Your Working Life With Caroline Dowd-higgins

Goldie Chan, a proud introvert, brings a fresh perspective to personal branding that rejects the exhausting "fake it till you make it" mentality. In her new book, Personal Branding for Introverts, Chan offers empowering, practical strategies that help introverts build authentic and memorable brands without draining their energy or compromising their true selves. Drawing on real-world examples from Taylor Swift to everyday professionals, she shows how introversion can be a powerful asset and provides actionable guidance on networking, community-building, and creating sustainable visibility that feels genuine rather than performative. More from Goldie Chan: Get Goldie's book Personal Branding for Introverts. Follow Goldie on LinkedIn More from Caroline Dowd-Higgins: Book Caroline as your next keynote speaker! Check out Caroline’s books. Get in touch with Caroline.

Julie Kratz is a leading voice in workplace allyship and inclusion, drawing from her 12 years in Corporate America where she experienced her own struggles with belonging. She now helps organizations create environments where everyone feels seen and heard. Her latest book, We Want You: An Allyship Guide for People with Power, provides leaders with practical, research-backed strategies to move beyond fear and use their power intentionally to foster psychological safety and equity. The guide offers concrete tools for building inclusive policies, modeling vulnerability, and creating pathways for diverse talent at the individual, team, and organizational levels. More from Julie Kratz: Get Julie's book We Want You: An Allyship Guide for People with Power Follow Julie on LinkedIn More from Caroline Dowd-Higgins: Book Caroline as your next keynote speaker! Check out Caroline’s books. Get in touch with Caroline.

Caroline interviews Vanessa Druskat, a leadership and team performance expert, about how to create the best workplace team for you. Vanessa challenges the common misconception that simply assembling emotionally intelligent individuals will create a cohesive team. Instead, she demonstrates that exceptional team performance requires building a culture around agreed-upon norms and habits that foster emotional intelligence at the group level.  More from Vanessa Druskat: Read her book: The Emotionally Intelligent Team: Building Collaborative Groups that Outperform the Rest. Connect with Vanessa on LinkedIn. More from Caroline Dowd-Higgins: Book Caroline as your next keynote speaker! Check out Caroline’s books. Get in touch with Caroline.  

Rachel DeAlto is on a mission to connect people to their most powerful resource—each other—in today's diverse, multi-generational workforce. But creating genuine connection can be difficult, which is why Rachel wrote her latest book, The Relatable Leader: Create a Culture of Connection. Caroline and Rachel talk about the actionable strategies in the book that help leaders learn how to be more authentic to gain trust and unlock team potential.   More from Rachel DeAlto: Book: The Relatable Leader: Create a Culture of Connection Rachel's website. Find Rachel on LinkedIn. More from Caroline Dowd-Higgins: Book Caroline as your next keynote speaker! Check out Caroline’s books. Get in touch with Caroline.  

After receiving harsh feedback about her lack of self-awareness despite strong business results,   embarked on a deep exploration of leadership through philosophy, psychology, and management studies. She ultimately developing her MYLO (Manage Yourself to Lead Others) approach for other leaders, which led to her writing her new book, Manage Yourself to Lead Others: Why Great Leadership Begins with Self-Understanding. Caroline and Margaret talk about the practical steps for identifying the leader you want to become, managing emotions and difficult situations, navigating organizational culture as a "Culture-Maker" rather than "Culture-Taker," and recovering from setbacks.  More from Margaret Anthony: Book: Manage Yourself to Lead Others: Why Great Leadership Begins with Self-Understanding. Find Margaret on LinkedIn More from Caroline Dowd-Higgins: Book Caroline as your next keynote speaker! Check out Caroline’s books. Get in touch with Caroline.    

In this episode, Caroline talks to Jenn Tardy, a diversity practitioner and human resources expert about how to promote workplace diversity amid current DEI backlash. Jenn has worked with organizations like Gap Inc., Red Bull, Harvard, and the US Chamber of Commerce. Rather than offering generic advice, she provides actionable insights for combating hidden biases at every stage of the talent lifecycle—from finding and attracting candidates to engaging and developing employees. Her new book, The Equity Edge: How Addressing Bias in Recruiting and Retention Drives Success, serves as both a strategic guide for leaders and a valuable resource for potential employees navigating today's hiring landscape.  More from Jenn Tardy: Book: The Equity Edge: How Addressing Bias in Recruiting and Retention Drives Success  Find Jenn on LinkedIn Jenn's Website More from Caroline Dowd-Higgins: Book Caroline as your next keynote speaker! Check out Caroline’s books. Get in touch with Caroline.

Dr. Scott D. Anthony, a clinical professor at Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business, joins Caroline to talk about eleven pivotal innovations that changed business and the human experience. From gunpowder, to the printing press, to Julia Child's cookbook and now generative AI, Scott tells the stories of how these innovations changed the world. Rather than simply celebrating these inventions, Anthony reveals the underlying patterns of how disruption actually occurs and spreads through society.  More from Dr. Scott Anthony: Book: Epic Disruptions: 11 Innovations That Shaped Our Modern World More from Caroline Dowd-Higgins: Book Caroline as your next keynote speaker! Check out Caroline’s books. Get in touch with Caroline.  

Caroline sits down with Dr. Josephine Palermo, an organizational psychologist and executive coach, to talk about how women should reconsider everything they think they know about power in the workplace. Josephine is the author of the new book Rising to Feminine Power: The Lasso of Truth, which talks about how current power structures aren't working and how women especially can bring a new kind of leadership to the workplace. Josephine talks about the science behind feminine power and how we uncover the hidden barriers that may be holding you back from stepping into your authentic power. Connect with Dr. Josephine Palermo: Book: Rising to Feminine Power: The Lasso of Truth  Podcast: Teams, Culture & You More from Caroline Dowd-Higgins: Book Caroline as your next keynote speaker! Check out Caroline’s books. Get in touch with Caroline.  

On this episode, Caroline talks with Lesley Cooper, a management consultant with over 25 years of experience in employee well-being. She's the founder of WorkingWell, an award-winning consultancy that helps companies manage workplace pressure to facilitate growth and development. Her new book, Brave New Leader: How to Transform Workplace Pressure into Sustainable Performance and Growth, addresses the persistent problem of workplace well-being despite widespread support systems. The book tackles the harsh reality that employees often fear speaking up about workplace pressure due to concerns about consequences, creating a culture sustained by fear rather than openness.

This week, Caroline talks to Juliet Schor about the case for the four day work week. Schor is an economist and sociology professor at Boston College, and has gained widespread recognition through national media appearances and her viral 2022 TED Talk "The Case for a 4-Day Work Week," which has been viewed over three million times. Caroline talks to Juliet about her latest book, Four Days a Week: The Life-Changing Solution for Reducing Employee Stress, Improving Well-Being, and Working Smarter, which is the first large-scale study of the four-day work week based on her four decades of work research. The book demonstrates how companies like Kickstarter, Bolt, and Basecamp have successfully eliminated the fifth workday while maintaining productivity and dramatically improving employee well-being, hiring, and retention. Schor provides a comprehensive blueprint for implementing this transformative workplace model, arguing it can address major challenges including burnout, AI disruption, and the climate crisis.

On this episdoe of Your Working Life, Caroline talks to Andrew Brodsky, an award-winning business professor and management consultant at The University of Texas at Austin's McCombs School of Business. Andrew specializes in virtual communication and workplace technology, and wrote a new book called "PING: The Secrets of Successful Virtual Communication". He and Caroline talk abbout his actionable framework for mastering modern workplace interactions across all communication platforms. Social Media/Links:  Read 'Ping: The Secrets of Successful Virtual Communication'.  LinkedIn Ping Group Music credits for this episode:  Week Thirteen by Ben von Wildenhause, Free Music Archive (CC BY)  Week Thirteen by Ben von Wildenhause, Free Music Archive (CC BY)  Social Media/Links:  ·      Book Link for 'Ping: The Secrets of Successful Virtual Communication: https://www.amazon.com/Ping-Secrets-Successful-Virtual-Communication/dp/1668055244 ·      LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewsbrodsky/ ·      Personal We

Dr. Sunita Sah is an award-winning professor at Cornell University and an expert in organizational psychology. She leads groundbreaking research on influence, authority, compliance, and defiance. A trained physician, she practiced medicine in the United Kingdom and worked as a management consultant for the pharmaceutical industry. She currently teaches executives, leaders, and students in healthcare and business. Dr. Sah is a sought-after international speaker and consultant, advisor to government agencies, and former Commissioner of the National Commission on Forensic Science. Her multidisciplinary research and analyses have been widely published in leading academic journals and media entities including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Harvard Business Review, and Scientific American. She lives with her husband and son in New York. DEFY: The Power of No in a World That Demands Yes How many times have you wanted to object, disagree, or opt out of something—but ended up swallowing your words, shaking you

Dr. Margaret Heffernan produced programmes for the BBC for 13 years.  She then moved to the US where she spearheaded multimedia productions for Intuit, The Learning Company and Standard&Poors. She was Chief Executive of InfoMation Corporation, ZineZone Corporation and then iCast Corporation, was named one of the “Top 25” by Streaming Media magazine and one of the “Top 100 Media Executives” by The Hollywood Reporter.  The author of six books, Margaret’s third book, Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at our Peril was named one of the most important business books of the decade by the Financial Times. In 2015, she was awarded the Transmission Prize for A Bigger Prize: Why Competition isn’t Everything and How We Do Better, described as “meticulously researched…engagingly written…universally relevant and hard to fault.” Her TED talks have been seen by over 13 million people and in 2015 TED published Beyond Measure: The Big Impact of Small Changes. In 2020, she published Uncharted: How to map the futu

Manar Sweillam Morales is a national thought leader and visionary on building human-centered workplace cultures at the intersection of diversity, flexibility, and well-being. As the Founder & CEO of the Diversity & Flexibility Alliance, Manar is on a mission to empower organizations to unlock their full potential by creating inclusive environments, implementing effective flexible work strategies, and prioritizing holistic employee well-being. A sought-after speaker, author, and trusted advisor, Manar brings a wealth of expertise from her background as an employment litigator and adjunct faculty member at Georgetown University. She is the author of “The Flexibility Paradigm: Humanizing the Workplace for Productivity, Profitability, and Possibility” (Georgetown University Press, January 2025), which provides a roadmap for building adaptive, resilient organizations that bring out the best in their people. Manar is a recent recipient of the President’s Lifetime Achievement Award and is a member of the

Lynn Blades episode: Minimal Brain Activity by Unheard Music Concepts (source: Free Music Archive) (CC BY)    www.lynnblades.com Lynn Blades, author of THE QUIET BURN: The Ambitious Woman’s Guide To Recognizing And Preventing Burnout, is the founder of Legacy Leadership, an executive leadership consultancy, and a dedicated DEI advocate. She has strived to cultivate a 21st-century leadership workforce that truly reflects the diversity of our society. RECOGNIZING AND PREVENTING BURNOUT Demanding Careers Should Not Overshadow Health And Well-Being Women face numerous challenges in their careers – dealing with sexist and demeaning work environments, juggling work and family obligations, struggling to achieve parity with their male colleagues – all of which require having the necessary physical and emotional capacity to maintain one’s self-esteem. Lynn Blades has spent decades advising women in Fortune 500 companies and independent businesses. An executive leadership coach, her message is clear: it’s time to

After graduating from Boston’s Emerson College in 1985, Tom headed west to work in the film and television industry. In Hollywood, he honed his writing skills through the trials and tribulations of episodic TV, animated series, screenplay options, and game shows for over two decades. When the feast or famine lifestyle of a Hollywood Writer became too sporadic for his maturing life (He had grown to enjoy eating two to three times a day – every day), he took a job at a call center to make ends meet. After his first day on the phones, his manager asked him to stop.  He was terrible at the entry-level position. Tom got easily frazzled, had no focus, and was simply in the wrong role. But rather than look to another company to find his niche, Tom looked inward to learn more about himself and the industry that didn’t want him. Tom leveraged his findings to change himself and the work environments he occupied. Climbing the corporate ladder one rung at a time, Tom evolved into an innovative leader with a proven track

Alison Fragle episode:  Distances by Beat Mekanik (source: Free Music Archive) (CC BY)    ALISON FRAGALE, PhD Speaker. Professor. Compulsive Organizer. Website www.alisonfragale.com Newsletter alisonfragale.substack.com ALISON FRAGALE is the Mary Farley Ames Lee Distinguished Scholar of Organizational Behavior at the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina. Her scholarship has been published in the most prestigious academic journals in her field, and featured in prominent media outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Financial Times, Boston Globe, and Inc. She is the author of the book, Likeable Badass: How Women Get the Success They Deserve, published by Penguin Random House on September 3, 2024. A sought-after keynote speaker and trusted advisor, she lives in Chicago with her family. Questions/topics to discuss: What is the difference between power and status? Why is status more important? What is the definition of a Likeable Badass and why is it the ke

Lori Rosenkopf is the Simon and Midge Palley Professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. As Vice Dean for Entrepreneurship, she serves as Wharton’s faculty director for Venture Lab, Penn’s home for student entrepreneurs, and also their San Francisco campus. In a prior role as Vice Dean of Wharton’s Undergraduate Division, she introduced a new curriculum and developed experiential classwork in the tech sector. For over thirty years, Rosenkopf has taught entrepreneurship and management of technology to more than 20,000 high schoolers, undergraduates, MBAs, and executives, connecting these learners to many of the most entrepreneurial alumni at Wharton and Penn through treks, panels, and classes. Rosenkopf was named a Best Undergraduate Professor by Poets and Quants, and has received multiple awards for her teaching, including Wharton’s prestigious David Hauck Award for Distinguished Teaching. Rosenkopf has published more than thirty articles on technological communities and social network

Abby Davisson episode:  Quickening by malictusmusic (source: Free Music Archive) (CC BY)  Abby Davisson is an author, speaker, and award-winning leader obsessed with holistic decision-making (the kind that takes multiple bottom lines into account). After spending two decades making change from within existing organizations, she launched her own, focused on helping leaders make smart choices for lasting success in work and life. The book she co-wrote with Stanford Professor and labor economist Myra Strober, Money and Love: An Intelligent Roadmap for Life's Biggest Decisions, was called “brilliant” by professional poker player Annie Duke; named a top business book of 2023; and is required reading at Stanford's Graduate School of Business. Prior to launching the Money and Love Institute®, Abby’s professional experience included strategy-focused roles in the public, private, and non-profit sectors, including a decade at Gap Inc. where she led the Gap Foundation and co-founded the company’s employee resource

Distances by Beat Mekanik, via Free Music Archive (CC BY)    Wes Adams is the CEO of SV Consulting Group. He partners with Fortune 500s and scaling companies to develop high-impact leaders and design operating structures that support high performing teams. He is also a positive psychology researcher at the University of Pennsylvania where he studies the leadership practices and organizational structures that help employees thrive. He lives in Atlanta, GA.  LinkedIn  Website   Tamara Myles is a speaker, author, professor, and entrepreneur specializing in the science of human flourishing at work. She helps leaders and organizations like Microsoft, KPMG, and MassMutual unlock the power of meaningful work to drive peak performance, innovation, and resilience. A faculty member at Boston College and a researcher and instructor at the University of Pennsylvania, Tamara’s work challenges assumptions about work, showing that when leaders make work meaningful, they create thriving teams and lasting impact. She lives