Uncharted Journey

by Cathy McKnight

Life is an adventure filled with great stories. This podcast captures and shares the adventures of amazing women, their careers, their success, and the secrets they learned along the way.

Podcast episodes

  • Season 4

  • Episode 72 – Janna Kimel, Empowering Empath

    Episode 72 – Janna Kimel, Empowering Empath

    Janna Kimel knows how to unlock potential at the intersection of UX Research, design, and accessibility. For more than 15 years, she has been a driving force in the world of UX Research, design, and accessibility. With an unwavering commitment to championing inclusive design and research, she has transformed countless ideas into reality, igniting new team dynamics and supercharging existing ones with her approachable and positive leadership style. Her journey as a researcher has given a voice to products and experiences, while her expertise in building collaborative and inclusive environments has paved the way for seamless project alignment. With creativity and empathy as driving forces, today’s guest thrives on mentoring team members and brings a unique blend of curiosity, integrity, and openness to every endeavor Janna has faced and continues to fight chronic pain for much of her life. And rather than let it slow her down, she has combined her worlds in launching the Chronic Pain Project. This passion project is a coming together of her love of art, empathy building, and her experience as a researcher. She understands that chronic pain can be intense and isolating and wants to bring others together to visualize the experience and share their stories. She attributes her success and happiness, at least in part to finding balance in her life. Part of this came through great advice from a former colleague who told her to “drive your own bus” so that you get to control the destination, and through embracing others and welcoming them into her world including her husband, cat, and even herself, via a committed morning meditation practice. This self-awareness is also reflected in her advice of “pull your chair up to the (proverbial or literal) table, and share your voice. Your true voice.” Because everyone has value to add and should be able to do so in an authentic self manner. Janna Kimel Learn more about and maybe even join The Chronic Pain Project. Janna Kimel on LinkedIn

  • Episode 71 – Tamsen Webster, Story Builder

    Episode 71 – Tamsen Webster, Story Builder

    Tamsen Webster is part strategist, part storyteller, part English-to-English translator, and with an overlay of enthusiastic positivity. Take all those things to varying degrees depending on the day and tasks at hand, and there is no wonder her clients and followers learn and embrace the council on how to drive action with their ideas. The primary benefactors of Tamsen’s expertise are storytellers. She has spent the last two decades helping them find and build their best stories they tell themselves and others. As the founder and Chief Messaging Strategist at Find The Red Thread, she boasts an impressive and diverse client list that includes big guns like Johnson & Johnson, Harvard Medical School, and Intel, as well as start-ups leading the next wave of innovation. She is also a professional advisor at the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship and a mentor for the Harvard Innovation Labs. Additional accolades include being an in-demand speaker, being named to the Thinkers50 Radar Thinkers to Watch class of 2022, and publishing her first book – Find Your Red Thread: Make Your Big Ideas Irresistible. And most recently, she launched the accompanying Red Thread online course and is poised to publish her second book in the fall of 2024. Pattern-driven, bidirectional, and curious, Tamsen is Boston-based with her family, a reluctant marathoner and connoisseur of dark chocolate, and, in her mind at least, a champion ballroom dancer. In her impressive 20+ years in marketing, 13 years as a Weight Watchers leader, and ten years later still working with TEDx Cambridge/New England, Tamsen has learned the value of support in its giving and receiving. Being open to receiving, as well as giving support to those around you, creates a positive pattern that extends into and creates a positive community for growth and learning. TamsenWebster.com Tamsen Webster on LinkedIn Sign up for: The Red Thread Newsletter Book 1: Find Your Red Thread: Make Your Big Ideas Irresistible Book 2: Coming Fall 2024 – stay tuned!

  • Episode 70 – Cindy Gallop, Status Quo Challenger

    Episode 70 – Cindy Gallop, Status Quo Challenger

    Cindy Gallop is a woman to be reckoned with. With a background in brand-building, marketing, and advertising, she’s been a trailblazer since 1998, when she started up the US office of ad agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty in New York. Since then, she's only gotten more badass, earning accolades like Advertising Woman of the Year and being named one of the 15 Most Important Marketing Strategy Thinkers Today, alongside the likes Malcolm Gladwell and Seth Godin. What really makes Cindy exceptional, is her outspokenness and willingness to challenge the status quo. Not content with just doing things the way they've always been done – oh no, when she sees something that is not working or needs to be done/done differently she moves to make those changes. Case in point, in 2009 during her TED presentation, in reaction to and based on her own direct personal experience dating younger men, she launched to a live audience that included Robin Williams (who BTW was duly impressed) Make Love Not Porn, THE social sextech platform designed to promote positive sexual behavior and values. It is a frank, open, and positive place for all to learn about sex that is very much needed. The world has been engaged and supportive of her endeavour ever since. She also lends her badassery as a board advisor to a bunch of tech ventures, works as a personal brand/life/executive coach, and consults on brand and business innovation for companies around the world. Her consultancy approach “I like to blow shit up.”. You will never be at a loss for what she is thinking, particularly when it comes her fierce advocacy for diversity and inclusion in advertising, tech, and business. Her impact on those industries has been immeasurable. So it should come as no surprise that when asked for her best piece of advice Cindy says “Don’t give a damn what other people think, do what you believe.”. This has certainly served her well   Cindy Gallop on LinkedIn Cindy Gallop on Instagram Make Love Not Porn website Donate to Make Love Not Porn Academy Crowd Funding

  • Episode 69 – Liz Robinson, Change Generator

    Episode 69 – Liz Robinson, Change Generator

    Liz Robinson is someone who truly knows how to build teams, capacity, and community. With deep roots in communications for financial services, she has led impactful efforts like the one to expand the national conversation about how we value and pay for college, at institutions like Sallie Mae and U-promise Investments. With more than 20 years of combined brand strategy and creative agency expertise, she has a unique ability to create meaningful experiences that drive positive change. Liz understands the power of a brand's impact on relationships, from consideration to loyalty and advocacy, and has successfully leveraged thought leadership, consumer insights, and her own highly creative mindset to drive revenue growth and customer loyalty at all the organizations that have been fortunate enough to have her on their team. It was after a family trip to Kenya, that her business experience and passion for making an impact collided and inspired her to take that critical and essential first to explore how she could instigate and support a broader impact on building communities. Thus, her foray into the world of international non-profits and the start of her own business, L Rob Inspires. Today, at the helm of L Rob Inspires, she and her team are dedicated to helping non-profit and for-profit organizations build communities and foster stronger relationships with their customers, and in both cases make a different to the world. Liz is Massachusetts-based with her family and four dogs and makes time to give back to her own community by volunteering with the Lovelane Special Needs Horseback Riding Program as well as an active board member on a couple of community focused organizations. Please consider giving to one of the many deserving organizations that L Rob Inspires supports; Team Heart Embrace Kulture Teach the World Foundation   Connect with Liz: L Rob Inspires Liz Robinson on LinkedIn

  • Episode 68 – Lizz Bacon, Heartset Problem Solver

    Episode 68 – Lizz Bacon, Heartset Problem Solver

    Lizz Bacon is an innovative problem-solver. A few years after graduating Stanford with a bachelor's degree in literature, she had the epiphany that she was a designer and pursued a master's degree in the discipline. And for the 25 years since, she has been practicing at the forefront of the digital product development. While working for St. Jude Medical, she realized that she loves working on meaningful problems in the health domain. Losing her job at St. Jude’s was a pivotal moment in her career that lead to her starting her own company, Devise Consulting, at helm of which she has been pursuing her passion to help others ever since. And ironically, her first client was St. Jude’s – leadership quickely came to realise after her departure that Lizz is one-of-a-kind and couldn’t be replaced by anyone else. Most recently she is taking her passion for helping make the world a better place with compassion and empathy and writing a book about how to sustain our souls at work. In her down time, our guest enjoys writing poetry, drawing, driving cars as fast as possible, riding motorcycles through forests and mountains, drumming, and enjoying good times with beloved family and friends. Lizz's best advice is to prioritize activities that feed your soul and give you a positive emotional state. She’s found balance and peace in mediation, even when, and sometimes especially when, “monkey mind” takes over …” it’s important to be attuned to one's true self and listen to the murmurs within”. Lizz Bacon’s website Devise Consulting Devise Substack School of Possible Substack Open House March 6