Christina Wallace led a hard-charging life before the pandemic. She was a multi-hyphenate's multi-hyphenate, a musician-entrepreneur-marathon-runner-speaker-author-road-warrior who was flying a hundred thousand miles a year for work. Then she quit her job, because she had a new baby and it was time for a change. She was mapping out her book proposal and multiple income streams when the pandemic closed everything down - including her almost-income streams - and her world shrank into her Brooklyn apartment with just her, her baby, her husband, and her husband's phone voice - "a separate being in our relationship" - all day, every day. She realized change was going to have to come from her, so she reached out about a long-shot dream job - and became the newest faculty member of Harvard Business School. After a stint of zoom teaching, Christina and her family decamped for Boston and a life that, while still full and busy - had been designed on her terms, with a flourishing professional life at, she freely admits, "the first job that I have yet to cry at.” Now the mother of two, a three year old and a nine-month-old, Christina is the author of a new book, "The Portfolio Life," and a passionate advocate for designing a life that makes you happy. In this episode of "Your New Life Blend," host Shoshanna Hecht talks to Christina about finding her way to her own Portfolio Life, and how we should all aspire to be happy in our own unique and personal version of success.

The through-line of Umbreen Bhatti's career has been helping people tackle, as she says, "big, complex, sticky challenges." As the Director of the Athena Center for Leadership at Barnard College, and in her previous work as a lawyer and Director of the Innovation Lab at KQED, Umbreen looks at these challenges from all perspectives and then zooms out and kicks the tires on the underlying frameworks, paradigms and default assumptions to find new, and better, pathways forward. (She does not have time for "this is how we've always done it" and still less for "this is why it can't be done.") Umbreen had been at the Athena Center for almost a year when the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded in March 2020, and she got her wish: "this is how we've always done it" was no longer an option, and "this can't be done" never was. It was, ironically, a perfect crucible for learning about leadership - which, for Umbreen, meant equipping her students to move forward an uncertain world, and find ways to seize challenges and turn them into opportunities. In this episode, host Shoshanna Hecht talks to Umbreen about how leadership means looking at challenges as new possibilities, and moving beyond them to envision the world we want to live in, and then build it.

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Yoga educator Chrissy Carter left her high-intensity job as a trader on Wall Street to pursue her passion for wellness. Then in March 2020 her yoga practice suddenly switched from the studio to her home which became the place for everything else, too, including her husband and baby, as boundaries completely disappeared, along with her sense of control over her life. Chrissy had always approached her teaching, her business, even her relationship asking, how do I simplify this? and turned to simplicity again in this moment, looking to rebuild her boundaries, refocus her practice and zero in on the one thing she could control: herself. As a "perfectionist and control freak" now learning to "go with the flow," Chrissy worked to find that control in her practice, returning to the Yoga Sutras to remind her that the point of her practice was truly to practice - focusing on the effort and showing up every day with wholeheartedness, and also discipline. In this episode of "Your New Life Blend," Chrissy examines this journey with host Shoshanna Hecht, and how when "simple" doesn't mean easy, "practice" means showing up for yourself. 

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Author Lindsey Pollak had always made a point of projecting polish and control - useful for her work as an in-demand speaker and workplace expert. In March 2020 she had a year of speaking engagements booked - until she didn't. Over a two-week period, she lost over six figures in business as clients cancelled bookings and took back deposits. As the family breadwinner, she had no choice but to figure out how a workplace expert adapts when the workplace disappears. Then, Lindsey and her family had to adapt even more when a space heater in the apartment below them sparked a building-wide fire. The family watched from the street as their home burned. Lindsey had to relocate, retrench, rebuild - and recalculate, which became the subject of her next book, and this episode of "Your New Life Blend." Host Shoshanna Hecht talks to Lindsey about rebuilding a life and a career in the face of unrelenting change and challenge, how trying to project perfection can keep us from asking for - and receiving! - the help we need, and how we just never know what people are carrying.

What stories are we telling ourselves about the world? The New Quo founder Christina Blacken works with leaders to challenge the status quo through "narrative intelligence" - understanding the power of stories to change minds, break patterns, and make better, wiser decisions. In this episode, host Shoshanna Hecht speaks with Christina about the stories we tell ourselves in good times and in crises (and whose stories get told, and from whose perspective). Christina also shares how she applied the lessons of narrative intelligence to her own story, professionally and personally, when the COVID-19 lockdowns took hold in March 2020. Professionally, Christina's flourishing in-person speaking and consulting business changed on a dime. Personally, she learned to navigate her own rising fear and trauma brought on by pandemic life by reframing her own stories in order to overcome those fears and move herself forward.

Washington Post columnist Helaine Olen has always been fascinated by work and how it dominates our lives - and, since March 2020, has been fascinated by the profound shift she has observed in our relationship to work since the pandemic sent so many of us home, and sent so many others directly into harm's way. These observations were the basis of her recent article, "How the Pandemic Ended America's Bad Romance With Work," in which she explores the forces compelling what she calls "a great reconsideration, a great renegotiation" with work in this country and exactly how much of it we actually want in our lives. In this episode of "Your New Life Blend," host Shoshanna Hecht speaks with Helaine about the societal forces that build movements from the ground up, and what happens when giant swaths of the workforce abruptly realize that work won't love you back. 

How do you support women in the workplace? If you're Sali Christeson, founder and CEO of Argent, you do it with sleeve-stays, flexible fabrics and, of course, pockets. Argent's suits were ubiquitous this fall in the run-up to the election with a hot-pink voting-themed collection - but almost three years ago in March 2020 when everyone stopped going to the office, she wasn't even sure she'd have a business at all. On this episode of "Your New Life Blend," host Shoshanna Hecht talks to Sali about how she navigated the challenges of the past few years - professionally and personally, with two young kids at home, the ups and down of being a founder, who shows up for her (because, it's been a wild few years), and why she is so passionate about giving working women clothes they can love, and also stash their phone in. 

 Welcome to Your New Life Blend, a podcast about deciding what we want our lives to look like. Even as we are expected to "return to normal,” we are all, collectively and individually, remaking what "normal" looks like - in our families, in our careers, and in a shifting, evolving culture. Join therapist and coach Shoshanna Hecht for thoughtful, illuminating conversations with guests across a range of life experiences asking, "What do we want our lives to look like?" It's time for Your New Life Blend.