Risky Conversations with Jamie Lee

🎙️ What happens when one coaching client gets so much clarity, she sends her sister your way—not for coaching, but just for some good, honest truth-telling?

Turns out, you get a new podcast episode, an unexpected career comeback… and a pretty great story about integrity over sales.

In this episode of Risky Conversations, I sit down with Beth Nichols and SJ Crawford—real-life sisters and co-hosts of the podcast Miss Informed—for a he...

Join us for a riveting conversation with Marion Siboni, the founder and CEO of La Creme de la STEM - a global private network supporting early-stage female founders in science, technology, engineering, and math. 

In this episode, we dive into Marion's own entrepreneurial journey, marked by bold career pivots and a relentless drive to create change. Hear how she navigated the male-dominated tech industry, overcame self-doubt, an...

In this episode, I sit down with two early-career researchers and open science advocates: Harini Lakshmi Narayanan, a postdoctoral researcher in cancer diagnostics at University Hospital Zurich, and Madita Determann, a postdoc studying liver-related diseases who began her career as a surgical assistant in Germany.

Both are leaders in OILS (Open Innovation in Life Sciences), a volunteer-run organization that promotes transparency, re...

In this episode, we’re diving into one of my favorite topics: the art of negotiation. And I couldn’t have asked for a better guest than Melanie Imming—a Dutch consultant known for turning complex ideas into compelling stories and challenging the status quo with clarity, warmth, and courage.

Melanie and I first met in Switzerland, where I led a negotiation workshop for Open Science Retreat. She later became a coaching client, wanting...

In a world teetering on the edge of massive systemic disruption, how do leaders navigate forward with clarity, courage, and impact? 

In this episode, I'm speaking with Caroline Stokes, a global leadership strategist offering a timely, sobering, and visionary approach to reinventing leadership. 

Her new book, Aftershock to 2030, is a radical roadmap for CEOs leading beyond collapse and thrive in an era of unprecedented change. 

We...

In this episode, I'm joined by Michelle Petties, a TEDx speaker and food story coach who has transformed her own life by understanding the deep emotional roots of eating. 

Michelle shares her remarkable journey of losing and gaining nearly 700 pounds before discovering how food is intimately connected to our emotions, memories, and cultural inheritance. 

Through her personal story of overcoming food addiction and rebuilding her ...

In this episode of Risky Conversations, we dive into the unique challenges faced by STEM professionals when it comes to navigating difficult conversations and developing essential social skills. 

Dr. Corinna Freitag, an executive coach with a background in chemistry and industry, shares her interdisciplinary approach to helping her clients - chemists, engineers, and other technical experts - improve their communication, emotional in...

What Does It Really Mean to Be an Ally?

Allyship can be a thorny topic—stirring discomfort, shame, or confusion about how to show up without overstepping or saying the wrong things. 

In a time of growing division and discrimination, many people are asking: How do I use my unearned advantages to create more inclusion without offending people?

In this episode of Risky Conversations, I sit down with Rashida Bonds, an ally coach who says ...

Today, I want to share something I originally wrote as an email to one of my coaching clients. It touches on something that shapes nearly everything we do: the pursuit of happiness.

Here’s the context. One of my clients is an executive at a major tech company. She’s leading a bold new initiative that involves hiring, retaining, and coaching a team of sharp, high-performing people who can deliver results fast.

She’s working hard. She’...

This year, I'm turning Buddhist, meditating with a sangha (a community of Buddhist practitioners), bowing in the morning, and taking lessons from Buddhist teachers. 

This happened because I started reading Billy Seol's Substack (https://substack.com/@julylifecoach), which he writes every single day (impressive!) 

I've come to consider Billy as a kind of spiritual god brother. 

In this deep dive into the intersection of ...

I recently led a group session called Zen and the Art of Dealing with Office Politics, where I helped professionals—especially women and underrepresented folks—navigate the messiness of workplace dynamics with more calm and clarity.

We kicked off with a guided brain exercise to shift out of high-frequency beta brain waves (you know, that anxious, go-go-go energy) and into a slower, more grounded alpha state. It’s a small shift that ...

In this captivating episode, Emily Maggiotto shares her inspiring story of navigating pivotal career and life decisions guided by her insatiable curiosity. 

From leaving a stable finance job to pursue a musical adventure, to leading HR teams through challenging times, Emily's journey exemplifies the power of embracing risk, learning continuously, and finding fulfillment on one's own terms. 

This conversation offers invaluab...

Did you know that a survey of over 4,100 young men from Brazil, Indonesia, the Netherlands, and Uganda revealed that menstruation is still considered taboo around the world? In fact, many associate periods with words like ‘dirty,’ ‘embarrassing,’ and ‘disgusting.’ This deep-seated stigma is something women and girls are taught to internalize, making us feel shame around a natural biological process.

But today, we’re changing that na...

I work with a sex coach, not because I have sex problems, but because the coach and I are on a similar wavelength. My coach, Michaelann Gardner, is a deeply compassionate and fascinating person who has studied hypnosis under Melissa Tiers, just like I have. 

(To give you an idea of what our coaching sessions are like: Michaelann guides me through hypnotic trances where we meditate on death, on the impermanence of life. I emerge from...

I'm a coach who helps smart folks who don't like office politics get promoted and better paid. Part of that work is helping professionals negotiate their salary. 

98% of my clients are women, and I often hear this objection when I coach on salary negotiation: "I feel guilty for asking for the money I want." 

In this episode, I share insights on how to shift your mindset, presence, and strategy to approach salary d...

Since 2011, I've hosted negotiation trainings that can be best described as scrappy, pragmatic, and useful. 

It started with humble Meetups where I got a bunch of the smartest women I know into a room and had them practice asking for what they wanted -- out loud.

When the pandemic hit, I consciously decided to focus primarily on my 1:1 executive coaching, and everything moved to Zoom.

(You can read about my coaching philosophy, p...

🔥This might get me fired, I say to my clients to preface this truth bomb — 

The game is rigged against employees. 

Learning to negotiate for yourself is an essential part of playing to win the game. 

The system is rigged to benefit the select few at the top and shareholders, not the hard-working manager or multi-talented individual contributor. And if you’re a hard-working woman or a minority, the odds are even wo...

In this interview, employment lawyer Anne Donne Lee Bush shares practical advice for navigating workplace discrimination. 

Anne draws from her own experience as an immigrant lawyer who reinvented her career in New York to provide no-nonsense guidance on 

• building evidence, 
• challenging performance improvement plans, and 
• leveraging mediation to negotiate better severance packages. 

Whether you're facing microaggr...

This is a replay of my interview on The Burnout Club podcast, hosted by Patrice Bonfiglio—a hedge fund industry veteran and all-around powerhouse.

Key Takeaways:

• Burnout isn’t caused by working hard—it’s driven by chasing a specific feeling or using emotion as fuel to push yourself to extremes.
• A key sign of burnout is physical illness—it often shows up through physical symptoms.
• Overcoming burnout requires a two-pronged approach: ...