Narrator: Welcome to Dr. Alicia and Dr. Eileen’s Soul of the Leader podcast.

Alicia: Welcome to Soul of a Leader podcast, where we share inspirational leadership stories with some excellent leaders in their own right. We developed this podcast with the aim to ignite soulful conversations with leaders. I am Dr. Alicia Straughter, one of the executive producers of Soul of a Leader. My background is I am a Chicago person, born and raised on the West side. I am a Loyola alum, a proud Loyola Rambler. I am one of the only individuals in my immediate family that has graduated from undergrad and graduate and earned my Ph.D. So that is just a brief background of who I am. I, over the last 20 some years, ran an organization called Athletes Against Drugs, AAD. There I was in a leadership role for about 20 some years, leading a task of individuals like my team and executive board and advisory board and volunteers with supporting education for youth in the inner cities of Chicago and throughout the United States. And I’ve come to the point of my career, consulting, and happy to be joining with my co-star, my co-executive producer, my partner in crime, Dr. Eileen Timmins. We’ve known each other from graduate school.

Eileen: Thank you, Dr. Alicia. Dr. Alicia and I have known each other for over 20 years, as she stated. We’ve been a partner in business and working together in nonprofits for over 20 years. I have been a global CHRO, which is a global human resources officer, for over 20 years in many different types of organizations. Advertising, startup technology, private-equity backed organizations, nonprofit healthcare. I’m also an artist, an author, a labyrinth builder. I’ve also been an executive coach, a board member, a board coach, and formed boards for all types of organizations. I’m a professor at DePaul University, along with Alicia. We’ve both been adjuncts for many, many years.

Eileen: I’ve recently had the wonderful opportunity to start my own business on the side, called Aingilin. It goes back to my heritage as being Irish. Aingilin means, Angelic, little angel. I was born in the Bronx and stayed there till I was young and moved to a small town out of Madison, Wisconsin. So if you hear a little bit of slang in my speech, I was in speech therapy for many, many years. But I’m very excited to do this podcast.

Eileen: I started my business knowing that there was a gap in leadership, as I’ve coached executives around the world and the globe. When I coach executives, I feel that I’ve heard many of the same stories over and over again, that people are coming to work, they feel an emptiness, they don’t understand the corporation. They feel like something’s missing in their life, and how they can get rejuvenated again to lead in the organization. Alicia and I came up with this idea after I had left corporate America just a few months ago. We are starting to do this podcast to share these stories from people who have overcome some of this emptiness and a lack of spirituality or soul in their day-to-day life at work. As we discuss this more, we’d like to share some privileges and challenges that we’ve had as leaders in our day-to-day work life and in our past. Alicia, would you like to share some of your challenges or privileges?

Alicia: Oh my goodness, Dr. Eileen, I have tons of challenges when I was a leader, and I had tons of great experiences and privileges of being a leader. So one point that comes to mind when I was leading the organization, a nonprofit organization called AAD, and most of the time people always thought, “Oh, you have it easy,” because it was connected to a certain level of celebrity status. Well, that is wrong. So many challenges were faced with dealing with staff, shortage of revenue at times to meet payroll. Leaders deal with that. And you overcome those situations by understanding your passion. That is one of the reasons why we are doing this show is to talk about how our passion is connected to our leadership ability.

Alicia: Oh my goodness, Dr. Eileen, I have tons of challenges when I was a leader, and I had tons of great experiences and privileges of being a leader. So one point that comes to mind when I was leading the organization, a nonprofit organization called AAD, and most of the time people always thought, “Oh, you have it easy,” because it was connected to a certain level of celebrity status. Well, that is wrong. So many challenges were faced with dealing with staff, shortage of revenue at times to meet payroll. Leaders deal with that. And you overcome those situations by understanding your passion. That is one of the reasons why we are doing this show is to talk about how our passion is connected to our leadership ability.

Alicia: I would say too, it was fun because I enjoyed the outcome of what we provided for the underserved youth. I enjoyed the moments of seeing the sparkle in some of the kids’ eyes when we provided them with gifts, or tuition for their college, or their high school private school that we sent students to. So, I mean, I have a lot of them, and we can go on and on, but I know you have a lot to share too, as well, Dr. Eileen, with some of the challenges or maybe some great privileges, because you were in nonprofit as well, as well as corporate, and most of mine were all local government and nonprofits.

Eileen: Yes. Thank you, Dr. Alicia. I have an experience that I had at one of my financial services organization where I have never seen a leadership team come together when there was a crisis. It was a fantastic effort. Our CEO at the time… is still there, a wonderful leader and it had to do with a collapse of a major, major financial company where many of the clients’ money was stuck in the CME, which is the Chicago Merchandise Exchange. And there were many, many clients that could not get to the livelihood of their funds that they lived on. And the leadership team gathered together. There was an article in Crain’s. And we executed seamlessly to make sure that these people who were suffering and needed these funds to continue their life, in their business, in their day-to-day life, for paying bills, we executed seamlessly. So at a time of crisis, leadership can really come together, if there’s that honestly, there’s friendship, there’s inner strength, there’s a passion, courage and creativity and innovation.

Alicia: Wow. We have a lot to share on this show. And one of the things that, I have to share this story. Dr. Eileen didn’t give it all the way correct. She texted me one day after she knew that her job was going to be phased out. She said, “I have an idea.” And I said, “Sure.” So I had to wait a couple of days before I could find out what this ideal is. And well, here it is. This is her idea. We sat and talked and now we have a show.

Eileen: Yeah, there was an idea. We are excited to share our stories, our expertise as PhDs, our experience in the workplace, and also the experience and the stories from our podcast guest.

Alicia: One of the reasons why Dr. Eileen and I created this show, we understood that there are lessons or there are blessings out of a situation. We also understood as we were developing the show, that we wanted to talk to ordinary people with extraordinary impact. We believe that you can lead with your soul. We understand that there’s a connection of spirituality and your leadership ability, and we want to express that through this show, and we hope that our guests who tune in will feel the impact and feel the passion that we have for creating the podcast, and also with some of the great guests that we have coming on the show.

Eileen: Dr. Alicia, I am excited about our new podcast and sitting down with many, many guests.

Alicia: I am so excited too, Dr. Eileen.

Eileen: And this concludes our podcast, and thank you all for tuning into Soul of the Leader. In our next episode, we sit down with Raquel Pittman, and we will discuss creating a success out of failure. For more information about the Soul of the Leader podcast, please go to souloftheleader.com. Tune in next time to Soul of the Leader.