The Leap: Women Who Built It Anyway

What does it actually take to build something of your own? In this compilation episode, we bring together eight voices from the Path Found archive — eight women who started businesses without a playbook, an MBA, or anyone’s permission. Their seeds were rarely what you’d expect: a friend’s move during COVID, a whisper at a niece’s birth, a bike commute in uncomfortable jeans, a journal full of sad entries, even a SWAT raid. What they share is the moment they stopped listening to everyone else and started listening to themselves.

This episode is for anyone standing at the edge of a leap — a career change, a side hustle, an idea you keep ignoring. The route may not be linear, but there’s always a way forward.

Featured Voices

•      Kristina Marler — Founder, Neat Freak SoCal. From producing high-end events in New York to discovering a professional organizing business inside a friend’s two storage units during the pandemic.

•      Melissa Romero — After nearly a decade in California environmental politics, she followed a lifelong whisper into birth work — and is now training to serve Spanish-speaking families as a doula.

•      Eleanore Guthrie — Founder of Knorts and inventor of knit denim, on creating a category, getting copied by giants, and pivoting on her own terms.

•      Kayla Andersen — Founder, Riparian Media. She did the math on her freelance income, gave a polite two weeks’ notice, and decided she deserved good things.

•      Londa Jensen — From international educator to a cannabis-industry arrest to CEO of Manifestation Babe and founder of Manifested Adventures.

•      Vikki Yaller Radow — A tech pioneer since 1989 — GeoCities, FrontBridge, and the foundations of what we now call Office 365 — on knowing your worth.

•      Macey McCallion — A horse trainer from a family of doctors and lawyers, on drowning out the naysayers and trusting her intuition.

•      Jessica Nersesian — Co-founder, Metric Design Works (Barcelona), on sustainability in consumer electronics and “following the thread” to a job that didn’t exist until she made it.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Eight women, eight businesses built from scratch, eight leaps taken without a neck. None of them had a playbook, none of them did it the right way, and every single one of them had a moment, sometimes terrifying, sometimes thrilling, often both, when they decided to stop waiting for permission and just go. I'm Monica Argandonia, and this is Pathfound. Today we're bringing together eight voices from our archive in one conversation about what it actually takes to build something of your own. Not the highlight reel, the whole messy, doubt-filled, kept going anyway story. This one's for anyone standing at the edge of a leap right now. Every business starts with a seed. And for these women, the seed was rarely what you'd expect. It wasn't a business plan, it wasn't an MBA. It was usually something much more personal. A gap they noticed, a skill they didn't know they had, or a whisper they'd been ignoring for years. Christina Marlar spent years producing high-end events in New York, Bone Appetite Magazine, American Express Platinum Events, Wine Spectator, before becoming a stay-at-home mom in California. When the pandemic hit, a friend asked for help unpacking a new house. That one afternoon changed everything.

SPEAKER_01 1:16

And this is really where my business began. So I am a pretty social person, and my husband is less social, certainly social, but he was kind of content with COVID and having to isolate. It was very difficult for me. So I started thinking, I gotta do something about this. And what ended up happening was I have a friend who's an interior designer, and she has a client had a client who was moving from one house to another. And my friend was doing the interior design for the new house. And she said she could use some help unpacking and getting her new house set up. And it's COVID. So, you know, I think you're a trustworthy person and you know, to be safe about that. And so, as it turns out, once the I I realized what the project was, it started with having to clear out two storage units because she had inherited a lot of her mother's furniture and just had collected things over the years. And so this storage unit, these two big storage units that were, you know, she's paying several hundred dollars on each a month. She realized, like, this is crazy. And so that's where that sort of started. And then it went from there because I became sort of this trustworthy person. I was uh, you know, kind of allowed in the house and we were, you know, masking up, very safe. And that got me thinking from there, how I, as a mother, had like many mothers, are trying to homeschool and do all these things during COVID. And we were buying off of Amazon like it was crack. Right. I know. Right? Just, you know, the trampoline, the this school supply, like everything. And all of a sudden I'm like, oh my gosh, I don't have a big house, I don't have an attic, I don't have a basement. Like, where is all this stuff gonna go? There's just so much. And that's when I realized that maybe there are other people like me who had accumulated all this stuff and didn't know how to get rid of it or when to get rid of it or how to organize it. And so between that and sort of this going in this house that I was helping someone move into, that is where I did this for about two years and then started my business, Neat Freak SoCal.

SPEAKER_02 3:24

So, okay, a few questions. Had the pandemic not happened, what do you think? I mean, do you think you were you looking for something?

SPEAKER_01 3:31

Were you looking for So I was looking because my my third child was going to be was in kindergarten. And in my head, I was like, as soon as she's in first grade, I gotta be full throttle here. And so it was definitely in the back of my head. I also have a friend who called me up and said, Hey, I have a couch you might want. And I said, Great, but let me pay you for it. And she's like, No, no, no, you just have it. And I said, Well, you know you can like sell that, even if it's not a lot. Like, I can't just take your couch. So she was moving as well. That's why she was trying to get rid of the couch. And I said, How about I help you move into your kitchen and then I'll take your couch? So she said, Great. So her husband, so over several nights, her husband would bake me cappuccinos and I unpacked her boxes and moved her in. And what was astonishing to me is again, my background in loving of cooking, kitchens, all those things. It's just like second nature for me to think, okay, to your left you put this, to your right, you put this of the dishwasher. This is where all this these things go. And this friend of mine was like absolutely like blown away. She had put cat food, because she had done a little before I started helping her, but she put cat food in that cabinet to the left of the stove. And I said, Why, why is that here? And she said, Well, because I have to feed my cat twice a day. I said, Okay, can we find a better place that's accessible? But like maybe leave that for your oils and things that you're using next to the stove. She's like, Yeah, I never thought of it like that. And so, so that kind of also put a seed in my head. So all these things, you know, along the way were kind of like, and again, it was this is now five years ago, essentially. This was all when I think now, five years later, there's a lot more you hear the term professional organizer. But I think five years ago it was maybe the it was still newer. And I thought, can I really make money doing this? Is there really a need? Well, sure enough, there has been.

SPEAKER_02 5:19

So plug for your business, it is called Neat Freak SoCal. I love that story because Christina didn't go looking for a business. She went to help a friend unpack. And somewhere in those storage units, she found herself. Melissa Romero's seed was a whisper too. One she'd been caring for years without knowing what to do with it. Melissa spent nearly a decade in California environmental politics. She wrote legislation, lobbied for recycling policy, and helped sue Amazon for $1.5 million. She was successful. She was making an impact. And then she went to her niece's birth.

SPEAKER_07 5:55

So I was at the birth of my my niece, my first niece, Clementina, and that was 2023. And my sister had a birth duela. And birth was always an interest of mine, like always a whisper, always like something that was really interesting, but I didn't know what to do with that. What are you, what are you supposed to do with that? Again, your dream job doesn't, you don't know it exists yet. So at the time I was, I knew what a doula was, and I thought, well, that sounds really amazing. And so my sister had a doula, and I got the chance to chat with her while we were at the birth of my niece, and it just snowballed from there. I was like, oh my God, this is an interest of mine that I've been ignoring. I haven't been paying attention to this interest. And the more that I learned about it, the more I felt this like undeniable pull in that direction. And so I said goodbye to my limiting beliefs that I can only have one job at a time. And I said, you know what? I'm gonna be a birth duel on the side because why not? Why do I have to make a whole career change in order to experience something I'm passionate about? And so I I went to the training. I've attended five births since then, including the birth of my second niece. And then, you know, I knew that I it was wasn't an option. I had to do this. It was like inevitable at that point. And so it was something I did on the side for for a while, for two years. And every time I would do it and I'd be in a hospital room with someone in labor, and it's like two in the morning, and my back hurts because I'm like helping them with some counterpressure in between contractions. I would think to myself, and I would still do this over my other job, like over and over and over again. Wow. Like it just felt, I don't know, it felt right.

SPEAKER_02 7:33

She left her job in December. At the time of this recording, she was in Mexico in a Spanish immersion program because there's a shortage of Spanish-speaking doulas in Sacramento, and she saw the gap. That's Melissa in a nutshell. Even in the middle of a career leap, she's already thinking about who isn't being served. Eleanor Guthrie's origin was more deliberate. She knew she wanted to start something, so she just had to find the right thing. And what she found was a gap so specific. So why doesn't this exist? That she essentially invented a category, knit denim.

SPEAKER_05 8:07

I ultimately I started it because, you know, in college, I've always led a very active lifestyle. And in college specifically, I was riding my bike a lot around the town and to get to classes. And I was always, you know, switching between my yoga pants or my non-stretch denim. And I'd I didn't like looking like I just got out of a workout class when I'd wear the yoga pants. But then obviously the non-stretch denim is very hard to move in and it's not very comfortable. And then in the summer, I would wear my knit shorts. I had like a knit shorts collection, and I loved riding my bike in the knit shorts. They were comfortable. I looked cute. People always wanted to know where I got my shorts from. And so I thought, like, maybe there's a way that I can combine these concepts. So, you know, I've got denim, it's comfortable, fashionable. I can work out in it, it's knitted. And then I just started, just threw myself into it, basically. I've never considered myself creative until I started my business. And then I realized I actually am creative. So, you know, at the very beginning, it was very kind of nerve-wracking or uncomfortable to share my art with people because I've never put out creative work before. And, you know, now I'm so used to, I get so many different reactions that I don't care if it's good or bad for the most part. But at the time, you know, it really kind of hurts, or you, you know, you take a punch to the stomach if people are kind of like, what's that? Or that's weird, or if they don't understand it, it's hard. But you do have to get past that in order to build a bit, you get gotta get past it, used to it. Like it's just something that is always gonna happen.

SPEAKER_02 9:48

And Kayla Anderson built riparian media, not because she planned to, but because the freelance work she was doing on the side quietly crept up and matched her nonprofit salary. She noticed, she did the math, she jumped.

SPEAKER_06 10:03

Once I got that third client in October of 2022, I realized that the freelance work was just about replacing my salary, the nonprofit. And after a lot of thinking, I was like, you know what? I'm just gonna start my own company. I could, I think I could do this. I've been creating content since 2018. I obviously know what I'm doing, or at least I hope I know what I'm doing. Because there's a lot of self-doubt in all this. And I think this is the bane of any creative's existence where you always think that what you're making is just atrocious and bad and you don't know what you're doing. But then other people are like, no, it's good. What do you mean? We really like it. We wouldn't be working with you if we thought otherwise. So I put in my two weeks' notice. I was very polite. It's like, I like you guys. Here's my two weeks' notice. I'm gonna be doing this. And so I started my own company on November 1st, 2022, called it Riparian Media.

SPEAKER_02 10:54

Here's the thing about leaps: the jump itself is almost never the hardest part. It's the landing. The moment the adrenaline wears off, and you realize you're actually doing this alone with no one to tell you what comes next. Londa Jensen's path to entrepreneurship ran through some of the most unexpected terrain I've ever heard on this show. After years in international education, she lived in Egypt, taught in Iraq, managed a brick semester in Russia, China, and India. She took a job that seemed financially smart and ended up in handcuffs. Literally.

SPEAKER_03 11:30

And he was like, basically, it's cannabis. And he was like, cannabis is legal now. You know, we have a what do they call it? It was like a medical collective, and we have all the paperwork. And, you know, I trusted this person and this was so outside my wheelhouse. But then he also like flashed a number in front of my eyes that I could like barely comprehend, you know, and thinking about the student loans in the back of my head. And I agreed. And man, did I learn some big lessons from that experience because number one, I think it's very easy to take a job for financial reasons. You know, it's very easy to look at that number and think, like, wow, that's gonna help me. I'm gonna be able to buy a house or I'm gonna be able to pay off my student loans or I'm gonna be able to do whatever. But the question is, so are you gonna feel good about yourself doing it? And I discovered that I did not feel good about myself doing it. And while I wasn't doing anything particularly egregious, you know, I was the operations manager. So I facilitated like tracking money and payments and ordering supplies and HR, like it was like a normal job from my perspective and the way that I ran it, right? But one of the locations that we had, SWAT officers cut the gate, kicked the door in. And I was there with the grower, and he was just showing me like how things were going. We were having one problem in this room, we're in the back room. You know, we hear a sound, but it could be like our water pump. Well, anyway, 13 SWAT guys come in with guns and are like, get on your knees. And I'm just like, oh my God, like I've spent my entire life being a teacher. Like, this is insane, you know? And they're asking me questions like, Are you a gang member? Where are all the drugs? Where are all the weapons? Where's all the money? And I'm just like, like, I can't even wrap, I can't even wrap my mind around it because I'm just like, I'm running a business, you know? So I got arrested and I was charged with three felonies, distribution, cultivation, and sales.

SPEAKER_02 13:14

Three felony charges. She kept going. Here's what happened next.

SPEAKER_03 13:19

And I had never felt worse in my life. Like I felt like I had hit the bottom of like everything. I didn't even know I could feel this bad, you know? And I felt so much shame and, you know, just disappointed in myself. So there was like a period of probably six months where I had to continue working there because I wasn't going to be able to find another job while I have three felonies pending. So I waited until my case was cleared. They ended up after a lot of money, dropping them to a misdemeanor charge of operating without a business license.

SPEAKER_02 13:52

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 13:53

And so at that time, I had recently was like about to get married, and my partner is not from the US. And so we were about to have to go through immigration, and I was gonna have to be the financially responsible party. And so I'm just like, oh my God, everything's gonna be fine. So I started applying for jobs and I was like, I will literally at this point in my life, I was like, I will do anything I needed to pay this bare minimum number of money so that I can be this person on paper for my my husband. And so I probably applied to, I don't know, maybe 200 jobs. And I found this job that I don't think at any other time in my life may have piqued my interest. But because I had hit such a low point in my life and I was starting to like try to, you know, I'm like made my first vision board and I was just like, how do I change the place that I'm in? Because I I don't know how else to get out of this. So I'll try anything. So I read this book called You Are a Badass, and I made my first vision board. And I remember the first thing on my vision board was you are not a criminal. And I found this job at Manifestation Babe, and it was like, you know, assistant, Jill of all trades. And I was like, I can do that. So I applied for the job. And, you know, when I had the interview, one of the things that they had asked me to do in the interview was to plan a retreat to Bali. And I was like, well, I could do this in my sleep. So I did that and I got the job. And, you know, when I started there, the pay was a third of what I was making in cannabis. But I was like, I'll hard I'll work hard, like this won't be forever. And now it's what, eight years later, and I'm the CEO of that business.

SPEAKER_02 15:24

From three felony charges to CEO of Manifestation Babe, and now the founder of Manifested Adventures, her own transformational travel company. Eleanor Guthrie's version of the hard part was slower and in some ways more insidious. She spent years building something genuinely new and then watched bigger brands absorb it without credit.

SPEAKER_05 15:47

Within the past few years, it had become very, very popular to use my aesthetic for knit. Like people start me, I'm saying this crazy, but Diesel in particular was a company that really like took my aesthetic and ran with it. They hired a new creative director who's kind of known for biting other designers. And yeah, and so they sort of flooded the market with designs that looked like mine because they used my signature textiles and my signature way of designing denim. And I've just been noticing other companies starting to do that too, or they had already been doing that. And so that started making it harder for me to sell my designs because now it's like people have other options. Like they're just more out there at different price points. I like Sheehan ripped off my signature, my best-selling set. And there's nothing you can do about that, right? I haven't found a lawyer yet who is, you know, telling me that there is something I can do. I was like, isn't there something I can do to protect like the signature aesthetic of these textiles? Because people for years and still they still kind of do do this, but now that it's so widespread, people don't understand anymore that it originated from my brand. But people would always be like, Oh my god, is that Nortz? Is that Nortz? Is that Nortz? Like on Instagram, random people don't even know. You know, they'd comment on a photo and like, no, it's not. No, it's not, it's not Norts. But I haven't found a lawyer who says that it's possible. So yeah, it's been sort of a more recent decision and kind of like take a step back from selling clothes because what I've determined is that or realize I've been acting like a free research and development and marketing arm for the industry with all of my textile developments. Because I'll develop a textile, then I'll get it on like a bunch of celebrities and then maybe written up in a in a media outlet. And so then these big companies are like mood boarding my stuff, like, oh, this is already gaining traction. Let's just put our own spin on it or let's make our own design out of that textile. We already know it works, and I'm like, I can't keep funding that. So now that's where I'm like now in this sort of pivot situation where I'm like, I need to break from focusing on selling clothes. I'll still kind of do it here and there, but it's not gonna be my main focus. And I now want to sell my textiles to these other companies. Like, if I can't beat them, I will try to join them and hopefully like build up my name that way and my reputation kind of on the back end, and then I can circle around and come back to my brand later or build a different brand, or not eat like maybe I'll be happy just doing what I'm doing with the fabric.

SPEAKER_02 18:39

Vicki Yala Redal was one of the only women in early tech rolling out the first personal computers at Northrop Grumman in 1989. She helped build GeoCities and sell it to Yahoo. She helped build Frontbridge and sell it to Microsoft. But the part of her story I keep thinking about is this.

SPEAKER_00 18:56

I'm a big believer in, you know, know your worth and make sure that you're in a group of people and with a group of people, whether that's in a relationship or in a company or in whatever presence you're going to be in or a group, that they also know your worth and they value your worth. And otherwise, don't be there. Go find it.

SPEAKER_02 19:17

Every person I talk to on the show eventually comes back to the same thing. The moment they stopped listening to everyone else and started listening to themselves. Macy McKellion put it better than almost anyone. Macy is a horse trainer who spent years trying to convince herself she should want a real career. Her grandfather was a doctor, her dad a lawyer, her uncle, a renowned sociologist at MIT, and here she was working in a barn. She knew she was good at it. She just had to get loud enough inside to drown out everyone else.

SPEAKER_08 19:49

That shift in mindset where it's like, I'm not gonna listen to my own self-doubt, have that whole imposter syndrome thing circling around, or listening to old trainers that I had that were just like, oh, if don't ever do this, don't ever make it your business. Just don't like it's not worth it and it's too hard and all this stuff. And other people too that were like, well, you're so talented in other ways. Why would you just be a horse trainer? Right. Actually, and I remember this guy who used to cut my hair. He was pretty funny and would always used to have a good time sitting in a chair with him. And I remember one day he's like, You know what? I never asked you what you did for work. And I told him, I was like, Oh, I I'm a horse trainer. He's like, Oh, so where do you work? I'm like, at a barn he and he just cracked up. He just started hysterically laughing. He's like, You work in a barn? You know, and I was like, What is that? What is that? You know, so I've I've had that kind of reaction to it in a lot of different ways, but just sort of this like, why would you do that? Or oh my god, I can't believe you do that. And then I've also had the opposite end of the spectrum where people are just like, oh my god, that sounds so amazing. What a dream. Oh, it's a fairy tale. Aren't you just blessed every day? And I'm like, no, it's not like that. What job is like that, right? Like, let's be real. It's not, you know, unicorns and rainbows all the time, right? It's a job. But that turning point is important because it's almost like parsing out the voices in your head, right? There's always gonna be a naysayer voice, right? In anyone's head.

SPEAKER_02 21:31

Always.

SPEAKER_08 21:32

And it's like, when do you listen to that because you know that it's giving you accurate information? And when do you say, Oh yeah, that's from when I was a kid, or that's that's something that society told me, or that's something, you know, mentor told me, or something like that, you know? But it's difficult to do that, but it's like that developing a strong intuitive sense, I think, is just so important. It's like, and that's why that Gestalt Institute, I think, was really important for me too, because it was like I was working on myself and getting stronger in who I was and what I knew to be true for me, not what was true for someone else projected onto me. And so from my perspective, that's such an important thing for everybody to work on, right? Is just working on yourself and strengthening your own intuition, strengthening your own relationship with yourself so you can trust yourself and so you're not just listening to the noise.

SPEAKER_02 22:36

Kayla Anderson found her quiet voice in a journal. She was in a hard season, depressed, going through the motions, when she flipped back through her entries and realized every page was the same. Something clicked.

SPEAKER_06 22:49

I think it would be the idea that I do deserve good things out of life. And that's probably a very unconventional answer. But no, I'm not gonna get into like my upbringing and like past poor decision making and all that stuff. But I genuinely held the belief for a really long time that it was a really low time too, where I was like very depressed and not in a good relationship, and um, everything was just kind of going through the motions. And I had this feeling of like, well, this is just what life is about, and you know, like it is what it is. But when I had a moment of and it felt like something just clicked in my brain, and I couldn't tell you when that happened, but there was just this feeling of like I was looking at my life. I I think I was I was like journaling one night and I was slipping through my journal and I realized that all of my entries were just like so sad. And I just had this thought of like, is this really it? And then as I was kind of like sitting there with all of that, I was like, no, like I deserve to have a good life. And it was just this such a novel thought. And but then when I like really chewed on that, and it's not the idea, like when I say like I deserve to have a good life, I don't mean it in like the pretentious way of like I deserve to be a billionaire and have a private jet and have servants. And like it's not that at all, but it's just the idea of like, no, like I deserve to have good friends, and I deserve to like feel happy when I wake up, and I deserve to feel like I matter, not because I've done anything, just from the fact that I'm alive and I'm breathing. Like everyone has inherent value, and I do as well. And that's something that I've told like my friends, like, you know, it's so so easy to tell like a friend that's hurting or a community member that's hurting that, like, hey, like you have value and you have this. And I kind of was really thinking about it. It's like, how come I can tell that so easily to other people, but I can't tell that to myself? And if it is true for other people, then it has to be true for me. And it's that thought that spurred me moving up here and it spurred me quitting that startup, and it spurred me starting my own company and choosing the friends that I'm choosing and like being really intentional about like who I'm dating and being like even with like the type of clients that I work with. So I hope that answers the question. Probably a little bit unconventional of an answer, but like that's the thing that really when I think about what changed the trajectory of my life, it was that moment of actually being like, no, like there is goodness, and if I'm telling my friends that they deserve good things just by existing, then that truth also has to apply to me.

SPEAKER_02 25:18

I deserve good things, not because I've earned them, not because I've suffered enough, but because I exist. That's it. That's the whole shift. One of the questions I ask every guest is what would you tell someone who's figuring it out right now? And across hundreds of conversations, a single idea keeps surfacing. Londa Jensen called it pulling a thread. Jessica Nurcessian's mentor also called it following the thread, as in the common thread. And Melissa Romero put it more simply than anyone, your dream job doesn't exist yet.

SPEAKER_07 25:52

Well, the thing that I've already said a few times, which is that your dream job is you don't know what it is, you don't even know about it yet. You don't know that it exists yet. So don't get caught up on what you think is within the realm of possibility. Just keep following what you're good at and what you're passionate about. And if something, whether it's a job or a person, doesn't feel right or feels off for you or starts to feel off, listen to that feeling because it's always right. That was such an important part of this whole career change for me was really understanding the difference between what I actually wanted and what ideas were put in my head about what I should want. Like, oh, I should buy a house. I don't want to do that. What I don't want to buy a house. So, you know, that's just a silly small example, but it's true. When you especially are growing up with a lot of imposter syndrome, it's hard to differentiate what do I actually want and what was put in my head without my consent, without my knowledge. So that was a really important thing that I I wish I could have figured out. But I also feel like everything happens how it how it does for a reason.

SPEAKER_02 26:55

So and as students are graduating high school, figuring out what to major in, right? There's all this pressure you kind of pick a major and stick with it. What would you tell them? Like, you know, it's tough right now because they're worried about AI and they're worried about, you know, being able to get a job. And and I think that's a good point you make about these things that we're told that we want, but do we really want them? So what would you, you know, if you could go back to your alma mater and stand there in front of in front of them, what would you say to them?

SPEAKER_07 27:24

Well, what I would say is probably like if you have a dream about something, if you have a dream about some doing something, becoming something that feels impossible, talk about it out loud and watch how that changes. Watch how the possibility starts to change. And there's no timeline, there's no right answer. You don't have to do the same career for your whole life. I actually think it's really deeply unnatural for people to do the same thing every single day, Monday through Friday, for however many years we work, a long, really long time. I think that there's seasons to life. And if the season that you're in at the moment something feels really interesting and is pulling you in that direction, and it also makes you feel like your authentic self, that's probably a good sign that that's a thing you should do. And you're not tied to it. It's not forever. There's no rules. There's literally no rules. Listen to your gut, get really clear with yourself about why you want something. Get really, really clear about that and make plans and follow them, but don't allow your idea of what something should be to get in the way or cloud your ability to see what else is possible.

SPEAKER_02 28:27

There's no rules. There's no timeline. There are seasons to life. I love that. And Melissa came to that not just philosophically, she tested it. She went from environmental legislation to birth doula to photography business, and she's doing it all at once without apology. Jessica Nersesian carved out something equally hard to name. She's the co-founder of Metric Design Works, a product design firm focused on sustainability in consumer electronics, a space she describes as one of the most overlooked environmental challenges on the planet. She built it 16 years ago, is now based in Barcelona, and she is still the only woman in most of the rooms she walks into.

SPEAKER_04 29:08

It's not anything I would have thought when I was younger. This was not like I wanted to be a doctor.

SPEAKER_02 29:15

Well, yeah, and it wasn't a job. Like no one Right. Yeah. I carved it out. You created a job.

SPEAKER_04 29:21

I have a dear aunt who is not my aunt. She's she's a dear friend. And she worked for the World Food Program with the UN. And when I was young, and I was asking her how she got to be you, she always said, just follow the threat. And I think there's a bit of that where you just keep going towards what lights you up and interests you, and trusting that wonderful people will meet up with you and resonate. It can feel risky, it can feel scary. I think there is this promise in the US that if you go corporate, you will have health care and you will have safety and you will have stability. But my experience was corporate didn't offer those things. And I've really enjoyed forging ahead and having our own business. It can feel risky, but ultimately you have better agency of who you are and be able to say, this is a customer that I don't resonate with. I don't want to support them.

SPEAKER_02 30:20

That's the thing about owning your own business that no one puts on the brochure. You get to decide who you work for. You get to say no to things that feel wrong. That's not nothing. Londa Jensen had the same realization. Here's how she described the thread to anyone still figuring out where to start.

SPEAKER_03 30:37

Unless you want to do like a really specific thing, right? Like you want to be like a civil engineer or a neurosurgeon or something that where it's like, okay, you really need to kind of buckle down and focus and do that path because it's a long one. If you don't know, I mean, here's the other thing. It's like it's never too late to do anything, right? But I think it's like if you're at university and you take a class and that opens something for you, take another step further there. Because, like, I know I took, I took a class on like Russia and Islam and the former Soviet Union that had nothing to do with business. It was obviously one of the elective courses, but it stirred something in my mind that I was more curious about. Did it also lead to me ultimately learning Arabic? I don't know, but it was like a part of it, just like pulling at a thread, right? So if you find yourself finding something that you're you want to know more about or that you feel drawn to, like keep pulling at that thread. Talk to your professor, ask him if he knows of an internship or if he knows anybody who works in a space or has jobs like that. Like you got to pull to your network and pull the thread because every conversation you have will lead you to a new place. Every course you take, every new person you meet is leading you as you pull that thread. And you never know what you're gonna find there. You know, I remember taking an organizational behavior class, and that was a huge thread in ultimately ending up in intercultural relations because the part of organizational behavior I found to be the most interesting was those cross-cultural examples. Like you're just pulling out a thread and like you're gonna find a little of it here, you're gonna find a little of it there. The irony is like my operations class that I took in college, I had the worst grade that I ever got in my life. And that's what I ended up doing. So it's not about like, is this the job that you're good at? Does this fit your degree? Is this gonna pay well? It's like, does this open your curiosity? Does this pull you in? Does this make you want to know more? And if so, just keep pulling on it.

SPEAKER_02 32:26

And Vicky Yaller Radow distilled everything she learned without a mentor in rooms that weren't designed to include her into three principles she shared with her teams, her kids, and every young person who's asked. Earlier on, you said there were three foundational things. And the first one was, you know, build on your skill set, like figure out what you're good at and and pursue that. What are the other two?

SPEAKER_00 32:51

Second one is work hard. Work harder than anyone and everyone around you because it creates a nice competition. You know, that's the athletic in me, right? I the athlete in me wants to compete. And I'm not competing, but I'm competing with my competitors, right? I want my team, my team members amongst me to I want all of us to work super hard so that we can beat out our competitors. So that's number two. And number three is be that positive influence. You know, it's a world of negativity. Of course, we can all it's lazy to focus on negative things. It really is. You have to build discipline in your mind and in your heart every single morning to wake up and find the positive and things and be that positive influence. I want to be that and I want to be around people that are doing that. So to me, those are the three things. And, you know, there's a whole bunch of little sprinkles around all of that, right? There's, you know, help others. There's, you know, I have this saying at work, don't play the not it game. Like, not it, you know, like, oh, we we need somebody to do blah, blah, blah. And so many people want to first just say, not it, not me, not doing it. I want to be the, I'll do it. That's the culture, right? So there's a bunch of those other sprinkle things that I would sprinkle across those three foundations. But for me, what are where I found the most success is abiding by those three things.

SPEAKER_02 34:05

Eight women, eight different industries, eight leaps. And woven through every story, the same stubborn truth. There is no single right way to build a meaningful life. There's only the willingness to start. Christina mailed a homemade fortune cookie to Martha Stewart, and it led to a career in events. Melissa attended her niece's birth and heard a whisper she'd been ignoring for years. Londa got arrested, and it led to a CEO title at her own travel company. Eleanor got copied by Diesel, and it led to a pivot that might change everything. Macy listened to the quiet voice, and it led her to the barn, which led to the business, which led to the life she was always supposed to have. Michaela decided she deserved good things, and it led her to Vancouver, a company, a team of seven, and a documentary. Vicky followed curiosity into the guts of computers at a defense contractor, the only woman in the room, and helped build what we now call Office 365. And Jessica followed the thread all the way to factory floors in Malaysia and Barcelona, building a job that didn't exist until she made it. None of these paths were straight, none of them were safe, and not one of them would have happened if these women had waited until they were ready. If something in today's episode resonated: a name, a story, a moment, go back and listen to their full episodes. I'm Monica Argandonia. Thank you so much for listening to Pathfound. If today's episode connected with you, please subscribe, leave a review, or share it with someone who needs to hear it. Find us on Instagram at Pathfound Podcast and visit Keystoneetwork.org. The route may not be linear, but there's always a way forward. I'll see you next time.