Thinking Outside the Box to Support Resilience: A conversation with Promedica’s Kate Sommerfeld and Randy Oostra
Rooted: A Podcast About Nature & Wellbeing
Release Date: 11/09/2021
Sit with SMB: Coming Home to Earth (An Earth Day Meditation for Any Day)
Rooted: A Podcast About Nature & Wellbeing
Today is Earth Day. And while this practice is offered in honor of this moment, it’s not limited to it. This is something you can return to any day you feel the need to slow down… to reconnect… to remember that you are part of the living world. This guided walking meditation is an invitation to pause and remember something easy to lose in the rhythm of modern life — that we are not separate from the earth. We are part of it. Through breath, imagery, and sensory awareness, you’re invited to feel the ground beneath you, reconnect with your body, and experience the quiet steadiness of...
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Walk With Cory McGowan
Rooted: A Podcast About Nature & Wellbeing
What happens when you step out of the environment that shaped you — and into one that reveals you? In this conversation, I sit down with Cory, a leadership coach based in rural Japan, whose work brings individuals and teams into nature not as an escape, but as a catalyst for clarity. After years in Tokyo’s corporate world, Cory found himself living and working in the mountains of Minakami — a place of shifting rivers, deep seasonal rhythms, and what he describes as a quiet “homecoming.” What emerged wasn’t just a lifestyle change, but a different way of working with leaders. We...
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Walk with SMB: Conditions Shape Everything
Rooted: A Podcast About Nature & Wellbeing
As the seasons begin to shift, it’s a reminder that change doesn’t always come from trying harder — sometimes it comes from changing conditions. In this solo walk episode, Susan reflects on how much our wellbeing is shaped not just by what we do, but by the environments we’re part of. Drawing on both nature and her experience in organizational wellbeing, she explores a different lens: what if feeling “off” isn’t something to fix within ourselves, but a signal about the conditions we’re operating in? This episode invites a simple but powerful question — what are the...
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Walk With Jessica DeAngelo: Finding Clarity, Creativity and Yourself Outside
Rooted: A Podcast About Nature & Wellbeing
Jessica DeAngelo joins me for a conversation about what happens when we step outside, move our bodies, and give ourselves space to think differently. After a pivotal moment with her young daughter, Jessica began a simple experiment: 30 minutes a day in nature, without technology. What followed wasn’t a quick fix, but a shift — from scattered attention to clearer thinking, from constant input to something more grounded. In this episode, we explore how movement and time outdoors support creativity, why stepping away from screens can help us refocus on what actually matters, and how a...
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Walk with SMB: Imaginal Cells & the Messy Middle
Rooted: A Podcast About Nature & Wellbeing
On a morning walk, three blue jay feathers stop Susan in her tracks — a small moment that opens into a deeper reflection on change and possibility. In this solo episode, she shares the story of imaginal cells — the cells inside a caterpillar that carry the blueprint for a butterfly. During transformation, the caterpillar doesn’t simply change form. It dissolves completely before something new begins to organize. Through this lens, Susan explores how periods of uncertainty in our own lives may not be signs that something is wrong, but part of a natural process of reorganization. She...
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Walk With Jay Maddock | The Science Behind Time in Nature
Rooted: A Podcast About Nature & Wellbeing
Nature is often treated as a luxury — something we visit when we have time. But public health researcher Jay Maddock has spent years studying something different: what actually happens in the body when we spend time outside. In this conversation, Jay shares the research behind what many of us intuitively feel. Within minutes of stepping outside, blood pressure drops, mood improves, and our nervous system begins to reset. Over longer periods, time in nature may even strengthen immune function. Jay’s work sits at the intersection of public health, behavioral science, and environmental...
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Walk with SMB: The Three Environments We Live In
Rooted: A Podcast About Nature & Wellbeing
What environments shape your day? In this walk episode of Rooted: A Podcast About Nature & Wellbeing, Susan explores a simple but powerful idea: most of us move through three environments every day — the natural environment, the built environment, and the artificial environment. Nature surrounds us with living systems that regulate and restore. Built environments provide the structures that organize our lives. Artificial environments — screens, platforms, and digital tools — increasingly hold our attention. Each environment serves a role. But they operate in very different rhythms....
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Walk With Claudia Kraut: Start Where You Are - Small Steps Back to the Natural World
Rooted: A Podcast About Nature & Wellbeing
What if you've never been a "nature person" - but nature is exactly what you need? Claudia Kraut spent decades in organizational health and wellbeing, just like Susan. She called herself an "interior gal" - someone who only went outside when she was made to. Then at 50, she tried something new: a trail run. It changed everything. In this conversation, Susan and Claudia explore how there are so many ways to connect with nature, and you can start exactly where you are. Maybe it's an app that helps you find trails nearby. Maybe it's a few minutes of fresh air on your lunch break. Maybe...
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Sit with SMB: Finding Steady Ground in an Changing World
Rooted: A Podcast About Nature & Wellbeing
What if the steadiness you've been searching for isn't somewhere you need to go — it's something you already are? A lot is changing right now. For many of us, it feels like standing in a rushing river, the current pulling harder than we expected. The instinct is to move faster, do more, strategize harder. But what if the most powerful thing you could do is plant your feet? This is a Sit episode — something a little different from a typical podcast. No guest. No interview. Just host Susan Morgan Bailey guiding you through a short, grounding experience using breath, the senses,...
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Walk With Micah Mortali: Rewilding as Remembering
Rooted: A Podcast About Nature & Wellbeing
Micah Mortali, founder of the Kripalu School of Mindful Outdoor Leadership, introduces the concept of rewilding—not as running off to live in the woods, but as reclaiming lost connections with our natural habitat. In this conversation, Micah shares the idea of nature as "the green mirror"—a counterbalance to the black mirrors of our phones. When we look into the green mirror, we see who we actually are, not a curated artificial version. Susan and Micah explore how rewilding addresses root causes of disconnection, why simply being outside shifts our nervous system in ways no app can...
info_outlineApproximately 40-60% of our current state of health is driven by non-clinical factors. How much money we have in the bank, the depth and breadth of our social support network and the stress of finding reliable childcare all have impact on our health and risk for disease. Organizations looking to improve the health of their workforce would be wise to keep this in mind – understand and address basic need challenges exist among your workforce – before focusing on improvement of individual health risk factors.
My guests for this episode understand the power of helping individuals meet basic needs. Kate Sommerfeld is the President of the Social Determinants of Health Institute and she is joined by Randy Oostra, President and CEO of Promedica Health System based in Toledo, Ohio.
Listen in as Kate and Randy walk through the steps they have taken to provide resources that address basic needs to those they serve and to their own employees. They share the lessons they’ve learned through their partnership with Kumanu provider of the Resourceful app the two organizations developed together to help organizations understand what’s truly holding employees back from being present, productive, and resilient.
If you’ve been thinking your wellness strategy needs a reboot, this episode is for you.
Connect with Kate Sommerfeld
Website: https://www.promedica.org/social-determinants-of-health/
LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/katesommerfeld
Brussels Sprouts Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKHMS_ZP4zo
Resourceful App: https://www.kumanu.com/resourceful/
Connect with Randy Oostra
Website: https://www.linkedin.com/company/promedica
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/randy-oostra-4348286/
Connect with Susan Morgan Bailey
Email: susan.bailey@marshmma.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/susanmbailey/