Authentic Leadership. Profound Stories. Proven Lessons.
Your Authentic Executive is where executives go on the record — the pivotal moments, the hard-won lessons, the vignettes that shaped who they are as leaders. Not polished success stories. The real ones. New full episodes drop the first Tuesday of every month.
About SPARKs Between full episodes, SPARKs deliver power-packed excerpts built to ignite action. Drop a SPARK into your next team meeting, play it, and use the Action4Traction™ and Talk4Traction™ prompts to open real leadership conversations and drive next steps. SPARKs drop Tuesdays 2, 3, and 4.
✅ Full Episode – First Tuesday of Every Month
🔥 Sparks – power-packed excerpts to share and ignite action.
🎙 Subscribe now and join us on a journey to uncover the stories, struggles, and strategies behind Your Authentic Executive.
About Your Host: Janyne Peek Emsick, Ph.D.
For 35+ years, Janyne Peek Emsick, Ph.D. has helped Fortune 150 companies, award-winning privately owned organizations, the public sector, global nonprofits, and mission-driven organizations on six continents. All engage Janyne for a specific reason: when the hardest things go unspoken, she names them — and does it in a way that opens the door rather than closes it. Ph.D. in transformational leadership | Harvard Law Executive Education | NeuroLeadership Institute | Founder, 5R Edge™. Pronounced jah-neen'.
Together, we've got this.
📌 Follow Janyne on LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/janynepeekemsick
📌 Explore Executive Coaching → YourExecutiveCoach.com
Favorites Replay: It's Not Going to Be That Bad - Train Your Body to Lead Under Stress with Robert Vause
Heart racing. Short of breath. Trying to calm down and feeling it slip away like sand. Robert Vause got tired of walking into hard rooms that way. So he took up freediving. In this Favorites Replay, Robert shares what holding his breath underwater taught him about leading under pressure. The urge to breathe, it turns out, isn't really about oxygen. Once he understood that, he could train his brain to bring everything back down when every signal said bring it up. Meet Robert Vause: Rober...
1 Sept 2026
How an Elementary School Principal Made Silos Impossible
You have run the offsite. The values are on the wall. You still have silos. Dan Schmidt did not train his way out of that problem. He designed his way out. North Star Elementary opened in 2022 with six learning studios, a two-story Learning Commons, and one rule that changed everything: no teacher gets a permanent desk. Dan and I trace the whole arc, vision to building to culture, and the evidence five years on. Meet Dan Schmidt: Dan Schmidt is the founding principal of North St...
4 Aug 2026
The Neuroscience & Business Outcomes of Gratitude & Forgiveness with Jeffrey Snell, Ph.D.
Gratitude and forgiveness sound like soft topics. In the brain, they're two of the hardest-working tools a leader has. In this episode, neuropsychologist Dr. Jeff Snell and Janyne sit with the brain science of both — and why a team's energy either compounds or quietly corrodes depending on which one is being practiced. Gratitude is a gift you give someone else. Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself. Both are learnable routines that physically rewire the brain, and both start smaller than yo...
7 Jul 2026
Leading When Your Life is On Fire with Lindsey Rai Kortan
"More than education, more than experience, more than training — resilience determines who succeeds and who fails." Diane Coutu's 25-year-old definition opens this conversation, and Lindsey Rai Kortan lives it. Lindsey leads Ronald McDonald House Charities of Omaha, an organization built for families fighting for their children's lives. While leading it, she privately navigated domestic violence, her husband's addiction and overdose, her mother's death, and single parenting two sons — during ...
16 Jun 2026
My Conversation with the Man My Dad Hired Over 50 Years Ago
Bob Gerst spent weeks building one report. His managing partner kept three pages and threw the rest in the wastebasket. What Bob learned in that moment — from the man who hired him — shaped the next 50 years. That man was my Dad, Jim Peek: Bob’s first boss and lifelong mentor. My dad read the same poem every morning for half a century. He was passed over for partnership twice and never turned bitter. In his final days he could still recite that poem from memory. I’m releasing this episode the...
3 Feb 2026
Change Leadership: What Gets in the Way with Thomas Saller
Why do 70% of transformations fail—even for well-intentioned leaders? I sit down with Thomas Saller to explore what derails change initiatives. Thomas is partner at 5L Partners, serves senior leaders across Europe, and author of Work It Like a German. He doesn't coach clichés—he coaches complexity. Three critical blind spots: The neuroscience behind resistance – People aren't afraid of change; they're afraid of loss. We unpack the SCARF model and how brains default to threat detection 80% of ...
3 Jun 2025
Episode 6 - Stephen Barbee, Prison Fellowship Field Director
Stephen Barbee, Prison Fellowship Field Director, shares his powerful story of redemption and resilience, detailing his transformation from addiction and incarceration to a life of purpose and leadership in an interview.
6 May 2025
Episode 5 - CEO Mom: Leading with Grit, Grace, and Generational Wisdom with Kimberly Cappellano, CEO of Private Wealth
CEO Mom: Leading with Grit, Grace, and Generational Wisdom As we approach Mother’s Day, Episode 5 features a story that honors the profound intersection of leadership and legacy. Meet Kim Cappellano, CEO of Private Wealth and a mother of four, in her most courageous leadership act to date: sharing her deeply personal IVF journey for the first time. A private leader by nature, Kim steps forward in this conversation—not for attention, but because she knows that sharing what’s real helps ...
1 Apr 2025
Episode 4 - Robert Vause, Head of East Region at CLAAS
How Freediving, Failure, and a 16-Year-Old Leader Built Executive Grit – New Podcast Episode Out Now! What do freediving and boardroom leadership have in common? In Episode 4 of Your Authentic Executive, I sit down with Robert Vause, an unconventional leader whose journey began at age 16, managing a service department—and has taken him everywhere from near-military flight school to the depths of freediving and the heights of executive leadership. Robert’s story is a mastercl...
4 Mar 2025
Episode 3 - Tinashe "Nash" Mahupete, CEO at QLI
In this episode of Your Authentic Executive, host Dr. Janyne Peek Emsick sits down with Nash Mahupete, the newly appointed CEO of QLI (Quality Living, Inc.) in Omaha, Nebraska. Nash shares his inspiring journey from his upbringing in Zimbabwe to leading a multiple-time Best Places to Work organization. Key Themes & Takeaways: A Journey of Resilience & LeadershipNash reflects on his formative years in Zimbabwe, where he grew up in a home shaped by faith, community, and a deep sense of ...
4 Feb 2025
Episode 2 - Patrcia Kearns,LPT, Former President and CEO at QLI
In this episode of Your Authentic Executive, host Dr. Janyne Peek Emsick welcomes Pat Kearns, a physical therapist, President, and CEO of QLI (Quality Living, Inc.), an award-winning organization recognized multiple times as a Best Places to Work organization. Key Themes & Takeaways: Roots & Leadership Foundations Pat shares her upbringing in rural western Nebraska (Gordon, NE), a community she describes as "God’s country," rich in safety, connection, and opportunity. She reflects on ...
3 Feb 2025
Episode 1 - Susan Courtney, Former Executive VP at BCBSNE
In this debut episode of Your Authentic Executive Podcast, we sit down with Susan Courtney, retired Executive Vice President of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Nebraska, to explore her incredible journey from a small-town childhood in Minnesota to leading at the highest levels of corporate America. Susan shares insights from her early years, the impact of her family, and how golf played a pivotal role in shaping her identity. She reflects on her time in the Navy during the Cold War, where sh...
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
Apple Podcasts (US)
5.0 / 5
2 ratings
Spotify
5.0 / 5
3 ratings
Podcast Authority Score: 10 / 100
A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.
Quality
8
Social presence
0
YouTube
0
Engagement
32
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