343: Discovering Joy and Autonomy in the C-Suite with Sabrina Calouri
Release Date: 05/03/2026
353: Behind the Shiny Objects: Real Inclusivity in a Changing World with Katryn Wright
Allyship in Action
You might remember Katryn from episode 292, where we dove deep into the behavioral blueprint for inclusion. Well, a lot can happen in a year—or in our current case, since the wild ride of the 2026 election—and the DEI landscape is shifting beneath our feet. I’ll admit, when I first started this work ten years ago, I thought we could just shout from the rooftops that inclusion matters and everyone would just magically get it. But as we look at the headlines today, it’s clear that "shiny object syndrome" has left us with a lot of noise and not enough real, systemic change. Katryn and I...
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352: Better Leadership Starts with a Better Night of Sleep with Dr. Carlos Nunez
Allyship in Action
Sad to admit, after 350+ episodes, I have never dedicated a full show to sleep . I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve been doing a ton of deep-diving into sleep lately. Between life changes, career shifts, and navigating perimenopause, my nights haven’t exactly been peaceful . In fact, coming off a rough night myself, I’m sitting here with a massive afternoon coffee, fully aware that I reached for a sugary lunch to get through the slump! We’ve all been trapped in that vicious cycle, right ? But today, we are busting the toxic, old-school corporate narrative that sleeping is lazy or...
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351: How to Speak Up and Get Your Voice Heard at Work with Daniel Newton
Allyship in Action
When I started my business, I wanted to create spaces where every single person felt seen, heard, and like they truly belonged . It sounds so beautifully simple on the surface, doesn't it? But as we all know, making sure people feel heard at work can get incredibly messy . This week, I had the absolute pleasure of chatting with a peer of mine from grad school, Daniel Newton, an Associate Professor at the University of Iowa, whose research on workplace engagement is quite literally out of this world . He’s spent years studying how people speak up and stay engaged, working with everyone from...
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350: How to Lead Values-Based Decision Making with Jenny Bates Heaton
Allyship in Action
Jenny Bates Heaton is the founder of Bates Leadership and has a brilliant new TEDx talk. What really blew me away during our chat was how Jenny used her personal journey facing a massive medical decision after a cancer-risk mutation diagnosis to completely rewrite the script on how we make choices. It got me thinking about my own life and how often we make decisions based on what we think we should do, rather than what aligns with our deepest values. For me, everything comes back to fairness, justice, and a whole lot of strength. When things feel off-balance in the world, my mental health...
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349: Driving Change from the Inside Out with Tara Jaye Frank
Allyship in Action
If you are feeling a bit battered by the cultural waves and political turbulence swirling around us right now, trust me—you are not alone. I’ll admit, when I woke up the morning after the 2024 election, I felt physically sick worrying about what the fallout would mean for our businesses and the hard choices ahead. That is why I love this conversation with Tara Jaye Frank. She met me right in that messy space with the ultimate reframe, sharing a beautiful story about how a simple grocery delivery from a man named Socrates gave her the title for her new book, You Are Before the World. It is...
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348: Why AI Is Not a Replacement for Human Talent with Christopher Lind
Allyship in Action
This week, we dive deep into a topic that’s been on everyone’s mind—and probably in every news alert you’ve received lately: AI. While the world seems to be split between AI will save us all, and AI is coming for our jobs, our guest and AI expert, Christopher Lind, brings us back to earth with a much-needed reality check. As Christopher points out, the real risk isn't just the tech itself, but the disconnect between leadership's lofty expectations and the actual human experience on the ground. He often jokes about AI being a hammer looking for a nail, but in our rush to be efficient,...
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347: How to Design Better Meetings for a Better Culture with Rebecca Hinds
Allyship in Action
This week, Rebecca Hinds, the brilliant mind behind what is officially my new favorite book, Your Best Meeting Ever, is with us at Allyship in Action. I’ll be honest—I listened to this one on Audible, and hearing Rebecca’s voice felt like she was sitting right there with me, narrating every meeting catastrophe I’ve ever lived through! We’ve all been there: trapped in a conference room (or a Zoom square) while someone reads slides at us, doing the mental math of just how much this hour is costing the company. But as I always say in my leadership training, a meeting is a snapshot of...
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346: The Five Stages of Male Allyship with Shawn Andrews
Allyship in Action
In this episode of the Allyship in Action podcast, Julie Kratz connects with Dr. Shawn Andrews to discuss the critical intersection of leadership, gender, and emotional intelligence. Allyship is not a one-time declaration but a continuous practice of small, intentional behaviors that bridge the gap between good intentions and real impact. Core Themes for Inclusive Leadership Allyship as a Sustainable Practice. Effective allyship flourishes when it aligns with an individual's natural strengths rather than feeling like a forced performance. "Allies can start by asking, ' How can I do this in...
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345: Finding the Human Connection in Mental Health with Alexis Redding
Allyship in Action
I recently sat down with the brilliant Alexis Redding, a developmental psychologist at Harvard who is doing the heavy lifting to help us understand what’s actually going on with young adults today. Alexis shared how we often look at the "kids these days" and think they’re living in a completely different world, but Alexis’s research shows that while the hashtags have changed, the big, messy feelings of figure-it-out-ness are the same as they were 50 years ago. Whether you’re a parent to an almost teenager like I am, or a leader managing a Gen Z team, this episode is all about...
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344: Stop Being a Crumbudgeon and Start Playing at Work with Kelsey Kates
Allyship in Action
It was such a treat to sit down with my friend Kelsey Kates and really geek out over a topic that we often leave at the playground: play. I’ve felt that slow boil in my own career—trading my personality for steel-toed boots and a suit just to fit the corporate mold until I didn't even recognize myself in the mirror. Kelsey is here to remind us that we don't have to lose our joy to be high-performers. She brings this incredible blend of Google leadership experience and MIT neuroscience to show us that playfulness isn't about being childish; it’s about a state of being that lowers...
info_outlineWelcome back, everyone! I am just so thrilled to share my conversation with Sabrina Caluori, the CMO at Chief. You know, I talk a lot about capacity erosion—that feeling where your mental load is so heavy you're basically walking through quicksand while trying to run a marathon.
Sabrina gets it. She’s been in those high-stakes rooms at Paramount, hitting a wall of burnout so thick she didn't even have the words to name it yet. But what I love about her perspective is how she’s flipped the script, moving from stepping off the ladder to building a community that reminds us we aren't alone in the isolation of leadership.
We laughed about my grandma sleep schedule, but honestly, if we don't start treating our rest and autonomy as non-negotiable business assets, we’re just designing our own exhaustion.
Key Themes from the Conversation
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The Evolution of Ambition and Autonomy. The narrative that women are losing ambition is simply untrue; rather, their needs have shifted toward seeking more control over their impact and schedules.
"Women are still as ambitious as ever, but the kind of tenure of that ambition had evolved... what's different is its autonomy, and influence, and flexibility."
Rest as a Strategic Business Tool. Prioritizing restorative time and white space is not a luxury but a biological and professional necessity for high-level problem solving.
"We forget, as leaders, that actually that rest, that restorative time... is when, a lot of times, the best bigger, more kind of white space-type ideas come back."
Solving Isolation Through Peer Community. Senior leadership can be incredibly isolating, and having a peer network outside of one’s own organizational chart is vital for sustained success.
"Chief exists to solve isolation at the top... the ability to bring peers together to have the conversations that were so hard to have inside our org charts."
Intentionality in the Age of AI. While technology is moving rapidly, women leaders are focusing on intentional leadership by prioritizing thoughtful deployment over mere speed.
"We're putting intentional leadership first, over the speed of deployment... 80% of women are involved in leading AI efforts."
Actionable Takeaways
Audit your calendar for Thinking Time. Proactively block out small windows of time every single day to step away from your screen, reset your nervous system, and allow for the strategic white space your brain needs to lead effectively.
- Women’s definition of ambition may be evolving, but their belief in the power of community remains constant. The study found that 93% of women believe they have the collective power to build new “centers of influence.”
- 94% say being around other ambitious women fuels their own ambition.
- Two-thirds believe their problem solving accelerates when brainstorming with other women leaders on business challenges.
- 86% of women leaders say their peer network is a competitive advantage in the AI era.
- 83% learn more from peer conversations about AI than from any formal training.
- 84% say they have made smarter AI-related decisions because of insights from their community