230: Small Acts, Big Impact: Rethinking What Community Service Looks Like in 2025
The Found Podcast with Molly Knuth
Release Date: 12/03/2025
236: Get Uncomfy: Reinvention, Risk, and Building What You Wish Existed with Liz Garcia
The Found Podcast with Molly Knuth
Liz Garcia is the kind of woman who makes you want to sit up straighter, open a new notes app, and finally do the thing you’ve been talking yourself out of. In this second guest interview of the Ages & Stages series, I sit down with Liz — owner of Storage Theory, founder of GW Spice Co., mom of two, serial entrepreneur, and host of The Liz Garcia Show — to talk about what it really looks like to pivot from corporate life into entrepreneurship… and keep going even when it’s scary. Liz shares the “before and after” moment that propelled her family into business...
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235: Just Go For It: Building a Multi-Passionate Life with Carley Kintzle
The Found Podcast with Molly Knuth
In the very first guest interview of the Ages & Stages series, Molly sits down in person with Carley Kintzle a senior at Iowa State University studying agricultural communications and public relations, a cattle exhibitor, the founder of Wild Orchid Co., and a photographer who picked up a camera… and ran with it. Carley’s story is a reminder that you don’t have to pick just one lane. From starting a jewelry business in high school (despite never having made leather earrings before) to landing a dream role with Corteva while still in college, Carley shares what it looks like to...
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234: Less About Proving, More About Impact: An Ages & Stages Reflection
The Found Podcast with Molly Knuth
As we step into a brand new year, this episode opens the Ages & Stages series with a personal reflection from me, Molly. In this solo episode, I looks back across my own life — from childhood curiosity and creativity, to achievement-driven adolescence, to motherhood, entrepreneurship, burnout, and a more grounded, intentional season of leadership. Rather than rushing toward what’s next, this episode invites listeners to slow down, reflect on what each age and stage has already taught them, and consider how those lessons shape who you are becoming. This conversation sets the tone for...
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233: One From the Heart: 4 Women Leading Community Change
The Found Podcast with Molly Knuth
This episode is a little different — and honestly, it might be one of the most important ones I’ve ever shared. Instead of one long-form interview, you’re getting four mini-interviews with women who are quietly (and powerfully) making their communities better — through nonprofit work, community organizing, and the kind of “someone has to do something… so I will” leadership that changes everything. These women were listener-nominated, and every story proves the same thing: You don’t need a massive following or a fancy title to make a difference. You just need the willingness to...
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232: Nourish the Body, Feed the Soul: A Conversation with Whitney Sanger of Project Rooted
The Found Podcast with Molly Knuth
Whitney Sanger isn’t just a nonprofit founder — she’s a mother of seven, a Dubuque native, a communications and storytelling pro, and the kind of woman who sees a gap and refuses to accept “that’s just how it is” as an answer. In this conversation, Whitney shares the very personal journey that shaped her relationship with food, and how that journey eventually turned into — a nonprofit built on the belief that nutrition isn’t only about what’s on the plate… it’s also about connection, dignity, community, and hope. We talk about the moment that sparked her curiosity (a...
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231: The Quiet Work of Changing Lives: How One Small-Town Teacher Serves New Families in Big Ways with Sarah Palmer
The Found Podcast with Molly Knuth
This week’s episode of The Found Podcast isn’t about a flashy brand or a viral business story. It’s about a woman you’ll probably never see on a billboard, but whose work is changing lives quietly, consistently, and deeply in rural Eastern Iowa. In this episode, Molly sits down with Sarah Palmer, an English Language Learning (ELL) teacher in the Western Dubuque Community School District. For the past 18 years, Sarah has been teaching language, yes—but also welcoming refugee and immigrant families, connecting them to food, furniture, transportation, and community support, and modeling...
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230: Small Acts, Big Impact: Rethinking What Community Service Looks Like in 2025
The Found Podcast with Molly Knuth
As we enter December and close out the final month of 2025, this episode brings our year-long exploration of restored, intentional female leadership full circle. We’ve spent the past twelve months talking about presence, friendship, boundaries, nervous system health, community spaces, and the internal work that helps women lead sustainably. This month, we’re turning our attention outward—to the communities we belong to. In this episode, Molly shares a deeply personal story of her own evolution as a community volunteer: from an enthusiastic, overcommitted “young mom with a mission” to...
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229: Things Are Just Better When They’re Fun: A Thanksgiving Giggle Fest with My Mom & Sister
The Found Podcast with Molly Knuth
This week on The Found Podcast, we’re trading strategy for stories and KPIs for giggle fits. To celebrate Thanksgiving and our November theme of family for the ambitious woman, I invited two of the biggest influences in my life and leadership to join me on the mic: my sister, Jessica Ryan, and my mom, Kathy McAllister. This episode is…unhinged in the best way. We swap stories about handmade Halloween costumes, soda cans secretly stashed in dresser drawers, hiding Dad’s favorite candy, President’s Day “mystery trips,” and the legendary Mother’s Day “Guilty Pleasure” road trip....
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228: Wildly Intentional Living with Mandy Webber: Motherhood, Homesteading & Choosing a Life That’s Yours
The Found Podcast with Molly Knuth
Today’s episode feels extra special — because I finally got to sit down in person with someone I’ve admired online for months: Mandy Webber of the Wildly Intentional Podcast. She drove from West Branch, Iowa, to my home office in Cascade, and what started as a podcast interview turned into a three-hour, soul-filling conversation about motherhood, homesteading, family culture, learning (and unlearning), running a business from your values, and choosing a life that’s deeply rooted in intention. We recorded a double-pod, so you’ll hear the Found-side of our interview today, and you can...
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227: Motherhood & the Ambitious Woman: Holding Both Without Losing Yourself
The Found Podcast with Molly Knuth
This week on The Found Podcast, we’re continuing our November series on family — and we’re going right into the tender middle: motherhood. Because motherhood changes everything. Your time. Your nervous system. Your calendar. Your priorities. Your sense of self. And if you’re an ambitious woman on top of that? It changes the way you define success, too. In this solo episode, I talk honestly about what it looks like to be a mom who loves her kids deeply and a woman who has dreams, goals, clients, and callings. We’ll name the myths, talk about the invisible labor, and tell the truth...
info_outlineAs we enter December and close out the final month of 2025, this episode brings our year-long exploration of restored, intentional female leadership full circle. We’ve spent the past twelve months talking about presence, friendship, boundaries, nervous system health, community spaces, and the internal work that helps women lead sustainably.
This month, we’re turning our attention outward—to the communities we belong to.
In this episode, Molly shares a deeply personal story of her own evolution as a community volunteer: from an enthusiastic, overcommitted “young mom with a mission” to a thoughtful, seasonally-aware leader who has learned how to give back without losing herself (most of the time, anyway). I talk about the boards I have served on, the projects I've helped lead, the burnout that followed, and the moment I finally gave herself permission to step back.
You’ll also hear how to bring your gifts, energy, and leadership into your community in ways that honor your capacity, why service doesn’t have to be huge or flashy to be meaningful, and how even small acts of care ripple out more than you think.
What You’ll Hear in This Episode
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Molly’s personal stories of serving on local boards, capital campaigns, and community revitalization projects
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What I learned from burnout, resentment, and stepping away
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Malcolm Gladwell’s 3 criteria for “meaningful work” and how they apply to volunteering
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The shift from “lifelong service clubs” to “short-term, high-impact” volunteer models
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Ideas for serving your community in ways that fit your season of life
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Real examples of women who made big change through small acts (cookie fundraisers, concert series, park lighting, youth leadership)
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Why your leadership belongs—even if your gifts look different than someone else’s
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Practical questions to help you discern where and how you are called to serve right now
Key Quotes
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“You don’t have to change the world for your service to be meaningful and valuable.”
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“Some seasons are for rolling up your sleeves. Some seasons are for amplifying others. Both are service.”
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“When women bring ideas into community spaces, change happens faster and it sticks.”
Resources & Links
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Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers (for the three keys to meaningful work)
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Previous Found Podcast episodes on community, leadership, and intentional living
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Connect with Molly on Instagram: @mollyknuth
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Share this episode with someone doing good work in your community