Join us to talk strategies for navigating the strange and crazy times we live in. It’s beneficial to be a conscious leader right now, for you and for others.
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27 Apr 2026
Conscious Leadership
Join Lesley and Cord for a short conversation about changing the name of Diversity Differently to Conscious Leadership. Conscious choice through metacognition is a central part of the leadership education that they provide. The new name isn't just about what they do differently, but rather a central practice of what it takes to lead change.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit leadconsciously.substack.com/subscribe (https://leadconsciously.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)
19 Jan 2026
Deserving Martin Luther King, Jr.
Join us for a deep dive into the concept of human value, what it is to feel worthy, and how best to articulate our right to belong with our friend and scholar Maurice Wallace, author of King’s Vibrato (https://www.dukeupress.edu/kings-vibrato). This conversation is perfect for reflecting on an MLK Day when the world feels upside down. What is it to look into our own lives and feel a deep knowing of our right to belong? As Maurice states: “When belonging is a foregone conclusion, then you don’t have questions of deservedness.”
Background image: by History in HD (https://unsplash.com/@historyhd?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText)
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14 Nov 2025
Learning without Judgment
Join Cord and Lesley for a conversation with documentary filmmaker Sheila Marshall (https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1597226/). Sheila discusses the power of storytelling through film, specifically what results when we suspend judgment to truly examine another person’s perspective. She talks about her films Right Between Your Ears and After the Flood: The Church, Slavery, and Reconciliation. Both films offer us lessons in guiding people away from the discomfort of cognitive dissonance, exploring what it means to successfully forgive and to reconnect in new ways.
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10 Oct 2025
Choose Your Own Adventure
Join Cord and Lesley in a conversation about analyzing stories. They’ll discuss how stories help us heal—and how stories can also become limiting if we hang on to them for too long. Is it possible to choose your own adventure instead?
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8 Sept 2025
The Story of Your Morning Coffee
Lesley and Cord are back for season 2, this time focusing on stories. The stories we tell ourselves have power. Even something as simple as a story about your morning coffee is powerful. Why? What can or should you do about this? Join us in a fun and insightful conversation about the process of “storifying” — how noticing your own act of story creation gives you power to change things for the better.
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11 May 2025
Showing Up Fully Without Shame
Join Lesley as she walks and chats with friend and colleague Burgandy Holiday, LCSW. They talk about what it is to show up fully and how shame might prevent us from doing so. Burgandy is a therapist and equity consultant who encourages identity- and faith-based reconciliation through healing. She discusses what it is to support people in all their methods of healing, including unexpected or taboo ones, like choosing not to have relationships with certain people in our lives.
Get full access to Diversity Differently at diversitydifferently.substack.com/subscribe (https://diversitydifferently.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)
30 Apr 2025
The Creative Power of No
Join Robyn and Lesley in sunny (and windy) south Philadelphia for a conversation about how saying no can creative positive results. They discuss what it takes to identify and set boundaries from a place of non-activation and how we can trust that things will work out, even and especially when we let go of the idea it’s our responsibility to fix them.
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4 Apr 2025
Progress and Flow
Join Robyn and Lesley for a chat about progress and flow. We talk about how much people tend to plan for the future by assuming what progress looks like. The truth is that progress is bumpy and unpredictable. Forcing what we think it should be can actually slow it down. Learning to be with emotion and developing our capacity to identify what we can and can’t control are useful skills. These can also help us reduce fear in a time of chaotic change.
Get full access to Diversity Differently at diversitydifferently.substack.com/subscribe (https://diversitydifferently.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)
20 Mar 2025
The Lessons of Imbalance
Join Sagely co-owners Lesley Curtis and Cord Whitaker in a conversation about balance and focus. Cord shares about his recent experience of vertigo. Noticing so intently what we are focused on helps us reconsider what’s possible. They conclude that when it’s impossible to do anything but accept imbalance, we often find new forms of stability.
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5 Mar 2025
But what about when it's really bad?
Join Sagely consultants, Robyn Smith, LCSW and Lesley Curtis, Ph.D., on another walk in Philadelphia, this time starting in the Italian Market. In this conversation, we take a serious and yet still hopeful look at what it is to find stability even when what we’re facing is awful. What works for helping people through disaster, loss, and personal trauma, also works for finding ground through political instability, too.
(The Italian market is where Sylvester Stallone (Rocky 1976) starts his run to the Museum of Art stairs, still known as the Rocky Steps. If you know the scene, you’ve already started humming the theme song.)
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26 Feb 2025
Trust the Process
Robyn and Lesley discuss trust on their latest walk in Philadelphia. If we observe that a lack of trust seems to be influencing our organizations, then what is it to make ourselves a source of trust? In this episode, we talk about applying a radical focus on our own experience so that we trust that recovery is possible. From this perspective, we emanate trust and start to make change through our own belief in peaceful collaboration.
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20 Feb 2025
The Gold "Mine"
Join Lesley and Robyn on a winter walk in Philadelphia while they discuss the me/not me. Robyn invites us to go deeper into the investigation of what belongs to us and what doesn’t. Patterns that seem really subtle can start in the earliest years of our lives, so looking at our relationship with our mothers is a good place to see how we can make change. We can learn to be present, truly present, by not fighting what was. This is a more powerful place to make equitable change in the world and—as you’ll hear, even the streets of Philadelphia agree.
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11 Feb 2025
On Not Punishing Ourselves
Join Cord and Lesley in a conversation about punishment. We often learn to punish ourselves as a way of staying safe. This voice continues, sometimes for generations, even when the danger is gone. Once we become aware of our inner critic, then we can do something about it. It’s actually possible to give ourselves compassion instead, which is the start of a new way of being in the world.
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6 Feb 2025
Transforming Conflict with Hope
In this episode, Lesley interviews her former student and colleague, Alex Rose, who teaches conflict transformation at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Alex talks about the powerful work of the Duke-UNC Rotary Peace Center and what it feels like to move toward peace with people from all over the world at this time in the United States. Her story is one of hope and determination, demonstrating that peaceful collaboration begins within.
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4 Feb 2025
What is Mine?
In this episode, Cord and Lesley speak with their friend and colleague, Robyn Smith, LCSW, who specializes in somatic coaching and trauma healing. They talk about how important it is to know what belongs to you and what doesn’t. Robyn shares some examples of how people can release shame and guilt associated with not being able to fix what isn’t ours. This makes it easier to show up and respond with your fullest talents in the current moment.
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29 Jan 2025
This is Not That
In this episode, Cord and Lesley talk about how history’s lessons are important, but staying present to our current moment is an effective strategy for culture change. “This is not that” helps us fine tune our threat detection system. Our own nervous system regulation can help us create order and stability, even in times of orchestrated chaos.
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22 Jan 2025
Remembering the Life Jackets
Join Cord and Lesley in their second episode. We take a boat metaphor to its edges when we ask: how can you be the one who remembers the life jackets? We’ll discuss the space between reaction and response; permission to be okay; and untangling feeling from belief. Thanks for listening!
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19 Jan 2025
What is it to grieve well?
This is the first episode of our Diversity Differently podcast by Sagely co-owners, Lesley and Cord. Our podcast is simple: informal conversations about culture change, social justice, and inclusive leadership. In this episode, Lesley and Cord spend 16 minutes discussing what it is to grieve well. Why does it matter? And what can it help us do in this time of transition? Thanks for listening!
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Reach and audience
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Apple Podcasts (US)
5.0 / 5
2 ratings
Podcast Authority Score: 17 / 100
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Quality
21
Social presence
0
YouTube
0
Engagement
32
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