Mother's Quest: The Podcast

I'm excited to share this Episode #15 with you-- a conversation with Karen Baker, a mentor of mine who played a pivotal role in connecting me to a career of service. It’s not surprising because connecting people to service is Karen’s super power. Karen has been making matches her whole life, but she currently brings this gift to her role as the Chief Service Officer of CaliforniaVolunteers, where she serves under Governor Brown. Karen has 20 years of innovative leadership in all facets of the service and volunteering sector, including local and national non-profits and federal agencies. In 2008, she was appointed by Former California Governor Schwarzenegger to serve as the first-in-the-nation state cabinet Secretary of Service and Volunteering. Karen is also an amazing mom to 2 children, Ella and Christopher, both adopted at birth by Karen and her husband. In our conversation, we talk about the ways in which Karen’s parents and seven siblings inspired her to be of service to others, how she brings that serv

Hello and welcome to Episode #14, the first interview in the extended season of the Mother’s Quest Podcast. Starting with today’s interview of Amanda Steinberg, I'm excited to bring you six more episodes to light our way to an E.P.I.C. life. I reached out to Amanda because I am ready to re-write my money story and she was uniquely qualified to guide me. Amanda is the Founder and CEO of DailyWorth.com and just published a book titled “WORTH IT: Your Life, Your Money, Your Terms”. This past summer, Amanda was chosen as one of Oprah Winfrey’s SuperSoul 100 and recently was named to Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business – all for good reason: she has revolutionized the relationship between women and their finances. Amanda empowers women to explore the equation between their self-worth and their net-worth and to resist the conventions that keep us from viewing money as a source of personal power. In our interview, with her new book as a back-drop, Amanda shares candidly about the ways her mother shaped h

I am filled with excitement and gratitude as I bring you this Episode #13, a solocast. It is an opportunity for me to reflect on the milestone of completing the first twelve episodes I set out to record when I launched the podcast, the common themes and lessons I have found among them, and the ways in which my life has been enriched as a result. I open with honesty about the challenge I had recording this solocast and how and why I decided to bring you an unedited second version, one in which I didn’t worry about flaws or strive for perfection. I also share a dedication with you to a woman whose words have been an anchor for me the last few months, Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés. I let you in on some areas in my life where I am feeling challenged and how I carefully selected topics and guests in the extended season, another six episodes, to support me in these areas. Finally, I let you know about a few ways you can lend your support, through spreading the news of the extended season utilizing my Thunderclap campa

In Episode #12, I am honored to share this enlightening conversation with Saadia Ahmed, who I reached out to after the recent executive order on immigration to find out how I could become an ally to the Muslim community. Saadia and her husband live in Los Gatos, California with their two children. She is a talented Financial Advisor serving high-level women professionals and entrepreneurs, couples and families. She is actively engaged in her local community, is a member of Watermark, and is passionate about issues and opportunities in the areas of education and empowerment of women. She is also a bridge builder, and in this episode, she shares that after 9/11, she became heavily involved in outreach for her community and proactively pursued inter-faith dialogue as a way to find common ground with others.   We talk about some of the stereotypes held about Muslim women, how she has stepped into and developed leadership among the women in her community, and our mutual desire to reach out beyond our bubble, with

I am excited to share this vulnerable conversation with the Truth Bomb Mom, Kristina Kuzmic. Energetic, funny, and honest, Kristina has an in-your-face perspective on issues of parenting and life in general. She has become a Youtube sensation with her “mom-centric” videos about raising children and juggling all of life’s challenges, with over 200 million views across media outlets and websites worldwide. Kristina and her husband currently live in Southern California, where her most important, rewarding, and exhausting careers include being a sanitation engineer, chef, chauffeur, and conflict resolution guru for her three (mostly satisfied) clients – her children. In this episode, we talk about Kristina’s experience growing up in America, shaped by an escape from war-torn Croatia. She shares how on a whim, she went from being a divorced mother on food stamps to winning a cooking show on Oprah’s OWN Network in 2011.  How her satirical YouTube video, “4 Reasons Women Should NEVER Breastfeed in Public,” went vira

I am thrilled to share this heartwarming conversation with Nancy Netherland, a healthcare advocate and a self-proclaimed mom-ologist with on-the-mom training in infectious disease, hepatology, rheumatology, gastrointestinology, and glitterology. Nancy is also a healer and an artist.  She is a mom to two mermaids ages 9 and 10 and works as a writer and data strategist for non-profit and safety-net healthcare entities. In the past five years, she has helped secure over $100-million in grant funding, influenced international policy, and provided research for publications and speeches presented before the UN, WHO and the US Congress. In our conversation, we explore how Nancy’s parents instilled a sense that anything is possible, something she has needed to draw on as she faced the loss of her husband and the serious, chronic illnesses of her daughters. She shares how she and her girls cultivate generosity and pay that generosity forward through something they created called “gratitools.” And, we talk about how sh

In this interview, I am excited to share a deeply personal and reflective conversation with Amber Lilyestrom, a transformational branding and business strategist, writer, speaker and host of The Soul Fueled CEO Podcast. Amber has also been a coach and champion for me as I’ve created Mother’s Quest and leads a community of soul-fueled CEO’s that has become an important source of support. From the moment she answers my first question, you will experience how Amber brings this combination of simultaneous vulnerability and crystal clarity. She brings those gifts along with her own trial and error experiences as an entrepreneur and mother to help visionaries, leaders and what she calls “disruptivators” turn their passions into heart-centered brands and thriving businesses. It was the birth of her daughter, and becoming a mother, that caused her to proactively design her life and business after working for 10 years in collegiate athletics marketing for her alma mater, the University of New Hampshire. And, it is her

In this interview, I am excited to share a thoughtful and honest conversation with wife, mother, freelance television anchor/reporter, volunteer for philanthropic causes and entrepreneur, Erika Greff. Erika lives in the heart of New York City with her husband and two sons, ages 13 and 12. I came to know her over the summer, when we were both grieving for the loss of our mutual friend, Leslie Fischer. Erika and I talk about how her boys comforted her the day of Leslie’s funeral and wanted to take positive action in Leslie’s honor that day. In our conversation, she shares the ways in which she and her husband have encouraged her sons to focus on empathy, gratitude and daily acts of service, which her sons document on a website they created called budgetphilanthropist.com. We also discuss how Erika has found herself at a career crossroads, after 18 years as an on-air correspondent for PBS’s Nightly Business Report. And, how freelance journalism has given her an opportunity to engage herself and her boys in consc

In Episode #7 of the Mother’s Quest Podcast, I am honored to bring you this intimate, inspired conversation with Jenjii Hysten, a mother, coach, and community leader who I deeply admire. I have known Jenjii for almost a decade now, through my connection with her husband Franklin. But in recent months, Jenjii’s raw and vulnerable sharing about what it is like to be the mother of two black boys and fear for their safety, caused me to move past my worry of saying or doing the wrong thing and reach out to her in a whole different way. Our honest conversation about the ways in which we’ve stepped out of our comfort zones to live out loud and forge connections with one another based on our common humanity, as mothers of sons, was one of the most powerful moments I have had yet on the Mother’s Quest Podcast.   Jenjii is an advocate, teacher, student, facilitator and a voice for the voiceless. She was born in Los Angeles but says that Oakland raised her. She studied Interdisciplinary-Studies with an emphasis on Urban

In this episode, I was honored to have a conversation with my children’s holistic pediatrician Dr. Elisa Song, founder of Whole Family Wellness, creator of the online resource Healthy Kids Happy Kids and an amazing mother to her daughter and son. If you tuned into Episode 5, you know Elisa gave me permission to replay her interview of me from her Thriving Child Summit, where we talked about my motherhood journey with my older son, how Elisa became a key part of the puzzle to help him thrive, and what led me to create Mother’s Quest. In this interview, I got to turn the tables and learn about the influences that shaped Elisa and how she approaches living an E.P.I.C. life. Elisa is a board-certified, Stanford-, NYU-, and UCSF-trained holistic pediatrician. In 2005, she forged a daring path, by going out on her own and founding Whole Family Wellness, an integrative pediatric practice in Belmont, CA – one of the first and most highly regarded holistic pediatric practices in the country. She’s also a lecturer for

This week, I am taking a break from podcasting for the holidays, so thought I would take this opportunity to bring you a previously recorded interview that was done of me by Dr. Elisa Song for her Thriving Child Summit. Elisa is my children’s pediatrician and the founder of Healthy Kids, Happy Kids, an online resource for pediatric holistic health which hosted the Summit. The conversation was an opportunity for me to reflect on my own experience as a parent, especially when we faced developmental delays and health challenges with my older son, how my experience leading a process called “reflection” inspired me to focus my coaching practice on mothers, and the inspiration and plans for Mother’s Quest in the months before the podcast launch.   I hope you will enjoy getting to learn a little more about me and my journey as a mother, and how moments of pause and reflection contribute to me living my E.P.I.C. life and helping my children to thrive. I think you will also enjoy hearing from Dr. Elisa Song and I look

In this episode, I’m honored to have a conversation with two amazing mothers to their 8 year old daughter, Oakland-based life and business partners Lynn Johnson and Allison Kenny. They are the co-founders of Spotlight: Girls, which celebrates and activates girls and women through multi-media learning experiences and products. Through their Go Girls! summer camps, after-school, and school break programs, elementary and middle school girls build social/emotional skills through acting, music, media, dance and visual arts activities. Lynn, the CEO of Spotlight: Girls, has over 25 years experience as a teaching artist working in diverse communities all over the United States.  She is a sought-after facilitator and speaker and serves on the National Advisory Board of Teaching Artists Guild and the Board of Directors of the How Kids Learn Foundation. Allison is a writer, blogger, and actor.  She is the author of Starring Celia - a chapter book about a 4th grade girl who goes from being bullied to becoming a Go Girl!

In this episode, I’m excited to be reunited with an old friend and former colleague, Rootopia founder Michelle Ratcliffe. Michelle is a farm to family specialist, who aims to help mothers raise happy, healthy kids and help our nation’s farmers prosper. She is a mom to two boys, and lives on a 4-acre farm near Portland, Oregon. As a first-generation American who struggled in school, digging in the earth and growing food grounded Michelle and turned her onto academics. Over the past 20 years, she’s been researching ways to get more local healthy foods on our plates and advocating for policy changes that would do that. Michelle earned her doctorate in Agriculture, Food and the Environment from Tufts University with research focused on the impacts of school gardening on adolescents. Her research into school gardening was vital to the gardening and childhood obesity efforts of First Lady Michelle Obama, which led to Michelle’s recent visit to the White House to celebrate the White House Kitchen Garden Dedication.

On this episode of Mother’s Quest, I had an opportunity to talk with an amazing mother, entrepreneur, TEDx speaker, and blogger, named Katherine Wintsch about bringing authenticity into our lives as women and mothers. Katherine is a nationally recognized expert on the topic of modern motherhood. As the founder and CEO of The Mom Complex, she advises major corporations on what mothers really need in order to create better products and services that make mothers lives easier. She writes about the highs and lows of motherhood in her blog, In All Honesty. Her TEDx talk titled, Unmasking Motherhood, uses spoken word to deliver a powerful call to action to mothers, and inspired me to let down my own mask, to be vulnerable and honest, through the creation of Mother’s Quest. In our conversation, Katherine shares how she learned to let go of people-pleasing and mommy guilt, and instead got curious, learned to love herself and designed a life that fulfills her. We talk about the power of revealing the truth about mothe

Welcome to the very first episode of the Mother’s Quest podcast! I am so honored to bring you this conversation with Navjit Kandola. Navjit is a spiritual adviser, educator, speaker, filmmaker, full-time mom, and the director of the Nizhoni School for Global Consciousness. Navjit works with clients to heal subconscious wounds, release anxiety and strain, identify habits that spiral into negative behaviors, and unblock stagnant energy in relationships and projects. It felt right to have my first conversation on the podcast with Navjit because she was one of the first people I reached out to after I decided to launch Mother’s Quest. I found her through Danielle LaPorte’s website. Danielle, another profoundly spiritual mother, who is also an entrepreneur, author and poet, is a long-time friend of Navjit’s and refers to Navjit as a masterful soul sister who is lucid as a diamond. I determined I needed some of that guidance and reached out to Navjit for a phone session. I proceeded to tell her about my desire t

Welcome to this introductory episode of the Mother’s Quest podcast. This solocast will give you a preview of what to expect in this twelve week season and reveal the stories behind Mother’s Quest E.P.I.C. framework, the podcast logo and the mantra that closes each show. This solocast, and the podcast that it officially kicks off, is a birthday present to myself. This milestone birthday, on December 1st, 2016, and the reflective and transformative experiences in the months preceding it, inspired me to start my quest and this podcast. For the first time in my life, I have the desire to create and share publicly something deeply personal; to use and share my voice; to commit to something I am calling my E.P.I.C. life; and to build a community to support me and other mothers along the way.  In the episodes that will follow, I interview other mothers to learn their words of wisdom. But this episode is an opportunity for me to use my own voice and share some lessons I’ve learned since the moment I decided to cross