After decades moving between corporate leadership, consulting, and academia, Jeff McAuliffe has seen leadership from every angle. From sitting at executive tables to building his own consulting practice from scratch, he’s learned that “the top” isn’t a fixed place—and that loneliness shows up in ways most people don’t expect.

This episode of Lonely at the Top is about the quiet realities of leadership that no one prepares you for.
It’s about navigating influence when you don’t have control, the tension between authority and authenticity, and what it really costs to hold both.

It’s also about redefining leadership as something more human: less about having answers, and more about creating space for truth.

Episode Highlights

• Why “the top” is relative—and why loneliness can exist at every level
• The hidden isolation of entrepreneurship and solo consulting
• Moving from corporate leadership to building something on your own
• Why great leaders don’t need to be “the one in charge”
• The challenge of influencing without authority
• What leaders wish they could say out loud (but usually don’t)
• Why “I don’t know” might be the most powerful leadership tool
• The role of emotions in leadership—and why most leaders avoid them
• Navigating environments where authority doesn’t work
• Leading through uncertainty while holding information you can’t share

Connect with Jeff

Jeff's Linkedin

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Lauren Goche has cracked the code on something most leaders never admit they need: community. A principal real estate broker, micro-influencer, and self-described love bully, Lauren built her career by staying connected — and then discovered that even she had a chaos habit she didn't see coming. In this episode, she talks with Rachel about the expensive sabbatical lesson that revealed she didn't know how to be calm, what it looks like to lead a team with radical care as the operating principle, and the strange isolating side effects of becoming someone people recognize in restaurants, on front porches, and at lunch while accidentally stealing your phone.

Episode Highlights

•⁠ ⁠She nearly took a job she dreaded — and a chance conference encounter changed everything
•⁠ ⁠Why Lauren deliberately chose never to own her own brokerage ("it's more headache and more lonely")
•⁠ ⁠The Mexico property: how a sabbatical got too quiet and she manufactured chaos to escape the calm
•⁠ ⁠Scarcity to abundance: growing up with housing instability and what it meant to be able to lose big without losing everything
•⁠ ⁠The love bully philosophy — why care for each other comes before care for clients, and why she'll bring you a sandwich whether you consent or not
•⁠ ⁠The parasocial side of Instagram fame: being recognized at her own front porch, and having a fan sprint away with her phone
•⁠ ⁠Lost friendships, nervous system repair, and learning to say no as a complete sentence
•⁠ ⁠Why community isn't soft — it's the infrastructure of a sustainable business

Connect with Lauren

Lauren's Instagram

Dr. Mark Vossler spent 30 years as a cardiologist before most people retire from their first career. He was medical director of cardiac services for a decade, managed physicians, navigated hospital politics, and learned the hard way that medicine is really just people work with better equipment.

Then he retired. And got busier.

Now he leads Physicians for Social Responsibility, a national organization built on a striking premise: 80% of health outcomes have nothing to do with medical care. They're determined by your zip code, your income, your race, your environment. So if you actually care about keeping people alive, you have to go upstream to legislators, policy, and power.

This episode is about what it takes to lead when you can't fire anyone, when the stakes are existential, and when caring too much can paralyze the very people you need to move.

It's about knowing when to say no, how to protect what's yours, and why likability — real likability, not performed likability — might be the most underrated leadership asset there is.

Episode Highlights

• Why 80% of health outcomes are determined by factors medicine can't fix
• Managing physician egos vs. managing volunteers — and which is harder
• The fine line between being worried enough to act and so worried you shut down
• Why facts don't persuade people — and what actually does
• What Fred Rogers' congressional testimony teaches every leader about influence
• The 8pm Saturday call that signals your job is falling apart

Connect with Mark

Mark's Linkedin

Email: wpsr@wpsr.org

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He built influence in rooms that were never designed with him in mind.

Growing up in Boyle Heights, Los Angeles, Alfred Fraijo, Jr. grew up food insecure in one of LA's most underserved neighborhoods. Now he's reshaping the cities that once failed communities like his. He built a career at the top of a major international law firm, then walked away to bet everything on himself.

This episode of Lonely at the Top is about what it feels like to carry leadership while holding identities that haven’t always been welcomed in positions of power.
It’s about navigating ambition while staying connected to community.
It's about leading projects worth hundreds of millions of dollars while addressing deeper issues of belonging, responsibility, and representation.

Episode Highlights

• Growing up as the first person in his household to finish high school, and understanding power from an early age
• Rising to leadership inside elite legal spaces as a queer, Latino executive
• Founding a multidisciplinary development firm rooted in social impact
• Building cities that reflect the communities they serve
• Staying grounded while operating at the edge of financial risk every day
• Redefining what responsible leadership looks like
• Ending every colleague call with "I love you" and making a case for why more leaders should too

Connect with Alfred

Website: Somos Group
Email: alfred@somosgroup.org

Dan Graham spent 30 years at Sony, rising from organizing office supplies to managing 150 people, all without the pedigree or resume you’d expect.

But his defining leadership moment wasn’t the promotion.

It was the day he was called into HR and told he might lose his job, not because the numbers were bad, but because he’d forgotten the people behind them.

This episode is about what happens when success quietly turns into pressure, pressure turns into reactivity, and a leader has to face the impact of his own behavior.

It’s about fear. Accountability. And the courage to change in public.

Episode Highlights

• A late-night cafeteria conversation that changed the trajectory of his career
• Promoted over colleagues with more education and experience
• Managing 150 people without formal training
• Turning off the lights in a tense executive meeting to reset the room
• Forgetting his mission under mounting performance pressure
• Being reported to HR by his own supervisors
• Confronting the impact of his anger on the people he cared about most
• The first honest conversation about fear in his entire life
• Public accountability — and rebuilding trust with his team

Connect with Dan

• Website: https://www.dpgphotos.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dpgphotos0105/

In this episode of Lonely at the Top, Rachel sits down with Dr. Kazique J. Prince, psychologist, executive consultant, and creator of the Djembe Card Deck, for a deeply human conversation about dignity, authenticity, and the quiet loneliness that comes with leadership.

Drawing from decades of experience advising mayors, CEOs, and change-makers, Dr. Prince challenges the myth that authority requires emotional distance. He explores how leaders can remain grounded in their humanity while holding power — and why true leadership is less about being “right” and more about ensuring that everyone walks away with their dignity intact.

Together, they unpack how authenticity develops over time, why cultural awareness starts with self-examination, and how leaders can create environments of trust and belonging without sacrificing clarity or authority.

Episode Highlights:

• Leadership doesn’t exempt you from being human
• Power doesn’t mean you stop needing mutual recognition
• The real danger of leadership is not stress; it’s disconnection
• Culture, hierarchy, and roles are real, and they don’t erase our shared nervous systems
• The goal isn’t agreement or “rightness," it’s relational intactness
• Leadership should not require anyone to disappear — including the leader.

Connect with Dr. Kazique Prince:

• jelaniconsultingllc.com
• djembedeck.com

In this episode of Lonely at the Top, Rachel sits down with Emma Whittard, a former senior executive in global children’s publishing turned transformational coach for women leaders in midlife.

Emma shares what it was really like to rise through the ranks at companies like Disney, DreamWorks, and Warner Brothers, including the invisible loneliness of being the only person in the room who knew how to build something entirely new. From running international publishing businesses to launching a startup-within-a-studio at DreamWorks, Emma reflects on the emotional cost of responsibility, especially when success quickly turned into loss and layoffs.

Together, Rachel and Emma explore the isolating reality of leadership decisions that affect livelihoods, the lack of mentorship for innovators inside large organizations, and how women in particular are conditioned to carry enormous pressure quietly. Emma also speaks candidly about midlife transitions—shedding inherited stories of worth, productivity, and self-sacrifice—and why the best leaders are those who stay curious, ask great questions, and allow themselves to remain human.

Episode Highlights

• “I was the only person in the entire company who had ever done this before.”
  Emma describes the profound loneliness of building a new business inside DreamWorks with no roadmap and no peers.
• Creating a global business plan while sitting on her bed with a toddler nearby
  A striking image of how leadership, motherhood, and pressure collided in real time.
• The moment everything changed from expansion to contraction
  Being asked to dismantle the very team she had just built—and how close that brought her to burnout.
• “That’s the closest I’ve ever come to a breakdown.”
  Emma’s most vulnerable admission about the emotional toll of leadership without support.
• The spa certificate that saved her nervous system
  A small but profound example of how self-care—not strategy—was what she actually needed.
• “Leaders who ask great questions are the best leaders.”
  Emma reframes leadership as humility, curiosity, and connection rather than certainty.
• What she would do differently now
  Naming mentorship and embodied support as non-negotiables for anyone at the top.

Connect with Emma:

• EmmaWhittard.com

In this episode of Lonely at the Top, Rachel sits down with Sorby Grant, President and CEO of Climb Hire, an equity-focused workforce development nonprofit supporting underemployed adults in accessing real economic mobility.

Sorby reflects on the emotional cost of being the decision-maker, the pressure of stewarding a mission rooted in justice and opportunity, and the quiet exhaustion that can make it hard to recognize success while you’re living it.

A central thread of the conversation is social capital — how access to relationships, trust, and informal networks determines who gets opportunities and who stays stuck. Sorby unpacks why talent alone is rarely enough, how the “hidden job market” really works, and why teaching people how to build professional relationships is a critical equity intervention.

She also opens up about her own leadership evolution: stepping into the CEO role after working closely inside the organization, navigating the shadow of a founder with a very different leadership style, and learning to claim her own authority without losing the heart of the mission.

Connect with Sorby:

• https://climbhire.co/
• Sorby@climbhire.co