In this episode of Lonely at the Top, Rachel sits down with Sorby Grant, President and CEO of Climb Hire, an equity-focused workforce development nonprofit supporting underemployed adults in accessing real economic mobility.

Sorby reflects on the emotional cost of being the decision-maker, the pressure of stewarding a mission rooted in justice and opportunity, and the quiet exhaustion that can make it hard to recognize success while you’re living it.

A central thread of the conversation is social capital — how access to relationships, trust, and informal networks determines who gets opportunities and who stays stuck. Sorby unpacks why talent alone is rarely enough, how the “hidden job market” really works, and why teaching people how to build professional relationships is a critical equity intervention.

She also opens up about her own leadership evolution: stepping into the CEO role after working closely inside the organization, navigating the shadow of a founder with a very different leadership style, and learning to claim her own authority without losing the heart of the mission.

Connect with Sorby:

Website - ClimbHire.co.
Email - Sorby@climbhire.co

In this episode, Michelle Markwart Deveaux—author, singer, facilitator, coach, and founder of multiple mission-driven businesses— shares her journey from theology and the arts into business ownership, and the often unseen emotional labor of building something meaningful in systems that weren’t designed to sustain creatives. She speaks candidly about self-doubt at high levels of leadership, the difference between being nice and being clear, and why direct communication, while necessary, can deepen isolation at the top.

Together, Rachel and Michelle unpack how leaders learn to keep moving forward even while privately questioning their worth, impact, or belonging. Michelle reflects on her desire to be impactful rather than “important,” and why self-examination is not indulgent but essential for ethical, sustainable leadership.

Episode Highlights

• A candid exploration of how self-doubt often increases—not decreases—at higher levels of leadership, especially for women and femme founders.
• Michelle unpacks the difference between being nice and being kind, and why leaders eventually have to choose clarity over likability.
• A nuanced conversation about how direct communication creates effectiveness while simultaneously increasing isolation at the top.
• Insight into how many creatives and consultants unintentionally undervalue their work due to inherited narratives about money, art, and service.
• A powerful reframing of leadership success: impact over importance, and why visibility without integrity leads to burnout.
• Discussion of how leaders often miss or minimize opportunities because they’ve learned to downplay their own significance, particularly in female-socialized leaders.
• An honest look at how leadership requires holding consent, agency, and boundaries in environments that reward over-giving.

In this deeply transformational episode, international teacher and healer Zach Rehder explores what happens on the other side of loneliness.

Zach shares how, despite years of seeking, studying, and gathering spiritual knowledge, he still suffered loneliness until an unexpected flood of despair in a Chipotle parking lot forced him into surrender. What he found on the other side wasn’t destruction, but liberation.

Zach reframes stress and anxiety as friends, signals that we’ve left presence. He explains how resistance to our feelings — not the emotion itself — is what creates suffering, and how embracing the fullness of human experience allows leaders to access deeper clarity, compassion, and inner spaciousness.

✨ Episode Highlights

• Stress and anxiety as allies
Zach explains why these sensations are not failures, but friends guiding us back to presence.

• The awakening in the Chipotle parking lot
A sudden wave of despair becomes the doorway to one of Zach’s most profound transformations from resisting emotions to finding their inherent beauty.

• The real cause of suffering
It’s never the sadness, loneliness, or anxiety that is the villain, it’s our resistance, judgment, and fear of the sensations themselves.

• Rachel shares her own awakening vision
During one of Zach’s breathwork workshops, Rachel saw herself joined by other light-bearers — a moment that dissolved the illusion of isolation in her path.

• The limits of knowledge
Zach describes spending decades devouring spiritual information, only to realize that understanding doesn’t create transformation, presence does.

• Why leaders overwork, overperform, and overrun their bodies
Rachel reflects on how high achievers use productivity as a socially acceptable form of emotional avoidance until the body can no longer sustain it.

• The invitation to stop fighting yourself
Zach’s core message: all the emotions we fear are simply energy and when we stop resisting them, they become pathways to clarity and freedom.