Connecting the Dots by The Collective is a podcast exploring business-to-business strategy through the lens of sport, science, and innovation. Each series focuses on a different theme, pairing guests from diverse sectors to uncover insights, tackle challenges, and share what’s driving impact across industries. Our latest series dives into longevity and regenerative health, spotlighting science-backed B2B solutions shaping the future of preventative care.
Worth Beyond Performance: Anna Yulusova on Body, Mind and Midlife Leadership
Anna Yulusova grew up in a family of swimming coaches and was in the water by the age of two. She moved from swimming into pentathlon and then kickboxing, where she won three Russian titles and an Asian championship before stepping away from competition at twenty. She completed a double degree in psychology and international relations, moved to Barcelona without a word of Spanish, and went on to spend twelve years at an American agricultural multinational, latterly as a senior treasury executive covering fifty entities across EMEA.
A restructuring brought her into an outplacement programme and her first experience of executive coaching. Today Anna is an ICF-certified executive coach and mentor working with accomplished women in their forties and fifties as they move through perimenopause and menopause. Her approach treats body and mind as one system, bringing together training, nutrition, stress management and nervous system regulation with the mindset work she developed through her own transformation.
In conversation with Grace McNamara, Anna explains why the strategies that served women for decades often stop working in this season of life, and why eating less and training harder can make things worse. She describes the “I want myself back” moment that brings most clients to her, the 360-style assessment she starts with, and the change that follows once women see the full picture. She also shares a candid story from her time as a manager, when she did not understand what women on her team were going through, and makes the case for companies to support women leaders through menopause so they stay in their roles.
The most personal part of the conversation returns to her father, who was also her coach, and the belief she carried into her forties that love had to be earned through performance. Anna talks about how she unlearned it, what recovery means for an athlete and an executive alike, and why pushing all the time leads to burnout.
In this episode
Why what worked in your thirties may stop working in perimenopause
Treating body and mind as one system
Supporting women leaders through menopause at work
Recovery as part of performance
Separating self-worth from achievement
Chapters
00:00 Welcome
00:49 A childhood in the pool
02:50 From pentathlon to kickboxing
04:46 Choosing a future beyond sport
07:04 Studying, loss and a move to Barcelona
09:18 Building an international corporate career
10:56 Restructuring, outplacement and a first coach
13:29 Founding her coaching practice
14:39 Body and mind as one system
16:22 Why she works with women in midlife
18:25 “I want myself back”
20:13 Why pushing harder stops working
24:40 Taking the conversation into corporates
29:24 Teaching in business schools
30:27 Performance, worth and her father’s words
37:02 Collective spotlight
38:58 Close
Collective spotlight
Anna celebrates Mel Robbins for the way she brings everyday, relevant topics to a wide audience with humility. She credits the Let Them Theory and shares how she applied the same idea as a parent before the book was published.
Resources
Connect with Anna Yulusova: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-yulusova-coach/
Hosted by Grace McNamara. Produced by The Collective.
4 Oct 2026
MIT Top 20 AI Startup Founder Dania Valladares Unpacks the AI Coaching Opportunity
Elite coaching has always been limited by the coach's calendar. Dania Valladares, founder of Agora Fitness and one of the top 20 startups selected at the AI Powered Women 2026 conference at MIT, is building AI agents trained on each coach's own methods. Her aim is for that expertise to reach clients who would never get a slot.
Jen Halsall co-hosts with Nathan Hyland of The Collective. Their guest is a software engineering leader whose career began with a computer science degree in Havana. Dania traces her path from Cuba to Mexico to engineering leadership in the US. She describes how her father's terminal diagnosis, arriving as she was expecting her first child, led her to Ashtanga yoga, meditation and breathwork, and to the mission behind Agora.
The conversation looks at why static PDFs and pre-recorded programmes have been the only way coaches could scale. Dania explains why she sees AI as the next digital surface after websites, social media and apps. She describes how a coach's agent is built from their client notes, programmes and ebooks, and how the agent questions the coach to find gaps in the method. Training, nutrition and biometric data then flow back to the coach, so the method keeps improving.
Jen and Nathan put the questions coaches and operators are asking. What does this mean for gyms where most members never buy personal training? How is quality protected when so much general guidance underserves women? How does a client's context carry across a team of coaches? Where does the agent stop and hand over to a human or a medical professional?
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
01:10 From Havana to engineering leadership in the US
03:42 A turning point: family, yoga and the mission behind Agora
05:45 The calendar bottleneck for coaches and clients
08:00 Why coaches rarely treat their offer as a product
09:54 AI as the next digital surface for coaching
12:04 What the experience looks like for the client
13:57 Personalisation, cohesion and how a coach's agent is built
17:50 Closing the feedback loop when life gets in the way
19:34 Building a team of coaches with one shared client context
21:16 What it means for gym operators
24:01 Quality control and the gaps in women's health guidance
27:53 Early feedback from coaches
31:28 Rethinking the hours-for-income model and trainer churn
33:48 When you can't make your session
34:22 Adherence and daily conversations with your coach
35:56 Scope of practice, guardrails and handing over to humans
38:05 Building in AI as a woman and Latina founder
40:35 Collective spotlight
41:56 Closing thoughts
Resources
Dania Valladares on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dania-rosa-valladares/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/dania-rosa-valladares/)
Agora Fitness: https://agora.fitness (https://agora.fitness)
The Collective: https://wearethecollective.world (https://wearethecollective.world)
All episodes: https://wearethecollective.world/podcast (https://wearethecollective.world/podcast)
Connecting the Dots is the B2B podcast from The Collective, covering women's health, leadership and innovation across fitness, health and wellness.
28 Sept 2026
What Good Looks Like: Rebuilding the Fitness Professional Career Path, Part 2
In the second of two episodes on the fitness professional career path, part of The Collective's What Good Looks Like series, Jen Halsall continues playing boss of the world with Aimee Barry, Chief Operating Officer of Les Mills UK.
Aimee began on the operator side, working in women-only clubs in Australia, before moving to the UK and the supplier side of the industry. Her focus today is bringing more instructors into fitness and building better career pathways for them. She describes a disconnect at the heart of the problem. Operators say they cannot find enough instructors, while instructors say they cannot find the right work.
The conversation covers how people now enter the industry, from freelance routes to the academies that larger operators are building to train members and front-line staff from the ground up. Aimee sets out the foundation every new instructor needs, which is safety and quality, with continuing education built on top. Jen makes the case that education should be matched by progression in pay. Aimee argues that the industry undervalues group exercise because it rarely measures the return a great instructor brings through retention and referrals, and that measuring it is the route to fairer pay.
Jen and Aimee then turn to personal training and make the case for a hybrid fitness professional who teaches groups, trains clients and welcomes members at the door. Aimee describes a class she visited in Japan, where the instructor greeted more than a hundred participants by name and the experience continued over tea afterwards. They also discuss:
how to make qualification levels meaningful to members
why fitness departments are often under-resourced compared with operations and sales
which operators are getting it right
The episode closes with Aimee's plan for a new talent pipeline built with colleges and employers, and her spotlight on a young founder in her team.
Chapters
00:00 Welcome and episode framing
01:06 Aimee's path from operator to supplier
02:06 Why the career path is broken for every stakeholder
03:59 Group fitness vs personal training: what should instructors be paid for?
05:15 New routes in: operator academies and awareness
06:39 Is entry too easy? Safety, quality and continuing education
08:13 Linking education to pay
09:46 Fair pay and the shift to coaching and mind-body formats
11:22 Fitness as a side hustle for Gen Z
13:03 Measuring the return on a great instructor
14:46 What happens when group exercise disappears
17:36 Personal trainers at the front of the class
19:27 Breaking down the silos: the hybrid fitness professional
21:12 Hospitality and the first welcome
23:01 Lessons from a Japanese health club
25:21 Making qualification levels visible to members
29:08 Choice across mid-market and boutique
30:08 Resourcing the fitness department
32:42 Employed and freelance markets
33:43 Flipping the resourcing ratio for retention
34:21 Operators getting it right
36:35 Boss of the world: building a new talent pipeline
39:00 A people industry in the age of AI
39:41 Connecting the dots
41:40 Spotlight on women doing great work
42:33 Close
Resources
Aimee Barry on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/aimee-barry-94278128
The Collective: wearethecollective.world
More episodes: wearethecollective.world/podcast
Who has been a guest on Connecting the Dots by The Collective
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Pinky Ghadiali
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