In this episode of Lonely at the Top, Rachel sits down with Dr. Kazique J. Prince, psychologist, executive consultant, and creator of the Djembe Card Deck, for a deeply human conversation about dignity, authenticity, and the quiet loneliness that comes with leadership.

Drawing from decades of experience advising mayors, CEOs, and change-makers, Dr. Prince challenges the myth that authority requires emotional distance. He explores how leaders can remain grounded in their humanity while holding power — and why true leadership is less about being “right” and more about ensuring that everyone walks away with their dignity intact.

Together, they unpack how authenticity develops over time, why cultural awareness starts with self-examination, and how leaders can create environments of trust and belonging without sacrificing clarity or authority.

Episode Highlights:

• Leadership doesn’t exempt you from being human
• Power doesn’t mean you stop needing mutual recognition
• The real danger of leadership is not stress; it’s disconnection
• Culture, hierarchy, and roles are real, and they don’t erase our shared nervous systems
• The goal isn’t agreement or “rightness," it’s relational intactness
• Leadership should not require anyone to disappear — including the leader.

Connect with Dr. Kazique Prince:

• jelaniconsultingllc.com
• djembedeck.com

In this episode of Lonely at the Top, Rachel sits down with Emma Whittard, a former senior executive in global children’s publishing turned transformational coach for women leaders in midlife.

Emma shares what it was really like to rise through the ranks at companies like Disney, DreamWorks, and Warner Brothers, including the invisible loneliness of being the only person in the room who knew how to build something entirely new. From running international publishing businesses to launching a startup-within-a-studio at DreamWorks, Emma reflects on the emotional cost of responsibility, especially when success quickly turned into loss and layoffs.

Together, Rachel and Emma explore the isolating reality of leadership decisions that affect livelihoods, the lack of mentorship for innovators inside large organizations, and how women in particular are conditioned to carry enormous pressure quietly. Emma also speaks candidly about midlife transitions—shedding inherited stories of worth, productivity, and self-sacrifice—and why the best leaders are those who stay curious, ask great questions, and allow themselves to remain human.

Episode Highlights

• “I was the only person in the entire company who had ever done this before.”
  Emma describes the profound loneliness of building a new business inside DreamWorks with no roadmap and no peers.
• Creating a global business plan while sitting on her bed with a toddler nearby
  A striking image of how leadership, motherhood, and pressure collided in real time.
• The moment everything changed from expansion to contraction
  Being asked to dismantle the very team she had just built—and how close that brought her to burnout.
• “That’s the closest I’ve ever come to a breakdown.”
  Emma’s most vulnerable admission about the emotional toll of leadership without support.
• The spa certificate that saved her nervous system
  A small but profound example of how self-care—not strategy—was what she actually needed.
• “Leaders who ask great questions are the best leaders.”
  Emma reframes leadership as humility, curiosity, and connection rather than certainty.
• What she would do differently now
  Naming mentorship and embodied support as non-negotiables for anyone at the top.

Connect with Emma:

• EmmaWhittard.com

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:

• https://climbhire.co/
• 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.

Connect with Michelle

• https://thespeakeasycooperative.com/
• https://www.instagram.com/thespeakeasycooperative/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelle-markwart-deveaux/
• Michelle@faithculturekiss.com

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.

Connect with Zach

• https://www.zachrehder.com/

In this raw and deeply human conversation, therapist, consultant, and founder Sarah Buino pulls back the curtain on what it really cost her to build — and ultimately let go of — a thriving group therapy practice. Sarah shares how rapid growth, unhealed trauma, and a crushing sense of responsibility left her completely burnt out, pushed her into residential treatment, and forced her to confront her relationship with work at the deepest level.

This episode explores the emotional toll of being “the boss,” the hidden loneliness of being the person everyone depends on, and the courage required to tell the truth when your success is slowly destroying your wellbeing. Sarah’s story is a powerful reminder that leadership doesn’t require martyrdom, and that sometimes the bravest move is to walk away.

Trigger Warning: discussion of suicidal ideation

Episode Highlights

• The breaking point: Sarah describes the moment she realized she was “literally failing at everything” after tripling her staff and workload — and how burnout overtook her completely.
• The emotional cost of leadership: Why being “the boss” created expectations, pressure, and isolation she never could have prepared for.
• Trauma rising to the surface: How unresolved childhood trauma collided with the demands of running a business, ultimately pushing her into residential treatment.
• Radical honesty: The moment she looked her future executive director in the eye during the interview and said, “I don’t want to do this anymore.”
• Letting go without shame: Why selling her practice wasn’t a failure but an act of profound self-trust.
• A different way to lead: How Sarah now works with therapists on aligning their inner healing with the way they run their businesses — so no one else has to crash the way she did.
• A message to leaders: If your success is costing you your health, your joy, or your sanity… it’s okay to choose yourself.

Connect with Sarah

•  https://www.headheartbiztherapy.com/
• https://www.headheartbiztherapy.com/podcast

Dee Meacham, Senior Vice President of People Solutions, has built her career at the intersection of technology and humanity. From being one of only four women in her engineering class to leading global transformation initiatives, Dee has learned to thrive in the gray—where systems meet people and innovation meets tradition. In this conversation with host Rachel Alexandria, Dee shares how she built a career that bridges human insight and technical precision, what it means to lead through paradox, and how she’s cultivated connection and resilience in spaces where few peers truly understand the path she walks.

💡 Episode Highlights

• Bridging people and systems: Dee reflects on her unique career spanning engineering, technology, and HR—and how she’s built fluency in both logic and empathy.
• From Disney to the boardroom: How a spontaneous job application reshaped her career and taught her to say yes to surprising opportunities.
• Leading through paradox: The delicate balance between data and intuition, detail and big picture, and why leaders must hold both truths at once.
• The human factor in innovation: Why successful transformation depends less on tools and more on the people who adopt them.
• Connection by design: How Dee proactively builds networks and mentors to counteract the isolation of high-level leadership.
• Resilience in constant change: Lessons from decades of working in environments defined by disruption—and how to keep growing without burning out.

Connect with Dee

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deemeacham/

Dee Recommends

• https://gogiftedones.org/

Gwen Bortner has spent her career thriving where others hesitate—inside systems, startups, and boardrooms that weren’t designed for her. As the founder and CEO of Everyday Effectiveness, Gwen has led teams across 47 industries, from tech to telecom to fiber arts, and knows firsthand what it means to stand out at the table.

In this episode, host Rachel Alexandria and Gwen talk about being “the only one in the room,” what happens when competence becomes isolation, and how neurodivergence and curiosity can both challenge and empower leadership. It’s a candid conversation about the quiet cost of success—and how to stay connected, grounded, and effective when you’re the outlier everyone relies on.

💡 Episode Highlights

• From coder to CEO: How Gwen built a career across 47 industries and what that breadth taught her about systems, leadership, and adaptation.
• Curiosity as fuel: Why problem-solvers often rise fastest, and how that same drive can lead to burnout and loneliness.
• Neurodivergence and entrepreneurship: How ADHD traits show up in founders, and why “different wiring” can be both a superpower and a stressor.
• The lone woman in the room: Gwen shares the isolation of being the only female executive in a rapidly growing tech company, and the invisible politics that come with it.
• Turning difference into design: How Gwen helps leaders harness what makes them unique to build organizations that actually work for humans.
• Redefining effectiveness: The shift from proving yourself to creating impact with ease and intentionality.

Connect with Gwen

• Website: https://everydayeffectiveness.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gwen-bortner/