What do the pharmaceutical industry and an icebreaker turned polar cruise vessel have in common? You’re forgiven when your answer to this question is, “Absolutely nothing!” You would – however – be wrong. Because my guest today is the link between these two very different worlds. Entrepreneur in the polar expedition world  Heather Thorkelson is an entrepreneur who runs a coaching company, a polar expedition company, and is part owner of a polar ship management company. While she was...

Hi! My Name is Heather Monro. To those of you who are regular listeners will no doubt be wondering at this point, “What’s become of the usual host, Gerdi Verwoert?” So let me put your mind at rest. She’s still here because today’s guest is the very same Gerdi Verwoert. For this 50th episode, it seems fitting to do something a little different and if like me, you really value Gerdi’s perspective and the line-up of wonderful conversation partners she’s gathered, maybe you’ve also wanted to hear...

Today’s guest is Torill Bye Wilhelmsen, an entrepreneurial coach from Norway. She started her slow business coaching and consultancy firm Fjellflyt to help people develop profitable and sustainable companies, so they can live off what they are passionate about. Over the course of her career she has started two companies, won awards for innovation and website texts as a salesperson, worked as a project manager and business manager, and completed a master's degree in international economics and...

This episode is part of a series of interviews with members of The Climate Reality Project community who have trained with former US Vice President Al Gore to become Climate Reality Leaders. *-*-* Yuriko Baba is a Sustainability and Brand Experience professional and intrapreneur with experience in leading cross-functional, multi-disciplinary teams. She has proven herself as a change agent leading with empathy. She’s also passionate about the creative arts. Working for a global organisation...

This episode is part of a series of interviews with members of The Climate Reality Project community who have trained with former US Vice President Al Gore to become Climate Reality Leaders. *-*-* Today’s guest is Clare Snowdon, a mum of 2 daughters – a 22- and a 7-year-old and living on the outskirts of London, UK.  By day she works as a physicist in a lab. In her spare time, she is passionate about guiding Nature connection, sharing mindfulness, championing biodiversity and getting...

Remember the first time you rode a bike and took your hands off the handlebars? And then because it felt fun and daring you did it again - and again - riding down a hill with the wind in your face, arms up over your head screaming, “Look, ma! No hands!” You showed up. You did it. Letting go of the handlebars The arc of Diane Wyzga’s professional career stretches from working as a US Navy officer, nurse, corporate businesswoman, platform storyteller, lawyer, educator, and litigation...

Diana Tedoldi is a leadership and teamwork development specialist. Since 2000 she’s been working in the corporate environment; first as a manager in the Organisation and HR field, and then as a freelance professional. Throughout her professional life, she has been developing projects for organisational evolution, managerial growth, leadership and team development. Integrating her passions As a Professional Certified Coach and expert facilitator of personal and professional growth, she...

A passion for archaelogy Garry Pratt has always had a passion for archaeology. A passion that had him spend a lot of time in the outdoors. Early on though, he realised that despite having a BA in Archaeology, having a successful career in that field would be challenging even in the very best of times. So he stepped onto a very different trail and embarked on a career in publishing and advertising. It didn’t take him long to heed the call of entrepreneurship and start his first business,...

I am an avid follower of photographers. I simply love how they can show us the world, in particular Nature in all its beauty, in ways we’ve never seen it before. I especially like photographers who don’t photoshop their images so much, you can’t help but think the end result looks nothing like what they actually photographed. Today’s guest is such a photographer. Claire Victoria Bishop, founder of ‘Rewild the Frame’, is a natural light photographer who is passionate about all things nature -...

You know you’ll be talking to an interesting person when his Linkedin headline reads like this: “Fusing Nature Engagement, True Resilience and Individual/Business Development. Certified Facilitator in Lego® Serious Play®. Wilderness and Urban Survival Skills Instructor, FireFighter, Soldier, Business Director (x3)” Tread Lightly Today’s guest is Toby Cowern. He uniquely fuses his teaching background, risk management qualifications, military training and outdoors experience to deliver...

Curiosity, Connection and Stories Curiosity, connection and stories have served as driving forces in Amy Atwell’s personal and professional journeys. With a degree in journalism, she began her career in public relations and corporate communication in the days before texting and video calls. In her PR work, she served clients focused on everything from satellite imaging to healthy ageing before joining a large regional chamber of commerce as editor and content developer. During her eight years...

This episode is part of a series of interviews with members of The Climate Reality Project community who have trained with former US Vice President Al Gore to become Climate Reality Leaders. *-*-* How often have I interviewed someone with their very own Wikipedia page? Never! That’s how often. But that’s changing today as I’m interviewing Anne Bland, born and raised in Finland and now a social entrepreneur in the UK. That Wikipedia page? It’s because she used to be the Deputy Leader of...

Craig and I have a wide-ranging conversation touching upon working in IT, the Appalachian Trail, hiking, climbing and parkour as well as all lessons we can learn from them. I was introduced to today’s guest when I listened to an interview on his podcast with future ‘Daring Self-Leadership’ guest Diane F. Wyzga. They had a conversation about podcasting in general but specifically about how Diane got into podcasting. I regularly listen to her 1-minute podcast ‘Stories From Women Who Walk’ and...

Nicole Snell had a successful career in the entertainment industry but then switched to leading workshops on self-defense in life and the outdoors. How and why? Hiking safely I first became aware of Nicole Snell when she popped up in my Instagram timeline. At the time I was converting a video series on safely solo hiking among mountains into a podcast. Where I focussed on the technical aspects of safely hiking mountains and frankly any other Natural environment, Nicole brought to my...

After finishing college, Grattan went to Australia for a year and returned home 12 years later. He lived and worked in Taiwan for 8 years, where he studied Chinese, taught English and eventually set up his own business. He also travelled extensively in South East Asia; often for months at a time. Returning to Ireland in 1998 he bought a training franchise, specialising in leadership and management development. Qualifying as an Executive & Business Coach in 2006 was a natural progression....

Ellen Snee has worked at the forefront of women’s leadership development for more than 25 years. But for the first 18 of those years, the front line of leadership wasn’t an Ivy League MBA program or a high-end consulting firm: It was an international order of Catholic nuns. During her time in the order, Ellen was surrounded by smart, educated, committed, and fun women who held roles of authority that were uncommon for women in the 1970s. She gained a number of essential — and, happily,...

Jo Roberts is a writer living in Cumbria with her fabulous dog Millie - She believes that words and nature have the healing power to transform inner thoughts, feelings, and emotions. And that a blank page has the magical potential to dance with innate creativity. Writing Inside Out – is her new venture to inspire and motivate others to explore & share their own stories. As she believes that we ALL have a story to tell and that experiencing life’s ups & downs is a journey we all...

I met Caroline Ferguson a couple of years ago when we both attended a workshop on presentation techniques. Not that she particularly needed to improve her technique; from what I could see, she was already doing just fine. After all, having appeared on television, radio and numerous podcasts she has ample public speaking experience. She’s won awards as a pathological writing person a.k.a. a comedy writer.  Caroline’s a not-so-pathological mind unscrambler when she puts her talents to very...

25 Years ago Jennifer Walsh of ‘Walk With Walsh’ started her career in the beauty and wellness industry. She has since branched out significantly and is now on a mission that is two-fold: to help the beauty industry understand how deeply connected to Nature it is and always has been. How it is so much more than just being sustainable – which is all the buzz in beauty these days. Jennifer is working towards putting Nature at the centre of those conversations vs. sustainability.to get more...

My guest today is Heather Monro of Brightspace Thinking I’ve got to know her as part of an intimate and powerful thinking circle she initiated for a small group of soul-centric coaches. In it, she has shown herself to be a great space holder and a deep thinker who can often come at subjects from intriguing angles. Heather grew up in Central London but from a very early age experienced her greatest sense of belonging in nature. As a teenager, she cultivated this through the discovery of a...

Paul and Sandra are a Gen X couple passionate about EXPERIENCING MORE of life and our amazing planet BY LIVING WITH LESS stuff, distractions, waste.  Guided by their personal values, they've been creating a life they love: In 2016, they swapped their well-paying corporate careers in Sydney, Australia for the uncertainty of self-employment and location independence. Since then, they've backpacked around the Americas and Europe for two years, explored New Zealand for a year in a campervan and...

Julie has an empowering story of courage, resilience and trust. A story of tremendous inward focus, strength and connection. Having climbed some of the World’s highest peaks, being held at gunpoint crossing the desert during the Gulf crisis, widowed at 36, starting the first female expedition company in the Middle East in 2003 and caring for her husband through stage 4 brain cancer to complete recovery are just a few of the diverse and unusual experiences that have allowed her to perfect the...

Born in 1962, Bernhard Fanger is one of the “boomers” who has had an interesting career path that was anything but a straight line. As with many things, in retrospect, it is relatively easy to connect the dots of his military service, a carpentry apprenticeship, positions in management consulting and product management and later on the board of directors and supervisory boards of medium-sized stock corporations. The 25 years it took to draw that squiggly line were necessary to ultimately be...

Linda Aspey lives in the beautiful Cotswolds, a rural area of south-central England. Designated as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in 1966, the Cotswolds covers 787 square miles (2,040 km2) and, after the Lake District and Yorkshire Dales national parks, is the third-largest protected landscape in England. That she’d be living in an Area of Outstanding National Beauty is very fitting when you consider Linda’s passionate love of Nature and her drive to protect it. Something she started...