Episodes

I’ve innately had this willingness, a fearlessness to challenge the people in charge and to not be afraid of power. -Jenn Abelson Have you ever wondered what it might be like to be an investigative reporter? In the spotlight, Jenn Abelson, reporter for The Washington Post and co-host of the new series, Broken Doors. www.washingtonpost/brokendoors. Born and raised on Long Island, New York, Jenn went to Cornell University and spent time abroad, working in Israel during violent times when her fami...

If they didn’t let me in the front door, I was going to climb up the cellar stairs. -Sandra Goroff Sandy Goroff has spent 40 years shouting about her clients from the rooftops. In this interview, we turn the tables to talk about her incredible career as a publicist and photographer and the result is a tutorial on how to do it right. Sandy specializes in authors and their books, art, lifestyles, design and architecture, movies and museums. With plenty of chutzpah and little experience, she lande...

I don’t really believe in obstacles. If there’s a wall, you get on top of it and start dancing -Elin Schran Meet Elin Schran, Founder of Joy Skate Productions: joyskateproductions.com. She’s passionate about making ice skating accessible to all and spends her days bringing specially designed camps and clinics to rinks that accommodate skaters of every age and every ability, including adaptive/therapeutic skating clinics. For this exceptional woman, ice skating= joy. You see, Elin is the daught...

When you have a child with a heart defect, you live with fear every day. And yet, you have to live your life and you have to lean into hope. -Diane Pickles Diane Pickles admits that a little voice inside her head thought something might be wrong with the unborn child she was carrying. The year was 1994 and she and her husband William had a healthy three year old son at home when an ultrasound revealed that their baby had Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome, meaning that he had half a heart. Doctors...

I look at everyone on my team as a colleague. We’re all women, we’re all tough and we care. -Christine Buckley If you’ve ever had a really bad headache, the worst kind of headache that keeps you up at night and just won’t quit, keep listening because this episode just might save your life. All too often, severe headaches for women between the ages of 35-60 are all too often explained away as stress or misdiagnosed as migraines when they could be a sign of a brain aneurysm. Meet Christine Buckle...

Work hard, play hard, enjoy every day and THINK BIG. -Candy Costas Get ready for a personal and career story that plays out like a roller coaster ride! In the spotlight, Candy Costas, RN. She’s the President & Co-Owner of Privatus, a private, upscale nursing company with 500 employees that spans five states and counting www.privatuscare.com. What we will learn in this story is that running a nursing company was never part of Candy’s plan. The decision was the result of a personal crisis that to...

What makes us different is that we lead with kindness. We lead with relationships first, and the business comes organically and naturally. -Melissa Gilbo & Amy Pocsik In the spotlight, two moms who were invited by a colleague to meet for coffee. That meeting would change Melissa Gilbo and Amy Pocsik’s lives because as they spoke and compared notes about their business careers, they realized what they lacked: a place at the table, a network of support, a community that would lift them up, and wh...

Every day is a chance to make the world a more beautiful place. -Tanya Holton The Arnold Arboretum is a treasure to Boston. Established in 1872 it encompasses 281 acres of land owned by Harvard University in an area of Boston called Jamaica Plain. The Arnold Arboretum is filled with 15,500 individual plants and is a benchmark for similar institutions all across North America. In this interview, we meet Tanya Holton, Director of Institutional Advancement. It is her mission to keep this urban par...

Our children are borrowed. They are not ours. It is our duty, our role, our most important thing to empower them and raise them right. -Katie Wood The woman you are about to meet was a guest on The Story Behind Her Success in the summer of 2019. When we recorded her story, she was expecting her 4th child and that episode continues to be one of our most downloaded shows. The community of women who admire Katie Wood and consider her a wise coach and role model is quite stunning. A former school t...

I have created for other women what I know I needed, which is a platform to be seen and to be heard and to be celebrated for being just who you are. -Kristie Dean We all know what it means to receive healing from medicine, but how do you mend a broken heart? How do you heal your soul? Enter Kristie Dean. The mother of three young girls and a gifted photographer, it wasn’t that long ago when she was sitting in a parking lot in tears, feeling like she had lost her way. Now the Founder & Director ...

Bad things can happen. Good things can happen. But how do you conduct yourself and I don’t mean putting on a facade. How do you take care of you? -Tara West Childhood trauma can linger for a lifetime. It can kill your self-confidence, leaving you to wonder if you are worth it. Or, it can ignite a fire, deep down inside and propel you to break free. Welcome to the life of Tara West www.tarawestfashion.com. Today, she is one of the nation’s most successful stylists and fashion bloggers, but it wa...

It’s our duty as humans to help humans. Beyond anything, we as people owe it to these innocent lives to help them in their time of need. – Ilana Pavlotsky It’s been hard to watch the news lately. The war in Ukraine gets worse by the hour, with thousands dead, including innocent children. I’ve been looking for a woman to profile who knows first-hand what is happening on the ground in Ukraine, someone who will share what she knows, openly, and from the heart so that we as women, can come together...

Did I change somebody’s life or change somebody’s day or help somebody to survive cancer because of this song that was just a joy to write? That’s everything. -Lindy Robbins Have you ever wondered what it would be like to write hit songs for a living? For this interview, I’m on the road, just outside of Los Angeles for an interview with multi-platinum selling and award-winning songwriter, Lindy Robbins. She started singing at three and later got her start as a singer in a vocal group, touring t...

I tell the parents of special needs children: your child can do more than you think. Unleash all of their possibilities and find people who also believe in what they can do. -Debby Sabin It’s been 7 years since I’ve interviewed Debby Sabin. She is a licensed Occupational Therapist and the Founder of Lovelane Special Needs Horseback Riding Program. A not for profit therapeutic riding program serving disabled children from 3 years old to young adults, Lovelane is a place where children with disab...

We are tenants for a lifetime and this castle is a wonderful lesson for us, because we are just here for a short lifetime, far shorter than the cedar trees or the oak trees. We’re just trying not to muck it up! -Lady Fiona Carnarvon This week’s story is steeped in history, including a certain castle named Highclere which you may have seen on the famous series, Downton Abbey. It is also a rare glimpse into the life of British royalty. Lady Fiona Carnarvon is the 8th Countess of Carnarvon and the...

Hippies sat around on the oval all day, throwing frisbees and sniffing flowers. Radicals put their asses on the line. -Nancy Newman In this episode, we meet a woman who entered Ohio State in 1967 with a goal of becoming a sorority sister and within one year, became a radical, fiercely protesting the Vietnam War and supporting the Black Panthers. Nancy Newman was a senior, majoring in journalism when college campuses erupted on May 4, 1970 following the Kent State Massacre which left 4 students ...

I may have created this, but I wouldn’t be here 10 years later if it wasn’t for the support of hundreds of thousands of families from around the country who sit down with their kids and take a few minutes to explain gratitude and giving something to someone you will never meet. -Emily Spencer This week’s story takes us to Florida where we meet Emily Spencer, the Founder & President of Heartillery Group, heartillerygroup.org, a non-profit with a simple mission: to spread love and gratitude for t...

I don’t know anything else except loving what I do. -Marcie Mills For this interview, we’re in Palm Springs, California, at the Ocotillo Lodge. Built by Gene Autry, “the singing cowboy” in 1948, this legendary location was once a playground for movie stars like Lucille Ball, Doris Day, and Marilyn Monroe. And it’s here that we are talking to Marcie Mills, a radio sales pro from Boston who took her career to a whole new level when she made the move to Los Angeles 20 years ago to run radio sales ...

If you want to be successful, start by making your bed and getting up in the morning. Keep showing up. If you just keep showing up, good things will happen. -Pam Lewis Have you ever wondered what it might be like to be a publicist to the stars? This week, I’m taking you to Music Row in Nashville to meet Pam Lewis, one of the PR queens of country music. Born and raised in upstate New York, she attended Wells College and studied abroad to attend a program associated with The Sorbonne University. ...

There absolutely still exists the “maternal wall bias” in the medical culture. It’s implicit, not overt, but it happens, every single day. -Tamara Chang, MD. According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, female doctors are 40% more likely to leave medicine completely or go to part-time practice within 6 years of completing their residencies. In this episode, we’re zooming with Pediatric Hematology & Oncology physician Tamara Chang who explains why this is happening and what she is ...

The first time I went up in the air, people said: “when you come down, you’re going to get bitten by this bug” and I completely understood. It’s such an incredible feeling seeing the world from a different perspective, so I knew I had to pursue this. -Emma Anderson She’s 20 years old now, but five years ago, Emma Anderson shared her passion for aviation and for learning how to fly an airplane someday with her mother, Tina. Instead of discouraging her daughter, Tina helped her fulfill this dream...

Doing something that you look forward to, that beautiful thing that you wake up and dream about. That is what I call success. -Jenn Uche Welcome to the inspiring story of Jenn Uche, a 17 year old high school senior who has been chosen as a 2021 Global Rise Winner. This 1 billion dollar philanthropic venture was created and funded by Google co-founder, Eric Schmidt and his wife Wendy and is a collaboration between Schmidt Futures and the Rhodes Trust. To find out more, just go to: www.riseforthe...

During Covid, I just knew that this is an industry that is never going to die. People are always going to want to get married. I knew we were going to have to adapt, but a bride will always want a beautiful dress on her wedding day. -Colleen Ferry For this interview, we’re taking a road trip to a little town near the Massachusetts-New Hampshire border called Chelmsford for a conversation with Colleen Ferry, a young woman who is the queen of the pivot. A gifted singer, she spent her teen years a...

I hope our reader’s breath is taken away as they read the stories in Living Crue. It’s a magazine, but it’s also a movement. -Marci Bracken Waiting rooms can be boring and they can be magical, because you just never know who you might meet! In the spotlight, a woman who joined forces with woman she met in the waiting room of a karate studio, only to realize that the two had so much synergy, they had to do something about it. Meet the powerhouse co-founder of Waiting Room Media, LLC and the new ...