Christina Ona sits down with Kerri Garbis, CEO and founder of Ovation Communication and author of Presentation Skills for Managers, published by McGraw Hill. Ovation's coaches and trainers are all professional actors. The company supports corporate learning and development programs, prepares speakers for conferences, and puts Kerri on stages and podcasts as a keynote speaker herself.

You'll discover why actors make strong communication coaches, and why Kerri says preparation and knowing how you show up are the heart of it. She shares the National Institute of Mental Health statistic that 74% of people fear public speaking, and why she still rehearses, records and gets feedback before every talk. She also explains Bravo, Ovation's AI-driven rehearsal platform. People can record themselves between coaching sessions and get feedback on their visual, vocal and verbal skills, practice follow-up questions, and track their progress.

We dig into where AI helps and where it falls short. Kerri argues that AI hasn't made communication training less important. With more of our time spent in front of screens, the moments we're in front of real people have to count. Christina and Kerri also talk about cognitive atrophy and why humans must stay in charge. Kerri then walks through the AI bot she's building to take over a workflow that has been a bottleneck for her company: turning a client request into the finished training materials.

This conversation also gets personal. Kerri speaks openly about stepping away from her business after her husband died, caring for her daughter, and coming back to find the one problem she needed to fix. It's a candid look at running a company, and adapting, through hard times.

Essential listening for leaders, L&D and HR professionals, speakers, business owners, and anyone who wants to communicate with confidence in the AI era.

Godwin Ona sits down with Jim Petersen, PhD, a retired Navy Captain, submariner and Naval Academy graduate. Jim is CEO and owner of Diversified Professional Coaching and president and owner of the Professional Business Coaches Alliance. He is the author of seven books and a frequent speaker on leadership, with a doctorate in financial and retirement planning.

You'll discover how Jim's years on submarines taught him that being a people person matters as much as technical skill. He shares two stories of top performers who were put in the wrong roles, and why strong leaders aren't always strong salespeople. He explains the adaptability quotient (AQ), the ability to unlearn and relearn, and the assessment tools his coaches use to help leaders find their strengths and gaps.

We also get into the coaching industry itself. Jim explains why business coaching is often misunderstood, and why great coaches, like those of Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan, don't need to be better than the people they coach. He talks about his book Who Let the Dogs Lead, which uses nine dog breeds to show that teams do best when they combine different talents. He also shares where he sees leadership coaching going as AI changes the workforce, and how he brings in senior military officers, entrepreneurs and PhDs to teach the practical application of leadership theory.

This conversation also gets personal. Jim talks about launching his company right before COVID and building it back from a lost contract. He tells the story of a friend who spent six and a half years as a POW in Vietnam, the subject of his book The Spirit to Soar. He also reflects on how the moments that stop us in our tracks end up defining us.

Essential listening for business owners, executives, sales leaders, coaches, and anyone preparing to lead through change.

Christina Ona sits down with Awatif Yahya, founder of Awe Horizons, Fulbright scholar and leadership educator. Her career bridges technology, international business and HR, including a decade with British American Tobacco and assignments in Dubai, Hamburg, London and Algiers. She is also the author of Embracing Leadership, Not Dictatorship.

You'll discover what pushed Awatif to rebel against conventional leadership, and how she closes the gap between how leaders see themselves and how they come across. She asks leaders and employees the same question separately, then shows each side what the other said, before any training begins. She also explains why personality assessments should be repeated as we grow, and why communication is the top pain point she hears from clients today.

We break down her approach to AI: use it to help you learn, not to do the thinking for you. Awatif explains why she writes her own emails before asking AI to refine them, how clear prompting has sharpened her communication, and how she's building a game-like leadership assessment tied to her book and her Sharp Leadership Framework.

This conversation also gets personal. Awatif opens up about the vulnerability of putting a book into the world when it can't be taken back, what her coach taught her about taking feedback while staying authentic, and why the real work starts after launch.

Essential listening for HR and L&D leaders, executives, aspiring leaders, and anyone who wants to lead with intention and use AI to grow rather than coast.

Christina Ona sits down with Cindy Miller, LPGA Professionals Hall of Fame member, former LPGA Tour player, veteran of five U.

S. Women's Opens and recipient of the 2026 Ellen Griffin Rolex Award for Teaching Excellence. Cindy is also a TEDx speaker, corporate trainer and author of Take Another Shot at Business, Golf, or Life. After roughly 40 years of coaching, she brings a rare mix of elite competition, teaching expertise and straight talk to the question of how people unlock their potential and perform under pressure.

You'll discover what Cindy calls "the committee of they," the critics on the sidelines who tell you what you can't do, and why she uses them as motivation. She explains why golf mirrors life ("you're the one holding the club"), how she adapts her coaching to four behavior styles, from the competitive "D" to the detail-driven "C," and why balanced teams need every one of them. She also shares why she's excited about AI and remote coaching, from a home simulator and Top Tracer to lessons over Zoom.

We break down Cindy's "It Box," the three-step framework from her book: get off the nail, look in the mirror, and plant a seed. She walks through how it applies to anyone who wants to make a change, reflect, or start the next chapter of their career or life.

This conversation also gets personal. Cindy opens up about her late-night path from the reality show The Big Break to the Legends Tour, how she worked to rewire her belief that she didn't deserve to win, and the seed of advice that helped her and her husband Alan through their hardest season. Her story is about forgiveness, faith, and the courage to keep going.

Essential listening for coaches, leaders, athletes, and anyone who has ever been told to sit down and decided to stand up instead.

Christina Ona sits down with Bob Eckert, CEO of New and Improved, to unpack a career built around one mission: facilitating great change for the health of humanity. With three decades of global work spanning Intel, General Electric, Johnson & Johnson, Mercedes-Benz, and public-health and humanitarian projects, Bob brings a rare mix of organizational development, facilitation, and futurist thinking to one of the biggest questions in business today: how do we integrate AI wisely?

You’ll discover why Bob believes most companies are asking the wrong question about AI adoption, how his team uses a wisdom protocol to challenge thinking instead of flattening it, and why a user-side AI harness could help people grow their cognition rather than replace it. He explains the difference between using AI to accelerate mundane work and using it in ways that quietly weaken critical thinking, pattern recognition, and innovation over time.

We break down the creative problem-solving framework Bob uses with senior teams, including how to define the right goal, gather the right data, identify the real problems, and build implementation plans that actually hold up. He also shares why leaders should pay attention to AI 2040, the strategic roadmap he says every executive should read, and why responsible AI governance may need auditable standards before companies can truly scale the technology safely.

This conversation also gets personal. Bob opens up about the process that helped him define his lifelong mission, the wisdom traditions that shaped his thinking, and the simple but profound idea that there is no such thing as a grown-up - only growing ups and stuck people. It’s a powerful lens for anyone trying to lead, learn, and stay adaptable in a world that is changing faster than most organizations can keep up.

Essential listening for founders, executives, operators, and anyone who wants to use AI to expand human capability - not erode it.