Time For Change

Jay Shifman, a stigma-destroying speaker, podcaster, and a believer in honesty, tells us his story of dealing with a mental health misdiagnosis and substance misuse. Jay launched the Choose Your Struggle podcast, the show brings into light multiple vulnerable stories about dealing with substance misuse, mental health, and recovery, as well as expert education on those topics.

Scott Deluzio, a father of 3, author of the Surviving Son, army veteran, and web developer, tells us his story of dealing with PTSD and the loss of his younger brother.

In this episode, I host Shawn Harper, a former NFL offensive lineman who played with the Rams, the Oilers, the Colts and NFL Europe. Shawn’s journey from the grit and grime of the NFL locker room to the corporate culture of the boardroom sparks a fascinating discussion on overcoming adversity and knowing what matters the most, especially as we all grieve and rise in the post-covid phase.

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In this episode, I speak with Tracey Brown, US Coast Guard Veteran. 25 plus years as a physiotherapist, 10 years specializing in scar tissue therapy. Severely burned as a young child. #1 best selling Author of Rescue to Recovery: A Veteran's Story of Hidden Scars and Personal Discovery. The story of overcoming decades of undiagnosed PTSD.

A United States Coast Guard Veteran, Tracey Brown wore many hats. She was a swimmer on small boats, a firefighter when needed, and an all-around boat crew member to name a few of her duties while at the USCG Group San Francisco Ca. After many years of undiagnosed PTSD, Tracey was educated as a Director of Physical Rehabilitation and has been working for over twenty years to help clients get free from physical pain. For the last decade, she has specialized in pain reduction via scar tissue therapy.

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Highlights of the show include:

✔︎ How to know if you are suffering from PTSD

✔︎ What is the first step you should take if you live in pain

✔︎ How to handle someone who shares their pain with you

✔︎ How to turn your life from a life of pain to a life of joy and fulfillment 0

In this episode, I speak with Marquita Myrick, a professional counselor, and an empowerment coach

Marquita Myrick is a Licensed Professional Counselor and an Empowerment Coach who is dedicated to helping her clients discover what’s missing. She obtained a Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology from the University of Colorado Denver in May 2011. Since then, she has worked on a college campus, community mental health centers, residential, private practice, and an eating disorder partial hospitalization program.

Marquita identified a desire to do some form of coaching after leaving her last full-time job to embrace stay-at-home parenting with her eldest who was a newborn at the time. She experienced burnout, low self-esteem and had taken too many hits to her mental health so she knew there was internal work to do. Despite her doctor suggesting she consider a new career, she sat on that dream for several years.

Fast forward to 2018 where she decided to embrace coaching, she discovered her own beliefs were holding her back from building a dream business. During the process of learning and unlearning behaviors and beliefs that no longer served her, Marquita was able to put the missing pieces together and realized her calling was to coach other freedom-craving women looking to be free from their emotional wounds, fixed mindset, and low self-esteem.

In this episode, I speak with Laura Gates, an executive coach and trusted advisor to top tech companies.

Laura Gates is a sought-after executive coach, team facilitator, and trusted advisor to executives at Silicon Valley’s top tech companies. She has worked with Google, Linkedin, NASA, NAVAIR, AT&T, and with many other corporations.

Laura is passionate about leading with purpose and harnessing our collective genius to solve the world’s most pressing challenges. She started her career as a Wall Street banker at Citibank and has successfully built two companies of her own.

I talk to Laura about managing her own newly created situation as a coach that works remotely with her clients, and how she had adjusted to the new normal. I also talk to Laura about connection vs. boundaries in business relationships in remote work settings in comparison to face to face work settings. I loved our conversation on cutting through the social norms and being truly authentic while working with clients remotely.

In this episode, I speak with Virginia “Ginny” Clarke, a former leadership staffing at google and a former partner at Spencer Stuart, an author, a leader, and a podcaster.

Ginny Clarke is an executive recruiter and career advisor. She is former recruiting and diversity and mobility director at google where she has led non-technical executive recruiting as well as diversity and internal executive mobility. Ginny is based in Mountain View, CA.

Before Google, Ginny was a partner at Spencer Stuart, based in Chicago. She worked in the firm’s financial services and led Spencer Stuart’s diversity practice for a total of 12 years.

After leaving Spencer Stuart, Ginny wrote Career Mapping: Charting Your Course in the New World of Work, empowering individuals to strategically navigate their careers. After the release of Career Mapping, Ginny formed her own executive search and talent management consulting firm.

I talk to Ginny about the difference between activity and impact. Ginny shares her experiences from google, teaching her team to differentiate between doing for the sake of doing, and doing for the sake of purpose. We also talk about the importance of pausing to think and leaving yourself space to be, in a fast-paced, rapidly changing world. I loved what Ginny had to say about differentiating between fear and uncertainty. Ginny has shared that she has been meditating for years and talked about the need for top executives to learn to distress not only for the purpose of their own mental health but also for the purpose of truly thinking things through.

In this episode, Dr. Michelle is joined by Jill Wesley, a leader and coach with expertise in the Science and Soul of Speaking.

Jill has trained and coached over 80,000 executives and high-performing employees in some of the world's top companies and institutions (LinkedIn, Twitter, Square, Adobe, NetApp, Cisco, Stanford Law School, NFL Players Association, Johns Hopkins University and Panasonic, to name a few).

We discuss how working in an industry that, with COVID, hasn't been able to continue to thrive in person and how she has been able to pivot into the busiest year she has ever had. We also discuss how burnout has reared itself in new ways and how she recommends relearning how to prioritize and adjust.