Notes on Resilience

Send us a textResilience shows up in the small choices that restore steadiness after a hard season, and in the rare moments when private truth reshapes public policy. As we mark three years of the show, I share the unexpected chapter that changed my professional life: partnering with Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley on the Post-Disaster Mental Health Response Act. The work was slow and human. It demanded a shaky voice, persistent calls, and an insistence that survivor stories deserve visibility, validation, and a central place in how we write the rules.Across nearly 150 conversations of this podcast, a pattern emerged. Guests rarely used the word resilience, yet everything they described—uncertainty, identity, responsibility, care—mapped to it. No one glorified pushing through pain for its own sake; instead they talked about decisions that led back to wholeness, connection, and stability. Behind the mic, that meant a different kind of craft: research that honors nuance, questions that protect context, editing that preserves dignity, and a steady presence when a guest shares something fragile. The outcome is a lens on how people rebuild and how systems can help or hinder that process.We also look forward. The next phase introduces a produced narrative series exploring decisions and turning points that communities use to make sense of loss and progress, alongside episodes shaped by a survivor’s lens—people who have lived through disruption and can articulate what it reveals about culture and responsibility. Through these formats, we’ll keep centering lived experience and tracing the quiet truths that drive meaningful change. Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!Start for FREESupport the show__________ Producer / Editor: Neel PanjiInvite Manya to inspire and empower your teams and position your organization as a forward-thinking leader in well-being, resilience, and trauma sensitivity.Please subscribe, rate, and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your listening platform of choice. It really helps others find us.#trauma #resilience #compassion #MentalHealth #CompassionateLeadership #leadership #survivor

Send us a textWhat if the choices that define you arrive sideways—on an ordinary day, without a plan, and ask you to cross a threshold you never imagined existed? We pull together standout moments from season three to explore how our identifies can change in real time: a spontaneous dance on a Paris stage, a living kidney donation made without hesitation, a tattoo on trust, a climb up Mount Fuji in a typhoon, a first book from someone who once believed reading wasn’t for him, and a grueling Camino that stitched life back together after isolation.We start with the spark: an unexpected invitation to step into the light and say yes. From there, guests show resilience in many forms. Along the way, we reflect on how resilience often lies in small decisions, not just in times of crisis. The episode invites you to notice your own thresholds: the places where you stretched, adapted, and discovered strength you didn’t know you had. These stories aren’t polished origin myths; they’re honest, human snapshots of change. They show how meaning is made after the fact, when we look back and realize a choice turned out to be a turning point.If these reflections spark your own: What is one thing you did this year that you never imagined for yourself. Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!Start for FREESupport the show__________ Producer / Editor: Neel PanjiInvite Manya to inspire and empower your teams and position your organization as a forward-thinking leader in well-being, resilience, and trauma sensitivity.Please subscribe, rate, and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your listening platform of choice. It really helps others find us.#trauma #resilience #compassion #MentalHealth #CompassionateLeadership #leadership #survivor

Send us a textSilence protects bullies.We sit down with Kim Williams—veteran HR executive, survivor of workplace abuse, and founder of the Fair Path Project—to unpack how brilliant jerks get shielded, why moral injury cuts deeper than most leaders realize, and what it takes to turn empathy into accountability.Kim explains how fear operates at every level: employees fear retaliation, HR fears litigation, and executives fear losing a top performer. We examine the leverage that drives organizations—EPLI insurance exposure, workers' compensation for psychological harm, turnover costs, productivity loss, and even share price risk when toxic cultures are exposed in the press. If you’ve ever wondered how to quantify the brilliant jerk tax, this conversation is for you.We also explore policy as a catalyst. Current frameworks require proving intent, a bar so high it keeps most targets unprotected. The Workplace Psychological Safety Act reframes abuse by decoupling harm from intent and recognizing psychological injury as real, documentable damage. Kim shares why hundreds of organizations support the effort and how advocates are engaging lawmakers to move beyond empathy-driven PR toward enforceable standards. Along the way, we find hope in Gen Z’s refusal to accept broken norms and in practical tools that automate documentation and surface patterns early.If you’re an HR pro ready to lead, a manager looking for scripts that de-escalate, or an executive determined to protect both people and performance, this episode offers a clear playbook: care for your nervous system, document precisely, use leverage wisely, and act consistently. Kim Williams is the speaker and advocate, spokesperson for End Workplace Abuse, and the founder of the Fair Path Project to confront the silent epidemic of workplace bullying and to help employees reclaim dignity at work. A veteran HR executive and survivor of workplace abuse, she witnessed firsthand how workplace culture, gaslighting, and retaliation harm not only individuals but entire organizations. Determined to create change, Kim transformed her lived experience into a mission of accountability and healing. She equips employees with tools to document abuse, protect their rights, and recover their confidence, while guiding employers toward cultures rooted in psychological safety and integrity.LinkedIn Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!Start for FREESupport the show__________ Producer / Editor: Neel PanjiInvite Manya to inspire and empower your teams and position your organization as a forward-thinking leader in well-being, resilience, and trauma sensitivity.Please subscribe, rate, and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your listening platform of choice. It really helps others find us.#trauma #resilience #compassion #MentalHealth #CompassionateLeadership #leadership #survivor

Send us a textWhat if the fastest path to better outcomes is a renewed commitment to empathy you can actually teach, measure, and scale? We sit down with Dr. Helen Riess—Harvard Medical School psychiatrist, founder of Empathetics, and author of The Empathy Effect—to unpack the science that turns the so-called soft skills into hard results.Helen shares the journey from lab to classroom to enterprise, including a rigorously tested empathy curriculum that improved patient experience and shifted workplace dynamics. The numbers tell a powerful story: in a cohort of 500 clinicians, those who completed empathy training had an 83% higher retention rate. We dig into why that happens and talk about the elephant in the room: a healthcare system straining under factory-like pressures, where new nurses often arrive unprepared, mentorship is thin, and burnout feels inevitable.Helen explains why culture change starts when leaders practice self-empathy and model curiosity, perspective-taking, and honest optimism. We map practical moves that make empathy operational: structured feedback, micro-recognition, mentoring time, and training. This conversation applies to any business that prioritizes the customer, while treating employees as mere functions; caring for people isn’t a detour from performance—it’s the engine.If you’re ready to replace cynicism with connection, and checkboxes with real behavior change, you’ll leave with a roadmap grounded in neuroscience and proven in practice. Helen Riess, M.D. is the founder and Chief Medical Officer of Empathetics. She is also a clinical professor and research psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School, the author of The Empathy Effect, and is a core member of the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations. She has devoted her career to teaching and research in the art and science of the patient-doctor relationship. You can connect with her on LinkedIn. Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!Start for FREESupport the show__________ Producer / Editor: Neel PanjiInvite Manya to inspire and empower your teams and position your organization as a forward-thinking leader in well-being, resilience, and trauma sensitivity.Please subscribe, rate, and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your listening platform of choice. It really helps others find us.#trauma #resilience #compassion #MentalHealth #CompassionateLeadership #leadership #survivor

Send us a textCrisis leadership is about recognizing reality faster than everyone else. And telling the truth when it’s hardest. We sit down with Samantha Montano—associate professor of emergency management and author of Disasterology—to unpack what actually works when the stakes are life and death. From Katrina’s painful lessons to the East Palestine train derailment and the long haul of COVID, she traces a thread through delayed recognition, top-down blind spots, and the corrosive impact of mistrust.Samantha breaks down the habits that separate effective responders from well-meaning bystanders: identify a crisis quickly, listen to the people closest to the ground, decide with clarity, and stay flexible as facts change.We also talk about what we owe survivors after the cameras leave: rigorous after-action reviews that identify what failed—codes, policies, infrastructure—and commit to real fixes. Samantha shares practical ways to navigate the misinformation by pre-identifying credible experts and transparent sources before a crisis hits. There’s hope here too: a new wave of students stepping into emergency management with clear eyes about climate risk and a drive to build systems worthy of public trust.If you care about disaster response, public communication, or leading under pressure, this conversation offers concrete frameworks and hard-won wisdom. Dr. Samantha Montano is an associate professor of emergency management at Massachusetts Maritime Academy, co-founder of Disaster Researchers for Justice and the Center for Climate Adaptation Research, and the author of Disasterology: Dispatches from The Frontlines of The Climate Crisis.BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/samlmontano.bsky.social Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!Start for FREESupport the show__________ Producer / Editor: Neel PanjiInvite Manya to inspire and empower your teams and position your organization as a forward-thinking leader in well-being, resilience, and trauma sensitivity.Please subscribe, rate, and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your listening platform of choice. It really helps others find us.#trauma #resilience #compassion #MentalHealth #CompassionateLeadership #leadership #survivor

Send us a textFear rewires leadership in the moments that matter most. We sit down with Melissa Agnes, keynote speaker, author of Crisis Ready, and a shaper of ISO 22361, to explore how leaders can move from survival mode to creation mode when the stakes are high. Melissa shares why so many teams cling to the concept of getting back to normal after disruption, and how that reflex can stall recovery when normal created the problem. Her antidote: embodied leadership, daily regulation, and a culture that turns readiness into a default, not a wish.We dig into the science of fear and why your thoughts aren’t always trustworthy under stress. We talk about grief as a mix of loss, longing, and feeling lost—and how addressing grief openly builds trust and momentum. From co-regulating a room with a calm nervous system to designing four levels of safety—physical, emotional, psychological, operational—Melissa maps out practical steps any leader can use to stabilize teams.Crisis readiness, as Melissa defines it, blends mindset, skill set, and organizational capabilities so you fall to strong training instead of weak habits. That means practicing vulnerability, clarifying values, and running honest after-action reviews that actually change how you operate. The result is a healthier culture and leaders who show up as whole people at work and at home.Melissa Agnes is a speaker, the founder of Crisis Ready Institute and creator of the Crisis Ready® Certification, and is recognized as a Top 40 Thought Leader in Security & Life Safety (2025). She helped shape international crisis management standards as a panel member for ISO 22361 and is the author of Crisis Ready: Building an Invincible Brand in an Uncertain World. You can connect with and learn more about Melissa on LinkedIn or Instagram. Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!Start for FREESupport the show__________ Producer / Editor: Neel PanjiInvite Manya to inspire and empower your teams and position your organization as a forward-thinking leader in well-being, resilience, and trauma sensitivity.Please subscribe, rate, and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your listening platform of choice. It really helps others find us.#trauma #resilience #compassion #MentalHealth #CompassionateLeadership #leadership #survivor

Send us a textNews travels faster than your approval chain—so who speaks for you when it matters most? We sit down with crisis management consultant Suzanne Bernier to unpack what effective leadership looks like under pressure. The conversation quickly turns practical: why a team-led model outperforms lone-wolf leadership, how to select a spokesperson who naturally projects trust, and when to move the CEO out of the spotlight and into a strategic command seat.We discuss the move from traditional business continuity to operational resilience. Suzanne lays out the cadence of preparedness—annual exercises, quarterly scenario walk-throughs, and clear incident management roles that prevent overload and duplication. The goal is a living system where strategy, operations, and communications work in sync.Communication is the decisive edge. The first message out shapes public understanding, so waiting for perfect certainty invites misinformation to fill the gap. Suzanne shows how to build legal-safe messages in advance, define what can be said without risking the investigation, and empower a spokesperson trained to connect with empathy and clarity. Real stories from survivors and responders bring the lessons home, making risk tangible and action urgent. We close with big news: the Disaster Heroes podcast is coming back—this time co-hosted—bringing frontline voices from around the world to the mic.If this conversation helps sharpen your crisis playbook, follow the show, share it with a colleague, and leave a review with the one change you’ll make to your plan this week.Suzanne Bernier has been making resilience relevant since 1997. A former journalist and government press secretary, Suzanne is now an international, multi-certified, award-winning crisis management trainer, speaker, and author. She is currently the Vice President of the Resilience Information Exchange (RIE) - Toronto Chapter and a faculty member of both DRI International and DRI Canada.She is the author of Disaster Heroes, a book that highlights the stories of ordinary individuals who have made extraordinary contributions during disasters. You can learn more about Suzanne on her website or LinkedIn. Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!Start for FREESupport the show__________ Producer / Editor: Neel PanjiInvite Manya to inspire and empower your teams and position your organization as a forward-thinking leader in well-being, resilience, and trauma sensitivity.Please subscribe, rate, and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your listening platform of choice. It really helps others find us.#trauma #resilience #compassion #MentalHealth #CompassionateLeadership #leadership #survivor

Send us a textAnxiety doesn’t mean you’re broken; it means you care. When stakes rise, that surge of energy can sharpen focus, rally teams, and improve decisions—if you know how to work with it. We sit down with Harvard Medical School psychologist David Rosmarin to unpack a practical, research-grounded approach any leader can use to turn anxious moments into traction.David explains what anxiety really is—both the body’s activation and the mind’s appraisal of threat—and why chasing zero anxiety backfires. Instead, he offers a clear framework. We also talk about the cultural shift organizations need: stop pathologizing normal stress and start building simple rituals that make conversation safe and useful. From a team paralyzed by AI fears to a company-wide workshop that turned nerves into unity, David demonstrates how reframing anxiety as evidence of care can transform outcomes.You’ll learn a straightforward scale to gauge everyday activation versus clinical concern, how to run quick check-ins that reduce silence and guesswork, and why leaders who pretend they’re never anxious often drive unhealthy coping across a team. The result is a playbook for resilience: fewer knee-jerk decisions, more clarity in crisis, and a culture that treats uncertainty as a space for skill, not shame.Dr. David Rosmarin, PhD is a Harvard psychologist, keynote speaker, and founder of Center for Anxiety and the author of Thriving with Anxiety: 9 Tools to Make Your Anxiety Work for You. He is a trusted expert who delivers insightful, science-backed commentary with clarity and compassion. He has been featured in TIME, The Harvard Gazette, Good Morning America, over 40 leading podcasts, and has delivered two widely viewed TEDx talks.Visit his website or connect with him on LinkedIn. Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!Start for FREESupport the show__________ Producer / Editor: Neel PanjiInvite Manya to inspire and empower your teams and position your organization as a forward-thinking leader in well-being, resilience, and trauma sensitivity.Please subscribe, rate, and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your listening platform of choice. It really helps others find us.#trauma #resilience #compassion #MentalHealth #CompassionateLeadership #leadership #survivor

Send us a textA cargo plane cockpit isn’t the first place most people look for lessons on software leadership—until you hear what happens when a co-pilot stays silent. A single dismissive moment can shut down a voice and invite disasterIn this episode, I talk with Nate Amidon, founder and CEO of Form 100 Consulting Today, about how trust, humility, and psychological safety turn complex, invisible work into predictable results, and why compassionate leadership is a performance advantage.We explore what it means to pull out the best thinking from your team, and map the small behaviors that create psychological safety. We also dig into the unique challenges of a software business, where the work is hidden behind screens and pipelines. You can’t walk a factory floor to spot a stalled widget; you need people to surface risk early. Finally, we connect compassion to alignment: clear goals, plain-language requirements, and feedback loops that let executives and engineers row in the same direction.If you care about building resilient teams, scaling delivery without burnout, and creating a culture where people actually speak up, this conversation is for you. Listen, and share with a manager you know who could benefit. Nate Amidon is the founder and CEO of Form100 Consulting, a veteran-owned and veteran-staffed technology consulting firm that brings military leadership principles to software development organizations. Nate has spent over 20 years serving in the Air Force as a C-17 pilot in both active duty and reserve capacities. His experience leading C-17 crews and planning large military exercises provided the basis for Form100 Consulting’s approach. When not collaborating with clients, you’ll find him chasing trout with a flyrod or skiing on the slopes of the Rocky Mountains. You can connect with Nate and learn more about him on LinkedIn. Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!Start for FREESupport the show__________ Producer / Editor: Neel PanjiInvite Manya to inspire and empower your teams and position your organization as a forward-thinking leader in well-being, resilience, and trauma sensitivity.Please subscribe, rate, and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your listening platform of choice. It really helps others find us.#trauma #resilience #compassion #MentalHealth #CompassionateLeadership #leadership #survivor

Send us a textResilience isn’t about being unbreakable. We sit down with Dr. Jordan Smoller—psychiatrist, epidemiologist, and geneticist at Harvard and Mass General—to discuss resilience as adaptation and explore why naming harm matters, how acknowledgment from leaders reduces isolation, and the real-world steps that transform empathy into trust.Jordan brings a blend of clinical experience and research leadership to questions many of us have: When does a normal response to trauma become a condition that needs care? How do we balance the language of diagnosis with the need to reduce stigma? We dig into the complexity of mental health science, from brain and body to relationships and social context, and tackle the systems-level issues that shape recovery: access to mental health care, workforce shortages, insurance barriers, and the political currents that complicate meaningful change. Jordan argues for two parallel commitments: immediate access to effective support and sustained investment in research that turns innovation into implementation. If you’re ready for a grounded, hopeful take on resilience, mental health research, and the power of being seen, this conversation offers perspective and practical insight. Subscribe, share with someone who needs it, and leave a review with your answer to one question: what change would make the biggest difference for mental health where you live?Dr. Jordan Smoller is a psychiatrist, epidemiologist, and geneticist whose research focus has been understanding the genetic and environmental determinants of psychiatric disorders across the lifespan and using big data to advance precision mental health including improved methods to reduce risk and enhance resilience. He is Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, Professor in Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and the Jerrold F. Rosenbaum Endowed Chair in Psychiatry and Director of the Center for Precision Psychiatry at  Massachusetts General Hospital, among many other roles. He is also the author of The Other Side of Normal (HarperCollins/William Morrow, 2012). Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!Start for FREESupport the show__________ Producer / Editor: Neel PanjiInvite Manya to inspire and empower your teams and position your organization as a forward-thinking leader in well-being, resilience, and trauma sensitivity.Please subscribe, rate, and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your listening platform of choice. It really helps others find us.#trauma #resilience #compassion #MentalHealth #CompassionateLeadership #leadership #survivor