What do you do when the organization you've given everything to - the one you helped build from the inside out - is suddenly gone?

Nurit Siegel Smith spent 25 years building a career at the intersection of arts, culture, and social impact. As Executive Director of Music Forward Foundation, she helped 20,000 young people across the country find pathways into the music industry, including building the first federally recognized apprenticeships in music and live entertainment in the United States.

Then, in early 2025, the organization was sunset. And Nurit was the one who had to see it through.

What followed was a year she'll tell you herself took six months just to breathe through. We talk about what it looks like to grieve meaningful work, how to stop chasing the next goal and start building the context of the life you want, and why being an artist and being an entrepreneur might be the same act - just with different tools.

You'll Learn

⭐ What it looks like to stop goal-chasing and start context-building

⭐ How to rebuild your sense of purpose when your identity was tied to your work

⭐ Why presence and joy don't actually require financial security

Key Insights

Either You Take the Pause, Or It's Taken from You Nurit didn't choose to stop. The work she loved was taken away. But what she found in the stillness changed everything.

Stop Chasing the Goal. Instead of asking "what's my next role?", Nurit flipped the question: what does the life I want to be living actually look like?

Purpose and Paycheck Don't Have to Be the Same Thing One of the most freeing realizations of Nurit's transition: she didn't have to find one role that held all of it. She could serve on boards, volunteer, be present for her family - and make money somewhere else.

Timestamps

04:00 Planting seeds: on cold outreach and the slow burn of relationships

06:00 The next generation and instant gratification in the workplace

08:00 Navigating liminal space

09:00 Nurit's path: from gymnast and dancer to nonprofit leader

11:00 Discovering the many career pathways in arts and culture

13:00 Music Forward Foundation and building apprenticeships in the music industry

16:00 Sunsetting an organization you love - and surviving it

21:00 Redefining what it means to be a creative person

23:00 Bundu bashing: what creative careers and entrepreneurship have in common

26:00 The year after: six months just to breathe

29:00 Hibernating, licking wounds, and slowly coming back to life

31:00 Redefining success and flipping the goal framework

33:00 When purpose and paycheck don't have to be the same thing

35:00 What financial insecurity taught both women about baseline joy

40:00 Building vs. reacting: staying grounded

42:00 Women founders, corporate boards, and the environment that needs to change

48:00 What's calling to Nurit now

Resources and Links

Connect with Nurit on LinkedIn

Find host Kristin Belden on LinkedIn or at BeldenStrategies.com

Sign up for Kristin's newsletter Big Deal Energy: BeldenStrategies.com/newsletter

If this conversation resonated, share it with someone who needed to hear it — and consider leaving a review. It helps more women find these conversations.

What happens when you spend decades achieving everything you were supposed to want - only to realize it fits like an itchy sweater?

In this episode, I sit down with Ariana, co-founder and managing partner of Flight Design Co. and co-founder of Kindredly.

What I love most about her story isn't what's on her resume. It's what lives underneath it. She's a poet, a photographer, a former wilderness and whitewater river guide turned youth developer turned brand strategist - a self-described recovering achievement addict who spent a decade blowing up the version of herself she'd been building for everyone else.

We talk about creativity as resistance to hustle culture, why the thing you're most afraid to show people is probably your most powerful differentiator, and what biology might have to say about why women in midlife are just getting started.

You'll Learn

⭐ What it takes to unlearn achievement addiction and rebuild on your own terms

⭐ Why your "weirdest thing" is actually your greatest brand differentiator

⭐ How to honor your creative self when it doesn't fit neatly into your career

⭐ What the biology of menopause has to do with women's leadership (seriously)

⭐ How to let creativity be the antidote to hustle culture

Key Insights

The Itchy Sweater Moment You can build everything you were supposed to want and still feel completely disconnected from it. That discomfort isn't a failure - it's data.

Creativity Can't Be Hustled When you're actually in a creative practice, you can't drive it. That's the point. Five minutes of it is enough to pull you back into your body and out of the noise.

Biology Is Trying to Tell Us Something Humans are one of the only mammals that go through menopause - and the research on whales and elephants suggests it's because elder females are meant to lead. Ariana makes the case that women in midlife aren't winding down. They're just getting started.

Timestamps

02:00 How Kristin and Ariana met and what Ariana radiates

06:00 Was she always an entrepreneur?

08:00 The slightly feral childhood, risk-taking, and her time as a whitewater river guide

11:00 How guiding people through scary things became the through line

13:00 Fear of being truly known

16:00 The achievement addiction

18:00 The 100 Day Project

21:00 Launching a website that brings all of herself together

24:00 Cross-pollinating audiences and why showing your full self builds the best clients

26:00 Why overnight success is always a decade in the making

32:00 How capitalism and hustle culture are the enemy of creativity

36:00 Creative Roundtabling

40:00 What it would take to actually create the conditions for more women founders

45:00 Why having women at the table isn't enough without a culture shift

46:00 The biology of menopause and elder women as evolutionary leaders

Resources and Links

Connect with Ariana on LinkedIn or at her website

Learn more about Flight Design Co. and Kindredly

Find host Kristin Belden on LinkedIn or at BeldenStrategies.com

Sign up for Kristin's newsletter Big Deal Energy: BeldenStrategies.com/newsletter

If this conversation resonated, share it with someone who needed to hear it — and consider leaving a review. It helps more women find these conversations.

What does it look like to stay completely, unapologetically yourself - across every job, every pivot, every industry?

In this episode, I sit down with my ride-or-die bestie Vanessa — creative director, UX designer, co-founder, freelancer, fine artist, and one of the most genuinely creative people I've ever known.

We go all the way back to the corners of an art school painting lab, survived a summer in Europe on nectarines and salami, and grew into adults together in San Francisco.

But beyond our history, this conversation is about something I think a lot of women are quietly wrestling with: how do you stay true to who you are when every system around you keeps asking you to be something else?

Vanessa has navigated corporate giants, a thriving event business, freelance life, and startup culture — always leading with integrity, always trusting her gut — even when the world wanted her to fix her face and be a little more "corporate Vanessa."

You'll Learn

⭐ How to trust your gut when the world wants a formula

⭐ What it looks like to pivot across corporate, startup, freelance, and entrepreneurship

⭐ How to keep your creative practice alive when life demands everything else

⭐ What staying true to yourself actually costs — and why it's worth it

⭐ How to redefine legacy when your path doesn't look like anyone else's

Key Insights

Integrity Isn't a Strategy — It's a Through Line Vanessa has never been able to perform her way through something that doesn't fit. That's been a friction point in corporate environments — and her greatest superpower everywhere else.

Intuition Is a Muscle Vanessa doesn't start with references — she starts with excitement. Dread, fear, and excitement are all data points. When something's exciting and a little scary? That's usually the green light.

"Flow" Over the Formula At every stage of her career, the signal wasn't a title or a number — it was the feeling in her body that said this rhythm is right. The work is chasing more of that.

Timestamps

02:00 – How Kristin and Vanessa met and grew up together

05:00 – Vanessa's creative family roots and her third-grade art teacher debut

09:00 – Why she calls herself a "unicorn designer" — and means it

13:00 – Keeping a creative practice alive when life takes over

17:00 – From event florals to web design: the many lives of Vanessa

24:00 – Early career in graphic design and the pivot toward UX

27:00 – Landing at Walmart.com and realizing corporate wasn't it

33:00 – Running an event company and a tech career at the same time

36:00 – Using dread, excitement, and fear as a decision-making framework

40:00 – Why she looks at fashion week, not other beverage brands, for inspiration

46:00 – The girl boss era, what we were told, and what nobody mentioned

48:00 – What building a legacy means when your path is entirely your own

54:00 – Authenticity as a through line — and why it's been both a blessing and a friction point

Resources and Links

Connect with Vanessa on LinkedIn

See her work at Vanessavellozzi.com

Find host Kristin Belden on LinkedIn or at BeldenStrategies.com Sign up for Kristin's newsletter Big Deal Energy: BeldenStrategies.com/newsletter

If this one hit close to home, share it with a friend who needed to hear it — and consider leaving a review. It helps more women find these conversations.