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Leadership, Motherhood, Resilience & Redefining Success: Key Takeaways from the 2025 Summer Series
41 Plays1 day ago
We’re closing out the 2025 Summer Series by weaving together the most powerful lessons from the six remarkable women who shared their journeys of leadership, resilience, and motherhood. Their stories highlight that success has many definitions, that motherhood can sharpen rather than limit leadership, and that true strength comes from adaptability, reflection, and alignment with values. Together, their insights remind executive mothers that intentional choices and resilience not only shape careers but also create space for balance and purpose at home. Leanna offers key takeaways designed to inspire professional women to embrace clarity, redefine success, and lead with confidence.
Full transcript available here.
Connect with Leanna here and share your takeaways from the 2025 Summer Series!
If you missed any of the conversations in the Summer Series, now is the perfect time to revisit them. Each episode offers unique strategies and inspiration that build toward the takeaways Leanna shared here.
Dr. Lesley Robinson
Ep 102: Leading with Purpose: Charting Your Own Course as a High-Achieving Woman
Ep 103: Leading with Impact: Values Based Leadership and Growth Mindset for Working Mothers
Dina Silver Pokedoff
Ep 104: Navigating the Unexpected: Career Pivoting, Fertility Journeys, and Redefining Success
Ep 105: Navigating Working Motherhood: Leadership, Self-Care, and Sustainable Ambition
Sarah Brelowski
Ep 107: Becoming Strong: From Career Burnout to Alignment, Fulfillment, and Self-Defined Success
Ep 108: Sustaining Strong: How Strength Training Empowers Women with Self Confidence, Resilience, and Mental Wellbeing
Erica Willie
Ep 109: The High Achiever's First Superpower: Outwork Everyone and Succeed Through Work Ethic
Ep 110: Embracing Motherhood as a Superpower and Building a Values Aligned Legacy
Ashley Chang
Ep 111: From Doing It All to Doing What Matters: Redefining Work-Life Balance in Working Motherhood
Ep 112: You Don't Have to Do It All: Delegation Strategies and Support Systems for Working Moms
Kiran Reddy
Ep 113: Grounded in Purpose: Aligning Career, Service, and Becoming a Mother
Ep 114: Grounded in Resilience: Growing Through Adversity and Change in Relationships, Career, and Motherhood
If you're ready for deeper transformation, check out The Executive Mom Reset; Leanna’s six-month coaching program designed to help ambitious moms stop merely surviving and start thriving. Book a consult now!
Don’t forget to subscribe, rate, and review the show to help more women find these empowering stories!
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Transcript
Introduction to Executive Coach for Moms
00:00:04
Speaker
Welcome to the Executive Coach for Moms podcast, where we support women who are attempting to find balance and joy while simultaneously leading people at work and at home.
Summer Series Reflection
00:00:15
Speaker
I'm your host, Leanna Lasky-McGrath, former tech exec turned full-time mom, recovering perfectionist and workaholic, and certified executive coach.
00:00:27
Speaker
Hey, welcome back to the show. I'm so excited to be here with you, just you and me. It's been a minute since I've just been on the mic talking to you after this amazing summer series that we've just had.
00:00:45
Speaker
And what I want to do today, this first week of September in back to school season and the end of summer, and now we're getting back in the swing of things for the school year,
00:01:00
Speaker
I wanted to take a minute before we moved on to wrap up the summer series and really kind of look back at some of the greatest takeaways and learnings that I had.
00:01:18
Speaker
from talking to these amazing and inspiring women, because I don't know about you, but these six women completely inspired me. I absolutely loved my conversation with each of them.
00:01:29
Speaker
I feel so honored that they all came on the show. And we did the two-part series for
Redefining Success with Leslie Robinson
00:01:37
Speaker
each of them. And my goal was to first tell their story and understand them a little bit more as a human before we learned more about the work that they're doing in the world or the message that they have to share.
00:01:51
Speaker
So I hope that you enjoyed that series. I just loved creating it. And so as a reminder, just to kind of recap, because maybe you missed one of them or maybe summer was so crazy. I don't know about you, but this summer felt really, really fast.
00:02:08
Speaker
So maybe you didn't have a chance to catch all of them. So I'll just tell you real quick about each of them. We had six women come. for two-part series. And the first one ah kicked off this series was the amazing Leslie Robinson. and she talked about really redefining success and career on your own terms. She talked a bit about her dissertation journey and how she kind of changed courses multiple times to make sure that it was in alignment with her and her goals. And I think the big theme of Leslie's episodes was letting go of external definitions of success and intentionally choosing your path.
00:02:53
Speaker
One of my biggest takeaways was really that you don't have to climb the ladder in a linear way. Sometimes it's much more about creating alignment and meaning in work and life. And I think that Leslie set the stage so well for that because we heard that from multiple women throughout the summertime.
Dina Pokedoff's Marketing Journey
00:03:17
Speaker
And so I think that this conversation with Leslie really set the tone for the summer series by questioning old definitions of success and really starting to imagine new possibilities.
00:03:31
Speaker
Our second guest was Dina Pokedoff. And Dina talked a lot about her career as a marketing executive and how she has balanced that with her kids. Her kids are a little bit older than some of the other women that we talked to this summer.
00:03:51
Speaker
And so it was interesting to hear her take because she has ah different perspective. For me, one of the biggest takeaways was hearing her career journey and how instead of going up, up, up, up up that career ladder, that linear straight up the ladder kind of orientation and career path,
00:04:14
Speaker
Dina took some unexpected detours from that ladder and made some different changes and also encountered some unexpected career changes with layoffs.
00:04:27
Speaker
And so i think that she really gave us a powerful reminder that success is not always about getting to the next rung, but really about taking the next step toward alignment. She talked a lot about redefining ambition and choosing sustainability over burnout and how we can think about the long game, the marathon of life, instead of going at a sprint pace and only allowing ourselves enough energy to get through ah sprint.
Career Shift into Wellness with Sarah Berlowski
00:05:07
Speaker
And then next up, we had Sarah Berlowski, my personal trainer. She came on and talked about redefining strong, what strong means to her.
00:05:20
Speaker
and we really dove into her career path and how she made a really big pivot out of the consulting world into health and wellness and personal training.
00:05:33
Speaker
And I loved hearing her story. And then she also talked about Obviously, she's an expert on strength. So she talked about strength training and really strength, not just as physical power, but thinking about it as self-care and balance and listening to your body and what it can give to you.
00:05:55
Speaker
And so I think that One of the key takeaways from my conversation with Sarah was that being strong is not about doing it all. It's really about honoring your body and living fully.
00:06:09
Speaker
And just like Leslie and Dina talked about, really living in alignment with what you want and kind of not worrying so much about what everybody else wants for you or expects of you or
From NFL Cheerleader to Nonprofit Founder: Erica Willie's Story
00:06:25
Speaker
thinks you should be doing.
00:06:27
Speaker
And then we had Erica Willie. This conversation was a lot about embracing motherhood as ah superpower. We heard about Erica's career journey, which was so interesting. She's done so many things from NFL cheerleader to being a technologist, to working in enterprise sales.
00:06:48
Speaker
And now she started her own nonprofit that's aligned with her personal mission and the legacy that she wants to leave. And so I love this conversation because she really talked about how at first, whenever she was working in enterprise sales,
00:07:05
Speaker
and she was pregnant, she felt like, oh my gosh, this is going to be such a hindrance to my career progression because she was she fainted at work and she had some challenges physically.
00:07:19
Speaker
and then over time and three kids She has learned to embrace motherhood as her superpower rather than as a hindrance to her career.
00:07:33
Speaker
So I love how she talked about being intentional about how she shows up at work and really like choosing where she puts her energy and how
Balancing Entrepreneurship and Motherhood with Ashley Chang
00:07:45
Speaker
she spends her time. And we talked a lot about the legacy that she wants to leave.
00:07:50
Speaker
And then we had Ashley Chang, who is the co-founder of Sundays, which is and executive assistant service for working parents.
00:08:02
Speaker
And Ashley and i discovered that we have so many things in common that we have such a similar upbringing with having a stay-at-home mom and an entrepreneur dad.
00:08:14
Speaker
And from seeing that, we both internalized that high standard of being an entrepreneur, as well as that high standard of being a mother.
00:08:26
Speaker
But one of the things that we've both had to realize, and Ashley is a new mom, so she's realizing right now, is that We can't compare ourselves to those two people who were so instrumental in our lives because we are only one person and they each were specialists. They each had their own specific job and we are kind of carrying...
00:08:53
Speaker
the expectation that we live up to that, that we are as great of an entrepreneur as our dad and as great of a mother as our mom, but it's challenging whenever we're one person trying to do both jobs.
00:09:06
Speaker
I loved how Ashley talked a lot about the fact that she really saw this gap, this challenge that so many working parents were having And she responded with creativity rather than resignation. She decided to create something to help rather than saying, this is just the way it is. And, you know, we all just have to kind of deal with it.
00:09:33
Speaker
She went and created something to really make it better. So I love that. I love it whenever people do that. And I think that Her story serves as a great
Resilience and Purpose: Kieran Reddy's Story
00:09:43
Speaker
reminder that leadership often starts with noticing everyday struggles and making a decision to make life better for yourself and for others.
00:09:54
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And then finally, we had Kieran Reddy, who is an attorney. She talked a lot about being grounded in purpose and resilience, and she shared her story about the past four years, which included a lot of change for her.
00:10:15
Speaker
She transitioned to motherhood and became a mom. She turned 40. She went through a separation and divorce from a relationship of 18 years.
00:10:28
Speaker
She had two layoffs. And so I loved hearing her story about how she overcame all of this adversity and stays connected to what's important to her.
00:10:43
Speaker
I think that she shared some really practical tips for anyone who's going through ah challenging time. And i think also...
00:10:54
Speaker
Her story is so inspiring about finding purpose through adversity and holding value steady while navigating change. She has some things that are really important to her, like...
00:11:08
Speaker
volunteering in her community. And she talks about how she finds the time and how she prioritizes and how much that gives back
Summer Series Themes Recap
00:11:17
Speaker
to her. So I just loved all of these conversations so much. i actually had someone reach out at the end of the summer and ask,
00:11:26
Speaker
can you give me a couple of episodes? I'm a little bit behind. What should I listen to next? And I was like, oh my gosh, I have six women in 12 episodes and i can't choose one. I want you to listen to all of them because they're all so amazing. And these conversations become like,
00:11:45
Speaker
My babies, I don't have a favorite. I love them all so much. So I just want to give a huge shout out to these six women who are so amazing. Thank you for coming on and sharing your stories and being so honest and open with us and being an inspiration to all of us.
00:12:02
Speaker
I want to share my six biggest takeaways from these conversations because I think so many of them, like we had some really common themes that So I kind of thought that that would be fun to share some of these themes and tie throughs from the overall series.
Thematic Exploration from Guest Stories
00:12:21
Speaker
One of the clearest threads is the idea of redefining success on your own terms. Leslie really reminded us that success isn't always about climbing higher on the ladder.
00:12:34
Speaker
It can mean pivoting and stepping back or slowing down if that move brings you closer to what matters. And Dina really echoed this with her very bold statement that sometimes moving down the ladder is actually the smartest move you can make because it might get you closer to your overall alignment of where you want to be in your life and career.
00:12:58
Speaker
And both Kieran and Sarah showed us that adversity and change don't take us off the path of success. They don't have to. They often really deepen our sense of purpose and make us more grounded and committed to doing what we want to do in this lifetime, in this one and only precious life that we have.
00:13:21
Speaker
Number two, the second theme that surfaced again and again was really motherhood as a superpower, not a limitation. And of course, that was the theme of Erica's episode. She captured this really beautifully when she shared how motherhood made her more intentional about how she shows up at work and how she chooses to spend her time. And I think so many of us can relate to that because,
00:13:50
Speaker
motherhood makes us feel like we have fewer hours in the day and we have to do the most with the hours that we have. And it helps us to to cut out what's not important.
00:14:04
Speaker
And i think Kieran really talked about that. She talked about that in the first year of motherhood, she had to put down a lot of things. She chose to put down a lot of things and lived kind of in more of survival mode and just like, here is the bare minimum that we need to be able to get by.
00:14:23
Speaker
And at the end of that year, she talked about how she realized she didn't need all of those things anymore. She didn't need to put those back on her plate, that it made more sense to kind of keep them off of her plate.
00:14:36
Speaker
Their stories really remind us that motherhood can be a source of clarity and strength and legacy building. rather than feeling like it's something that holds us back.
00:14:50
Speaker
I think this series also highlighted some different dimensions of strength and resilience. Sarah really talked about redefining what it means to be strong.
00:15:01
Speaker
That true strength isn't really about pushing, pushing, pushing. And it isn't necessarily about some of the definitions that we've been given in our lifetimes.
00:15:17
Speaker
That true strength is really about listening to our bodies, about caring for ourselves and honoring our limits. And Kieran's story of navigating change and adversity really underscored the fact that resilience comes from adaptability, that strength is as much about pausing, pivoting, and realigning as it is about endurance.
00:15:41
Speaker
And then fourth, we heard some really powerful lessons on leadership. I loved Leslie's definition of entrepreneurial leadership.
00:15:53
Speaker
And i had never heard that definition or heard how she described it, but I loved her take on that. And I love all of the amazing things that she has created using that leadership style.
00:16:09
Speaker
Ashley inspired us with her story of really seeing a need for working parents and choosing to create a solution. I think that that is real leadership whenever you see a problem and decide that you're going to do something about it.
00:16:27
Speaker
Whether that's on as big of a scale as creating a company like Ashley did, or just in our day-to-day lives at work or at home or in our communities of seeing a challenge and trying to create something better. And then Leslie, Dina, and Kieran all showed us that leadership often looks like aligning our choices with our values and leading with resilience and purpose.
00:16:57
Speaker
Leadership isn't just about managing teams or projects. It's really about seeing what's missing, creating what's needed, and living out our values in action.
00:17:10
Speaker
yeah We heard about the importance of reflection and intentionality. Every single guest, all six of the women in some way spoke about the power of pausing, whether that's reflecting on our values or questioning old definitions of success, or simply checking in with ourselves.
00:17:33
Speaker
That space to pause and reflect is really what allows us to make aligned and intentional choices instead of running on autopilot in a direction that we may not really want to be going in.
00:17:48
Speaker
But taking the time to check in with ourselves and say, am I on the path I want to be on? what is my vision and am I going in the direction that I want to be going is so important for us to live the kind of lives that we want to live.
00:18:04
Speaker
And then finally, i was really reminded that challenges can spark innovation. Ashley's creation of Sundays, Leslie, Dina, and Sarah's career pivots, Erica's Discovery of motherhood as her superpower and her decision to leave corporate and start her own nonprofit and Kieran's journey with adversity all point to the same truth, which is that friction often causes opportunity.
00:18:39
Speaker
When we face obstacles, we're really invited to think differently, to create new solutions. to innovate our processes.
00:18:50
Speaker
And it really challenges us to move forward in ways that we just might not have imagined otherwise. So if you're in a tough season right now, I really hope that these stories have inspired you to consider what amazing things might come out of this, what opportunities this might be creating for you after this season.
00:19:12
Speaker
So taken together, i think that these conversations really remind us that success has no single definition. It can mean pivoting, it can mean slowing down, innovating, or grounding in purpose.
Reflecting on Success and Values
00:19:26
Speaker
Motherhood can really be a source of power rather than a hindrance. And strength Strength comes not just from grit and pushing through, but also from adaptability.
00:19:39
Speaker
Leadership is about seeing needs and aligning with our own values and being in touch with them. And reflection, these intentional pauses, really helps us to navigate all of it with more clarity.
00:19:54
Speaker
I think that's the legacy of the summer series. really an invitation to live and lead with intention and to redefine old narratives and ultimately to create lives that reflect what matter most, which I think all of these women have done and are doing and will continue to do. And so I hope that you have taken that away as well. And i would invite you to consider it to take some time to reflect on
00:20:26
Speaker
your own definitions of success, strength, and leadership. and notice if the way that you're living is aligned with those definitions or if you want to make some changes.
00:20:39
Speaker
So that's a wrap on our summer series.
Executive Mom Reset Program Invitation
00:20:42
Speaker
Thank you for tuning in to these episodes and hearing these conversations. Coming up next in the fall here, we'll have lots of great content for you. So I'm just so glad that you're here and I appreciate you. So thank you all so much. Thank you again to these six amazing, inspiring women.
00:21:00
Speaker
And I will see all next week. Bye.
00:21:08
Speaker
If you're loving what you're learning on this podcast, I'd love to invite you to check out the Executive Mom Reset. It's my six month coaching program for ambitious, success-driven, career-focused women who are ready to stop surviving and start thriving.
00:21:24
Speaker
Together, we'll tackle the stress, guilt, and overwhelm that come with being a high achieving executive mom. You'll learn how to set boundaries, prioritize what truly matters, and build the confidence to show up powerfully at work, at home, and for yourself.
00:21:38
Speaker
Head on over to coachleana.com right now to schedule a free discovery call. We'll spend an hour talking about where you are now, what you want to create, and how I can help you get there because every woman deserves to live the life of her dreams.
00:21:52
Speaker
Let's create yours together.