At 16, standing on a rooftop in Iran during revolution and war, Dorna Djenab fell in love with Life. Not with her life. With Life itself. With creation. With beauty. One spring afternoon while standing by a balcony with her best friend, everything became clear. She saw a cat walking
Leadership isn't a choice between heart and hustle. It's the powerful fusion of both. Announcing Soul + Strategy, a new book series that takes you inside the unfiltered stories of the female executives who are rewriting the playbook on modern leadership. SOUL + STRATEGY Unfiltered Wisdom from Women
Jennifer Larson, LCPC, NCC is the Founder of Concentric Counseling & Consulting, a Chicago‑based group practice providing comprehensive outpatient mental health therapy for individuals, couples/relationships, tweens, teens, and families. In addition to therapy, Concentric offers select intensives and consulting services. Our clinicians provide specialized, tailored in‑person and
When George Blizzard and Nicky Regazzoni launched The PR Network in 2005, they didn't set out to become pioneers. They just wanted to solve a problem they saw everywhere: brilliant, senior PR professionals leaving the industry because traditional agencies couldn't accommodate working parents or anyone who
Jane Hales has spent over 30 years building and exiting businesses, serving as a board director, business accelerator coach and mentoring founders. She co-founded Sapio Research, an award winning market research agency inspired by social enterprise principles, and stepped back from day-to-day operations to become an active shareholder and board
Marie Torossian CPA, PLLC is a business advisory and strategy-focused accounting firm serving established service-based businesses with $750K+ in revenue. The firm specializes in financial clarity, strategic insight, and value-driven planning to help growth-minded owners improve profitability, scale with confidence, and build long-term business value. Preferred contact email: marie@marietorossiancpa.
Mary Axelsen knows what it means to choose courage over comfort, and she's done it more than once. In her twenties, as a single mother and sole provider, she left corporate America to attend college full-time. She worked three part-time jobs, raised her daughter, volunteered, and graduated debt-free.
Fran Benedict is the founder of Simply Mindful LLC, built on a simple truth: everything you need is already within you. With nearly 20 years in wellbeing, mindfulness, and organizational health, she creates space for individuals and teams to reconnect with what they already know. Contact email: fran@simplymindful.com
Before her health collapsed, Lynita Mitchell-Blackwell wore productivity like a badge of honor. She was chronically exhausted but called it "being driven." She ignored pain, inflammation, brain fog, and a nervous system that never powered down. She normalized operating at 120% and spiritualized overworking by calling it purpose.
Juliet Peters spent a decade as a television journalist before law school, working in Ohio, Corpus Christi, and Milwaukee. She always wanted to be a lawyer, but her love for journalism put that dream on pause. After graduating from Arizona State University College of Law, she worked as a civil
Suzanne Haynes didn’t leave her structured career because it failed. She left because, quietly and persistently, her life no longer fit the person she was becoming. For years, she built a successful path in the pharmaceutical industry while coaching fitness on the side. From the outside, everything looked right
Natalie Pryde spent over 25 years in executive-level Environment, Health, Safety, and Sustainability roles, leading diverse teams globally across automotive, commercial real estate, oil and gas, and life sciences. She held leadership positions at major corporations, served on the MDEQ Green Chemistry and Engineering Steering Committee, and was a member
Women Who Lead
Aneka Johnson didn't plan to become a dog therapy entrepreneur. The idea came to her in the shower. Literally. She had been informally bringing Chubbs, her French Bulldog, into friends' corporate workplaces and suddenly realized she'd "created this cuddle club." That moment of
Law
In litigation, most lawyers talk about winning. Tedra Cannella actually does it—and she does it against opponents with unlimited resources, elite legal teams, and every structural advantage money can buy. As co-founding partner of Cannella Snyder LLC, Tedra has built a litigation practice that defies conventional wisdom about how
Women Who Lead
Mandeep Kaur knows what it's like to juggle corporate demands, business ownership, motherhood, and personal wellbeing because she's lived it for over 15 years. As founder of The Positive Mindset Company, she supports overwhelmed professionals and busy business owners to build happier, more balanced lives through
Wellbeing
Fran Benedict's path to founding Simply Mindful took 28 years of exploration, and she's sharing it because "the polished success stories don't help. The real journey does." After graduating from the University of Georgia in 1998 with a focus on corporate wellness,
Finance
Keila Hill-Trawick expected to work for the federal government until she retired. From 2010 to 2018, she moved between agencies as an auditor—from the Defense Contract Audit Agency and U.S. Attorney's Office to the Government Accountability Office and U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. She'
Accounting
In 2017, Naomi Granger moved back home to Las Vegas just as adult-use cannabis sales went live, and she saw something most CPAs wouldn't touch: a massively underserved industry desperately needing professional accounting services in a federally restricted, cash-heavy, compliance-intensive environment. While traditional financial institutions and accounting professionals
Wellbeing
In 2016, Tiffany Lord saw something most people didn't: remote employees were already used to engaging through screens, and they needed quick wellness breaks during the workday—no traffic, no setup time, no waiting. Just open another tab, move your body, reset your mind, and go back to
Women Who Lead
For years, Drenusha Salihu adapted to being the only woman in technical IT environments—accepting it as simply "part of the territory" in a male-dominated field. But when she began actively pursuing a career in cybersecurity, the pattern became impossible to ignore. At nearly every training, she was
Wellbeing
Steph Hind spent years in corporate environments with good pay and prestigious titles, but she couldn't shake the feeling that something fundamental was missing. As Co-Founder and Consultant Director of Heka (formerly GoSweat), she turned that disillusionment into the UK's fastest-growing health-led employee benefits platform, now
Finance
After a near-death experience with severe preeclampsia following the birth of her third child, Tiffany Watson knew her body couldn't handle a traditional job anymore—but she also knew she wasn't done building. What started in 2018 as an insurance agency rooted in helping others avoid
Wellbeing
After 15 years of working across academic institutions and NHS services to support pregnant and postnatal people, Dr. Jill Domoney had a realization: the integrated, mind-body approach she knew could help women during the perinatal period simply didn't have space to exist fully within traditional healthcare settings. So
Women Who Lead
When Smita Tharoor arrived in London in the 1980s with a degree in English Literature and fluent English, she expected her confidence to translate. It didn't. The assumptions she encountered about her intelligence, her accent, and her right to belong planted seeds that would eventually grow into Tharoor