S02E04 | 30 years inside big tech: what actually keeps you human when everything accelerates

S02E04 | 30 years inside big tech: what actually keeps you human when everything accelerates

Kimberly Fuqua has spent nearly 30 years inside Microsoft. She's watched the industry go from encyclopedias to AI, from two business trips a year to a pace that shifts hour by hour. And what she's learned across all of it has almost nothing to do with technology. When her son was diagnosed with autism, Kimberly left Microsoft at the peak of her career. One year later, she came back — fully remote, two business trips a year, and a promotion. She got more by stepping back than she ever got by pushing through. That negotiation, and what it took to believe she deserved it, shaped everything that came after. In this episode, Selma and Axelle sit down with Kimberly to ask what nearly three decades inside one of the world's fastest-moving companies actually teaches you about staying human. They get into the speed problem — how technology evolves faster than people do, and what gets lost when organisations stop accounting for that gap. Kimberly's framework for staying grounded: identity, purpose, courage, community, resilience. And her distinction between bouncing back and bouncing forward — to the next version of yourself, not the previous one. Her advice for anyone close to burnout right now: five minutes. No meditation app required. Just sit, and be. Healing the Workplace is a podcast by Heal Magazine and LAUDACE. Instagram: @healingtheworkplace @healmagazine @thisislaudace 🎧 Subscribe and leave a review if this one landed.

S02E03 | Still showing up, already gone: the emotional truth behind quiet quitting

Nicole Sura built an Instagram platform called ShowerrBear around a single premise: naming the emotional truths people carry through their working lives but rarely say out loud. The quiet dread. The over-adaptation. The moment you realise you've stopped caring — but you're not leaving either. In this episode, Selma and Axelle ask her whether quiet quitting is a strategy or a symptom. Her answer lands somewhere more uncomfortable than either. Nicole traces disengagement back to a survival instinct most people never stop to examine. Your job is your livelihood, your stability, your ability to eat and pay rent. Of course, the primal fear of losing it runs underneath everything. And that fear, when it runs long enough, creates fissures: between mind and body, between how you feel and what you can name, between who you are and what the job is asking you to become. She talks about panic attacks she couldn't connect to stress at the time. Her mother's debilitating back pain that ended her corporate career. The way the body starts speaking long before the mind catches up. And the specific trap uncertainty sets: it makes you cling to the job that's draining you, because leaving feels too risky to consider. The conversation also gets into who gets to disengage safely — and who doesn't. The difference between a boundary and a withdrawal. And why the next step, whatever it is, has to come from inside you rather than from anyone else's roadmap. Healing the Workplace is a podcast by Heal Magazine and LAUDACE. Instagram: @healingtheworkplace @thisislaudace @healmagazine 🎧 Subscribe and leave a review if this one landed.

S02E02 | The dark side of high performance culture (and what it’s doing to our bodies)

Bianca Errigo burnt out at 22. She was on a sales floor of 800 people, her father had months to live, and she was throwing everything she had into a job she never wanted, because she wanted to buy him his health back. What came next was hospitalisation, fibromyalgia, cortisol so high she couldn't sleep lying down, and doctors who kept finding nothing wrong while her body fell apart. She's now the founder of HumanOS and works with organisations on sustainable performance. This episode is built on everything she had to unlearn to get there. Selma and Axelle ask the question most workplaces won't: what if your highest performer is the one running most dangerously on empty? Bianca brings the neuroscience, the research, and the lived experience — and makes the case that designing work around human capacity isn't idealistic. It's the only thing that actually works. This episode is accompanied by an article co-written with Heal Magazine and Laudace, going deeper into the research and organisational patterns behind what we explored today. Read it here: https://heal-magazine.com/high-performance-is-burnout-culture-hidden-cost-for-teams-and-organisations/ Healing the Workplace is a podcast by Heal Magazine and LAUDACE. Instagram: @healingtheworkplace @thisislaudace @healmagazine 🎧 Subscribe and leave a review if this one landed.

S02E01 | Burnout, AI, layoffs and loneliness: why work stopped feeling human.

Season 2 opens with just Selma and Axelle. No guests: their own experience first, before anyone else's. This season is about uncertainty at work: what it costs people, why most organisations have no language for it, and what staying grounded inside it actually looks like. Twelve years of chaotic environments, constant pivots, and the unspoken rule that you absorb it without making it someone else's problem. Selma overplanned as a way to stay in control. Axelle's burnout built slowly across multiple workplaces before she had words for it. Both of them performed fine on the outside the whole time. The numbers they bring into the room are hard to sit with. 13% of European employees are engaged at work. 150 million people across the EU are living with mental health conditions. AI disruption, mass layoffs, and the loneliness epidemic are not separate crises — they're landing on the same person, in the same body, on the same Tuesday. This season's question: how do you stay grounded when the ground keeps moving? Every guest sits inside that from a different angle. Healing the Workplace is a podcast by Heal Magazine and LAUDACE. Instagram: @healingtheworkplace @thisislaudace @healmagazine 🎧 Subscribe and leave a review if this one landed.

S01E04 | Slow is powerful: why conscious leadership is the future of work with Kremena Jordanova

In this insightful episode, hosts Selma Lemsaadi and Axelle Ahanhanzo are joined by Kremena Yordanova, a seasoned CMO and keynote speaker who blends two decades of corporate strategy with a deeply embodied approach to conscious leadership. From leading global brands like Adidas and Reebok to mentoring future leaders through somatic awareness and emotional intelligence, Kremena invites us to radically rethink how we show up in the workplace—not just as professionals, but as whole, self-aware human beings. Together, we explore: * What conscious leadership really means in a world built on hustle * Why emotional safety—not free meditation apps—is the true foundation of wellbeing at work * How leaders can regulate their nervous systems to prevent burnout and foster trust * The problem with glorifying urgency, and why slowness is a strategy * Leadership as a spiritual practice, and why it begins with radical self-awareness — Healing the Workplace is a podcast series by LAUDACE and Heal Magazine. Connect with us on Instagram: * LAUDACE: @thisislaudace [https://www.instagram.com/thisislaudace/] * Heal Magazine: @healmagazine [https://www.instagram.com/healmagazine/] 🎧 Don’t forget to subscribe, share, and leave a review to support grounded conversations on leadership, resilience, and mental health in the workplace.