Kristiana has spent the past twenty years leading innovation for design and technology teams at Fortune 500 companies, and there is one pattern that keeps showing up no matter the company or the team.

Brilliant leaders bring ideas that could genuinely change the business, and they have no idea how to pitch those ideas in a way that earns buy-in. So the ideas die in the conference room before anyone even gets to explore them.

In this episode, Kristiana breaks down seven of the most common influence gaps costing teams their best thinkers, and shares the real story of a leader named Carla whose pitch fell apart in the room, and what changed once she learned a better way to tell the story.

This framework grew out of a partnership Kristiana did more than ten years ago with Techstars Accelerators at Target, where she took the strategies that help startups win funding and adapted them for leaders pitching inside corporate teams.

Download the 7 Executive Influence Gaps & How to Solve Them Guide: https://www.worthytolead.co/influenceguide

Master the Art of Selling Ideas to the C-Suite. Join the Innovation Storytelling Workshop: https://www.worthytolead.co/storytelling 

CONNECT WITH KRISTIANA:
Website: https://www.worthytolead.co/
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/kristianacorona
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/worthytolead/

Dr. Maggie Sass and Dr. Ross Blankenship are consulting psychologists and executive coaches who have spent decades working with executives and senior leaders, and they came to a conclusion that changed how I think about emotions at work entirely.

We’re often taught to push past tension or ignore the defensiveness that spikes during tough meetings. But Maggie and Ross argue that friction isn't a problem to solve, but critical information for making decisions. Emotions are the medium through which all work happens.

Their new book, Friction: How Tension, Emotion, and Change Reveal Better Leaders, is backed by a national survey of over 1,100 working Americans, and it makes the case that human-centered leadership and emotional intelligence are becoming more essential, not less, as AI reshapes how we work.

Order Dr. Ross and Dr. Maggie’s latest book, Friction:
Website: https://www.talentsmarteq.com/friction/
Amazon: https://a.co/d/09kK3yTq

ADDITIONAL LINKS:

CONNECT WITH MAGGIE:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maggiesass-phd/
Website: https://www.talentsmarteq.com/

CONNECT WITH ROSS:
Website: https://www.tuesdayadvisors.com/
Substack: https://rossblankenship.substack.com/
Website: https://www.rossblankenship.io/

CONNECT WITH KRISTIANA:
Website: https://www.worthytolead.co/
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/kristianacorona
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/worthytolead/

Dr. Kevin Sakamoto and I go way back. We worked together at Target, we've spent years comparing notes from our different corners of the world (he's a professor and product leader, I'm a design leader), and we enjoy diving deep and nerding out over leadership and innovation.

We recently sat down to challenge how leaders are thinking about leading through AI. We get into the fear that some leaders are feeling right now: the quiet worry that their role, their relevance, their whole reason for being in the room might be slipping away.

We talk about the IKEA case study that will truly make you rethink what's possible when a company decides to renew its people instead of replacing them. We dig into why middle management is having its own identity crisis, what an inverted apprenticeship looks like when your newest hire knows more about AI than you do, and why the smartest thing you can do right now might just be to gather everyone around a table to work through it together.

If you've been bracing for impact instead of getting curious, this conversation is your invitation to try something different.

REFERENCES:

CONNECT WITH DR. KEVIN SAKAMOTO:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-h-sakamoto/ 

CONNECT WITH KRISTIANA:
Website: https://www.worthytolead.co/
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/kristianacorona
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/worthytolead/
Substack: https://worthytolead.substack.com/

Rusty Atkinson spent twenty-five years climbing into the highest levels of corporate technology, including time as a CIO, and he vowed not to stop caring about his people in order to get there.

In this Worthy to Lead podcast conversation, we get into the real cost of leading with integrity: the rooms Rusty wasn't invited to and why he'd make the same trade every time. He walks us through the six stumbling blocks he identifies in his book, The Integrity Edge, from lack of trust and unchecked ambition to the slow drift toward a toxic culture, and he hands us a Courage Model for building the kind of conviction that holds up when the stakes are high, not just when it's convenient.

If you've ever assumed that toughening up and caring less is just part of the job description at the top, this is your permission slip to choose another path.

REFERENCES:
The Integrity Edge by Rusty Atkinson: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FRN8YWKM
Love as a Business Strategy by Mohammad Anwar: https://www.loveasabusinessstrategy.com/

CONNECT WITH RUSTY:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rustyatkinson/

CONNECT WITH KRISTIANA:
Website: https://www.worthytolead.co/
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/kristianacorona
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/worthytolead/
Substack: https://worthytolead.substack.com

For once, I'm not the host – I'm the guest. My friend and fellow coach Laurie Hall flips the script and interviews me about my own path: small-town Minnesota roots, unglamorous first jobs, and getting thrown into leadership with zero training.

My early stumbles led me to coaching – the moment that changed how I lead for good – and into 23 years of building teams and inventing new roles for myself inside corporate. We talk about why I left a job I loved at Amazon at the start of 2025, the "human-centered leadership flywheel" behind my membership community now, and the mindset shift I keep coming back to: your work is not your worth.

If I could create my own role inside four different companies, why couldn't I build the one I actually wanted outside of all of them? I hope this gives you permission to ask the questions you've been putting off.

Be the first to know about new episodes, insights, and resources. Join my email list at https://www.WorthyToLead.co/subscribe

CONNECT WITH KRISTIANA:
Website: https://www.worthytolead.co/

LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/kristianacorona
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/worthytolead/
Substack: https://worthytolead.substack.com/

🎧 LISTEN TO LAURIE'S EPISODE:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-40-from-nasa-engineer-to-leadership-coach-navigating/id1748949789?i=1000768552476 

CONNECT WITH LAURIE:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauriehallformerlypeterson
Website: https://newhorizonstrategies.com/

Andy Vitale has been building with AI since 2015, across healthcare, banking, mortgage, marketing, and now tax software, long before it became a leadership talking point.

He was auto-suggesting medical codes at 3M before most people knew what machine learning was. He helped increase loan volume at Rocket Companies by billions of dollars through conversational AI. And now, as VP and Head of Product Design and AI Center of Excellence at TaxWell, he is shipping AI-powered features within a single tax season while spending 75% of his week in AI-related work, at the VP level, hands-on.

In this conversation, we trace that full arc: what it looked like to build with AI before it was a trend, how product teams are working differently now, why design systems have become a competitive moat, and what separates the leaders who will thrive in this moment from the ones who quietly become speed bumps.

If you have been feeling the pressure to get fluent in AI and lead your team through a transition you are still figuring out yourself, this episode is worth a listen.

REFERENCES:
Claude: https://claude.ai
Wisprflow: https://wisprflow.ai
Figma Make: https://www.figma.com/make/
Cursor: https://cursor.com/

CONNECT WITH ANDY:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andyvitale/
Website: https://www.andyvitale.com/
Design Executive Council: https://www.designexecutivecouncil.com/

CONNECT WITH KRISTIANA:
Website: https://www.worthytolead.co/
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/kristianacorona
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/worthytolead/
Substack: https://worthytolead.substack.com/

Erin Coupe spent over 17 years inside high-performance corporate environments: Goldman Sachs, CBRE, Fortune 140 companies. She was commuting 10 to 12 hours a week, working 60-plus hours, and building a career that looked impressive from the outside. Then her body started breaking down. Fainting in elevators. Stress rashes treated with steroids. A quiet but persistent sense that something was deeply wrong.

What followed was a years-long process of unlearning: not just habits, but beliefs she had never consciously chosen in the first place. Beliefs shaped by a childhood marked by poverty, a terminally ill father, and a survival mode that followed her straight into the boardroom.

Erin is now an international keynote speaker, executive advisor, and bestselling author of I Can Fit That In, named a 2026 Next List Selection by JP Morgan. She works with leadership teams to expand capacity, increase sustainable performance, and shift the energy of entire organizations, starting with the individuals at the top.

In this conversation, we get into what it cost her to live inside hustle culture for so long, what helped her to start owning her own energy, the importance of daily rituals (not just routines), and what actually moves the needle towards a sustainable work culture.

If you have ever felt like you are carrying too much, or quietly wondering how long you can keep operating at your current pace, this conversation is for you.

CONNECT WITH ERIN:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erin-coupe/
Website: https://www.erincoupe.com/
Instagram: https://instagram.com/authenticallyec

I CAN FIT THAT IN:
https://www.erincoupe.com/i-can-fit-that-in

CONNECT WITH KRISTIANA:
Website: https://www.worthytolead.co/
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/kristianacorona
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/worthytolead/
Substack: https://worthytolead.substack.com/

Laurie Hall spent years working on space exploration and the International Space Station. She was a chemical engineer at NASA and Lockheed Martin, doing exactly what she had dreamed about since she was a kid growing up in Kansas. And then, around year ten, a nagging question started to emerge: Is this still what I’m meant to be doing?

What followed wasn't a clean pivot. It was a five-year transition, grief she hadn't anticipated, and a slow process of figuring out who she actually was outside of the identity she had spent her whole career building. When Laurie lost her sister to suicide, something shifted. Her soul needed to see the difference she was making in people's lives directly and up close. That's what led her to found New Horizon Strategies in 2011, where she now leads a global team of coaches and facilitators helping leaders navigate change with clarity and confidence.

She also shares the "lifeline" exercise she uses with organizations to help people reconnect with what has shaped them, why she considers "should," "ought to," and "supposed to" red flag words in any coaching conversation, and what she wishes someone had told her when she was beating herself up for caring more about people than problem sets.

CONNECT WITH LAURIE:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauriehallformerlypeterson/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lauriehallformerlypeterson 

CONNECT WITH NEW HORIZON STRATEGIES:
Website: https://newhorizonstrategies.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/newhorizonstrategies
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/new-horizon-strategies-llc
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCX9Yj-Amk7drvg8uaaZzG0g

CONNECT WITH KRISTIANA:
Website: https://www.worthytolead.co/
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/kristianacorona
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/worthytolead/
Substack: https://worthytolead.substack.com/

Powerful leadership skills go beyond your strategy and experience. One of the most untapped sources of potential is your team’s creativity and curiosity. Here’s why that matters:

Van Lai-DuMone has spent over a decade proving that creativity isn't just an art class activity. It's a thinking tool, a problem-solving tool, and one of the most underused levers in leadership today. She's brought it into organizations like Google, LinkedIn, and NBC, and she's seen what happens when leaders finally stop treating it like a nice-to-have.

The story that started it all begins in a refugee camp in 1975. Twenty Vietnamese refugee women noticed their teacher, movie star Tippi Hedren's, red manicured nails. Instead of moving on, they got curious. That one pause sparked what would become an $8.3 billion industry in the US.

In this episode, Van breaks down her three-step framework for turning curiosity into action, what LEGO® Serious Play® looks like inside a real organization, why psychological safety and creativity are more connected than most leaders realize, and how she finally stopped ignoring the idea that had been tapping on her own shoulder for six years.

Creativity is more than just arts and crafts; it’s a fundamental element of how the most successful leaders approach problem-solving and strategy.

ADDITIONAL REFERENCES:
Van’s Speaker Reel: https://youtu.be/3QaUb8srP-0?si=KKe13kM6AxrSO4Bk
What if Pigs Can Fly? Intro: https://youtu.be/GGQoAVlg8ME
Strategic Play Podcast: https://www.strategicplay.com/podcast_van-lai-dumone
General Assembly: https://generalassemb.ly/instructors/van-lai-dumone/21492
The Honor Foundation: https://www.honor.org/our-tribes/van-lai-dumone/

CONNECT WITH VAN:
Website: www.worksmartadvantage.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vanlaidumone/
TEDx Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLixzTazp2U
Book "What If Pigs Can Fly": https://www.amazon.com/What-Pigs-Can-Fly-Possibilities/dp/1953183433
Creative Problem Solving Tools: https://www.worksmartadvantage.com/creative-problem-solving-building-blocks/

CONNECT WITH KRISTIANA:
Website: https://www.worthytolead.co/
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/kristianacorona
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/worthytolead/
Substack: https://worthytolead.substack.com/

What do you do when the identity you built your entire career around disappears overnight?

For Greg Bro, losing his job after 20+ years as a UX design leader wasn't just a professional setback. It was a complete identity crisis. The question "what do you do?" suddenly had no answer, and that forced a much deeper one: who do I actually want to be?

Instead of looking for a similar role, Greg wrote and illustrated a children's book in ONE MONTH.

Greg talks honestly about the disorientation of losing a role that defined him, the emotional spiral that followed, and the moment he realized that chasing the same title at a different company wasn't actually what he wanted. He shares how coaching helped him see his situation from a completely different angle, how he followed a small pull of creative energy into something he never expected, and what it took to go from concept to published author of two children's books in a matter of months.

What strikes me most about Greg's story is not just the speed of what he built. It's the courage it took to stop and ask a harder question: what kind of work is actually in integrity with who I am now?

REFERENCES:
Greg's Books: "Every Shape Has a PLACE": https://amzn.to/4sqFN7W 
"Every Shape Has a FEELING": https://amzn.to/3NCxkPw 
Get a signed copy with a custom doodle inside + shop merch at: https://www.bruteoptimism.com/shop 
Book Greg for an author visit: https://www.bruteoptimism.com/authorvisits

CONNECT WITH GREG:
Website: https://www.bruteoptimism.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bruteoptimism/

CONNECT WITH KRISTIANA:
Website: https://www.worthytolead.co/ 
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/kristianacorona 
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/worthytolead/ 
Substack: https://worthytolead.substack.com/