When a new business leader walked in and told Malvika Jhangiani they were going to restructure the entire segment — 60% of company revenue — in a room with just the two of them, no leaks, no one else in the room, she didn't say no. She said: "I hear you. And here's how we get to the same outcome with the right people involved." Six months after implementation, he came back and told her it was the right call.

That's the ABC method — Acknowledge, Build, Challenge — and it's the framework Malvika has built her career on. As VP HR, Learning & Development at Newell Brands, she's spent years figuring out how to challenge senior leaders without triggering defensiveness, manage rooms full of type A executives without losing the thread, and find genuine joy in the conversations most people dread.

In this episode, she gets specific about all of it.

You'll learn:

• The ABC method for challenging leaders without coming across as aggressive, and the Project Panther restructure story that proves it works
• How she handled a client in Oman at 24 who kept making inappropriate comments — alone, in a foreign country, with a relationship and additional business on the line, and still won the next assignment
• The "be brief, be bright, be gone" framework for capturing and keeping the attention of type A executives in high-stakes meetings
• How she gamified a full-day leadership talent review to keep a competitive senior team engaged, and still got all the work done
• Why leading with facts instead of emotion is the only way to challenge the status quo without losing credibility
• Her personal technique for staying calm when everything is tense: painting, choosing to laugh, and the line about "not my circus, not my monkeys, but I do know some of the clowns"

If you work with strong-willed leaders, navigate difficult conversations across cultures, or just want to bring more effectiveness, and more joy, into the hardest parts of your job, this episode delivers.

About Malvika Jhangiani: Vice President HR, Learning & Development at Newell Brands, Malvika has led organizational transformation, talent strategy, and cross-cultural teams across global markets. Originally from India, she has built her career navigating high-stakes leadership conversations across cultures, industries, and executive levels.

Connect with Malvika on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/malvika-jhangiani/

She Was 24, Alone With a Difficult Client in Oman. What She Figured Out Built Her Entire Leadership Playbook.

She watched a brilliant female CEO — strategic, skilled, accomplished — get pushed out of her company. And in that moment, Alejandra Torchia had a realization that changed how she thinks about her entire career: if it can happen to her, it can happen to any of us. A job title is the most fragile kind of power there is. The only power that can't be taken away is the one you build inside yourself.

Alejandra is SVP of Technology, Global Infrastructure Solutions at Equifax, leading teams across multiple countries and continents. She also runs "I Am Remarkable" workshops — originally a Google initiative — helping professionals, especially women and underrepresented groups, learn to celebrate their own achievements out loud. She did not always find this easy. Growing up in Argentina, where the culture does not reward self-promotion the way the U.S. does, she spent years assuming her work would speak for itself. It didn't.

In this episode, she shares what she learned late, by her own admission, and what she now teaches others from the start.

You'll learn:

• Why waiting for others to recognize your achievements is a trap, and the mindset shift that breaks it
• The story of how she walked into a job interview at 22 with no experience and got hired on boldness and a single honest promise
• Why she left a well-paying job that supported her family to escape bias, and how she made that decision
• The difference between title-based power and internal power, and why only one of them survives a corporate restructure
• The single biggest leadership gap she sees across cultures, levels, and industries, and it's not what most leaders focus on
• How values contain ambition and keep influence from crossing into manipulation
• The practical system she teaches for tracking and sharing your own achievements before you forget them

If you've been doing great work and waiting for someone to notice, this episode reframes that habit entirely.

About Alejandra Torchia: SVP of Technology, Global Infrastructure Solutions at Equifax, Alejandra leads infrastructure teams across the globe. Originally from Buenos Aires, she moved to the U.S. seven years ago. She is an advisory board member of WATT (Women Advancing Technology Together) at Equifax, a board member of the Start House Foundation, an active facilitator of the I Am Remarkable initiative, and a member of Women in Technology (WIT) Atlanta.

Connect with Alejandra on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alejandra-torchia-001954

Stop Waiting to Be Recognized: How Equifax SVP Alejandra Torchia Learned to Promote Herself — and Why You Need To

Sixteen years later, she still tells this story. She was called into the office of a 6'4" senior executive she barely knew. He sat with his back to the door and said: "You will either make me a very happy man or a very unhappy man." Something in her snapped. She replied: "I was always told I'm not responsible for how other people feel." He slowly turned his chair around with a smile on his face. That one moment became the foundation of a decade-long mentorship.

Melissa Dill is Executive Director and Chief Privacy Officer at Kodiak Solutions, and she's spent her career learning, sometimes the hard way, what it actually means to hold onto your personal power when the professional stakes are high.

In this episode, she breaks down the real moments that tested her, and the specific tools she built to handle them.

You'll learn:

• What "giving away your personal power" actually means, and how to catch yourself doing it before it costs you
• What Melissa said to a senior executive that instantly shifted how he saw her, and why most people would have responded the opposite way
• How she handled a new boss who made every conversation feel like an interrogation, and the scripting technique that got her through it without losing her composure or her job
• Why a mentor told her "if you're going to swim with sharks, you need to thicken your skin", and what that actually means for women moving into senior leadership
• How to stop taking feedback personally when your whole identity has been built around being the A student
• The self-awareness practice that tells you when to speak up and when holding back is the smarter move

If you've ever left a difficult conversation beating yourself up, questioning your own judgment, or wondering why you didn't say what you meant, this episode gives you the tools to stop that pattern.

About Melissa Dill: Executive Director and Chief Privacy Officer at Kodiak Solutions, Melissa brings decades of experience in technology and healthcare leadership. She is an active mentor to early-career women in tech and a champion of honest, values-driven leadership.

Connect with Melissa on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissa-dill-5b55874

How to Reclaim Your Personal Power When Authority Figures Try to Diminish You (with Melissa Dill)