Badass Women in Business
Welcome to The Badass Women in Business Podcast, where real women share the unfiltered stories behind their success. Hosted by Cristy O’Connor and Aggie Chydzinski, this podcast brings you inside the minds of founders, CEOs, and changemakers who have built, rebuilt, and redefined what leadership looks like. Each week, you will hear how these women turned obstacles into opportunity, silence into strategy, and ambition into impact. These are not highlight reels. They are hard-earned lessons from women who built empires, challenged norms, and did it all on their own terms. If you are building something, leading something, or dreaming of more, this show will light the fire that keeps you moving. Subscribe now and join the movement of women rewriting the rules of business, one badass story at a time. New episodes drop every Tuesday.
Episodes
Missy Wright did not plan on a career in franchising, but once she got in, she saw the impact it can have on people’s lives and never left.
In this episode, Missy breaks down what really makes a franchise successful, what separates the people who thrive from the ones who struggle, and what most people misunderstand before they invest. We also talk about what it takes to scale a brand the right way and what happens wh...
What if the safest path is not actually the safest one?
In this episode, Aggie and Cristy sit down with Melissa Anderson, President of Search.com, to talk about building a career by trusting instinct over convention. Melissa shares how she turned bold, uncertain choices into major opportunities, from moving to Ireland after college with no job, to scaling startups, leading innovation, and navigating acquisitions.
This...
What happens when life forces you to step away from the business you built?
In this episode of the Badass Women in Business Podcast, Aggie and Cristy sit down with Natasha Golinsky, founder of On Purpose Projects, a custom web and e-commerce development agency based in Vancouver, Canada.
Natasha has spent more than a decade building her agency without ever being a web developer herself. Along the way she learned the h...
What does it actually take to leave a secure job and build a company from scratch?
In this episode of the Badass Women in Business Podcast, Aggie and Cristy sit down with Kirsten Liston, Founder and CEO of Rethink Compliance, to talk about the reality of becoming an entrepreneur and the mindset required to build something new.
Kirsten shares how she went from a career in journalism to spending more than two decades in...
In this episode of the Badass Women in Business podcast, Aggie and Cristy sit down with Meredith Farley, founder of Medbury, an agency that helps executives and founders turn their real world experience into credible thought leadership on LinkedIn.
Meredith shares her journey from being a writing major during the 2009 financial crash to spending 13 years inside a fast growing content agency, eventually stepping into ...
In this episode of the Badass Women in Business podcast, Aggie sits down with Denver-based photographer and TruBlu Images founder Rebecca Todd. Rebecca shares her journey from studying photography at LSU to rebuilding her business after relocating from New Orleans to Denver.
They talk about carving out a niche working with mission-driven brands and nonprofits, why relationships matter more than marketing tactics, and...
Anna Perks is the founder of Perks Deconstruction, a Denver based company proving that sustainability and profitability can coexist. What started with walking her dog past a bulldozed historic home turned into a seven year journey building a 20 plus person company that diverts massive amounts of construction material from landfills. In this episode, Anna shares how she built a business in an industry she did not com...
Maria Onesto Moran, founder and CEO of Green Home Experts, joins the Badass Women in Business podcast to share the real story of building a sustainable, values-driven company through recession, pivots, leadership challenges, and motherhood.
Maria started Green Home Experts in 2007 as a green building supply showroom just before the housing market crashed. What followed was not failure, but evolution. Today, Green Hom...
Molly McCartan, Founder and CEO of The Mom Pact, joins Aggie and Cristy for a direct conversation about why nearly half of working moms are leaving the workforce and why this is not a motivation or confidence issue.
This episode looks at leadership, incentives, and systems that were never built to support real life transitions. Maternity leave, flexibility, childcare, career gaps, and return to work are not fringe to...
This episode is about health in the real world, not textbook medicine.
Aggie and Cristy sit down with Dr. Laura James ND, a naturopathic oncologist with more than twenty years of experience working with women inside an overwhelmed healthcare system. Together, they explore why modern healthcare leaves so many women confused, exhausted, and unsupported, especially while they are managing work, family, caregiving, and t...
The Honourable Leela Sharon Aheer shares the story that shaped her life and leadership.
Growing up in Alberta as the daughter of an Indian immigrant father and a Canadian mother, Leela learned early what it meant to stand out, speak up, and build community. At just 15 years old, she was directly confronted by white supremacist hate. Instead of shrinking, that moment became the catalyst for using her voice and steppin...
Most people donate because they want to help. Few ever find out what actually happens to their money. Philanthropy has a trust problem. Nonprofits have a transparency problem. Donors want clarity but rarely get it. And donor-advised funds have become a quiet holding place for billions of untapped charitable capital.
After fifteen years working inside philanthropy, Sarah Angello could not ignore the friction anymore. ...
Rachael Wonderlin built a national dementia consulting firm from a Tumblr blog, three Johns Hopkins books, and a decade of hands-on work inside senior living communities. But the real story is what she learned along the way about boundaries, burnout, and trusting her intuition long before the data caught up.
In this conversation, Rachael shares the full arc of building Dementia By Day from a one-woman hustle into a r...
Kristin Heideman spent more than twenty years working inside the insurance industry before she realized she was ready to build something of her own. When she was let go from a job she excelled in, she walked into Best Buy the next morning, bought a laptop, registered her business the day after, and stepped into a version of her career she had never imagined.
In this Diary of a CEO style conversation, Kristin breaks d...
Amanda DuBois was once told she was nothing more than a doctor’s wife who should stop dabbling at the law. Instead of shrinking, she built one of Washington’s longest standing women owned law firms, created a workplace that supports and mentors women, founded a nonprofit that has helped change more than twenty five state laws, and became an award winning author who writes about injustice in the legal system.
In this ...
What happens when a fashion designer and magazine editor turns her creative eye toward helping women entrepreneurs grow their brands and themselves? Ashley King, founder and CEO of BLOOM Virtual.co, joins Aggie and Cristy to share how she built a thriving creative agency that helps women step into their next level of growth with confidence, clarity, and purpose.
From her early days in luxury fashion to launching BLOO...
In this Season 4 episode of Badass Women in Business, Aggie and Cristy sit down with Sarah Noel Block, founder of Tiny Marketing, to talk about what happens when you stop playing small and start building a business that actually fits your life.
Sarah shares how she went from being laid off in 2008 to creating a thriving solo business that helps consultants and small B2B teams grow without burnout. She breaks down the...
Jenn Harris’s journey is a lesson in reinvention, resilience, and trusting yourself through change. Before becoming President and CEO of AirX Utility Surveyors, she built her career on curiosity and connection. She studied psychology, dreamed of becoming a golf pro, and went on to build golf-centered businesses that helped women gain confidence, build relationships, and find their voice in male-dominated spaces. Whe...
Angela Zeng, PhD, MBA, is the founder and CEO of Karviva, an award-winning wellness beverage company that blends Traditional Chinese Medicine with modern nutritional science. A pathologist by training, Angela immigrated from China to the U.S., built her own factory in St. Louis when co-packers couldn’t support her unique formulations, and has since carved out a space in the competitive natural food and beverage indu...
At just 27 years old, Julie Smolyansky became the youngest female CEO of a publicly traded company when she stepped into leadership at Lifeway Foods in 2002. What began as her family’s immigrant dream has grown into the dominant kefir brand in the U.S., with revenues projected at over $185 million in 2024 and distribution across the U.S., Mexico, Europe, and beyond.
In this episode, Julie shares her remarkable journe...
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