Work should be a place where we thrive, not just survive.
But for many of us, especially those at the margins, it’s still a space of silence, burnout, and shrinking ourselves to fit in.
Healing the Workplace is a bold, honest podcast exploring the future of mental health at work — through real stories, grounded insights, and socially conscious conversations.
Hosted by Selma Lemsaadi (founder of Heal Magazine) and Axelle Ahanhanzo (founder of LAUDACE), each episode goes beyond surface-level wellness trends to uncover what it really takes to build safer, more human workplaces.
S02E04 | 30 years inside big tech: what actually keeps you human when everything accelerates
Kimberly Fuqua has spent nearly 30 years inside Microsoft. She's watched the industry go from encyclopedias to AI, from two business trips a year to a pace that shifts hour by hour. And what she's learned across all of it has almost nothing to do with technology.
When her son was diagnosed with autism, Kimberly left Microsoft at the peak of her career. One year later, she came back — fully remote, two business trips a year, and a promotion. She got more by stepping back than she ever got by pushing through. That negotiation, and what it took to believe she deserved it, shaped everything that came after.
In this episode, Selma and Axelle sit down with Kimberly to ask what nearly three decades inside one of the world's fastest-moving companies actually teaches you about staying human. They get into the speed problem — how technology evolves faster than people do, and what gets lost when organisations stop accounting for that gap. Kimberly's framework for staying grounded: identity, purpose, courage, community, resilience. And her distinction between bouncing back and bouncing forward — to the next version of yourself, not the previous one.
Her advice for anyone close to burnout right now: five minutes. No meditation app required. Just sit, and be.
Healing the Workplace is a podcast by Heal Magazine and LAUDACE.
Instagram:
@healingtheworkplace
@healmagazine
@thisislaudace
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27 May 2026
S02E03 | Still showing up, already gone: the emotional truth behind quiet quitting
Nicole Sura built an Instagram platform called ShowerrBear around a single premise: naming the emotional truths people carry through their working lives but rarely say out loud. The quiet dread. The over-adaptation. The moment you realise you've stopped caring — but you're not leaving either.
In this episode, Selma and Axelle ask her whether quiet quitting is a strategy or a symptom. Her answer lands somewhere more uncomfortable than either.
Nicole traces disengagement back to a survival instinct most people never stop to examine. Your job is your livelihood, your stability, your ability to eat and pay rent. Of course, the primal fear of losing it runs underneath everything. And that fear, when it runs long enough, creates fissures: between mind and body, between how you feel and what you can name, between who you are and what the job is asking you to become.
She talks about panic attacks she couldn't connect to stress at the time. Her mother's debilitating back pain that ended her corporate career. The way the body starts speaking long before the mind catches up. And the specific trap uncertainty sets: it makes you cling to the job that's draining you, because leaving feels too risky to consider.
The conversation also gets into who gets to disengage safely — and who doesn't. The difference between a boundary and a withdrawal. And why the next step, whatever it is, has to come from inside you rather than from anyone else's roadmap.
Healing the Workplace is a podcast by Heal Magazine and LAUDACE.
Instagram:
@healingtheworkplace
@thisislaudace
@healmagazine
🎧 Subscribe and leave a review if this one landed.
20 May 2026
S02E02 | The dark side of high performance culture (and what it’s doing to our bodies)
Bianca Errigo burnt out at 22. She was on a sales floor of 800 people, her father had months to live, and she was throwing everything she had into a job she never wanted, because she wanted to buy him his health back.
What came next was hospitalisation, fibromyalgia, cortisol so high she couldn't sleep lying down, and doctors who kept finding nothing wrong while her body fell apart.
She's now the founder of HumanOS and works with organisations on sustainable performance. This episode is built on everything she had to unlearn to get there.
Selma and Axelle ask the question most workplaces won't: what if your highest performer is the one running most dangerously on empty? Bianca brings the neuroscience, the research, and the lived experience — and makes the case that designing work around human capacity isn't idealistic. It's the only thing that actually works.
This episode is accompanied by an article co-written with Heal Magazine and Laudace, going deeper into the research and organisational patterns behind what we explored today. Read it here: https://heal-magazine.com/high-performance-is-burnout-culture-hidden-cost-for-teams-and-organisations/
Healing the Workplace is a podcast by Heal Magazine and LAUDACE.
Instagram:
@healingtheworkplace
@thisislaudace
@healmagazine
🎧 Subscribe and leave a review if this one landed.
13 May 2026
S02E01 | Burnout, AI, layoffs and loneliness: why work stopped feeling human.
Season 2 opens with just Selma and Axelle. No guests: their own experience first, before anyone else's. This season is about uncertainty at work: what it costs people, why most organisations have no language for it, and what staying grounded inside it actually looks like.
Twelve years of chaotic environments, constant pivots, and the unspoken rule that you absorb it without making it someone else's problem. Selma overplanned as a way to stay in control. Axelle's burnout built slowly across multiple workplaces before she had words for it. Both of them performed fine on the outside the whole time.
The numbers they bring into the room are hard to sit with. 13% of European employees are engaged at work. 150 million people across the EU are living with mental health conditions. AI disruption, mass layoffs, and the loneliness epidemic are not separate crises — they're landing on the same person, in the same body, on the same Tuesday.
This season's question: how do you stay grounded when the ground keeps moving? Every guest sits inside that from a different angle.
Healing the Workplace is a podcast by Heal Magazine and LAUDACE.
Instagram:
@healingtheworkplace
@thisislaudace
@healmagazine
🎧 Subscribe and leave a review if this one landed.
28 May 2025
E04 | Slow is powerful: why conscious leadership is the future of work with Kremena Jordanova
Kremena Yordanova discusses conscious leadership with Selma Lemsaadi and Axelle Ahanhanzo, exploring emotional safety and self-awareness to foster wellbeing at work in this interview.
22 May 2025
E03 | Sync, don’t sink: rethinking productivity through your cycle with Faten Salem
In this powerful episode of Healing the Workplace, hosts Selma Lemsaadi and Axelle Ahanhanzo are joined by Faten Salem, CEO and founder of Ilik, a trailblazing femtech startup redefining how women engage with productivity, mental health, and self-care through the science of cycle syncing.
Faten shares her inspiring journey from navigating the entrepreneurial world in Palestine to launching a purpose-driven business in the Netherlands, all while challenging taboos around menstruation, burnout, and women’s health in corporate and male-dominated environments.
Together, we explore:
What cycle syncing really means—and why it’s not just a wellness trend
How today’s workplaces often neglect women’s biological rhythms
The toxic myth of constant productivity and the healing role of rest
Building resilience while navigating entrepreneurship, burnout, and geopolitical stress
Creating inclusive, trauma-informed spaces for open conversations on mental health and menstrual equity
—
Healing the Workplace is a podcast series by LAUDACE and Heal Magazine.
Connect with us on social for more.
LAUDACE: https://www.instagram.com/thisislaudace/
Heal Magazine: https://www.instagram.com/healmagazine/
🎧 Don’t forget to subscribe, share, and leave a review to support grounded conversations on leadership, resilience, and mental health in the workplace.
13 May 2025
E02 | Burnout, belonging and the silent load women carry, with Nicolette Lazarus
If your job feels like it’s taken over your life, you’re not alone, and it doesn’t have to stay that way.
In this episode of Healing the Workplace, we sit down with Nicolette Lazarus, speaker, and founder of Womanship, who shares how she untangled herself from burnout, perfectionism, and people-pleasing — and what it really takes to build a healthier relationship with work.
You’ll learn how to:
Set and sustain boundaries without guilt
Let go of overfunctioning and chronic people-pleasing
Reclaim your sense of identity outside your job title
Whether you're a team lead, founder, or someone who's always been “the strong one,” this is your reminder: your worth isn’t measured by your output.
Connect with us on social for more:
LAUDACE: https://www.instagram.com/thisislaudace/
Heal Magazine: https://www.instagram.com/healmagazine/
7 May 2025
E01 | Unlearning what we were taught about work, power & productivity
What if the version of success we’ve been chasing is actually hurting us? In this premiere episode of Healing the Workplace, Selma Lemsaadi (Heal Magazine) and Axelle Ahanhanzo (LAUDACE) hold nothing back as they unpack the deep emotional and systemic layers behind burnout, silence, and survival at work.
They explore what it means to truly belong in professional spaces—and why so many high-performing, mission-driven people still feel unsafe or unseen. From the silent costs of masking to the quiet power of boundaries, this conversation challenges conventional wisdom about productivity, leadership, and ambition.
If you’ve ever felt like you had to shrink, overperform, or prove your worth to be taken seriously at work, this episode will meet you exactly where you are.
Follow us on social for more:
Heal Magazine: https://www.instagram.com/healmagazine/
LAUDACE: https://www.instagram.com/thisislaudace/
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