Speak Your Mind Unapologetically Podcast

Disrupt Yourself Before Someone Else Does: How Thomson Reuters CTO Anuradha Turned Fear, Bias, and Discomfort Into Career Fuel
She grew up in a small town in India, first daughter in a middle-class family, educated in her mother tongue through 10th grade. She was culturally trained to listen more and speak less. Then she accepted a role as an assistant professor straight out of university, in front of 60 students, because she needed a job and couldn't say no to an opportunity. She showed up for her first class and trembled for the entire 60 minutes.
She didn't quit. She went back. She sat in her colleagues' classes to watch how they taught. She asked hard questions. She sought feedback from the students whose faces told her everything. Eventually, students started telling her: "No one ever taught this subject the way you do."
Anuradha is Head of Engineering and CTO of the Corporate Tax and Trade Technology Group at Thomson Reuters. She has since moved internationally alone, changed industries multiple times, and built a leadership philosophy around one core principle: disrupt yourself before someone else does it for you.
In this episode, she breaks down how.
You'll learn:
She asked for a Senior Director role and was told not only no, but "even if you applied, they wouldn't hire you." What she said next, why she didn't confront him, and how she used that conversation to get clarity about whether the problem was her or the environment around her.
The mental model she uses every time she gets a no: is this about me not having the skills, or is this about the climate in this organization not being ready for someone like me? Both are valid answers, but you have to know which one before you decide what to do next.
Why she deliberately paced herself after that conversation, asked for names of other people to speak to, and processed it over days rather than trying to resolve it all in one go.
Why running away from fear doesn't make fear disappear. It just means you'll face it later, under higher stakes, with fewer second chances.
How she built confidence and humility simultaneously by changing industries repeatedly: retail, financial services, banking, payments, tax and trade. The more she learned, the more she understood how much more there was to learn, and why she sees that as a leadership asset, not a liability.
What she means by "disrupt yourself before someone else does" and why it applies equally to personal growth, career management, and technology leadership at scale.
Her model for leading through failure: look forward first, understand what went wrong second. And why leaders who impose their own stress on a team under pressure take everyone down with them.
About Anuradha: Head of Engineering and CTO of the Corporate Tax and Trade Technology Group at Thomson Reuters, Anu is a recognized tech executive and speaker at women's leadership and technology conferences. She has built her career across multiple industries and continents.

Getting a "no" at work isn't the problem. Not knowing what to do with it is. In this episode, you'll get a proven 8-step framework to turn workplace resistance into genuine cooperation — without pressure, without losing your composure, and without damaging the relationship.
Whether you're asking for a raise, requesting flexibility, pitching an idea, advocating for resources, or handling a performance review objection, these steps give you a repeatable approach for any high-stakes conversation where the stakes feel too high to get it wrong.
In this episode, you'll learn:
How to recognize workplace resistance — even when it's subtle, indirect, or disguised as agreement
The most common mistakes that kill your credibility and close the conversation down
How to ask the questions that surface the real concern, not just the surface objection
How to address objections confidently without being aggressive, passive, or overly apologetic
The exact 8-step framework to move someone from "no" to "yes" while keeping the relationship intact
If you've ever left a workplace conversation feeling like you gave up too easily — or pushed too hard — this episode is for you.

A Recruiter She Never Asked for Advice from Told Her to Lower Her Ambitions. It Derailed Her for Months. What Geetanjali Learned About Who Gets to Define Your Ceiling.
She was doing great work, getting strong reviews, and waiting for someone to recognize she was ready for the next level. Nobody came. Finally, she went and asked. They said: "Yeah, we think you're ready." She walked away with one permanent lesson: no one knows where you want to go unless you tell them. Your manager cannot promote you toward a goal they don't know you have.
Geetanjali is SVP of Financial Planning and Analysis at Ceridian, and she has built her career across multiple industries, companies, and cities, often following her spouse's career moves and rebuilding her network from scratch each time. She has been told she had no career path because of a commute. She has had a recruiter give her unsolicited opinions about her ceiling — someone who had never worked with her and didn't even have a position for her. Both times, she fact-checked herself, pushed back, and moved forward.
In this episode, she gets specific about how.
You'll learn:
Why she walked out of her first promotion conversation wondering why her manager didn't just offer it, and the mantra she built from that moment: "I own my career."
How she separates "I can't do this" from "I don't want to do this" — a distinction her husband called her out on, and one that completely changes how you diagnose self-doubt.
The worst-case scenario mindset she uses every time asking feels too risky: maximum they say no, and then at least you know exactly what you need to work on.
The recruiter who told her to stay put and aim lower, without her asking for any of that advice, and how she spiraled — until she realized: this person has never worked with me, doesn't know what I do, and has no position for me. Why am I listening?
The manager who told her she had no career because she was commuting. How she found a better position, and what she said in her exit interview when the CFO asked why she was leaving.
How she negotiated leaving at 5 PM sharp with a male manager who was more supportive than she expected — and why building trust first is the prerequisite for every other ask.
Her salary negotiation rule, applied to every job offer she has ever received: never accept in one go, always go back at least once, and negotiate the full package not just the base number.
How she leads her team by modeling openness about her own mistakes first, which makes it safe for her team to take risks and tell her when she is wrong.
Her networking approach: stay in touch with mentors even after years of silence, get involved in community organizations when you move cities, and commit to one lunch a month with someone new.
About Geetanjali: SVP of Financial Planning and Analysis at Ceridian, Geetanjali has built a finance leadership career across multiple industries and cities. She is a dual-career couple partner, working mom, woman of color from India, and active member of the Association of Financial Professionals.

His Boss Told Him He'd Never Rise Above Engineer Level. Three Years Later, That Boss Reported to Him. Samuel Santos on Getting Noticed at Work
Early in his career, his manager told him the company had a prototype for success: blonde hair, green eyes. Samuel Moody Santos was mixed race, Black, an immigrant who had started his working life as a waste picker. His manager told him he would never advance past engineer level. Three years later, Samuel was a manager and that man reported to him.
He went on to retire as Senior Vice President at Johnson & Johnson, one of the top 40 Fortune 500 companies in the world. He speaks five languages. He holds an engineering degree and an MBA. And he wrote the book on how he did it: "In Spite of the Headwinds."
In this episode, Samuel shares the specific mindset shifts, communication strategies, and career moves that took him from invisible to indispensable, as a minority, an immigrant, and someone who was actively told he didn't belong.
You'll learn:
Why "success depends on who you know" is the wrong mental model, and the one-sentence reframe Samuel used to challenge a corporate trainer in a room of 40 people that changed how he thought about visibility for the rest of his career.
Why doing excellent work and staying quiet about it is the same as doing nothing, and how he marketed his ideas without ever bragging about himself.
How he turned a direct manager who tried to limit his career into a stepping stone by building relationships with leaders two and three levels above that manager.
The "poor photograph" framework: why being visible without being skilled fails, and why being skilled without being visible fails just as badly.
Why he treats every "no" the same way: either he didn't explain the idea well enough, or he needs a different audience. The Starbucks founder knocked on 242 doors. Samuel applied that same logic to ideas inside a corporation.
How he disagrees with superiors without triggering defensiveness: "I never disagree with any person. I disagree with ideas." The specific language he used to pose challenges as questions so people moved toward his position instead of defending against it.
The performance review confrontation where someone tried to penalize a team member for a mistake from two years prior, and how Samuel addressed the entire room to win that argument on the spot.
Why he focused ruthlessly on the one skill he could take above average (presenting technical ideas to non-technical executives), and chose not to develop things that wouldn't move the needle, including declining to learn Mandarin during a two-year assignment in Shanghai.
About Samuel Moody Santos: Retired Senior Vice President at Johnson & Johnson, Samuel is an engineer, MBA, minister, polyglot (five languages), honorary consul, former university professor, public speaker, and author of "In Spite of the Headwinds: My Journey from Waste Picker to Vice President at a Top-Forty Fortune 500 Company."
Book: https://www.amazon.com/Spite-Headwinds-Picker-Senior-Executive-ebook/dp/B09KGRQ61W Connect with Samuel on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samuel-moody-santos-56601a10/

Her Dad Found a Rolex and Returned It. What That Taught Her About Asking for Everything.
Her father came to the United States in 1989 with next to nothing. He found a Rolex in a locker room while working as a janitor and returned it. The owner gave him a job. He stayed 27 years. In that time, he asked his employer for a green card. They sponsored it. He asked for college tuition. They paid for his associate's and his bachelor's degree. He asked to pivot into chemistry. They made a role for it.
Darlene watched all of this and had one thought: if he could ask for all of that with nothing in his pocket and no English, why was she self-editing her ambitions?
She stopped. Now she opens job interviews by telling the people who will decide whether to hire her exactly what she wants: to be CIO of an organization. She told her future boss. She told the Calendly interviewer. Both were supportive. She uses it as a filter.
Darlene is Head of IT at Calendly, and in this episode she breaks down the frameworks she's built for speaking up, pitching ideas, and asking for exactly what she wants without apology.
You'll learn:
How to know which conversations are worth inserting yourself into, and which ones to let go based on span of control, stakeholder complexity, and how badly you want the outcome.
The self-interest framework: why "selfless" leads to burnout, "selfish" kills collaboration, and the middle zone of self-interest is where real buy-in happens.
Why she describes senior leadership as "glorified salespeople" and what changed when she stopped clicking on the backend and started selling visions instead.
The "directionally correct" approach to numbers: why giving a C-suite executive "$270K plus or minus 20%" is infinitely more persuasive than "decreased time" or a 6-decimal-point calculation that took two weeks to produce.
How self-editing language like "I think the answer might be..." quietly signals low confidence, and how to hit the delete button on it.
Why she tells every interviewer exactly what she wants out of her career, and how she uses their response as a filter for whether the organization is actually a place where she can grow.
About Darlene: Head of IT at Calendly, Darlene has built her career at the intersection of technology leadership and organizational influence. Originally from a Venezuelan family in Rhode Island, she leads IT strategy and operations at one of the most widely used scheduling platforms in the world. She is candid, direct, and unabashedly ambitious.