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The Books That Shaped Me

The Books That Shaped Me

by Angie Smith

Books Relationships

Season 2

The Books That Shaped Me Featuring Carrie Kass

Season 2 kicks off with Carrie Kass, founder, CEO, and TEDx Round Rock Women speaker. Carrie and Angie became friends through the multi-author book Pieces to Purpose, and this conversation picks up right where that friendship started. Carrie opens up about the moment she hit send on her first published story, the trauma she'd buried for decades, and what it cost her to finally speak it out loud on stage. She walks through losing her role in a private equity acquisition, and how that loss became the spark for her new book chapter, The Unacquired Voice. They dig into networking done right, why "what do you do" is the worst way to start a conversation, and how Carrie's community became her business overnight when she needed it most. Carrie also shares the books that shaped her, from The Giving Tree to The Five Love Languages, and previews her new book Voice and Vision, releasing August 5th. This one is honest, funny, and full of heart. Grab your coffee and settle in. www.carriekass.com IG: @thecarriekass FB: https://facebook.com/carriekass18 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carrie-kass-a59114a/ TEDx talk: https://youtu.be/5Jp1xudljow?si=hO3qFLMQ_GdJXImS Connect with Carrie on her social platforms, and connect with Angie at angiesmithsummitconsulting.com.

Featuring Valentina MacGregor

Valentina MacGregor has lived on four continents, survived a body brace that reshaped her whole life, and turned heartbreak into one of the most meaningful projects of her career. Born in Buenos Aires, raised in Venezuela, and shaped by stints in Italy, London, Glasgow, and Madrid, Valentina joins Angie to talk about what happens when you stop asking permission to be different. At 10 years old, a scoliosis diagnosis put her in a back brace for two years. She couldn't do PE, so she read instead. That's the moment she became a lifelong reader. She opens up about losing her brother after two heart transplants, the book that taught her to trust her own heart over everyone else's opinion (The Alchemist), and why she now photographs women over 40 for her Legends Project, an annual exhibit celebrating the women who dared to pivot. This one will remind you that the hard seasons are usually the ones doing the shaping.

Season 1

The Books That Shaped Me Featuring Vidya Moorthy

0:00 – Sponsor Message A quick thank-you to Windstar Insurance Group out of Cedar Park, owned by Angie's friend Stephanie Dew, for backing this season. 1:02 – Welcome to the Season 1 Finale Angie kicks off episode 10 with Vidya Moorthy, calling her "the crown jewel" to close out the first season. 2:22 – Vidya's Story: Detroit to Austin An MBA in finance, a master's in PR, a career that took her from Detroit to Asia Pacific to Austin in 2021, where she started from zero relationships and built a whole network one coffee at a time. 3:53 – Leading Austin Businesswoman Vidya took over as president in 2024 after founder Olga Adler stepped back. Her mission: get women access to capital, power circles, and new markets, without gatekeeping it behind a big price tag. 6:28 – Raised on Family, Faith, and Education Vidya grew up in southern India in a home that wasn't wealthy but was rich in education. Her name, Vidya, literally means education, and that thread runs through everything she's built since. 11:31 – The Mountain Question "Do you want to climb the mountain to be seen, or to be able to see further?" Vidya's answer to what keeps her climbing, and why she tries to pay it forward without keeping score. 15:06 – Active Listening as a Discipline Vidya breaks down why real listening takes generosity and empathy, and why it's not your job to convince someone to see it your way, just to honor their truth. 17:41 – Book 1: Atomic Habits by James Clear Vidya on why this "everybody's read it" book still changed her life: metacognition, getting 1% better daily, and the idea that profound change starts in the smallest habits. 23:38 – Book 2: A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini A story of two women bound together by hardship in Afghanistan. Vidya also shares a beautiful memory of her father's letters and the lesson he taught her about writing with simple, powerful words. 30:46 – A Taste of Her Keynote Vidya previews "The Lion in a Changing Jungle," her talk connecting global shifts, like trade, currency, and policy, to what's actually happening in a small business down the street in Austin. 36:11 – Connect with Vidya Find her on LinkedIn as Vidya Moorthy, or through austinbusinesswoman.com. Their annual awards gala is open to nominations, no membership required. 38:56 – Closing Vidya on never taking a mic lightly, and Angie's invitation to connect for coaching, speaking, or a future episode. 3. Bonus Book Mentioned (not covered in depth) 📚 The Lion Women of Tehran — mentioned by Angie around 28:01 as a similar read on oppressed women finding connection through hardship.

The Books That Shaped Me featuring Veronica Seever

0:00 – Intro: Angie welcomes Veronica Seaver, a woman she's known and admired for over a decade, back for Episode 9. 3:21 – Career Journey: Veronica traces her path from the restaurant industry at Hyatt to HR, to running her own nurseries, to becoming Elgin Chamber president. Every stop taught her the same skill: how to create buy-in. 8:55 – Choosing Honesty Over the Mask: Veronica gets real about faking her life for years and the moment she decided to just be honest with everyone, about everything. She talks about how dropping the mask disarms people and how much energy it gives back. 12:04 – 📚 Book Mentioned: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. This is the book that taught Veronica to love reading and showed her, as a kid, that she was creative. She's already planning a Narnia-themed event because of it. 16:16 – 📚 Book Mentioned: Hey Doll by Veronica Seaver (unpublished). Veronica wrote this after losing her mom and grandma to cancer within one week of each other, both diagnosed at the same time. She checked into a hotel the day her mom died and started writing. It sat untouched for eight years before she finally finished it, locked away in a hotel room by herself. Heartbreaking and funny in the same breath. 25:09 – Empowering Women Without Undermining Men: Veronica pushes back on the assumption that empowering women means being anti-men. Her mentors, her general manager, her ex-husband, have all been men who called things out of her. She wants to do for other women what men have done for her. 28:15 – Adjusting Her Business for a Tough Economy: Veronica talks candidly about how expensive everything's gotten and why she had to rethink her business model to stay sustainable. 32:21 – Introducing The Business Social: Veronica unveils her new event space in downtown Elgin, seats 70, walk-in ready, and open to the public for everything from business classes to baby showers. She's also planning a monthly community night with concepts like Pitch a Friend Singles Night and Hot Take Night. 37:11 – Where to Find Veronica: She shares where to follow her, mainly Facebook, with LinkedIn and her website sheisallthethings.com as backup.

The Books That Shaped Me Featuring Anne Grady

Ep. 8 | Anne Grady: Evolvability, the Inner Critic, and Why Your Brain Would Rather Be Predictably Unhappy What happens when the life you planned falls completely apart — and you end up more yourself than you ever would have been otherwise? Anne Grady is a bestselling author, keynote speaker, and resilience expert who has spent two decades learning — the hard way — how to not just survive tough circumstances but actually grow through them. Her son Evan was born with autism, mental illness, and developmental delays, and navigating his world as a single mom became the unlikely foundation for everything she now teaches. In this conversation, Anne and Angie cover a lot of ground: why uncertainty is neurologically threatening, the 15-second trick that rewires your brain, what it means to use your values as a decision filter when the choice feels impossible, and why your resume and your eulogy really shouldn't be the same thing. Anne also unpacks her brand new book Evolvability — and the difference between resilience (surviving) and evolvability (actually growing forward). This episode is packed with neuroscience that doesn't feel like neuroscience, real talk about mental health stigma, and more than a few lines you'll want to write down. Books mentioned: 📚 Evolvability by Anne Grady 📚 Self-Compassion by Kristin Neff 📚 Anchored, Aligned, Accountable by Ayo Bethia 📚 Joyful Prayerful Thankful by Kevin Karschnik Connect with Anne: Website: AnneGradyGroup.com Free adaptability assessment: evolvability.com Social: @AnneGradyGroup

The Books That Shaped Me featuring Kathy Wetzel

Kathy Wetzel is a tech executive, long-time SIM leader, and one of those people who has quietly shaped rooms full of leaders for decades. Armed with both an accounting and computer science degree, her career took her from Honeywell to Great Clips to TASB, the Texas Association of School Board Services, with a few wild pivots in between. This conversation is packed with real leadership wisdom. Kathy breaks down why change management is a people problem first and a technology problem second, why you need to stop chasing the naysayers and win the people in the middle, and why your HR person should be on your speed dial before you ever have a crisis. She also talks about building a personal board of directors, succession planning as a leadership essential, and the books that kept showing up for her at every stage of life and career. Books cited are Don't Sweat the Small Stuff to Crucial Conversations to Who Moved My Cheese, She closes with a perspective on AI that is grounded and hopeful. She has watched every major tech cycle arrive and create more than it displaced. Her take on the jobs that do not exist yet is worth the listen alone. This one is for every leader navigating change they did not sign up for.

The Books That Shaped Me featuring Melinda Kay Quiroz

What do you do when everything you built — suddenly disappears overnight? That's the real conversation in Episode 6 of The Books That Shaped Me. Melinda Quiroz spent 11 years building a massive insurance book of business. Then, on March 17th, 2026, that chapter ended — without warning, without a choice. She calls it her "captive to called" season. And what she says next stopped me in my tracks: "I truly would have never seen what my true worth was... until I lost it all." If you've ever poured your whole self into something — your job, your business, your title — and then had it taken away, this episode is for you. We talk about: Why your gaping hole might actually be cleared space The "upper limit problem" from The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks Ella Langley's Dandelion album and why Melinda says it was made for this season What it means to rebuild — and why rebuilding is NOT failure

The Books That Shaped Me fea Brandon Glaser

Brandon is a well-read servant leader. He has served our country and continues in public service in IT at TX Facilities Commission. He shared about "radical accountability" and how these lessons, that have been hard earned have shown him how to be empathetic while maintaining grit in the face of adversity. Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek Extreme Ownership and The Dichotomy of Leadership by Jacko Wilkins and Leif Babin Hidden Potential by Adam Grant The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter Think Like A Monk by Jay Shetty

The Books That Shaped Me featuring Brooke Fleming

Join me in this conversation with Brooke, she shares her journey with vulnerability and beauty. The Sacrament of Happy by Lisa Harper Girl Wash Your Face by Rachel Hollis I Do Feelings by Havilah Cunnington

The Books That Shaped Me Featuring Rafael Pimentel Pinto

What do Spartan Races have to do with getting a CIO job at a space agency? Everything, it turns out. Episode 3 of The Books That Shaped Me drops this week — and Rafael Pimentel Pinto brought a book that changed how he sees obstacles, careers, and the moment your mind says "I can't." Spoiler: he learned to ignore that voice.

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