Clover: Conversations with Women in Leadership on Visibility, Authority & Owning the Room

What happens when a creative mind, a startup operator, a cancer survivor, and a humanitarian all live inside the same person? In this episode of Clover, I sit down with Melissa Wood, founder of Formis and Curate, to explore the winding path that led her from a small town in North Carolina to the startup ecosystem in Austin. Melissa’s story spans early tech startups, design and photography, turning down life-changing opportunities, surviving cancer, humanitarian work in Ethiopia, and building ...

In this episode of Clover, I sit down with Rosa Yupari, former Chief Revenue Officer turned fractional CRO and sales advisor, to talk about what actually drives sustainable revenue growth — and why so many companies stall long before they realize it. Rosa shares her journey from engineering into sales, scaling teams to nearly $100M in revenue, and eventually stepping away from corporate leadership to build a practice rooted in mentoring, coaching, and real-world strategy. This is a candid, ta...

As January begins, many leaders feel pressure to move quickly; setting goals, making plans, defining the year ahead. In this solo episode of Clover, I pause that momentum and turn toward discernment. I share the habits, expectations, and patterns I’m choosing to leave behind, and how releasing what no longer fits creates capacity for clearer leadership. You’ll hear reflections on over-carrying, availability, certainty, and urgency, along with practical prompts to notice where weight has quiet...

More than a decade ago, I wrote The Snow Globe, a middle-grade novel about courage, belonging, and discovering strength you didn’t know you had. I wrote it before I had kids, before many of the leadership experiences that now shape my life. For years, the manuscript sat quietly as my life changed around it. Two years ago, I was ready to self-publish. The book had been edited. The cover was complete. And then someone asked me a single question: Is it your best work? The honest answer forced me...

In this episode of Clover, I sit down with fellow Austinite, community builder, and multi-pivot queen Heather Trumpfheller for a conversation that hits on career, identity, sobriety, boundaries, and what it really means to build community with intention. We talk about: Her winding career path & permission to pivotGrowing up a storytelling-obsessed kid in Dallas, studying broadcast journalism at Mizzou, and working at an NBC stationThe scary identity shift of leaving journalism, trying PR,...

In this episode of Clover, I sit down with my former teammate Jordan Lea, now VP of Customer Experience at Plum, to talk about bold career leaps, people-first leadership, and building a meaningful career on your own terms. Jordan shares her journey from a tiny town in North Carolina with dirt roads and cornfields to moving to New York City with no job lined up, flying standby for interviews, taking an unpaid internship in fashion, becoming employee #5 at a fashion tech startup, and eventually...

In this episode, I sit down with mortgage industry veteran and coach Carrie Guarrero to trace a three-decade career built on service, community, and relentless growth. Carrie shares how an 11-year-old’s flyer route in her mom’s mortgage office became a billion-dollar origination career—and why the trophies eventually mattered less than the names and stories behind each loan. She opens up about a career “pause” that didn’t go as planned, the humbling return that led her to Fairway, and how tha...

For years, women in leadership have been told to “find balance” — as if the secret to thriving careers, healthy families, and full lives could fit neatly into a color-coded planner. But what if balance isn’t the goal at all? What if it’s the trap? In this solo episode of Clover, I unpack the myth of balance — how it was sold to women as a shiny standard we could never meet, and why it’s time to let it go for good. From early-morning Zoom calls in yesterday’s t-shirt to late-night Slack pings ...