How does growing up in foster care shape you as a leader? Chéla Gage is the former Vice President Global Chief Inclusion & Diversity Officer, workforce mental health advocate, inclusion expert, and host of the 1 Million Fosters podcast. Gage joins Morra to share how her childhood in foster care shaped her strengths as a leader, her reflections on anxiety and hypervigilance as an asset, and how she’s transforming trauma into purpose.
Chéla’s journey from foster homes and group homes to senior leadership roles at Nissan, Raytheon, and Starbucks is a testament to the power of claiming your story. She shares how her upbringing honed her ability to read a room, anticipate challenges, and build belonging, skills that have made her invaluable in corporate spaces.
Learn more about Chéla Gage: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chelagage/
Key Themes:
✅ Hypervigilance as Leadership Strength: Growing up navigating new homes and caregivers taught Chéla to read the room quickly, identify influencers, and trust her intuition—skills she now uses to drive business impact.
✅ Reframing Trauma into Purpose: Chéla discusses how she once felt shame about her foster care past but now sees it as her superpower, providing her with empathy and perspective leaders need.
✅ Parenting as Reparenting: Motherhood allowed Chéla to give the love she didn’t receive as a child back to herself.
✅ The Role of Anxiety: Anxiety kept Chéla alert and prepared, but she learned to manage in therapy, to reduce constant threat scanning and burnout while embracing her “hypervigilance” as a leadership tool.
✅ Creating Belonging in Corporate Spaces: Through her career in recruiting and DEIB leadership, Chéla discovered the importance of recognizing and honoring people’s whole stories, not just their resumes, to create true inclusion.
Timestamps:
07:09 Hypervigilance as a Superpower
12:59 Transforming Pain into Purpose
18:40 The Role of Anxiety: A Double-Edged Sword
24:14 Inclusion and Belonging
29:51 The Impact of Personal Stories
34:50 Empowering the Foster Community
