The Culture Soup Podcast®️

The Culture Soup Podcast® – Women’s History Month Episode

Show Notes - The Culture Soup Podcast In this episode, host L. Michelle Smith takes us on a reflective journey back to 2018, when she first launched The Culture Soup Podcast. She shares how an unexpected speaking career and a chance encounter led her to create both a podcast and a book, despite corporate challenges. She then shifts focus to the present, discussing the impact of recent executive orders on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), particularly in the corporate and federal sectors. With canceled sponsorships and shifting priorities, Michelle emphasizes resilience in times of uncertainty, urging leaders to embrace change as an opportunity for growth. Additionally, she delves into the power of artificial intelligence (AI) in leadership and decision-making, highlighting its potential beyond content generation. She teases upcoming AI workshops designed to help leaders integrate AI into their businesses strategically. Tune in for an engaging discussion on navigating change, leveraging AI, and strengthening resilience as a leader in today’s fast-moving world.

In this episode, I take time to reflect on 5 lessons I've learned over the past five years of running my professional private coaching practice. We are celebrating NSC Coaching's 5th anniversary all this month, and we are also observing International Coaching Week. Listen for what I learned along this journey so far about perseverance, determination, focus, relationships and other important lessons that you can take away for your journey as well. I also tease a big announcement that's forth coming. It's a special episode, so tune in!

In this episode, I take time to reflect on 5 lessons I've learned over the past five years of running my professional private coaching practice. We are celebrating NSC Coaching's 5th anniversary all this month, and we are also observing International Coaching Week. Listen for what I learned along this journey so far about perseverance, determination, focus, relationships and other important lessons that you can take away for your journey as well. I also tease a big announcement that's forth coming. It's a special episode, so tune in!

In 2019, I did what many corporate types would call "the unthinkable." I walked away from opportunities at a Fortune 10 after being "surplussed" without a job lined up. Sure, I had opportunities externally. Yes, I had a seedling of a business that I had started, but I wanted to take the time to think through my next step methodically. I had a mission that only a few were aware of, and that drove me to seek out the one thing that I needed to activate it. Could I do it and remain in corporate? I had interested organizations telling me that I could do both-pursue my calling to author books and speak across the country and internationally and work for them. But I knew that would eventually cause friction. I'd lived it already. That one piece was missing that would activate my mission, and a scroll through Instagram and an ad from a longtime sisterfriend and former client would ultimately become the the gateway to my destiny. I let that sisterfriend turn the tables on me this week, and I thought it would be great to finally share my story: how I went from there...to here, five years later with a thriving, global executive and personal coaching and consulting practice, a publishing journey that has been extraordinary and the speaker tour that began in 2015 and has yet to end. What took me from a 25+ year-long career in strategic communication, agency side, agency owner, and client side to here? I pass Valorie Burton, MAPP, MCC the mic on my show, The Culture Soup Podcast ® as she featured me in her global preview call for The Coaching and Positive Psychology (CaPP) Institute. That is where I earned my certification that would tee me up for credentialing at the world's most respected coaching organizations, International Coaching Federation. I began with her Coach Training Intensive (CTI). So it's befitting that I allowed Valorie to throw back the covers on my purpose-driven story. My pen as my sword, my speaking as my munitions, evidence-based coaching, I discovered, would ultimately become my armor. Join me and Val for this inspiring and powerful conversation about what it actually takes to take on coaching as a profession in this special, extended video edition of The Culture Soup Podcast ® brought to you in part by The CaPP Institute. We're continuing to celebrate the five years anniversary of NSC Coaching, and six years for the podcast with this exclusive rebroadcast of "Conversation with a Coach", and it streams everywhere Thursday afternoon.

Where have I been? What have I been up to, you ask? This episode will catch you up, and drop some Nuggets that you probably weren't expecting.

This special episode is dual streamed and sponsored by The Culture Soup Podcast(r) and PR Yourself Podcast with Leah Frazier who is my guest host for today's show. It is a replay of the DFW Book Signing for Yes Please! 7 Ways to Say I'm Entitled to the C-Suite. It was recorded before a live audience. Listen to part one of the Fireside chat between myself and Leah and then tune in to Part 2 on TCSP After The Show, exclusively on Apple Podcasts. It includes more of the conversation, my reading from the book and the Q&A, which took a surprising and delightful turn. TCSP After the Show is available on a subscription basis. Subscribe today! #YesPleaseBook #TCSPAfterTheShow #TheCultureSoupPodcast

Ever finally get that sponsor and your high hopes are dashed because they just didn't deliver? My conversation with Dr. Christopher Butts, Learning & Development and DEI expert and a voice in my upcoming book Yes Please! 7 Ways to Say I'm Entitled to the C-Suite...we delve into the idea of sponsors who just aren't cutting the mustard and more reasons why Black women are stalled on their way to the C-Suite in droves. Check out part 2 of my conversation, and be sure to preorder the Kindle version of the book on Amazon leading up to pub day on Jun 15. Also, don't miss next week's episode where special guest host Condace Pressley of WSB-TV in Atlanta turns the mic around on me and special gues Dr. Jeff Gardere, America's Psychologist for a lively conversation about the book! #TheCultureSoupPodcast #YesPleaseBook #WomenLeaders

I grabbed some much needed catch-time with my friend Dr. Christopher Butts, Learning & Development and DEI Expert to talk about themes from my upcoming book, Yes Please! 7 Ways to Say I'm Entitled to the C-Suite. He is one of the expert voices in the book, and we discuss the pitfalls of sponsorship, especially for Black women and other women of color and what allies can do to step up fill these crucial gaps. We get pretty specific too. I hope you're ready.

Let's take a look back at my conversation with one f the world's most loved historians, Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. This takes us back to Episode 51 where we discuss his hit show Finding Your Roots and his journey to the show.

Let's talk CULTURE...and when I say culture--I mean the ARTS! I'm throwing it back to one of my favorite episodes as I wrap up a year-long engagement with one of my favorite clients, Lyric Opera Chicago and round the corner on my last term on the board of Opera America. One of the most acclaimed mezzo sopranos of our time is joining me on The Culture Soup Podcast®, and I’m so proud to call her friend! She debuted at the Metropolitan Opera, She’s sung for multiple Presidents. She is on the faculty at Juilliard. She even sang at the home going of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and she is on a mission to tell the story of Black people in opera. Meet the prolific and lovely Denyce Graves-Montgomery! She is the Founder of the Denyce Graves Foundation of which I am an advisory board member, and she is dedicated to telling the stories of Black people in Opera that you’ve never heard before. Tune in on Thursday to hear our conversation where we talk about the importance of seeing Black people in all aspects of Opera…from the stage to the composers, librettists and directors. We also talk about the importance of telling Black stories and seeing Black artist play characters that aren’t historically cast that way. It’s on this throwback episode of The Culture Soup Podcast®.

Women+ leaders in tech have access to sponsors, at the same rate as their male counterparts. That isn't the issue. It's that once women have sponsors, what happens next is often very different. There is also some discrepancies in titles between the genders. Both become obstacles for women leaders who are looking to walk in their power in rooms and at tables as they aspire to E- and C-Suite roles. That's a preview of just a couple of the findings in new research from Dr. Diana B. Allen, Empowerment Champion and Senior Cyber Security Expert. She is also yet another of my fantastic ELC Strategic Pathways sisters. Catch part one on of her episode of The Culture Soup Podcast on Thursday! #podcastsofLinkedin #womenintech #womenleaders

In this current touch-and-go environment, both economically and socially, what should leaders consider now? I speak to inclusive leadership & psychological safety expert Sacha Thompson, ACC the founder of The Equity Equation and faculty member of SOAR Women’s Leadership Academy about it. Join us Thursday March 16, streaming everywhere podcasts play, and live at noon across all of my social platforms. And don’t forget to subscribe to the bonus content, TCSP After the Show & DUETS. Sacha and I are members of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Incorporated...and we have a little Soror talk.

This week's episode is all about the message that keeps on giving. It's the message that organization after organization continues to ask for. It's all about knowing your value and how it's a powerful tool in your life and leadership aspirations. We dive in deep as I broadcast from Washington D.C. at the Executive Leadership Council's Mid-level Management Symposium where I delivered the talk twice--once as a keynote in a standing-room only session of about 200+ professionals and once virtually to hundreds more. Be enriched.

Ever considered how language can be leveraged to dictate the rules of a culture? Tonight's episode of The Culture Soup Podcast® is a Coaching Corner episode, and we discuss exactly how that it happens in world events and the workplace and what that works to the detriment of those who are not centered. We also take a deeper dive into today't #YesPlease Ask Me Anything question: How do you get opportunity to pursue you instead of the other way around. Get your journals ready to explore your actions on both topics, and I will also share some of NSC Coaching news and the latest on my recent and upcoming speaking and book signing experiences. Episode 172 drops later tonight. Ask Siri, Alexa, Google or Spotify to play the latest episode of The Culture Soup Podcast®, so simply look for it on any of the great podcast platforms. Thanks for your patience. We had to navigate some tech issues, but we're here!! #tech #culture #executivecoaching

Today's show begins with a special message from me from the #NABJNAHJ22 Convention as I prepare for my booksigning this afternoon at Caesar's Palace. Then we dive deep on a topic that seems to have some people in their feelings. That topic is the browning of America. Let's face it, some people just despise the thought that our country is changing, but the numbers don't lie, so what does that mean for media and the way people consume it? That is shifting too. But with today's touchy environment, how has it impacted how this message is being received in the corporate realm? I talk to my friend, media and marketing insights expert Adriana Waterston . She discusses how the temperature has shifted even in the corporate towers. While there has absolutely been a desire to do more with their content as it pertains to inclusion, some have resisted what's real—and that's the data. The data doesn't lie. We also learn what these multicultural audiences are saying about the content they are seeing and how it impacts their feelings. It's from some research that you will learn more about in my upcoming book, Yes, Please! 7 Ways to Say I'm Entitled to the C-Suite: Secrets Women of Color Need to Know Now to Find Their Happy and Thrive in an Exclusive Corporate Culture, as we look at the power of positive emotion to impact one's success.

If you're a longtime listener, you know that when it gets a little crazy in our culture, I phone a friend. Episode 170 is no exception. I don't know about you, but after putting $112 dollars in my tank, hearing more of my friends and family contract Covid, still tearing up about Buffalo and Uvalde and the many mass shootings since, and watching parts of the January 6 hearings...it was time to dial up a bestie. Eva Green Wilson, my soror and sisterfriend for more than 25 years joins me on The Culture Soup Podcast®️ tonight as we discuss how the wheels have literally come off the wagon in our world. Join us as we explore everything from the January 6 hearings, the pandemic, monkey pox, wars and rumors of them, the sweltering heat across the country, gas prices and inflation, anti-Blackness, gun violence, bored-in-the-house-and-being-in-the-house bored and parenting through it all. We even answer the burning question: which are we ready for now, zombies or locusts... because it's getting Biblical out there. And I wouldn't be a good coach if I didn't close the show by asking what's the opportunity in it all. The answer may surprise you. Eva Wilson, J.D. is an entrepreneur, creator and mom and the founder of The SocaMom Summit. She is the best-known Caribbean parenting blogger and has even been seen on Oprah...yes, THAT version of the show. Ask Alexa and Siri to play the latest episode, or stream it whereever you find your favorite podcasts. This special, extended edition starts streaming this evening after 6 p.m. CT. #tech #business #culture

e're carrying a very heavy load as leaders these days, so I'm speaking directly to you on Thursday's episode of The Culture Soup Podcast®️, The Coaching Corner. We're going back to our roots with all audio streams for the summer, and we are kicking off with three hot topics that are important to you as high-performing leaders: ✔️Dealing with the barrage of gun violence and the trauma we all feel as leaders as a result of the tragedies ✔️Annual reviews—what to do when you receive a scathing one and you suspect that its personal, and finally ✔️ Discussing what's really behind the hesitancy to return to the workplace—what’s behind companies who are pushing for it and what leaders are saying We'll even touch on the Juneteenth holiday and what leaders are grappling with nationwide when it comes to how to commemorate or celebrate it despite a tremendous knowledge gap on the topic. It's just you and me, keeping it

What does it take to be a bosswoman in radio? Kim Nelson-Ingram has her own approach, and it is high octane. She is at the helm at one to the nation's top syndicated morning shows, The Ricky Smiley Morning Show, and she sometimes does two cities in one day, even as a busy mom and wife! But she had a great mentor who modeled that for her, none other than the legendary Tom Joyner, The Fly Jock himself. Hear the story of how she landed in radio and took flight with Mr. Joyner on the first Black syndicated radio show...and continues the voyage with none other than the hysterical Ricky Smiley. I also share about my adventure on the very first broadcast of that show and how Mr. Joyner touched my life--guess which huge music icon I got to interview for the TV station?? Part two of my conversations with Kim airs this evening on The Culture Soup Podcast®, streaming in more than 70 countries and nearly every continent on Thursdays. I have all the women in tech on this podcast, including Siri, Alexa and Google.

When Kim Nelson-Ingram graduated from Florida A&M University, she wanted to be in TV, but little did she know that her first job search would land her in some incredible roles in the world of radio, making history too, and eventually as a children's book author with a vision for more. Her message is simple, and she's lived by it: You can BEE anything. It's a mantra that comes from an unlikely source. Meet my friend Kim. She is the author of an inspiring new children's book you'll want to get your hands on and she is the Executive Producer, the woman in charge, of The Ricky Smiley Morning Show. We talk about all the behind the scenes of publishing a children's book and some inside skinny on big-time syndicated radio, including some shoutouts to syndicated radio legend Tom Joyner.