Empowering Women at Every Stage
Chatting with The Experts with Paula Okonneh
Release Date: 04/23/2026
Women’s Strategies to Build Lasting Wealth
Chatting with The Experts with Paula Okonneh
Saran T. Baker, a transformational financial coach, international speaker, and author, discusses why high income does not equal wealth and how disciplined money management builds long-term freedom. Baker, a 2025 Maryland Top 100 Women Award recipient, explains shifting from “chaos” (can’t handle any obstacle sent) to “calm” (control, abundance, legacy creation, and money mastery) through mindset, pausing under pressure, and creating systematic, automated money “buckets” for emergencies, investing, retirement, and fun. She discusses women’s tendency to rescue others financially,...
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Know Your Workplace Rights
Chatting with The Experts with Paula Okonneh
Dr. Allison Butler, founder of Informed Choices Strategy, talks about workplace rights and accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Drawing on over 20 years leading accommodation and ADA compliance offices across higher education, healthcare, and federal agencies, Butler explains that employees who succeed are often those who ask early and strategically, treating accommodations as a performance-preservation tool rather than a last resort. She outlines her Informed Choices Framework: strategic disclosure (sharing functional impact without oversharing diagnosis details),...
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How to Get Media Exposure
Chatting with The Experts with Paula Okonneh
Dr Pam Perry, a publicist, podcaster, Speakers Magazine publisher and CEO of pamperrypr.com, talks about how to get known online and secure media coverage. Pam explains PR as part of marketing focused on awareness, outlines how PR, media, and branding work together through a strong digital footprint, and notes that media outlets look for an established brand and assets before featuring someone. She describes her Ready, Set, Go approach: mindset and clarity, assembling assets like headshots, media kits, reels, and press releases, then pitching and speaking. Pam discusses the personal mindset...
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The Greatest Life Insurance Scam Ever
Chatting with The Experts with Paula Okonneh
Deidre Knighten, a Los Angeles–based licensed financial advisor, discusses “income protection,” reframing life insurance as protecting household income for dependents. Knighten argues against whole life insurance and recommends buying term coverage for the years it’s needed (e.g., until children are grown) and investing the savings, citing compound interest and higher potential returns. She challenges whole-life “cash value” claims, outlining five policy rules she says disadvantage consumers, including low returns, borrowing costs and delays, and cash value not passing to...
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How to Deal with Family Trauma
Chatting with The Experts with Paula Okonneh
Gbotemi Babatunde, a clinical psychologist, discusses intergenerational trauma and how unresolved trauma affects child-parent relationships. Babatunde explains trauma as complex and subjective, noting that unprocessed experiences can shape perceptions, trigger protective responses, and be unintentionally transferred to children through modeling, emotional distance, overcontrol, and difficulties with co-regulation. She describes how children seek safety and love, and how parents may focus on material provision while missing emotional needs. In infant mental health, she emphasizes working with...
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Aligning Career with Identity
Chatting with The Experts with Paula Okonneh
Oluwatoyin Puddicombe, Nigerian HR professional and career fitness coach, discusses what happens when who you are doesn’t align with what you do. Puddicombe shares how societal expectations led her into medical school, where she struggled, failed key exams, and faced identity and family pressure before switching to Communication and Language Arts, excelling and graduating near the top of her class. She explains how the lack of career guidance motivated her to help young professionals find career fit, develop employability skills, and navigate career transitions through Toyin Talks Talent and...
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Stop Leaving Money on the Table
Chatting with The Experts with Paula Okonneh
Avenice Thompson, profit-acceleration strategist, focuses on doubling profit without spending on marketing. Avenice shares common business-owner mistakes she observed in her corporate career, including underpricing, poor invoicing, and weak cashflow management, illustrated by a vendor unaware he’d been paid $1.2 million. She explains her proprietary profit acceleration tool that benchmarks a company’s profit margin against industry standards and sets short-term goals. Avenice emphasizes “mindset over money” and her success formula: mindset and movement plus competence, confidence, and...
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African Women in Tech
Chatting with The Experts with Paula Okonneh
Dr. Susan Isiko Strba is the Counsel and Senior Fellow at the Geneva Center of Knowledge Governance and co-founder/Senior Research and Policy Advisor at the International Lawyers and Economists for Development (ilaed.org). She discusses women in technology in Africa. Dr. Strba says Africa’s tech landscape is often described as “bleak” in global comparisons, yet technology exists across a spectrum and must include women who run 80–85% of the informal sector that sustains much of the continent’s GDP. She links tech adoption to practical needs such as phones and social media marketing...
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Setting the Room’s Temperature
Chatting with The Experts with Paula Okonneh
Rebecca H. Mott, a founder of ReThought LLC & an author of Amazon #1 new release The Meeting Room, and “The Meeting Architect”, discusses how the energy you bring into a room sets the tone for conversations, decisions, and outcomes. Rebecca shares a lesson from early customer service work that smiling affects tone even on the phone, and explains how stress and “nervous energy” influence how others receive you before you speak. She emphasizes this is learnable through awareness and breath control, describing how marathon training taught her to pace breathing and notice stress...
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Unwelcome Uterine Guests
Chatting with The Experts with Paula Okonneh
Dr Cheryl Okoli, an advanced practice nurse and healthcare leader, discusses uterine fibroids, which she calls “unwelcome uterine guests.” Dr Okoli explains that fibroids are non-cancerous uterine tumors ranging from microscopic to watermelon-sized, likely linked to estrogen dominance, and affecting any woman of childbearing age, with higher prevalence and more severe symptoms in Black women (60% by age 35 and 80% by 50 vs. 40% and 70% in Caucasians). She reviews symptomatic signs, including heavy bleeding, pelvic pain, bulk/pressure, anaemia, urinary frequency, infertility, and...
info_outlineDr. Lisa Santiago McNeil—publisher, strategist, coach, transformational leader, and founder of Empowerment Publishing and Multimedia— has helped guide over 200 books into the world, many becoming bestsellers and platforms for impact, income, and influence. Lisa shares her desire to reintroduce herself and refocus on women “after a certain age,” discussing how women can shrink into the background and experience an identity crisis as they evolve through life stages. She emphasizes the need for “girls talk” at any age, the value of seasoned women’s lived experience, and showing up as one’s undiluted self even within a partnership. She connects inner healing, faith, and self-care—skin, hair, and heart—highlighting learning to depend on God, refilling from overflow, and embracing new seasons of purpose.
Timestamps:
00:00 Welcome to the Show
00:35 Meet Dr Lisa Santiago
02:10 Reintroducing After Midlife
04:55 Why Girls Talk Matters
07:13 Teamwork and Sisterhood
09:07 Identity Crisis and Healing
11:07 Metamorphosis Mindset Shift
13:12 Beauty as Inner Work
17:52 Faith Leaning vs Depending
24:52 Refilling the Overflow
27:10 Connect and Closing
Get In Touch:
If you're interested in connecting with Dr. Lisa Santiago McNeil, you can reach her via her website(https://www.epublishyou.com/), via Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/thereallisasantiago/), via Facebook(https://www.facebook.com/thereallisasantiago), or via her LinkTree (https://linktr.ee/lisasantiagomcneill).
Her YT channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_fqO_gJLEsLek_t8u1ZCQA
For those interested in sharing their own stories on "Chatting with the Experts," reach out to Paula Okonneh through her website at chattingwiththeexperts.com or connect via LinkedIn.