The bestselling book Beyond the Pews: Breaking with Tradition and Letting Go of Religious Lockdown shares the personal story of Jillian Maas Backman. Jillian wrote the book years after years of study and greater understanding about her unique ability to communicate with angels and see colorful auras around people.

Equipped with this rare gift and the knowledge that the spiritual realm is available to us all, Jillian works with cele...

How can we save kids from gun violence in America? Pearl Dick is the Artistic Director of PROJECT Fire, a healing arts program for victims of gunshot violence in Chicago. As the flagship healing arts program at Chicago’s Firebird Community Arts (FCA) Program in East Garfield Park, it helps kids who suffer from SELF: a fear for their safety, emotional trauma and anger, loss from injury and a limited sense of the future. Pearl is a v...

What does it take for women to be financially independent? Wealth management expert Tuula Jalasjaa shares decades of industry experience and two very exciting online platforms helping women close the gender gap around financial knowledge and wealth creation. Tuula is the founder of The Women’s Collection and Smart Money For Her, the first - a free online platform of educational and confidence-building tools. The second platform is ...

Author Elizabeth Gilbert says the universe buries strange jewels deep within us.  This helps to explain in part why broadcast journalist Sheree Franklin left a successful marketing career as an entrepreneur to become an intuitive coach and meditation teacher.  She’s traveled the world, gone Down Under with Oprah Winfrey, and been featured on news outlets discussing the powerful wisdom of her book, Intuition: The Hidden Asset Everyo...

Today’s changemaker is an award-winning interior designer who left a career in the financial services industry to build the life she wanted.  Armed with courage, tenacity, a paint brush and a few good ideas, Felicia Gimza built a new life and the interior design company, The Expert Touch Interiors.

Sip on some designer secrets and the story of how Felicia created a new life around design and new opportunities.  With some great advi...

Micheal Lewis popularized the idea of blind spots in his bestselling book, The Blind Side. Blind spots can be anthing from a football quarterback not seeing the tackle spot, a hidden view in your rear view mirror or decisions made regardless of things unknown. Typically, we see blind spots as a deficiency, a gap in judgment where mistakes can happen. But what if we saw them as opportunities for nudging us to take chances with the p...

Cristina Mittermeier is a world-class Fine Arts Photographer whose global influence extends well beyond her Mexico City roots. More than 1.5 million people recognize this award-winning Sony Artisan, National Geographic Woman of Impact and She’s Mercedes Empowered Woman. Cristina founded the International League of Photographers and co-founded of Sea Legacy to tell photographic stories that protect our oceans, Indigenous Peoples and...

Lise Poulsen Floris is a Danish freelance writer currently based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Her articles have been published internationally, most notably by ABC Australia, Global Times, Beijing KIds and Womanscape. She is a former EU worker turned writer, whose global travels have helped her to find the big story in every little story she discovers.   Lise shares some of the highlights of her new lifestyle and the challenges of gl...

Ching Tien grew up in Beijing in the 1960s with dreams of becoming a journalist until the Cultural Revolution changed everything. Ching’s father was jailed and her mother, a doctor, was forced to work in Gansu, one of the poorest provinces in China. For eight years, Ching labored in a factory and witnessed dire poverty alongside her mother - people living in caves with no running water or electricity. This stayed with Ching, who mo...

Adriana Bertini is a brilliant fashion designer whose innovative creation of condom art hangs in over 35 museums around the world. Her collections belong to some of the greatest celebrities and designers, even though Bertini left the haute couture fashion industry three decades ago to work with impoverished youth living in the streets of San Paulo, Brazil.  Many of them are LGBTQ kids that suffer violence and also the scourages of ...

This entrepreneur helps women to feel beautiful from the inside out. Words like confident, graceful and free are favorite expressions of Aradhana, a jewelry designer from India. She has lived in Indonesia and Shanghai, where she discovered the healing power of gemstones. If we are all the sum of our experiences and the nature that lives within our hearts, ARRA by Aradhana Designs reveals the potential that lives within us if we dar...

She escaped a revolution only to build a new one.  But this time, Shermin

Kruse is reimagining political and structural systems of leadership that actually work. As a corporate lawyer turned strategist, Kruse is a Northwestern Law Professor, entrepreneur, writer, and TEDTalk speaker and producer. Kruse understands twenty-first century challenges like COVID and America’s civil rights protests are a call for change and empowering tr...

Today’s changemaker is Arica Hilton, a poet, a visual artist, and a Chicago gallerist for Hilton Asmus Contemporary.  She has traveled the world chasing creativity, from the peaks of the Himilayan mountains to the deep diving waters of Raja Ampat, Indonesia. Working to protect our waters from plastic pollution with art exhibits from North America to Europe, and the Middle East to Asia, Arica embodies the cosmic energy of nature wit...

Rose water is a centuries-old elixir for wellness and beauty.  Cleopatra bathed in it for glowing skin as did Hollywood’s Elizabeth Taylor.   The tradition continues with Candice Crane, a mompreneur,  alchemist and the CEO behind Petal Sparkling Botanical beverages. Her unique blend of healthy flavors including rose water hydrates from the inside out. Crane’s success is forged on hard work, a bold imagination and an uncompromising ...

Today’s changemaker is Sue Britton, a revolutionary entrepreneur and CEO of Fintech Growth Strategies (FGS). Her company is a value-based, solutions provider in the Canadian financial and technology sector. When Britton decided to invest her talent, skills and thought leadership in today’s money and tomorrow’s technology, she reframed what it means to mix innovation and a culture of kindness  with excellence. As a female entreprene...

Today’s changemaker is a fighter, a knock-down, drag ‘em, get back up, fighter. Her harrowing story as a victim of an international human trafficking ring is both a warning about online predators as well as a story about forgiveness and redemption. Lured from her homeland of Budapest, Hungary, she flew to Toronto, Canada to become a nanny. Instead, Timea Nagy would fight for her freedom and renewed meaning in life. Now the CEO of T...

Imagine fighting a losing battle everyday as an oncologist before learning your retirement plan is funding what’s killing your patients. Meet Dr. Bronwyn King, an accidental activist and one of the most powerful, “butt-kicking” CEOs. Founder of Tobacco-free Portfolios, Dr. King is fighting for a tobacco-free world to end the annual global death-rate of 8 million who die from cancer-related illnesses. Hear how Dr. King is cutting of...

Dear Happiness: I’ve been looking for you since forever. I see people suffering, huge economic and racial divides, and a world torn apart by fear, sickness and isolation. Is there a happy life? Renowned thought leader and doctor of happiness, Dr. Jay Kumar, is in. His book, The Science of the Happy Brain, will help you to understand the overwhelming struggles of our world and provide real, actionable ways to heal. Hear how the good...

Season One of the Sipping on Stories podcast takes you into the lives of global changemakers whose lives inspire courage and hope for a more caring, connected, empowered world. When we dig into their stories, we tap into our own emotions and experiences that help us to embrace new ideas around freedom and success. Join host Rose McInerney, a philosophy-seeking writer and purpose-driven entrepreneur, as she sips on favorite drinks i...