Inside the Messy Middle: Leadership Lessons from the Field

Happy 7th Anniversary to NorthStar Solutions and Services LLC!

Happy 7th Solopreneurship Anniversary to me!

I couldn't see the full staircase yet, so I just focused on the first step.  That's how I started my solopreneurship journey on Friday, August 9, 2019! 

After 7 years of Unpacking Leadership™ at the Messy Middle, here’s what I’ve learned: - Power isn’t something you wait for; you already hav...

Meet Kirstin Le Grice, a healthcare tech product leader who spends her time turning complex healthcare tech challenges into clear, actionable plans. She specializes in guiding cross-functional teams through system upgrades and regulatory changes, translating technical details into business results. Kirstin holds an MPH from the Colorado School of Public Health and is a certified PMP and Agile Product Owner. In this remarkably candi...

Bringing AI Strategy to Life with Anjali Leon, Leanna Holmquist, and Thomas Peng

In this special episode, I’m joined by a panel of these three accomplished guests, including Leanna, a returning guest. This conversation was originally recorded at the May 15th World of Work Virtual Conference I co‑hosted with Tiffany Castagno of CEPHR LLC. This year's theme was "AI and Us: Now and Next".

As AI transforms every corner of work, m...

Exploring the invisible, emotional labor at the Messy Middle 

In this special episode, I am revisiting my conversations with our 10 guests so far, specifically to zoom in on their responses to my question:   What is a piece of emotional or invisible labor that you carry as a middle manager that probably nobody else knows about? 

Guests describe absorbing organizational ambiguity while projecting calm, holding confidential...

Meet Sahana Shenoy, a highly competent Product Management and Technical Program Management Leader with nearly two decades of cross-functional leadership experience. Sahana has led large scale initiatives across e-commerce, supply chain, healthcare, among some of the industries, and she's overseen multi-billion-dollar portfolios and helped build platforms that are used by hundreds of millions of people globally.

Top five takeaways f...

Meet Seema Sreenivas, a dynamic program management leader with more than a decade of cross-functional leadership experience in the Healthcare policy and systems space in the public sector in the US. Her career has been centered on improving operations, driving meaningful outcomes, and leading teams through change with clarity and purpose. She brings a thoughtful perspective on leadership, growth, and how to create lasting impact wi...

Meet Abhinav Roy, an accomplished portfolio delivery lead with international experience in the banking industry and financial services industry, helping teams and organizations build the capability, clarity, and confidence to deliver at scale. With his support, they learn how to shift perspectives, embrace change, and create meaningful transformation. His global experience spans India, Europe, the US, and Australia, and he wea...

Meet Tezeswari Nettimi, who goes by Tez, an award-winning technology and transformation leader with experience in driving IT modernization and strategic program delivery. A parent of two active teenagers, she is passionate about creating community impact through leadership, innovation, and mentorship. This straight-from-the heart conversation highlighted Tez's values-based, servant leadership and her commitment to leading with inte...

What our six guests have taught us about Humanity, AI, and Leading at the Messy Middle

In this special retrospective episode, I, your host, Meenakshi Iyer, am inviting you to pause and reflect, to take in, and synthesize the biggest insights from our first six conversations on this podcast. In the American philosopher John Dewey's words, "We do not learn from experience...we learn from reflecting on experience."

This episode weaves...

Meet Kristján G. Mathiesen (KGM), an "Icelander living in the States", an innovative tech leader who prioritizes being genuinely human in this AI-first world! He leads with humor, empathy, and curiosity to connect with people and help them feel confident in technology. His love for teamwork shapes how he shows up at work and in life. These are 3 of the many remarkable Kristján shares in his usual unassuming and authentic manner:

Meet Leanna Holmquist, an intuitive product leader shaping how humans and intelligent systems communicate and is passionate about making AI actually usable by humans. She specializes in AI enablement, product ownership, and NLP behavior modeling, blending technical depth with a sharp instinct for language and user experience. In this powerhouse of an episode,

Leanna&...

Meet Dr. Elena Bozylinski, a highly accomplished, cross-functional Program Management Leader, who is the epitome of leader being a lifelong learner. In this episode, Elena shares how she went from technical roles to program leadership, revealing how continuous learning, and leading with emotional intelligence and influence, have shaped her career trajectory. These are three main takeaways from this conversation:

Meet Shreya Kaushik - a software engineer at heart, a working parent to a five‑year‑old, and a leader in middle management, navigating the challenge of isolating signal from noise, whether in corporate dynamics or the fast‑moving world of AI. In this episode, she shares grounded, insightful reflections in her trademark matter‑of‑fact style.

1. The “messy middle” is defined by invisible labor and competing pressures Shre...

Meet Artemshia "Meshia" Adams, a highly-accomplished People Ops and HR Leader! In this episode Meshia drops real‑world wisdom on authenticity, emotional labor, and modern, global leadership - showing how empathy, equity, and trust can reshape teams, cultures, and careers, especially in today's AI-enabled workplace. 

Being misunderstood—especially by controlling ...

Padmini argues that large-scale change fails when leaders rely on frameworks al...

Welcome to Inside the Messy Middle: Leadership Lessons from the Field, created to center the voices of practicing middle managers and share honest, unpolished lessons about what leadership feels like in the “messy middle,” especially amid workplace change driven by AI.

I'm your host, Meenakshi Iyer, a Strengths-based Leadership and Lean-Agile Coach and Facilitator. My mission to help organizations equip middle managers ...