PODCAST · business
A World of Difference
by Lori Adams-Brown
A World of Difference is a leadership podcast for executives and organizational leaders navigating change across cultures, industries, and continents. Hosted by Lori Adams-Brown, a strategic transformation executive with over 20 years of C-suite advisory experience, the show explores organizational effectiveness, executive development, and leadership development through real conversations with leaders who have built and led across borders. Each episode features leadership stories from places and travel destinations spanning six continents, bringing listeners cross-cultural communication insights drawn from lived experience, not theory. Lori's own background, including over 15 years as an expat in Indonesia and Singapore, shapes every conversation with a global mindset rarely found in mainstream leadership media. Topics covered include human intelligence in AI transformation and change management, global leadership and cultural intelligence, executive coaching
Episodes
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How to Vote for Character, Not Charisma: Courage and Integrity in a Narcissistic Age with Dr. Chuck DeGroat
Have you ever followed a leader who shared their struggles on stage, said all the right things about brokenness, and still left everyone around them feeling smaller? Therapist and professor Dr. Chuck DeGroat has a name for that: fauxnerability. Chuck returns to A World of Difference the day after...
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Lead with Courage: Why Workplace Culture Is a Design Choice with Dr. Lauran Star
Workplace culture isn't broken. According to Dr. Lauran Star, it's working exactly as it was designed, and that should make every leader stop and look closely. Organizational psychologist and forensic cultural behaviorist Dr. Lauran Star joins Lori for a candid, funny, and unflinching…
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Stop Doing Change to People: Human-Centered Leadership in the AI Era with CEO Karen Zeigler
What if people do not resist change at all, and what they resist is change that is done to them? Karen Zeigler, CEO of Human Score, joins Lori to explain why so many change and AI efforts stall, and what leaders can do differently this week. This conversation was recorded live on LinkedIn, with...
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Feel Less Overwhelmed at Work: Understanding Work Intensification with Melissa Swift
Have you ever felt that the moment you catch your breath, three new demands are already waiting? Organizational consultant Melissa Swift gives that feeling a name, work intensification, and explains what helps. In this conversation, Lori and Melissa explore: How three years working in London…
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What Actually Motivates People at Work: The Enneagram Guide to Understanding Your Team with Joey Schewee
Have you ever worked with someone who just didn't get you, not because they were difficult, but because you were wired completely differently? In this episode, Lori sits down with Enneagram expert Joey Schewee to unpack why understanding motivation, not just behavior, is what actually transforms...
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Escape the Access Tax: How Lolita Taub Built a Career From Scratch as a Latina Venture Capitalist
Most people enter venture capital as a founder, an angel, an LP, a GP, or an ecosystem builder, usually without a roadmap. Lolita Taub has been all five. She calls the hidden cost of building without inherited networks the "access tax," and she says it shows up everywhere: in every country, for...
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Stop Managing Performance, Start Enabling It: Dr. Edie Goldberg on the New Talent Management Paradigm
What if everything you've been taught about managing performance was built for a workplace that no longer exists? Dr. Edie Goldberg returns to A World of Difference to unpack the research behind her new book, revealing why the system most companies use to drive performance is quietly working...
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Change Makers EPS 61: Allan Wind on the Andes, USAID and Peace Corps
Allan J. "Alonzo" Wind is a retired Senior Foreign Service Officer from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), having worked off and on with the Agency primarily overseas on diplomatic assignments from 1990 to 2019 in the Peru, Nicaragua, Angola, Nigeria, Iraq, Afghanistan and…
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Why Your AI Transformation Is Failing (Hint: It's Not the Technology) with Shaara Roman
What if your AI transformation isn't stalling because of the technology, but because of the culture, trust, and leadership behaviors you've built (or failed to build) around it? Shaara Roman has spent years inside global enterprises watching AI initiatives launch with fanfare and quietly fall...
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From Cameroon to Berkeley: Marie-Ange Eyoum Tagne on Failing, Faith, and Finding Purpose in Silicon Valley
What does it actually take to walk into rooms where no one looks like you and not just survive them, but change them? Dr. Marie-Ange Eyoum Tagne's story begins in Cameroon and leads all the way to the highest levels of Silicon Valley tech leadership, and the lessons she's learned along the way…
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Governance Isn't Control, It's Trust: Cynthia Lai on Cross-Cultural Leadership and Resilience in Hong Kong
What does it cost to keep climbing when you're not sure the ladder is leaning against the right wall? Cynthia Lai spent two decades in multinational banking before a health warning sign forced her to ask that question, and to walk away from a role that looked successful from the outside. In this...
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The Hidden Cost of a Broken Mental Health System: Janelle Miller Moravek on Workforce, Trust, and Access
What if the systems built to help people are quietly deciding who gets to heal and who feels safe enough to even ask? Janelle Miller Moravek has spent 26 years inside that system, and she's not just naming the problem. She's rebuilding it from the ground up. Topic bullets: Why the U.S. behavioral...
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Slow Down to Win: What the AI Rat Race Is Costing Your Organization with Lori Adams-Brown
What if the fastest way through AI transformation is actually to slow down? On this sixth anniversary episode, Lori Adams-Brown unpacks the hidden cost of speed-first AI adoption, and why the leaders who listen before they build are the ones whose people actually stay. EPISODE DESCRIPTION Six…
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From Peru to the Netherlands to Silicon Valley: Building Leaders Who Actually Get Culture with Maria Angela Calmet (Encore)
Picture two fish swimming in a bowl. One asks the other, how's the water? The second fish replies, what's water? That's culture, says Maria Angela Calmet, and it's exactly why so many leaders never notice the assumptions shaping how their teams communicate, decide, and trust one another. In this...
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The ROI of Kindness: How Neurodivergent Talent Is Reshaping the Tech Workplace with CEO Tara May (Encore)
What if the traits that get someone labeled difficult in one workplace are exactly what makes them extraordinary in another? Tara May, CEO of Aspiritech, a technology company where more than 90 percent of the team is autistic, joins us to talk about what she calls the ROI of kindness, and why...
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Lean On, Not Just Lean In: What Princeton Research Reveals About Workplace Burnout with Karen Tay
Karen Tay built a peer-support program for women navigating workplace bullying and burnout, ran it through Princeton research, and found something a lot of managers don't expect: the problem usually isn't a lack of effort. It's a lack of support. In this Leading Through Change encore, Karen and...
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The Human Is The Loop, Not Just In It: Leading Authentically in the AI Revolution with Allison Shapira (Encore)
AI is changing every part of how leaders communicate, and Allison Shapira has a warning worth hearing: don't outsource your voice to it. In this conversation, we get into her framework for using AI to amplify authentic leadership instead of replacing it, and why she insists the human isn't just…
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Venezuela After the Earthquake: What's Really Happening and How You Can Help with Lori Adams-Brown
One week ago, twin earthquakes tore through the Venezuelan coastline Lori Adams-Brown grew up on. In this solo episode, recorded live and shared here as this week's show, Lori reports what's actually happening on the ground, draws on her firsthand experience coordinating relief after the 2004...
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Permission to Leave: Reading the Signs Before Burnout with Sally J. Clarke
Staying isn’t always strength, and walking away isn’t always failure. Sally J. Clarke, co-author of Walk Away: Step Out to Step Up, joins Lori Adams-Brown to unpack why high-performing leaders so often wait for a crisis before giving themselves permission to leave. Why a role can look right on...
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Rooted to Rise: How the Vineyard Teaches Sustainable Leadership with Susie Lipps
What if the most sophisticated leadership framework you've ever encountered was grown in a vineyard? In this episode, Lori sits down with her longtime friend Susie Lipps, founder of Conversations in the Vineyard, for a conversation that is equal parts practical wisdom and personal depth. Susie...
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Community Is Capacity: Leading Through Constant Change with Hyatt's Carlee Wolfe
What happens when an organization says all the right things about culture, puts the values on the wall, launches the initiative, and nothing actually moves? Carlee Wolfe has spent more than two decades inside that gap, and her answers will challenge how you lead. Carlee Wolfe is Associate Vice...
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The Self-Trust Recession: Why Brilliant Professionals Go Unheard and How to Change That with Neelu Kaur
What if the silence in your meetings has nothing to do with confidence and everything to do with culture? Organizational psychologist Neelu Kaur joins Lori Adams-Brown to decode the invisible operating systems shaping how professionals communicate, advocate for themselves, and lead across…
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After the Exit: What Fiona Macaulay Learned About Identity, Failure, and What Comes Next
What happens when you spend 18 years building a company to $5 million in revenue across 80 countries, finally sell it, and then wake up with no idea who you are without it? Fiona Macaulay knows that moment intimately, and what she built from it is changing how thousands of accomplished women…
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From Human in the Loop to Human in the Lead: A CHRO's Case for AI with Anju Choudhary Live from Human X in San Francisco
What does it mean when the only HR professional in a room of 6,000 AI innovators refuses to stay silent? Anju Choudhary attended HumanX in San Francisco, looked around, and decided that was not a coincidence. It was a calling. In this live conference conversation recorded at HumanX, Lori...
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Life Beyond Borders: Real Talk on Moving to Mexico, New Zealand, and More | Live from Move Abroad Con San Diego
What if the life you have been imagining could actually begin somewhere else? At Move Abroad Con in San Diego, at the Hard Rock Hotel, Lori Adams-Brown stepped onto the conference floor to have three honest conversations with people living and breathing the conference about the expat life. Each…
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Your Body Knows Before Your Brain Does: Building Trust Through Somatic Leadership with Bradley McDevitt
What if executive presence has nothing to do with how you look in a room and everything to do with how aware you are in your own body? Presence-based leadership coach Bradley McDevitt joins Lori Adams-Brown to explore why trust is built somatically, not just strategically, and why the discomfort...
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Tia Levings on The Self They Tried to Erase: Religious Trauma, Recovery, and Reclaiming Your Identity
What happens to your identity when the system that formed you was built to erase it? In this deeply personal and clear-eyed conversation, New York Times bestselling author Tia Levings returns to A World of Difference with her new book, a survivor's guide that meets you wherever you are on the…
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Stop Calling It Resistance: How Evidence-Based Listening Drives Real Organizational Change | Jeff Wetherhold
What if the resistance you're seeing in your organization isn't defiance, it's information? What if the way you're talking about change is the very thing blocking it? Episode Summary In this episode of A World of Difference, host Lori Adams-Brown sits down with Jeff Wetherhold, founder of the...
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Situational Awareness for the C-Suite: Recognizing Workplace Bullies Before They Hollow Out Your Organization with Lori Adams-Brown
You were trained for almost everything. Nobody trained you for this. In this solo episode, Lori Adams-Brown draws on her extraordinary career of working in civil war zones, surviving riots targeting American citizens, leading evacuations, and navigating genuine life-or-death threats across…
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Ancient Queens & AI: What Egypt's Golden Era Teaches Us About Change Leadership Today with Christine Mikhail
What if the blueprint for thriving in the AI era has been buried for centuries, inside the civilization that built the pyramids? Organizational psychologist Christine Mikhail joins Lori Adams-Brown live from the Transform Conference in Las Vegas to unpack one of the most urgent (and...
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Stop Before You Get Stopped: The Case for Subtraction as Strategy with Nell Derick Debevoise Dewey
What if the reason you're exhausted isn't because you're doing it wrong — but because you're doing too much? Nell Derick Debevoise Dewey (Nell3D) is here to challenge the most dangerous assumption in modern leadership: that progress always comes from piling more on. In this episode, we unpack…
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Live at Transform 2026: The Science of Connection — How Optimistic Thinking Fights Burnout at Work with Daria Maneche
Live from the Transform 2026 conference floor in Las Vegas, Lori sat down with Daria Maneche, founder of The Working Optimist, for a candid, neuroscience-backed conversation about what it actually takes to build human connection at work, and why the stakes for getting this right have never been...
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How to Launch a Business While Navigating Career Transition (And Why I Named Mine After an Opera Word) with Lori Adams-Brown
What do you do when the title is gone, but the work isn't finished? In this solo episode, Lori Adams-Brown pulls back the curtain on the past six months: the beach day that changed everything, the blank bio she couldn't write, and the Italian word that finally gave shape to what she was building....
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How to Succeed in a New Job Fast: 90-Day Onboarding, Stakeholder Mapping, Upskilling & AI with Dr. Shveta Miglani (Best of 2025)
Ever started a new job and realized the “real work” isn’t just the work. It’s learning the culture, the decision-making rhythm, and what success actually looks like? In this re-released best-of conversation, Dr. Shweta Miglani breaks down the small, practical moves that help you ramp faster…
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From Farm to Silicon Valley: How One Turkish Immigrant Turned Grief, Grit, and Education Into a Life Beyond Imagination with Nuray Krein Yilmaz
What does it look like to build a life from scratch, not once, but again and again? Nuray Krein Yilmaz has done it more times than most people ever will, and her story is one of the most quietly extraordinary ones we've shared on this podcast. Nuray grew up in a small farming village in eastern...
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Rebranding the Brain: Neurodiversity, Psychological Safety & the Future of Hiring with Dave Thompson
What if the way we’ve been thinking about brains at work is fundamentally broken? What if accommodations aren’t about fixing people, but about unlocking talent we’ve been filtering out for decades? In this powerful episode, Lori sits down with Dave Thompson to explore how neurodiversity is the...
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Unlocking Hidden Brilliance: How Neurodivergent Talent Is Transforming the Tech Workplace with CEO Tara May
What if the key to innovation in your workplace isn't finding people who fit your culture, but transforming your culture to unlock brilliance that's been overlooked? Tara May, CEO of Aspiritech, has spent her career proving that when organizations create truly neuro-inclusive workplaces…
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The Telescope in the Room: What High-Performing Leaders Can't See About Their Own Career with Executive Coach Karen Kunkel Young
You're highly capable. So why does your next move feel so unclear? For senior leaders at a career inflection point — whether navigating a layoff, a values misalignment, or a long-overdue pivot — the problem is rarely a lack of skill. It's a lack of perspective. In this episode, executive coach…
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Spanish-Speaking America in STEM: A First-Gen Immigrant Latina Leadership Story with Bay Area Entrepreneur Rebeca Lopez Valerio
What do you do when the doors you’ve worked for keep closing because of factors you can’t control? In this episode, Rebeca Lopez Valerio shares how she turned “no” into fuel, built opportunities from scratch, and learned to lead with coraje, heart-forward courage rooted in identity, resilience…
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The Hidden Cost of Avoidance: Navigating Hard Conversations with Amy Brodsky
What if the very conversations you’re avoiding are the ones that could change everything? In this episode, we explore the hidden cost of silence, and how choosing “peace” over honesty can slowly erode trust, connection, and even joy. Many of us were taught to keep the peace, smooth things over…
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Unpaid, Unseen, and Expected: How the Pastor’s Wife Role Replaced Women’s Ordination with Dr. Beth Allison Barr (Best of 2025)
What happens when faith communities quietly replace women’s leadership with unpaid, invisible labor? In this powerful Best of 2025 #1 top most downloaded episode of 2025 re-release, historian and bestselling author Dr. Beth Allison Barr joins Lori Adams-Brown to unpack how the role of the…
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Permission to Feel It All: Gratitude, Resilience, and Authentic Leadership with Lori Adams-Brown (Best of 2025)
Some conversations stay with us because they name what we’ve been living but haven’t had words for yet. This episode is one of those moments, a reminder that gratitude does not require us to deny our pain, and authenticity does not demand perfection. As we revisit this Thanksgiving message, one…
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How to Unlock Hidden Talent at Scale: Skills, Mobility & the Inside Gig with Dr. Edie Goldberg (Best of 2025)
What if the talent your organization is searching for is already inside your walls? In this Best of episode, Lori revisits one of the most impactful conversations of the year with talent strategy expert Dr. Edie Goldberg, and it’s just as relevant now as when it first aired. Dr. Goldberg shares…
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Books That Shaped 2025: Essential Reads for Difference Makers with Lori Adams-Brown
As 2025 comes to a close, this episode is a love letter to difference makers everywhere—those navigating change, courage, career pivots, and complex workplaces. Lori Adams-Brown reflects on the books that shaped her thinking this year and deeply resonated with listeners across the globe. From...
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Lori Adams-Brown on Kindness Is Its Own Strength When Leading, A Holiday Reflection
Are you feeling the weight of leadership decisions that seem to pull you away from your core values? You're not alone in wrestling with what it means to lead authentically when the world around us feels increasingly divided and transactional. What happens when kindness becomes your greatest...
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Why Your Best Employees Are Operating from Survival Mode Without You Knowing with Elizabeth Vahey Smith
Are you leading with the assumption that your team is operating from a place of psychological safety? The reality might shock you. Recent research reveals that 80% of workplace professionals have experienced trauma that directly impacts how they show up at work—and most leaders have no idea it's...
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From Peru to the Netherlands to Silicon Valley: Building Leaders Who Actually Get Culture with Maria Angela Calmet
Are you leading teams across cultures but struggling to understand why brilliant strategies fail and talented people clash? The answer might be simpler than you think, and more complex than you've imagined. What happens when the biggest barrier to global leadership isn't language or logistics…
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Lori Adams-Brown on The Thanksgiving Gratitude Practice That Changes How Authentic Leaders Handle Crisis and Community
Are you struggling to hold space for both gratitude and grief in your leadership? In a year marked by unprecedented challenges, many executives are finding it difficult to navigate the tension between authentic appreciation and the very real pain their teams are experiencing. What happens when...
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The Human Is The Loop Not Just In It When Leading in the AI Revolution with Allison Shapira
Are you feeling the tension between staying authentic and using AI tools in your leadership? You're not alone. Many executives are grappling with this exact challenge, and the stakes have never been higher. What happens when the biggest threat to authentic leadership isn't AI itself, but how we...
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Lori Adams-Brown on Values-Driven Leadership and Speaking Up in a Time of Capitulation
Lori Adams-Brown, a Strategic Transformation Executive, Board Director, Global Speaker and Podcast Host challenges audiences to get clear on your personal values, to speak up when there is a values misalignment, and to reject self-limiting beliefs that hold leaders back in an era of capitulation...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
A World of Difference is a leadership podcast for executives and organizational leaders navigating change across cultures, industries, and continents. Hosted by Lori Adams-Brown, a strategic transformation executive with over 20 years of C-suite advisory experience, the show explores organizational effectiveness, executive development, and leadership development through real conversations with leaders who have built and led across borders.
Each episode features leadership stories from places and travel destinations spanning six continents, bringing listeners cross-cultural communication insights drawn from lived experience, not theory. Lori's own background, including over 15 years as an expat in Indonesia and Singapore, shapes every conversation with a global mindset rarely found in mainstream leadership media.
Topics covered include human intelligence in AI transformation and change management, global leadership and cultural intelligence, executive coaching
HOSTED BY
Lori Adams-Brown
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does A World of Difference have?
A World of Difference currently has 304 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is A World of Difference about?
A World of Difference is a leadership podcast for executives and organizational leaders navigating change across cultures, industries, and continents. Hosted by Lori Adams-Brown, a strategic transformation executive with over 20 years of C-suite advisory experience, the show explores organizational...
How often does A World of Difference release new episodes?
A World of Difference publishes regularly with 304 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
Where can I listen to A World of Difference?
You can listen to A World of Difference on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts A World of Difference?
A World of Difference is created and hosted by Lori Adams-Brown.
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