Real Talk is a weekly leadership show for the food industry. Hosted by Catalyst Food Leaders founders Jill Stuber and Tia Glave, each episode dives into the wins, the missteps, and the mindset shifts behind courageous leadership. Whether you're in ops, safety, HR, or culture-building, these conversations are your invite to lead differently — and more humanly.
Here's why Real Talk is worth tuning in for:
💬 Real stories, not rehearsed soundbites
🎯 Built for leaders in food — no fluff
🔁 Weekly rhythm, long-term value
👯♀️ Hosted by people who’ve walked the talk
📣 Built to drive growth, not just inspiration
S4E6: Building Leaders in the Toughest Environments in Food
Meat and poultry is one of the most demanding environments in food — high pressure, high turnover, compliance-first by necessity. The leaders operating inside it are often asked to carry more than they were ever developed to hold. Casey Gallimore and Megan Lynn Gifford see this across hundreds of companies. They join Catalyst Food Leaders cofounders Tia Glave and Jill Stuber in this episode of Real Talk, where they talk about what the industry's best companies do to develop their people deliberately — and what it costs when they do not. It weaves in the real value of mentorship programs like The Women's Meat Industry Network (WMIN) while naming honestly what mentorship alone cannot do. Honest, forward-looking, and built for the leader in food who is ready to do something different.
Download Catalyst's Culture Gap Guide here: https://www.catalystfoodleaders.com/food-safety-culture
Learn more about the Meat Institute: LMS: https://www.meatinstitute.org/foundations-of-listeria Food safety for the Executive Toolkit: https://www.meatinstitute.org/food-safety-executive-toolkit Events: https://www.meatinstitute.org/Events WMIN: https://wmin.org/
13 Oct 2026
S4E5: From Sensory Science to Baby Food Safety: What this Works Actually Requires of You
Sarah Smith Simpson did not take a straight line into food safety. She started in sensory science — the world of texture, taste, and consumer perception in baby food — and then made a deliberate choice to go deeper, earning an MS in food safety from Michigan on top of her PhD from Rutgers. She joins Real Talk with Catalyst Food Leaders cofounders Tia Glave and Jill Stuber to talk about the journey: what pulled her toward this work, what she wishes she had learned sooner, what leadership has required of her that no degree prepared her for, and what she wants the next generation of food safety professionals to know before they find out the hard way. This one is for anyone who is early in their career and trying to figure out what they are building — and for anyone who has been in it long enough to know how much the path can surprise you. Download Culture Change Starts with Me at catalystfoodleaders.com. It is for the leader who is ready to look at themselves first.
6 Oct 2026
S4E4: Tired of Culture Initiatives That Go Nowhere? Here Is the Piece That Was Always Missing.
There is a real and growing frustration with culture work in organizations — and it is not because belonging and leadership development are bad ideas. It is because culture initiatives have almost always been designed to change other people. The survey measures what others think. The training tells others what to do differently. The plan describes the gaps in others. The leader who commissioned it all was never the subject of the work. Nobody asked them to go first. That is not a personal failure. It is a systemic gap in how culture change has been taught and sold to organizations. This episode of Real Talk with Catalyst Food Leaders cofounders Tia Glave and Jill Stuber, names that gap directly — inviting the exhausted leader into a reframe rather than pointing blame — and makes the case that the missing piece was never another initiative. It was the leader's own behavior, and the willingness to look there first.
Schedule a Culture Conversation at catalystfoodleaders.com/contact
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