently landed the phrase that holds all of it together: coherence architect.

This conversation travels the full arc of how a person becomes that. It begins with the life Jem is living now, on a coastal farm at Bells Beach in Victoria, with his partner Tahlia and their four young adults, three generations under one roof. Then it walks backward: years of purposeful wandering as a fire dancer, tattooist, and barefoot traveller, an adopted Himalayan family he has belonged to for almost thirty years, a corporate career that fed his children and cost him his coherence, and a sweat lodge ceremony and the dream that followed, which showed him the belief he had carried since he was six and began the daily practice that rewired it.

If you have ever built an outwardly successful life and felt a quiet gap widening beneath it, this conversation is for you. An open door, and a reminder that the path inward is available.

Key Moments

- The coherence architect sequence: inner alignment first, then coherence in relationships, then coherence across the systems a leader carries, explained through the lens of the real leaders he works with.

- The Centre of Love Alliance: twelve founders of global movements fuelled by love, a non-profit Himalayan education sanctuary, and a mission to bring love back into the workplace as a genuine measure of human value.

- The moment Katherine reveals that Sincerely mirrors the Centre of Love's structure, and Jem names the spark of two worlds meeting aloud, on the record, for anyone listening to witness.

Quotes to Remember

"I've recently landed with a term to be the overarching title of my outer work, and it's coherence architect."

"I'm weaving these worlds together so that we can be a tide that lifts all the boats."

Reflection for Listeners

I keep thinking about the moment Jem said you don't retire from your life's purpose. He said it so simply, almost as a given, and I felt it land somewhere specific in me. He found his purpose at forty-one, after all of the wandering and the building and the losing, and he woke up the next morning and the morning after that and kept going. There is something quietly steadying in that, for anyone who wonders if they have left it too late.

Sincerely,

Katherine.

About the Host

Katherine Dudtschak is the founder of Sincerely, host of The Sincerely Show, and author of Sincerely, Katherine. She writes and speaks about leadership, service, and the interior life.

Disclaimer

This conversation is for reflection and perspective only and should not be relied on as therapy or professional advice. Please seek qualified support where needed before making any decisions based on the information you learn through this conversation. This content is also subject to our full Terms and Conditions, which you can review on our website at sincerelyinc.com.

Connect with Katherine Dudtschak

Website: Sincerely Inc.

LinkedIn: Katherine Dudtschak

Instagram: @katherinedudtschak

Connect with Debra Poneman

Website: Yes to Success

LinkedIn: Debra Poneman

Book: Debra Poneman on Facebook

Debra Poneman: She made a promise to the universe at thirteen, and she has kept it for sixty-one years.

On a playground in Skokie, Illinois, a thirteen-year-old girl watched two girls invite an outsider into their club and then cruelly rescind the invitation. In that moment, Debra Poneman saw one person's pain radiating to the furthest ends of the universe, boomeranging back into the very people who caused it. She made a silent promise that day: she would never consciously do anything that hurt another person. That promise became the through-line of everything she has since built.

Debra is the founder of Yes to Success, launched in 1980, which grew within three years to twelve major U.S. cities and nine countries on four continents, without the internet, without fax machines, on phones attached to walls. She has spent decades teaching meditation through the Art of Living Foundation and her AWAKE Method, reaching hundreds of thousands of people. When Katherine asks what matters most in her life right now, she answers without hesitation: being a good friend and a good mother.

This conversation moves through the formation of a philosophy, the moment in 1980 when Debra woke up knowing what she would do for the rest of her life, and a near-death experience in 2014 in which she watched words pull her back from death. The invitation here is to slow down enough to notice who is standing in front of you.

Key Moments

- The picnic bench at East Prairie School: two girls invite an outsider into the club, then laugh and rescind it. Thirteen-year-old Debra watches the girl's pain ripple through a matrix she can see, and boomerang back into the girls who caused it.

- The 1980 Learning Annex seminar she almost did not attend, where a man talked about vibrational beings two decades before The Secret, and Debra woke the next morning knowing she would spend her life teaching exactly that.

- The 2014 hospital room where Debra flatlined more than once. A nurse said, "She's going to be fine," and Debra watched those words enter her body as sparkling light, pulling her back. The doctor said, "We're losing her," and she watched those words arrive as grey-brown swamp, drawing her toward death.

Quotes to Remember

"The person standing in front of you at any given moment is always the most important person in the world at that time."

"Thou shalt decree a thing, and it shall be added unto thee. She said she's gonna be fine. It started pulling me back to life."

Reflection for Listeners

I have been sitting with this conversation since the moment it ended. What Debra gave me was not a framework or a method. It was a reminder that the way we speak, the way we listen, the way we look at the person standing right in front of us, is not a small thing. It is the whole thing. She has spent sixty-one years keeping a promise she made on a playground. That kind of consistency is its own kind of grace.

About the Host

Katherine Dudtschak is the founder of Sincerely, host of The Sincerely Show, and author of Sincerely Catherine. She writes and speaks about leadership, service, and the interior life.

Disclaimer

This conversation is for reflection and perspective only and should not be relied on as therapy or professional advice. Please seek qualified support where needed before making any decisions based on the information you learn through this conversation. This content is also subject to our full Terms and Conditions, which you can review on our website at sincerelyinc.com.

Connect with Katherine Dudtschak

Website: Sincerely Inc.

LinkedIn: Katherine Dudtschak

Instagram: Katherine Dudtschak

Book: Sincerely, Katherine

Connect with Helene Banner

LinkedIn: Helene Banner

Instagram: Helene Banner

Helene Banner: She Wore Protective Clothing for 15 Years. Then She Took It Off

Episode Description

Katherine Dudtschak sits down with Helene Banner, international keynote speaker on authentic leadership and founder of Let's Just Be Imperfect Ladies. Helene spent nearly 20 years inside the European institutions, becoming spokeswoman for the Commission in three languages at 29, Head of Communication for the EU Representation in Berlin at 30, and German speechwriter for Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker in 2019. She was also, through all of it, wearing what she now calls protective clothing: heavy suits, a controlled persona, and a version of herself the institution required her to be.

In 2017, she went on sick leave with burnout and did not return for eight months. What she found in that time was not a path back but a path forward: to women's leadership, to authentic communication, and eventually to the conviction that kindness is not softness but the most urgent form of leadership available to us right now.

This conversation covers her East German childhood, the parents who marched for freedoms they were not yet allowed to have, the burnout that stripped away the performance, the TEDx speech she was not selected to give and recorded herself anyway, and what it means to walk through the Brandenburg Gate every day knowing that walls can come up again.

Key Moments

• Helene's East German childhood: parents who marched for freedoms they did not yet have, and what a six-year-old girl absorbed before she had words for it

• The letter confirming her EU career appointment for life and the grey corridor she suddenly saw stretching to retirement: the achievement that felt like a trap

• Arriving at her desk in January 2017 feeling nothing, packing her documents with the quiet instinct she might not be back for a while, and being right

• What happened during eight months of sick leave: online seminars by women entrepreneurs, and a journal entry where she wrote "female entrepreneur" as if falling in love with a phrase

• The TEDx speech she was not selected to give, the Berlin TV studio she booked herself, and the decision to stop waiting to be chosen

• Walking through the Brandenburg Gate every day and feeling its fragility: walls can come up again, and she refuses to take that for granted

Quotes to Remember

"Every time I walk through the Brandenburg Gate, I get shivers. Walls can come up again. We cannot take this for granted."

"Kindness is not softness. It is the most radical and necessary form of leadership available to us right now."

Reflection for Listeners

Helene spent nearly two decades defending the freedoms her parents had marched for, inside the institution built to protect them, while slowly losing the freedom to be herself. What struck me in this conversation is how long it is possible to perform within a system you genuinely believe in, and how much it costs. Her burnout was not a failure. It was her body refusing to continue paying that price. The invitation she leaves is for all of us: what are you still wearing that was never really yours?

About the Host

Katherine Dudtschak is the founder of Sincerely and author of Sincerely, Katherine. Through conversations, writing, and storytelling, she explores what it means to live and lead as whole human beings in a complex world. 

Disclaimer

This conversation is for reflection and perspective only and should not be relied on as therapy or professional advice. Please seek qualified support where needed. This content is subject to our full Terms and Conditions, available on our website.

Connect with Katherine Dudtschak

Website: Sincerely Inc.

LinkedIn: Katherine Dudtschak

Instagram: Katherine Dudtschak

Book: Sincerely, Katherine

Connect with Dr. Robyne Hanley-Dafoe

Website: Dr. Robyne Hanley-Dafoe

LinkedIn: Dr. Robyne Hanley-Dafoe

Instagram: Dr. Robyne Hanley-Dafoe

Books: Calm Within the Storm and Stress Wisely

Dr. Robyne Hanley-Dafoe: She Borrowed Her Mother's Belief Until She Found Her Own

Episode Description

Katherine Dudtschak sits down with Dr. Robyne Hanley-Dafoe, award-winning educational behaviourist, globally recognised resilience and hope researcher, bestselling author, and one of the most trusted voices on what it actually takes to keep going when everything says stop. Robyne has delivered more than 2,000 keynotes worldwide and written three books including Calm Within the Storm and Stress Wisely. She is also a woman who was institutionalised at 16, got sober, and then drove her car off a road in a snowstorm into the Otonabee River.

The car sank fifteen to twenty feet. She swam out through the window, exhaled in complete darkness, and followed the bubbles from her own breath to the surface. A stranger named Joseph, who had seen her tyre tracks in the snow, crawled across the ice with a chain and pulled her to shore. He was later awarded the Governor General's Award for bravery.

Robyne woke up in hospital with one thought: you're here, do right by it. This conversation covers resilience, hope as a skill, what it means to borrow someone else's belief until you can find your own, and why the helpers need to get their hope back.

Key Moments

• Robyne at 16, her pilot light going out, unable to imagine herself at 18, and what her mother said in the psychiatric facility when Robyne told her she could not see a way through

• The car in the Otonabee River: exhaling in complete darkness fifteen feet underwater and following the bubbles to the surface

• Joseph, the stranger who saw tyre tracks in the snow, fashioned a piece of wood to spread his weight on the ice, and slid her a chain

• Waking up in hospital not with survivor's guilt but with a calling: you're here, do right by it

• Why hope is not a feeling you wait for but a skill you build, and why the helpers are running low on it right now

• How she borrowed her mother's belief until she could find her own, and why that is enough to begin

Quotes to Remember

"I borrowed her belief until I could find my own. And it was enough to fight for."

"Hope is not a feeling. It is a practice. And it can be built, maintained, and borrowed from someone who holds it for you when you cannot hold it yourself."

Reflection for Listeners

Robyne does not present resilience as a personality trait you either have or you don't. She presents it as a muscle, built through accumulation, through practice, through the repeated decision to keep going even when the reason is borrowed from someone else. What stayed with me after this conversation is her mother's response in that facility: not advice, not reassurance, but a clear and specific vision of the future she could already see. That is what witnessing looks like. That is what this show tries to do. And it is what any of us can offer the person beside us who cannot see the way through.

About the Host

Katherine Dudtschak is the founder of Sincerely and author of Sincerely, Katherine. Through conversations, writing, and storytelling, she explores what it means to live and lead as whole human beings in a complex world. 

Disclaimer

This conversation is for reflection and perspective only and should not be relied on as therapy or professional advice. Please seek qualified support where needed. This content is subject to our full Terms and Conditions, available.

Connect with Katherine Dudtschak

Website: Sincerely Inc.

LinkedIn: Katherine Dudtschak

Instagram: Katherine Dudtschak

Book: Sincerely, Katherine

Connect with Eila Park Robertson

LinkedIn: Eila Park Robertson

Instagram: Eila Park Robertson

Eila Park Robertson: The Price of Peace Is Pain. There Is No Other Way Through

Episode Description

Katherine Dudtschak sits down with Eila Park Robertson, former ABC News journalist, award-winning filmmaker, crisis communications strategist, and founder of Anecdotia, a production agency focused on racial, social, and climate justice storytelling. Eila led communications for the City of Portland during over 100 consecutive nights of civil unrest, navigating daily racial harassment, hundreds of death threats, and a period of personal crisis she speaks about with complete honesty.

What she built from that experience is a mission: to help progressive governments, advocates, and organisations communicate in ways that actually reach the people they most need to reach. Her central argument is simple and urgent. Calling people out has failed. Calling people in is the only thing that works.

This conversation covers her Korean immigrant parents, her violent father, the seven-minute video she posted after the Atlanta spa shootings that changed everything, the husband who fell in love with her when she could see nothing worth loving in herself, and what she now knows with certainty: the price of peace is pain, and there is no shortcut through it.

Key Moments

• Two years walking into Portland City Hall while people shouted racial slurs in her face, received hundreds of death threats, and discovered that social humiliation activates the same region of the brain as physical pain

• The wedding announcement in Vogue published on the same day as the Atlanta spa shootings, the thousands of racist messages that followed, and what happened next

• Collapsing in her Vancouver apartment, standing up, pressing record, and speaking for seven minutes: the video that reached the world and changed everything

• Why the right creates radical inclusivity around fear and grievance while the left specialises in cancellation, and what progressive movements must change to reach the people they are failing

• The husband who saw pure light in her when she could see nothing worth loving in herself, and what that unconditional witnessing did to bring her back to life

• Her closing conviction: the price of peace is pain. There is no shortcut. There is no other way through.

Quotes to Remember

"The price of peace is pain. There is no shortcut. There is no other way."

"Your instinct is right. Don't let the institution cloud it."

Reflection for Listeners

Eila arrived in this conversation carrying the specific weight of someone who has been asked to be less than herself by every institution she has moved through, and who has paid the real price of refusing. What struck me most is the absence of bitterness. She speaks about Portland, about the racist messages, about the years of performing in spaces that were not built for her, with the clarity of someone who has metabolised every bit of it into something useful. Her invitation is for all of us: call people in. Start with the one closest to you who you have been quietly writing off.

About the Host

Katherine Dudtschak is the founder of Sincerely and author of Sincerely, Katherine. Through conversations, writing, and storytelling, she explores what it means to live and lead as whole human beings in a complex world. 

Disclaimer

This conversation is for reflection and perspective only and should not be relied on as therapy or professional advice. Please seek qualified support where needed. This content is subject to our full Terms and Conditions, available on our website.

Connect with Katherine Dudtschak

Website: Sincerely Inc.

LinkedIn: Katherine Dudtschak

Instagram: Katherine Dudtschak

Book: Sincerely, Katherine

Connect with Anne-Marie Slaughter

Website: New America

LinkedIn: New America

Instagram: New America

Book: Unfinished Business

Anne-Marie Slaughter: She Felt Fungible in Her Dream Job. That Was the Beginning

Episode Description
Katherine Dudtschak sits down with Anne-Marie Slaughter, globally recognised scholar, policy innovator, former Director of Policy Planning at the US State Department (the first woman to hold that role), former Dean of Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs, former CEO of New America, and author of nine books including Unfinished Business: Women, Men, Work, Family.

Her 2012 Atlantic article “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All” became the most-read piece in the magazine’s history and sparked a global conversation about work, family, and leadership.

Anne-Marie mapped her career in high school. She knew exactly what she wanted. Then she walked away from the law firm she had spent years planning to join because she realised she felt interchangeable — “fungible” — with every other associate.

That moment began six years of drifting that produced everything she had not planned: a PhD, a professorship she never expected to love, and eventually a dream role at the State Department that also challenged her when it collided with family.

This conversation explores the Belgian-American childhood that shaped her, the drifting years she rarely speaks about, the impact of telling the truth in The Atlantic, the care economy capitalism ignores, and what it will take to build a world centred on people.

Key Moments
The summer internship that made Anne-Marie realise she felt fungible and the beginning of everything she had not planned

The six years between 26 and 32: a marriage ending, a PhD she never intended, and discovering she loved law through teaching

The husband she pursued for three years and the 33 years of marriage that followed

The Atlantic article editors thought was “same old, same old” and the global conversation that followed

Why we have a half-finished revolution: women doing jobs men traditionally did while still carrying the work women have always done

Why capitalism measures achievement but ignores care, belonging, and family

Quotes to Remember
“Never judge your insides by someone else’s outsides. In an age of social media where only the best side is shown, there’s plenty of pain and anger underneath.”

“We have a half-finished revolution. Women are now doing jobs men have traditionally done and they are still doing all the jobs women have traditionally done.”

Reflection for Listeners
What surprised me most was not Anne-Marie’s career — it was the drifting years. The six years where the plan fell apart and she had to figure things out from the inside.

She learned that when things fall apart, new doors can open that you never would have chosen. This conversation invites listeners to consider what might be growing in the space where their own plan changed.

About the Host

Katherine Dudtschak is the founder of Sincerely and author of Sincerely, Katherine. Through conversations, writing, and storytelling, she explores what it means to live and lead as whole human beings in a complex world. 

Disclaimer

This conversation is for reflection and perspective only and should not be relied on as therapy or professional advice. Please seek qualified support where needed. This content is subject to our full Terms and Conditions, available on our website.

Connect with Katherine Dudtschak

Website: Sincerely Inc.

LinkedIn: Katherine Dudtschak

Instagram: Katherine Dudtschak

Book: Sincerely, Katherine

Connect with Joanna Barsh

Website: Joanna Barsh

LinkedIn: Joanna Barsh

Book: How Remarkable Women Lead

Joanna Barsh: She Started Therapy at 72. She Has Never Been More Alive.

Episode Description

Katherine Dudtschak sits down with Joanna Barsh, Director Emerita of McKinsey and Company, creator of the Centered Leadership model, and author of three books including the bestselling How Remarkable Women Lead. Joanna spent more than 30 years at McKinsey advising Fortune 100 companies and developing a leadership framework now used by hundreds of thousands of leaders across the world. She is also a woman who, at 72, entered therapy for the first time, not from crisis, but from a refusal to fossilise.

In this conversation Joanna talks about the darkness that arrived only after she stopped working, held at bay for decades by extraordinary achievement and now finally asking to be seen. She talks about the somatic workshop in 2011 where she encountered that darkness in a room full of people. About the mother whose approval she still waited for, long after her mother was gone. And about the question that changed everything: not what am I missing, but what have I simply chosen not to unlock?

This conversation covers the hum of a life well integrated, four practices for the inner journey, and why people who stop growing fossilise. Whether you lead an organisation, are in the middle of your own becoming, or have been telling yourself the journey is behind you, this conversation will stay with you.

Key Moments

• Joanna's letter confirming her EU career appointment for life, the dream she had worked toward, and the grey corridor she suddenly saw stretching to retirement

• The somatic workshop in 2011 where her own darkness crushed her to the floor in front of a room full of people, and what it took to rise

• Her mother the painter, the waiting for approval that continued long after her mother died, and the moment Joanna finally decided to stop waiting

• The shift from "what am I missing?" to "what have I simply chosen not to unlock?": the question at the heart of Centered Leadership

• Four practices for the inner journey: getting off the train, recognising the gifts already inside you, releasing perfectionism, and accepting the work is never finished

• Why she still needs external validation at 72, names it without shame, and keeps going anyway

Quotes to Remember

"You are not missing anything. You have simply chosen not to open certain doors. And the reason they're closed is fear, not lack."

"People who decide they are done growing begin to fossilise. The journey is never finished. That is not a problem. That is the whole point."

Reflection for Listeners

Joanna's most important insight is also her most generous one: that what we spend our lives searching for is not absent. It is locked. And the key has always been on the inside. What stayed with me after this conversation is not the scale of what she has achieved but the honesty with which she names what is still unfinished. She is 72, still in therapy, still needing to be seen. And she says so without apology. That is not a confession of failure. It is an invitation to every listener to stop waiting for the moment they are fixed and start treating the journey itself as the destination.

About the Host

Katherine Dudtschak is the founder of Sincerely and author of Sincerely, Katherine. Through conversations, writing, and storytelling, she explores what it means to live and lead as whole human beings in a complex world. 

Disclaimer

This conversation is for reflection and perspective only and should not be relied on as therapy or professional advice. Please seek qualified support where needed. This content is subject to our full Terms and Conditions, available on our website.