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
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 ep...
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 BLOOM ...
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 p...
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. When ...
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 journey ...
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 indust...
From Teacher to Tech Leader: Jennifer Dulski on Resilience, Leadership, and Building Connected Teams
Jennifer Dulski’s career journey is anything but linear. She started as a high school teacher, moved into the nonprofit world, and went on to hold executive roles at Yahoo, Google, Facebook, and Change.org. Today she is the Founder and CEO of Rising Team, a platform that equips managers with the tools to build trust, connection, and effectiveness across distributed teams, while also serving on the faculty at Stanford ...
Anne Marie Dougherty is the CEO of the Bob Woodruff Foundation, where she has led the organization from $4.3 million to nearly $40 million in annual revenue. With no formal business training, she built a high-performing, data-driven nonprofit by applying principles from the for-profit world and building long-term partnerships with companies like the NFL, UBS, and Capital One.
In this episode, she shares how her identit...
Kate Wolff walked away from big agency life with no safety net and built four companies from the ground up. Lupine Creative. No Sheep Studios. Do the WeRQ. LumiTerra. Each one different. Each one intentional. And each one pushing against the industry norms she was told to follow.
In this episode, Kate tells the truth about launching a business weeks before the pandemic hit, losing everything, then rebuilding on her own...
What if the real ROI of being on a podcast isn't the interview itself, but the relationships that come afterward?
In this high-energy, straight-talking episode, we sit down with Christina Lenkowski, founder of Publicity by Christina, to hear how she transformed her PR background into a niche agency that helps women entrepreneurs get visible, get paid, and get taken seriously. Christina has landed her clients on mo...
In this episode of Badass Women in Business, we sit down with Yuki Bi, global advertising executive and co-founder of Helios Worldwide. Yuki shares how her journey from a Canadian ad intern to leading a private equity-backed global consultancy has been shaped by risk, reinvention, and relentless self-awareness.
This conversation goes beyond the polished version of success. Yuki opens up about leading a 500-person team ...
In this episode of the Badass Women in Business podcast, Laura Rike, Pinterest strategist and founder of SimplyPintastic®, shares her incredible journey from a burned-out VA to a thriving CEO leveraging Pinterest to create sustainable business growth. Laura’s story is a testament to the power of smart strategies, overcoming obstacles, and finding work-life balance as a mompreneur. Tune in to hear how Pinterest became ...
What do Asian elephants, a messy divorce, a housecleaning hustle, and a tech company have in common? Libby DeLucien. In this episode, Libby shares her unapologetically bold journey from growing up in a family of elephant handlers to becoming a serial entrepreneur and systems expert. She opens up about the real reason she started her first company in the middle of a custody battle, the mindset shift that helped her rec...
Lisa Troyano-Ascolese is not your average real estate broker. She’s a serial entrepreneur, tech founder, podcast host, and unapologetic advocate for women building their own path to freedom. In this powerful conversation, Lisa shares her evolution from ad sales exec to real estate powerhouse, and the pivotal moment when her CEO told her, “You’re never safe if you work for someone else.”
We cover everything from launchi...
Dana Hargus has spent the last 25 years helping kids and families find real relief when nothing else seems to work. In this conversation, she shares how her personal journey as a foster parent led her to build one of Oklahoma’s most innovative counseling practices, where biofeedback is the foundation. Dana explains how overstimulation, trauma, and emotional dysregulation show up in both children and adults, and why tr...
Kathy Eberwein is the founder and CEO of Global Edge Group, one of the first woman-owned recruitment agencies serving the global energy industry. From managing multimillion-dollar engineering projects to building a workforce of over 1,000 people across 18 countries, Kathy’s journey is rooted in resilience, values, and bold decisions. In this episode, she talks about leading through rapid growth, the importance of pers...
What does it mean to lead with authenticity in a system built to overlook you? In this powerful episode, we sit down with Elizabeth “Liz” Frederick, the Executive Director of Avenues for Justice: a nonprofit that's been disrupting the incarceration pipeline in New York City for nearly five decades. Liz shares her deeply personal journey from being a mentee at AFJ nearly 20 years ago to becoming its Executive Dire...
Thayer Lavielle is the Managing Director of The Collective at Wasserman, where she leads a global practice dedicated to driving investment in women in sports, entertainment, and music. In this episode, Thayer walks us through her nonlinear path—starting in journalism, moving into brand marketing and motorsports, and ultimately building a multimillion-dollar consultancy and research engine. We talk about how she discov...
Corporate life gave Marissa Rodriguez a title but not the freedom she craved. After a sudden layoff in 2015, she chose a different path that led her to build a powerful eCommerce consulting business, generate over $100 million in client revenue, and eventually relocate to Greece. In this episode, Marissa shares her journey from fashion retail to direct to consumer strategy, offering practical insights for founders nav...
Summary
Min Ju Kim, founder of Zasin, joins the podcast to share her inspiring journey from D1 golfer to multi-venture entrepreneur. Born in South Korea and raised across three countries, Kim brings global perspective, grit, and creative vision to her mission of empowering women through sportswear, self-expression, and storytelling.
She discusses launching Zasin, a pre-seed women’s golf athluxury brand challenging the m...
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