Heather Miller On Overdoing It And The Birth Of A Podcast

Hi friends, 

Welcome to the Balanceness podcast. Firstly, I’d like to start with a mindful minute and some gratitude for all of you who have found this podcast. I also want to thank the GrasshoppHer community for being part of the start up journey and for letting me guide your journeys. I also want to thank my team for supporting me in business and friendship on this wild ride called life.

This is the About me podcast that all literature says needs to exist for a podcast to be successful, but I’m procrastinating like nobody’s business for several reasons: I find it hard to talk about myself and to do so in a nutshell
but also, because this podcast is not about me. It’s about you. It’s about providing you with useful resources to help you find an equilibrium in life. Maybe if I talk about me in the service of you we’ll get this done. 

To start, my name is Heather Miller and I am Founder and CEO of social impact start up GrasshoppHer. My dream and my passion is simple.. it is to help people and I’ve been working in the service of equity in the workplace for over 14 years, 4 of which have been in the entrepreneurial space. But, I didn’t start as an entrepreneur. 

I started, at the age of 2, as a ballet dancer. I identified early on that this was my path and set out to join the most prestigious training institution I could find. And, I was also a dog lover. After years of training and preparation for the big audition to join the National Ballet of Canada, my parents got me a dog as a consolation prize should the audition not go well. But it did, and now they had a dog and a child they had to schlep back and forth to school at ungodly hours of the weekdays and weekends. 

Ballet was my world for years until it came time to decide whether or not I should go to college or join a professional ballet company. And, being the classic overachiever I am, I decided to do both...go to an ivy league school, continue my dance education with the Pennsylvania Ballet…oh and join the hip hop troupe on campus because it seemed fun.

I purposely graduated college in 3.5 years so that I could have 6 months off to bum around South America before going to law school, because God forbid I should take a gap year!!!  And, then, during law school I decided to back up dance with artists, such as LL Cool  J, Shaggy and Biz Markie on their North America tours.  I can guarantee that I was the only law student doing this.  Now, this was before wifi. My dear friends recorded our law school classes and shipped the recordings to the hotels where I was staying. Thank you all for that by the way. You helped me graduate. 

​Let’s just say that I was not a fan of the legal industry, although I was a fan of legal aid and enjoyed my time with my clients in the disability, welfare and mental health spaces. So, after ditching my legal career, I decided to indulge my passion for creating environments and set design developed during my dancing days and enroll in design school in Sydney, Australia. After graduation, I worked at several interior design studios in NY until my personal life took me back to my birthplace of Toronto and I joined a global consulting firm called McKinsey & Company. I say this with the most sincerity, McKinsey is a magical place. I learned how to be the best in class in business and how to serve my community all while surrounded by the smartest and kindest people on the planet. It was at McKinsey that I developed my passion for working with and for people and for serving in the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion space. With so much mentorship and after being charged with developing an internal mentorship program, I got the idea to build and launch GrasshoppHer, which would be a place to help women grow personally and professionally and realign with themselves. So, I left corporate America to join start up America. 

​On a personal more note, this was also the time when I bought my first house in NY, got divorced, did being single in NY, met my current partner, moved across the country, got pregnant with my first little boy and then, two weeks before his birth, got the call at 4a in the morning that my mom had passed. She had an extremely short, but terminal battle with cancer. Because I was about to pop, no doctor would ok my flight to Canada and I watched my mom’s funeral on Facetime. I can see now that was in total survival mode. Get the baby out safely, learn how to be a mom, launch a tech start up and be successful in all. 

​And then, the pandemic. With the uncertainty of the world and all of our survivals, a baby at home and a brand new start up, I was... on a roll. The start up wasn’t bringing in enough income, so I returned to the corporate DEI world in the wake of George Floyd’s death. I am so grateful for this. Again, I was surrounded by amazing people working to achieve change and impact. 

​And then baby two and a move to a house that needed lots of renovating. So, with two babies, two jobs (oh and 3 dogs…2 of which were puppies because I decided it was smart to throw 2 Mexican hairless pooches into the mix), I experienced a lay-off. I have no resentment here. The consulting world is experiencing a huge amount of post-pandemic change. But, change always throws one’s sense of security in flux and I felt like I was approaching a mid-life crisis, with no time or space to do so. 

​When life gives you lemons, you go to Costa Rica! I packed up my family and went to Costa Rica for the summer. There, with the  sun, sand and simplicity of life (the locals call it Pura Vida), I was able to take a breath. I started thinking about my life and lifestyle and reconsidering what was best for me and my growing family. I started thinking about balance (and whether that’s actually a thing) and what would need to change in my life to experience some semblance of it. 

So here we are…the birth of the Balanceness Podcast. I want to talk to amazing thought leaders and practitioners to understand if balance exists for them, how they stay sane and how they enjoy this one precious life we are awarded. We’re going to explore drive, juggling priorities, taking no prisoners with your schedule, love and sickness, pursuing your dreams, enjoying the journey and figuring out what is right for you. It’s my hope that these conversations give all of us the tools and resources to manage what’s on our plates and restack these plates if we need to. I hope these conversations provide value and help you err on the side of midlife epiphany versus midlife crisis. And, with that, I welcome you to reach out for any reason at [email protected] and welcome you to the Balanceness podcast!