Elizabeth Vahey Smith is a trauma-informed leadership expert, soft skills coach, and COO of TCK Training. With an MA in Linguistics and certification as a Trauma-Informed Care Practitioner, she's built a career around making complex human dynamics simple and actionable for leaders. She's authored several books including Trauma-Informed Leadership and The Practice of Processing, co-authored three white papers on trauma in Third Culture Kids, and conducted original research on psychological safety in the workplace.

Oh, and she does all of this while traveling the world full-time with her family. They have visited 25+ countries and counting with the globe as her children's classroom.

On The Hodges 12, Elizabeth is a Healer-Synthesizer-Cultivator. In this episode, we explore how this creative trifecta shows up in her work: healing workplace trauma, synthesizing complicated concepts into clear frameworks, and cultivating environments where teams can thrive.

We also dig into what creativity means when you're working across cultures, what kills innovation before it starts, and the surprising creative thought that caught even her off guard.

To Connect with Elizabeth:

Website: https://elizabethvaheysmith.com

LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabeth-vahey-smith-3ba0251b3/

Access Elizabeth’s Free 1-Hour Training:

https://elizabethvaheysmith.myboss.io/free-1-hr-diagnostic-training

To take The Hodges 12 Types of Creative Genius assessment:

Visit: www.thehodges12.com

In this episode, Heather sits down with one of her oldest friends, Cecilia de la Hoz, who joins the podcast from Madrid, Spain.

Cecilia is a Partner at EY-Parthenon and specializes in corporate valuation. Cecilia and Heather have been friends since 8th grade at the American School of Paris. Before taking the assessment, Cecilia never would have called herself creative, but her results tell a different story. The Hodges 12 profile revealed her powerful creative trifecta: Connector-Communicator-Synthesizer.

This warm conversation explores how creativity shows up in unexpected places, how cultural background shapes creative expression, and why even analytical professionals have creative genius waiting to be recognized.

Key Takeaways:

You don't have to be an artist to be creative. Cecilia's work as a consultant requires synthesizing complex information and communicating it clearly to clients

The Connector-Communicator-Synthesizer trifecta thrives on building relationships, translating ideas across audiences, and pulling together diverse information into coherent insights

Cecilia shares the ways she is now leaning into her creativity and making room for incubation.

Percy the Penguin Segment: Cecilia translates "Creative Genius" into multiple languages; hear how creativity sounds in Spanish, French, and German!

Connect with Cecilia:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ceciliadelahoz/

Take the Assessment: Discover your creative genius type at www.thehodges12.com

Connect with Heather:

Website: www.HeatherHodges.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heather-l-hodges-phd-07400a142/

In this episode, Heather takes us back to her 8th-grade art class at the American School of Paris, where Mr. Kingsley made every student feel like Claude Monet in training. But not everyone had a Mr. Kingsley, many of us had our creative identity stolen at a young age. Heather explores the five systemic ways creativity gets killed in our lives and organizations. If you've ever packed away your creative self and learned to color inside the lines, this episode is for you.

Key Takeaways:

School taught us there's one right answer, so fear of being wrong causes us to skip divergent thinking and jump straight to finding the "correct" solution

Creativity has been optimized out of the schedule and you cannot innovate on a ruthlessly optimized calendar.

We say we want innovation but punish every mistake.

Well-meaning gatekeepers starve creativity through micromanagement, chronic stress, and criticism that destroys the psychological safety creativity needs to flourish

We defined creativity too narrowly. If you only look for artists and inventors, you'll miss the creative genius all around you, including your own

Next Episode: Special guest Cecilia de la Hoz joins us from Madrid, Spain. She never saw herself as creative until she took The Hodges 12. Fun fact: She and Heather have been friends since 8th grade!

Take the Assessment: Discover your creative genius type at www.thehodges12.com

Connect with Heather:

Website: www.HeatherHodges.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heather-l-hodges-phd-07400a142/