Leadership isn’t a title you receive. It’s a path you practice, often years before you can name it. For our Women’s History Month conversation, we sit down with four remarkable women whose work spans higher education, family life education, ministry and chaplaincy, and music education. Together, we trace the moments that shaped their sense of calling and the mentors who helped them keep going when the road got complicated.

We talk about what it means to lead when you’re “the first” and there are no models to copy. You’ll hear honest stories about navigating patriarchal expectations in church spaces, pushing through academic gatekeeping during the tenure process, and learning how to offer your gifts even when they don’t match what others expect leadership to look like. Along the way, we keep coming back to faith, purpose, and the everyday disciplines that build confidence: showing up, serving, learning in public, and staying open to course corrections.

If you’re wrestling with your own next step, you’ll also hear practical advice for young women: leave the nest, try the thing, build a circle of people who encourage you, and trust that growth happens in the doing. We wrap with a lightning round on influential books and the women who inspired each guest, plus a reminder that the true measure of leadership is the lives we impact.

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A century after Negro History Week, we revisit why the project began as a corrective and why it still protects our minds and communities today. With historian and storyteller Donald Payton, we trace a clear arc: Reconstruction’s fragile gains, the textbook erasures that shrank national memory, and the coalition of churches, abolitionists, and early colleges that opened doors when the state would not. Along the way, we explore how media—from black newspapers to early film—preserved truth, spread migration routes, and too often sold damaging caricatures that still echo in public perception.

We get specific about the psychology of erasure: what happens when innovators design the filament, the interface, or the skyline and someone else collects the credit. Payton names the minority stress that follows, the anger and exhaustion of doing everything right and being written out anyway. We contrast Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois to show how strategy debates shaped education and class mobility, then examine the “illusion of inclusion” that followed integration—when school names, curricula, and civic rituals softened history rather than integrating the full truth.

This conversation is practical at heart. We talk about defending libraries under pressure, funding neighborhood bookstores, building family reading lists that start before 1619, and teaching media literacy that explains both the Chicago Defender’s quiet power and Hollywood’s loud distortions. The throughline is mental health: knowledge of self stabilizes identity, expands the horizon of possibility, and restores dignity across generations. If Black History Month is a doorway, the work is what we carry through it—policies, habits, and stories that honor the whole.

Listen, share with a friend who loves real history, and help us pass the truth forward. If this resonates, subscribe, rate, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

We explore real ways to find hope when the holidays hurt, weaving faith practices with counseling, planning, and gentle rituals that honor grief. We also share how supporters can show up with presence, not platitudes, and why boundaries are a gift.

• defining grief as mental, physical and spiritual
• distinguishing hope from happiness
• using scripture, prayer and Good Grief by Westberg
• practicing affirmations and journaling
• creating holiday plans and saying no
• honoring loved ones with simple rituals
• using music to name and move emotion
• seeking counseling and medical care when needed
• showing up for others with listening and presence
• sharing resources without rushing someone’s process

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