What does it actually cost to walk away from something you spent eighteen years building?

Dr. Tristin Brisbois has spent her whole career, in wildly different settings, chasing the same underlying question: what makes people well? It started with her PhD at the University of Alberta, a clinical trial giving cannabis to cancer patients to see if it could restore something chemotherapy had taken from them: the simple pleasure of tasting food. From there, she spent over a decade inside PepsiCo's Global R&D organization, climbing from scientist to Chief of Staff to director, optimizing that same pleasure at a global scale.

Then, this April, just five months after winning a seat on Red Deer's city council on her first try, she left PepsiCo to focus on civil service.

In this episode, we go back to the beginning and walk the whole arc:

🔹 THE SCIENCE — What her cannabis-and-appetite research actually taught her about pleasure and quality of life
🔹 THE CLIMB — PepsiCo Canada to New York, and the version of success she was chasing along the way
🔹 THE LETTING GO — What it means to continue adapting to a career

This isn't a policy interview, and it isn't a résumé. It's a conversation about ambition, appetite, and what's actually left once you stop chasing the next rung.

⏱️ What's Inside:
00:00 – A hometown kid who climbed a global ladder
— The PhD: cannabis, cancer, and the pleasure of eating again
— The climb: PepsiCo Canada to New York
— The five months of carrying both worlds
— The week she chose to serve her community
— What happiness looks like to her now

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#TristinBrisbois #RedDeer #Happiness #CareerChange #Purpose

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