Kanya Balakrishna, Co-Founder and CEO of The Future Project and Future Coach, shares a story most founders never tell publicly: what it's like when everything falls apart.

In this raw conversation, Kanya takes us from building a $15M nonprofit with 120+ staff to facing a catastrophic funding crisis that forced the organization down to just 10 people. This isn't about failure or success—it's about the messy, instructive middle that doesn't make headlines.

We explore what Kanya calls "the work twisties"—those moments when leaders lose their sense of position and can't see the path forward. She discusses the isolation of crisis leadership, the shame spiral that follows major setbacks, and how the pandemic unexpectedly created space for rebuilding something better.

Key topics:

• ​The hidden costs of rapid nonprofit growth
• ​Why "persistence" isn't always a strategy
• ​The sacrifice trap that catches mission-driven leaders
• ​How to lead when you can't see the way forward
• ​Building company culture vs. making hard decisions
• ​What it really takes to start over

This conversation reveals why we need better language for the difficult phases of leadership and the importance of peer support during crisis.

Exit Interview is a limited series exploring the entrepreneurial stories that don't make headlines - the complex realities of building, scaling, and ultimately stepping away from the companies you create. Host Ify Walker sits down with founders and first-time CEOs to discuss not just the beginning of their journey, but the end: the decisions that defined them, the costs they didn't anticipate, and what they learned about themselves when the stakes were highest.