Diana Sawyers has spent almost 30 years leading enterprise transformation for the State of Texas. She's also a saxophone player, a guitar student who's played Stubb's and Antone's, a political junkie, and a mom launching two sons into the world. In this episode we talk about all of it, and the books that helped her hold it together along the way.

Diana shares the moment she froze on stage with sticky notes taped to her guitar (and found out later Bob Dylan did the same thing). We talk about teaching inside a maximum security juvenile facility, why she believes music is one of the last truly human things we have left, and what it means to finally be comfortable in your own skin.

Books mentioned in this episode:

• What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver
• The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz
• 101 Essays That Will Change the Way You Think by Brianna Wiest
• The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt

If this conversation resonates, that's kind of the point. The books that shape us usually show up right when we need them. If you're in a season where you're asking what your own next chapter looks like, I'd love to talk with you. Head to angiesmithsummitconsulting.com to book a call.

Loree Tamayo built a life running hospitals and long-term care facilities, one that looked polished from the outside. Underneath it was a lifetime of psychological abuse she didn't even have language for, generational patterns passed down from her great-grandmother to her grandmother to her mother, and finally to her.

In this episode, Loree walks through the moment she surrendered her life to God with a blank check prayer, and how that same surrender carried her through a devastating marriage, eight years of counseling, and the slow work of learning what a boundary even is. She talks about the anger she didn't know she was carrying, why "no" felt like a foreign language, and how she came out the other side to found Yesterday's Gone, a women's shelter now supported by an army of men who show up to serve the very population abuse once tried to break.

This is a conversation about denial, boundaries, forgiveness, and the belief that God writes the best endings, if you let Him.

Find Loree at yesterdaysgone.org and hiddentreasureteams.org. She was also recently on Michelle Savage's Her Best Chapter podcast, check it out!

Today I'm sitting down with Jennifer Buaas. We first connected at work conferences over the years, and I knew there was a story here worth telling. Jennifer's path took her from driving a beverage cart at a golf course to the Texas Workers Compensation Commission, then to the Texas Department of Information Resources, and now to KPMG. Every door that opened came through a person who saw something in her first.

We talk about mentors who invest their time for no reason other than wanting someone else to succeed, why relationships and connection matter more than we give them credit for, and how public sector workers rarely get the credit they deserve. Jennifer shares the books and voices that shaped her along the way: children's books like Curious George during her early parenting years, Brené Brown's work and her podcast The Curiosity Shop with Adam Grant, the devotional Devotions from the Horse Farm by Kara and Dan Whitney, and Kristin Neff's book on self-compassion, which met her in one of the darkest seasons of her life.

We close on listening as the most underrated leadership skill, why AI will never replace human connection, and Jennifer's own book that's been taking shape in her mind for years.

If this episode encourages you, share it with someone who needs it today. Want to be a guest or explore a sponsorship? Connect with me at AngieSmithSummitConsulting.com.

Season 2 kicks off with Carrie Kass, founder, CEO, and TEDx Round Rock Women speaker. Carrie and Angie became friends through the multi-author book Pieces to Purpose, and this conversation picks up right where that friendship started.

Carrie opens up about the moment she hit send on her first published story, the trauma she'd buried for decades, and what it cost her to finally speak it out loud on stage. She walks through losing her role in a private equity acquisition, and how that loss became the spark for her new book chapter, The Unacquired Voice.

They dig into networking done right, why "what do you do" is the worst way to start a conversation, and how Carrie's community became her business overnight when she needed it most. Carrie also shares the books that shaped her, from The Giving Tree to The Five Love Languages, and previews her new book Voice and Vision, releasing August 5th.

This one is honest, funny, and full of heart. Grab your coffee and settle in.

www.carriekass.com

IG: @thecarriekass

FB: https://facebook.com/carriekass18

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carrie-kass-a59114a/

TEDx talk: https://youtu.be/5Jp1xudljow?si=hO3qFLMQ_GdJXImS

Connect with Carrie on her social platforms, and connect with Angie at angiesmithsummitconsulting.com.

Valentina MacGregor has lived on four continents, survived a body brace that reshaped her whole life, and turned heartbreak into one of the most meaningful projects of her career.

Born in Buenos Aires, raised in Venezuela, and shaped by stints in Italy, London, Glasgow, and Madrid, Valentina joins Angie to talk about what happens when you stop asking permission to be different. At 10 years old, a scoliosis diagnosis put her in a back brace for two years. She couldn't do PE, so she read instead. That's the moment she became a lifelong reader.

She opens up about losing her brother after two heart transplants, the book that taught her to trust her own heart over everyone else's opinion (The Alchemist), and why she now photographs women over 40 for her Legends Project, an annual exhibit celebrating the women who dared to pivot.

This one will remind you that the hard seasons are usually the ones doing the shaping.

0:00 – Sponsor Message A quick thank-you to Windstar Insurance Group out of Cedar Park, owned by Angie's friend Stephanie Dew, for backing this season.

1:02 – Welcome to the Season 1 Finale Angie kicks off episode 10 with Vidya Moorthy, calling her "the crown jewel" to close out the first season.

2:22 – Vidya's Story: Detroit to Austin An MBA in finance, a master's in PR, a career that took her from Detroit to Asia Pacific to Austin in 2021, where she started from zero relationships and built a whole network one coffee at a time.

3:53 – Leading Austin Businesswoman Vidya took over as president in 2024 after founder Olga Adler stepped back. Her mission: get women access to capital, power circles, and new markets, without gatekeeping it behind a big price tag.

6:28 – Raised on Family, Faith, and Education Vidya grew up in southern India in a home that wasn't wealthy but was rich in education. Her name, Vidya, literally means education, and that thread runs through everything she's built since.

11:31 – The Mountain Question "Do you want to climb the mountain to be seen, or to be able to see further?" Vidya's answer to what keeps her climbing, and why she tries to pay it forward without keeping score.

15:06 – Active Listening as a Discipline Vidya breaks down why real listening takes generosity and empathy, and why it's not your job to convince someone to see it your way, just to honor their truth.

17:41 – Book 1: Atomic Habits by James Clear Vidya on why this "everybody's read it" book still changed her life: metacognition, getting 1% better daily, and the idea that profound change starts in the smallest habits.

23:38 – Book 2: A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini A story of two women bound together by hardship in Afghanistan. Vidya also shares a beautiful memory of her father's letters and the lesson he taught her about writing with simple, powerful words.

30:46 – A Taste of Her Keynote Vidya previews "The Lion in a Changing Jungle," her talk connecting global shifts, like trade, currency, and policy, to what's actually happening in a small business down the street in Austin.

36:11 – Connect with Vidya Find her on LinkedIn as Vidya Moorthy, or through austinbusinesswoman.com. Their annual awards gala is open to nominations, no membership required.

38:56 – Closing Vidya on never taking a mic lightly, and Angie's invitation to connect for coaching, speaking, or a future episode.

3. Bonus Book Mentioned (not covered in depth)

📚 The Lion Women of Tehran — mentioned by Angie around 28:01 as a similar read on oppressed women finding connection through hardship.

0:00 – Intro: Angie welcomes Veronica Seaver, a woman she's known and admired for over a decade, back for Episode 9.

3:21 – Career Journey: Veronica traces her path from the restaurant industry at Hyatt to HR, to running her own nurseries, to becoming Elgin Chamber president. Every stop taught her the same skill: how to create buy-in.

8:55 – Choosing Honesty Over the Mask: Veronica gets real about faking her life for years and the moment she decided to just be honest with everyone, about everything. She talks about how dropping the mask disarms people and how much energy it gives back.

12:04 – 📚 Book Mentioned: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. This is the book that taught Veronica to love reading and showed her, as a kid, that she was creative. She's already planning a Narnia-themed event because of it.

16:16 – 📚 Book Mentioned: Hey Doll by Veronica Seaver (unpublished). Veronica wrote this after losing her mom and grandma to cancer within one week of each other, both diagnosed at the same time. She checked into a hotel the day her mom died and started writing. It sat untouched for eight years before she finally finished it, locked away in a hotel room by herself. Heartbreaking and funny in the same breath.

25:09 – Empowering Women Without Undermining Men: Veronica pushes back on the assumption that empowering women means being anti-men. Her mentors, her general manager, her ex-husband, have all been men who called things out of her. She wants to do for other women what men have done for her.

28:15 – Adjusting Her Business for a Tough Economy: Veronica talks candidly about how expensive everything's gotten and why she had to rethink her business model to stay sustainable.

32:21 – Introducing The Business Social: Veronica unveils her new event space in downtown Elgin, seats 70, walk-in ready, and open to the public for everything from business classes to baby showers. She's also planning a monthly community night with concepts like Pitch a Friend Singles Night and Hot Take Night.

37:11 – Where to Find Veronica: She shares where to follow her, mainly Facebook, with LinkedIn and her website sheisallthethings.com as backup.

Ep. 8 | Anne Grady: Evolvability, the Inner Critic, and Why Your Brain Would Rather Be Predictably Unhappy

What happens when the life you planned falls completely apart — and you end up more yourself than you ever would have been otherwise?

Anne Grady is a bestselling author, keynote speaker, and resilience expert who has spent two decades learning — the hard way — how to not just survive tough circumstances but actually grow through them. Her son Evan was born with autism, mental illness, and developmental delays, and navigating his world as a single mom became the unlikely foundation for everything she now teaches.

In this conversation, Anne and Angie cover a lot of ground: why uncertainty is neurologically threatening, the 15-second trick that rewires your brain, what it means to use your values as a decision filter when the choice feels impossible, and why your resume and your eulogy really shouldn't be the same thing.

Anne also unpacks her brand new book Evolvability — and the difference between resilience (surviving) and evolvability (actually growing forward).

This episode is packed with neuroscience that doesn't feel like neuroscience, real talk about mental health stigma, and more than a few lines you'll want to write down.

Books mentioned: 📚 Evolvability by Anne Grady 📚 Self-Compassion by Kristin Neff 📚 Anchored, Aligned, Accountable by Ayo Bethia 📚 Joyful Prayerful Thankful by Kevin Karschnik

Connect with Anne: Website: AnneGradyGroup.com Free adaptability assessment: evolvability.com Social: @AnneGradyGroup