I Know I Belong When...
Bold voices. Curious stories. Authentic Impact. What does it really mean to belong? Not just to be invited... To be seen. Heard. Needed. "I Know I Belong When…" is more than a podcast; it’s a movement. A mirror. A megaphone. It’s where raw truth meets radical hope. Each episode brings you unfiltered conversations with people who’ve wrestled with the question of belonging in the spaces that shape our lives: workplaces, schools, communities, and digital worlds. From the boardroom to the breakroom, from the sidewalks to our living rooms, our guests share the exact moment they knew they were in, and the moments they knew they weren’t. ______ This is not about feel-good soundbites. It’s about radical accountability. We explore: ~ Where equity is the foundation, not a divider. ~ The steps it takes to build diverse cultures, not only to survive, though to prosper. ~ Ensure inclusion is not just a checkbox; it is a commitment. ~ Where accessibility is not an afterthought, but the amplification to thrive. ______ At the heart of our conversation is the Belonging Formula: "Belonging = (Inclusion × (Diversity + Equity)) ^ Accessibility." It’s not just math; it’s a mindset. A blueprint. A challenge to every leader, builder, and changemaker: Are you creating spaces where every identity is not only welcomed, however, is valued and respected? ______ Here’s how we do it: [ We Say Names ] Names are not nicknames. They carry legacy, identity, and power. Inspired by #AlwaysChristopher #NeverChris, we explore how honoring someone’s name is the first act of belonging. [ The Moment of Belonging ] A defining story. A turning point. The moment our guest knew: I belong here. We unpack how that moment shaped their confidence, creativity, and connection. [ Navigating Non-Belonging ] We don’t shy away from the hard stuff. Guests share what it felt like to be excluded, erased, or underestimated, and how they reclaimed their space and voice. [ Sustaining Belonging ] What does it take to keep that feeling alive? We explore the systems, rituals, and leadership practices that make belonging a daily reality, not a one-time event. ______ Why it matters: This podcast is for anyone who’s ever asked: Do I really belong here? And for every leader who’s ready to answer: Yes, and here’s how we’ll prove it. Whether you’re building inclusive teams, designing accessible tech, or rethinking your own role in equity work, these stories will challenge you to show up differently. To lead with intention. To listen with humility. To act with courage. Because belonging isn’t a destination, it’s a practice. And it starts with listening.
Episodes
Joy is not a personality trait handed out at birth. It is a practice, it is available in the middle of a hard season, and Rachel Bents can explain the biology of how it works.
In this episode of I Know I Belong When…, Rachel Bents joins host, Christopher Bylone, for a conversation about what changes when joy stops being the reward at the end of the work and becomes the thing that makes the work possible. Rachel is the founder...
Belonging does not arrive with a new tool, a new title, or a new job. It arrives when people decide to make room for each other. On this episode of I Know I Belong When…, Dr. Steve Yacovelli, known to many as The Gay Leadership Dude®, joins host, Christopher Bylone, for a conversation about courage, identity, and the human side of every change.
Steve has spent more than 30 years in leadership and change management, from IBM a...
A parking lot. A lunch counter. An empty chair. A baby left with somebody who had never met him. Four moments from four lives, with nothing in common except the thing happening underneath all of them.
Season four of I Know I Belong When… brought twelve guests through twelve conversations. This recap does what the season could not do in real time. Host Christopher Bylone, Principal Strategist at Innovation Unbiased, lays it ac...
The room where Julie Pham knew she belonged held none of her credentials. No Cambridge doctorate. No Gates scholarship. No bestseller list. It was a prison, and nobody inside knew who she was on paper.
Dr. Julie Pham is the founder and CEO of CuriosityBased, and she joins host Christopher Bylone for a conversation that travels from a refugee family’s naming decision, to a correctional facility, to a weekly team meeting where a...
Some people wait for a door to open. Salomão Cunha Lima decided the room needed to be built.
In this episode of I Know I Belong When…, host, Christopher Bylone, is joined by Salomão Cunha Lima, founder and CEO of Sal&Co, a Social Architecture Lab in São Paulo, Brazil. The conversation moves through every arena of a life: self, home, community, work, and society.
Salomão calls his work social architecture rather than social...
Belonging is not a program that gets rolled out at work. It is the durable knowledge that who you are is enough, and it has to hold at home, in your community, and in the wider society, not only in a conference room.
In this episode of I Know I Belong When…, Darlene King Turner joins host, Christopher Bylone, for a conversation that refuses to keep belonging inside the workplace. Darlene is CEO and president of the Unity Coll...
Belonging does not begin at work. It begins in the people who hand you a baby at a family picnic and never think twice, in the neighbors who show up when the holidays fall apart, and in the quiet moment you finally let yourself ask for help.
On this episode of I Know I Belong When…, host Christopher Bylone welcomes Rebecca Taylor, a people strategy leader who has spent more than a decade in HR saying the quiet part out loud. ...
Most people treat a book as a finish line. You write it, you print it, you set it on a shelf, and the work is done. Fabi Preslar spent close to three decades proving that idea backward. In her hands, a book is not where a story ends. It is where a person finally gets seen.
In this episode of I Know I Belong When…, host Christopher Bylone welcomes Fabi Preslar, founder of SPARK Publications and the nonprofit Radiant Chapters C...
Most people treat inclusion like a feeling, something you hope for and revisit once a year. Effenus Henderson spent more than forty years proving it can be something you design. In this episode of I Know I Belong When…, host Christopher Bylone welcomes the president and CEO of HenderWorks, the strategist who convened the international working group behind ISO 30415, the first global standard for diversity and inclusion.
This ...
The most brilliant person in any room may be the one no one thought to hear. Pasha Marlowe has spent more than thirty years changing that. In this episode of I Know I Belong When…, Pasha joins host Christopher Bylone, Principal Strategist, for a conversation about worth, design, and the quiet decision to know you belong to yourself before you ask anyone else to make room for you.
Pasha is a global speaker on neuroinclus...
What happens when a capable person stops asking what is wrong with them and starts asking what is wrong with the room around them? That question anchors this conversation, and it reaches far past any office.
In this episode of I Know I Belong When…, host Christopher Bylone welcomes Grant Harris, MBA, Certified Diversity Executive, neuro-inclusive speaker, human-centered performance strategist, and founder of GTH Consult...
There is a story we tell ourselves about high-performance work: that winning costs you the people, that greatness and humanity cannot share the same room. In this episode of I Know I Belong When…, HR executive, coach, and founder Kate McKinnon shows that the choice itself was never real. Across more than 15 years in human resources, most recently as head of people inside the pressure-cooked world of sports, Kate built cultur...
Most of us were taught to earn joy. Land the results, hit the numbers, and then maybe you get to feel good. Greg De Koker spent a career proving that this is backward.
On this episode of I Know I Belong When…, Christopher Bylone sits down with Greg De Koker, a brand and culture transformation expert, a bestselling co-author, and the mind behind the forthcoming book Joy Squared: The Hidden Power of Joy in Leadership.&n...
Belonging is bigger than any office. It begins in the quiet knowledge that who you are is already enough, and it follows you into every room you walk into for the rest of your life. In this episode of I Know I Belong When, host Christopher Bylone sits down with Öykü Api, a thought leader in inclusion, change, and leadership whose story stretches across self, home, community, and work.
Öykü spent twenty years inside corporat...
What does it mean to lead so that everyone in the room knows they belong? Our guest has spent more than 25 years answering that question, and his answer reshapes how we think about people, work, and life.
Meet Dean Carter. He has served as chief human resources officer four separate times, at Fossil, Patagonia, Sears and Kmart, and Guild, earning national recognition for reinventing the future of work. His book, "Employee Ex...
Belonging is not built at the office. It is built wherever a person is, at the dinner table, inside a circle of friends, in the places we worship and organize, and at work too. Season 3 of I Know I Belong When… proved that twelve times over.
In this special season 3 recap, host Christopher Bylone, Principal Strategist at Innovation Unbiased, brings every guest from the season back together to examine what it takes to ...
What happens when you combine a lifelong storyteller, a lifelong protester, and a leader who runs toward the work when everyone else is running away from it?
You get Chris Jones.
In this episode of I Know I Belong When, host Christopher Bylone sits down with Chris, co-founder of Spectra Diversity and a social justice warrior since 1970, to discuss authentic leadership in turbulent times. Chris has spent more than four decades writing...
What happens when you take fifteen years of startup chaos, a front row seat to the exact moment culture either takes root or falls apart, and a leader who gets excited about the hard conversations most people run from? You get this conversation with Brooke Sullivan, Director of People and Talent at Banyan Software, and a leader building belonging inside fast-moving companies.
Brooke has spent her career inside software startups, bui...
Most leadership advice about artificial intelligence promises the machine will solve your people problems. Sarah A. Scala is in the other room telling executives the opposite. Artificial intelligence will expose them, and she is staying long enough to help fix what surfaces. That is the conversation that Christopher Bylone, host of I Know I Belong When, has on this episode.
Sarah is an award-winning diverse supplier, a global speake...
What if everything you have been told about accessibility, inclusion, and the so-called trade-off between doing good and doing well is wrong?
In this episode of I Know I Belong When, host Christopher Bylone sits down with Daniel Hodges — lawyer by training, nonprofit founder by calling, and living proof that when someone tells you no road exists, that is simply the opening line of your comeback story. As a kid, Daniel was func...
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