The Raw Onion Podcast

We talk about voice like it's a soft skill. It isn't. It's wired into the nervous system, and for a lot of women, being seen has never felt safe.

Marta Spirk is a strategic speaking advisor, TEDx speaker, bestselling author, and professional singer who helps women entrepreneurs use speaking, storytelling, and visibility as tools for authority and business growth. She came on The Raw Onion to talk about what actually happens in the b...

You've worked twice as hard to get half the credit. You sat in rooms where no one looked like you, no one led like you, and no one understood what it cost you to show up. And you did it anyway.

Adyna K. Pressley is a global women's leadership architect, award-winning author, keynote speaker, founder of Queens Royale, and host of the Pressley on Purpose podcast. With more than 30 years of corporate leadership experience, she built he...

Reece Soltani was at the top of the table at a billion-dollar organization doing serious work for refugees on a global scale.

And she still felt like she couldn't make a dent in it.

"So why am I here?"

That question changed everything.

She did everything right. Master's degree. Fortune 500 consulting. Billion-dollar nonprofit. But she felt very unhappy and purposeless in a way she couldn't fully explain.

So she left.

"I want to build som...

The pressure to keep performing can make you forget who you are. In this episode, Renee Coover joins The Raw Onion to talk about what happens when career success, motherhood, and self-worth collide, and what it looks like to choose yourself before your body forces the issue.

Renee shares her journey from high-stakes legal work to a more aligned life, including the moment she realized that burnout was not just emotional, it was physi...

If you have ever felt like your body gave out before your mind was ready to stop, you are not alone in that experience.

And you are not broken.

What happened, neurologically and physiologically, has a reason. This episode is where we start to look at it.

We closed out the Roadmap to Resilience series with something different this episode. Stephanie brought her own story to the table, and what she’s spent the last decade tryi...

About Our Guest

Mazarine Treyz is an artist, writer, speaker, and facilitator focused on radical imagination and healing. She has worked across nonprofit, government, and entrepreneurial spaces, delivering 100+ talks in four countries and creating courses, conferences, and consulting work along the way.

She is the author of Healing from the Nonprofit Sector and lives in Oregon with her community, garden, and cat.

Explore her work:

Book...

About Our Guest

Sandy Davis is a fractional COO, the founder of Elevate Operations Advisory, and the voice behind Elevate Within on Substack. With over 25 years in operations leadership across investment banking and commercial real estate, she now partners with founder-led businesses to fix the operational breakdowns that quietly stall growth, so founders can stop being the bottleneck and teams can scale sustainably. Her work sits a...

About Our Guest

Sarosh Iqbal is the founder of Prezio, a personalized gifting brand rooted in meaning and creativity. After a career in Silicon Valley, she chose a different path. Her journey reflects resilience, uncertainty, and learning to trust herself.

Website: prezio.gifts

Instagram: @prezio.gifts

LinkedIn: Sarosh Iqbal

There is a kind of weight that builds quietly over time. Not because everything is wrong, but because everything ...

Some conversations are soft in tone but heavy in meaning. This one settles differently.

In Episode 20 of The Raw Onion, we explore the neuroscience of the aging brain. we look at it not just as biology, but as a deeply human experience that can leave us feeling confused, tender, and even heartbroken.

You know that ache when someone you love starts repeating stories, snaps in a way that doesn’t feel like them, or looks at you wi...

Dr. Stephanie P. Covall, PhD, MA, NBC-HWC, holds a doctorate in neuroscience and a Master of Arts in psychology, alongside certifications in coaching and integrative health. She works at the intersection of brain science, nutrition, and behavior change, guiding clients toward sustainable health transformations through an evidence-based, whole-person approach. Her practice, Realize Better Health, is built on one grounding idea: that...

Sierra Abler is a doctoral candidate pursuing her Doctor of Education in Applied Leadership, the founder and CEO of Innovative Leadership, and the host of the Confidence Compass podcast. A farmer’s wife and mom of two boys with a third on the way, Sierra works primarily with educators and teachers, helping people recognize and expand the leadership skills they already carry rather than starting from scratch.

At 27, she brings ...

Dr. Punam V. Saxena is a TEDx and SXSW speaker, two-time author, and advocate with over 35 years of work in equity and education. A second-generation Indian American who grew up as the only Indian family in rural Georgia, she speaks on cultural bias, the Model Minority Stereotype, parent engagement, and empowering South Asian women’s voices in leadership. Her signature TEDx talk, The Key to Enhancing Student Success, explores...

There is a new version of intelligence circulating right now.

It sounds sharp. It sounds informed. It sounds like someone who has been paying attention.

It is well-articulated hopelessness.

And most of us, at some point in the last few years, have either performed it or quietly believed it.

In this final episode of the Discernment in the Age of Chaos series, we go somewhere that feels almost countercultural to say out loud right now. W...

For the first time in human history, we are living inside a global nervous system. Not as a metaphor. Literally.

And for those of us in this community, there is something worth sitting with: we are among the last people who will ever have known life before that was true. We grew up with downtime built into the day by default. Evenings that ended. A world that existed mostly within a radius we could actually see.

That is not nostalgia...

Emotional Contagion

Stephanie opens this episode with one question.

Not a framework. Not a breathing exercise. Just a question she wants you to sit with before anything else.

Right now, in this exact moment, are you actually anxious? Or are you carrying anxiety that doesn’t even belong to you?

It sounds simple. But the answer, and the science behind it, might shift something.

Here’s what’s actually happening in your bo...

Something happened to Stephanie recently that opened this whole conversation.

She was helping her mom out of a building. Blinkers on. Gone in under a minute. By the time she turned around, a stranger was photographing her license plate, shaking, then screaming, then in tears.

It was not about the car.

We have all felt it lately. Conversations that turn sharp fast. Small moments carrying weight they shouldn’t. Everyone just one t...

About Our Guest

GiGi Hahl is an Empowerment Coach, public speaker, and Master NLP Practitioner passionate about helping people unlock their inner power and live with intention. Her work combines mindset coaching, leadership development, and embodied movement to help individuals build confidence, clarity, and meaningful forward momentum.

We have been sitting with horse energy all month. The freeze, the place where the nervous system s...

You can’t force a horse to drink water.

You can’t force your nervous system either.

There is a moment most of us know well. You are clear. You know what needs to change. And yet, nothing moves.

You are not confused. You are not lazy. You are not broken.

You are regulated for a life you are leaving behind.

That is what this episode sits with. Because once you understand what is actually happening in your body during that paus...

There’s this moment after a snake sheds its skin where it doesn’t immediately move. It’s not stuck. It’s not weak. It’s recalibrating.

And there’s a good chance that’s exactly where you are right now.

In our “The Recode: From Skin to Stride” series, we’re living in the last weeks of the Year of the Snake before the Fire Horse arrives on February 17th. The space between shedd...