Speak Your Mind Unapologetically Podcast

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 Reina 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 Reina: 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.
Connect with Darlene on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darlene-reina/

The Mirror Method, the WAIT Acronym, and Why "Learn Fast" Beats "Fail Fast": Lee Health CSIO Lisa Martinez on Challenging the Status Quo — Part 2
She walked into a conference room as the only woman in a room full of men in technical data roles. They introduced themselves to each other and started the meeting without acknowledging her at all. She paused, said "excuse me," stated her name, her role, and why she was there. It startled them. She was glad she did it. Because if she hadn't, she wouldn't have belonged in the conversation that followed.
In Part 2 of this conversation, Lisa Martinez, Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer at Lee Health, moves from personal story into the specific leadership tools she uses every day to challenge the status quo, orchestrate high-stakes conversations, and move organizations through change without creating enemies.
You'll learn:
The Mirror Method: why the most dangerous thing you can do when entering a new organization is come in with a fix-it mentality, and the structured listening approach that gets people to agree the status quo needs to change before you ever propose a solution
WAIT — "Why Am I Talking?" — the acronym she uses to decide when her voice advances a conversation and when silence does more
How she reads the nonverbals of an entire organization the same way she reads body language in a room, and what signals tell her when trust is building and when it isn't
Why she stopped relying on PowerPoint and what changed when she started looking people in the eye instead of at her slides, including the mentor advice that saved her: "be ready to deliver a 5-minute version of what you just created" 
The difference between intellectual sparring and debate, and how she creates conditions for divergent thinking that actually leads to decisions, not just more discussion
Why she says "learn fast" instead of "fail fast", and how she navigates naysayers, skeptics, and the inevitable "you paid how much for what?" moments in healthcare innovation
What she looks for when building a team: curiosity, courage, and comfort with ambiguity, and why trustworthiness ranks above everything else
About Lisa Martinez: Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer at Lee Health, Lisa leads strategic planning, innovation, and organizational transformation across one of Florida's largest health systems. She is a passionate advocate for women in leadership and women of color in senior roles.
Connect with Lisa on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisa-martinez-csio

She missed the scholarship deadline for her MBA. She asked anyway. She got it. She was the only woman in her group project cohort, a single mom with a one-year-old, living paycheck to paycheck. She told her group on day one exactly what she could do and when she was leaving. They respected it. On a business trip with a relatively new manager, she admitted mid-conversation that she wanted to move into a strategy role that didn't even exist yet. That manager became her greatest champion. That pivot launched the career that led her to become Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer at Lee Health.
Lisa Martinez has spent her career figuring out what fearless authenticity actually looks like in practice: not as a concept, but as a set of specific choices made in specific moments of risk. In Part 1 of this two-part conversation, she walks through the mindset shifts and early career moves that built her foundation.
You'll learn:
The exact moment Lisa realized intimidation was her own internal problem, not something others were doing to her and how that realization changed every difficult room she walked into after
Why the post-it on her monitor reads "no one wants to feel insignificant, incompetent, or unlikable", and how she uses it to decode defensiveness in herself and others
The MBA-as-single-mom stories: how she advocated for a scholarship she'd missed the deadline for, set hard boundaries with her group project team from day one, and created an independent study that wasn't in the curriculum
How a candid conversation on a business trip, admitting she wanted a completely different role, launched her entire strategy career, and what she learned about speaking up to managers about your real aspirations
Why her first attempt at people management felt completely wrong, and the leadership philosophy she arrived at: "developing leaders, not amassing followers"
How conflict made two of her most important professional relationships stronger, not weaker
About Lisa Martinez: Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer at Lee Health, Lisa leads strategic planning, innovation, and organizational transformation across one of Florida's largest health systems. She is a passionate advocate for women in leadership and women of color in senior roles.
Connect with Lisa on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisa-martinez-csio

For years, Daisy Xia's performance reviews said the same things: hardworking, great team player, result-driven, quiet. Cycle after cycle, different managers, same words. Then she realized: those were her brand hashtags, and they were never going to get her to where she wanted to go. She wanted "confident," "influential," "driven," "leadership." And nobody was going to give her those labels. She had to earn them by using her voice.
Daisy is Head of Strategy and FP&A at Revolut, one of the world's fastest-growing fintechs. Originally from China, she built her career navigating the cultural expectation that hard work and results would speak for themselves. They didn't. In this episode, she breaks down exactly how she changed that, and what she now teaches every junior person who reports to her.
You'll learn:
The performance review pattern that finally made her realize she was building the wrong brand, and the specific words she decided to own instead
Why she stopped being the silent note-taker in every meeting, what she lost by doing it, and why AI has made that role completely obsolete
The 4-phase framework for asking questions in town halls and large meetings, from canned questions that still get you seen, to strategic dialogue that opens collaboration doors with senior executives
The "golden three months" strategy: how to use your newness as a security blanket to ask anything, map broken processes, and deliver visible value before anyone expects it
Why there is no such thing as over-communication at work ,and how staying quiet to avoid being "too much" is actually the riskier move
The one mandate she gives herself and every person she mentors: say something in every meeting, even if it's just a rephrasing
If you've ever been called "hardworking" but not "leadership material," or if you have great ideas that only come out in one-on-ones but never in the room, this episode is the blueprint.
About Daisy Xia: Head of Strategy and Financial Planning & Analytics at Revolut, Daisy leads strategic and financial operations at one of the world's largest fintech companies. Originally from China, she coaches and mentors junior professionals on speaking up, building visibility, and translating strong technical work into leadership presence.
Connect with Daisy on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daisy-xia
Stop Taking Notes, Start Getting Noticed: Revolut Head of Strategy Daisy Xia on Building Your Brand Through Your Voice

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.