From Proving to Paving: Leading From the Inside Out

From Proving to Paving: Leading From the Inside Out

What does it take to stop leading from the front, not becauseyou are stepping away, but because you have realized that the most lasting impact comes from a different place? Rebecca Vermeulen, Vice President at Genentech and 2025 HBA Star Award recipient, spent over thirty years buildingher leadership identity around what she could accomplish and how well she could lead. And then she took a sabbatical that changed how she understood all of it. In this episode, Rebecca and Sabine explore the successaddiction and what it takes to recognize it in yourself, the difference between leading from the front and sitting in the sea with your team, the inner voice that gets louder the longer you ignore it, and the ongoing weekly practice of catching reactive leadership and choosing the power of a pause instead. Rebecca also shares the book that shaped her thinking during the sabbatical and why she invested in an Enneagram coach to hold the shift in place. For any leader who has wondered whether stepping back might actually be the most powerful thing they could do right now, this conversation is for you.   Find Rebecca Vermeulen at https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebecca-vermeulen-a401113/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebecca-vermeulen-a401113/].Find The Ripple Network at theripplenetwork.com.   Key topics: leadership development, sabbatical, successaddiction, ego in leadership, women in leadership, legacy, organizationalchange

The Body Keeps the Score Card | Katie Delaney on Burnout, Boundaries, and Building Back

What does burnout actually feel like when you are the person everyone else relies on? In this episode of Be the Ripple, Sabine speaks with Katie Delaney, a functional medicine certified health coach, author, and former pharmaceutical industry leader, about the slow accumulation of stress that ends in a reckoning and the quiet, sustainable process of rebuilding from the inside out. Katie shares her story from a 2019 emergency room visit through the demands of managing global clinical trials during a pandemic, to the emotional breakdown that finally opened the door to change. She talks about what it means to set a boundary as protection rather than limitation, why sleep is a biological necessity rather than a luxury, and how a simple vision board became the beginning of a five-year transformation. This episode is for the high-performing woman who is showing up completely while quietly running out of herself. It is for anyone who has ever worn exhaustion like a badge of honor and is ready to consider a different way. Find Katie at WellnesscoachkatiedKatie Delaney [https://www.wellnesscoachkatied.com/] Find The Ripple Network at theripplenetwork.com [http://theripplenetwork.com] Key topics: burnout recovery, boundaries for high-performing women, functional medicine and health coaching, sleep and stress, building sustainable success

Come for the Coffee. Stay for the Help.

What does it mean to create impact when you may never see the outcome? In this episode of Be the Ripple, Sabine Hutchison speaks with Nicoletta della Valle, founder of Sempre Berna, a neighborhood café in Bern, Switzerland, that opened in October 2025 and pairs good espresso with free, walk-in support for anyone who needs it. In six months, Sempre Berna has handled around 130 cases: individuals navigating government forms, residents applying for apartments, young people looking for work, and one man who came in wanting help writing a CV, not for a job application, but for his own funeral. Nicoletta and her team of volunteers rarely find out what happened next. That is the whole point. This conversation explores what it means to build something whose ripple you may never witness, why removing data collection from care is a values-based decision, how collaboration with food trucks and local businesses keeps the whole thing alive, and why being missed might be the truest form of legacy. If you’ve ever felt the pull to respond to a gap you keep noticing, this episode is for you. Find Sempre Berna at sempreberna.ch. Learn more about The Ripple Network at theripplenetwork.com. Key topics: invisible impact, community support, volunteer leadership, values-based design, legacy as daily practice, social entrepreneurship, collaboration, Bern, Switzerland

How to Stop Comparing Yourself: A Calm Definition of Success

What if success isn’t something you achieve, but something you feel? In this episode of Be The Ripple, Sabine Hutchison sits down with Susi Hutchison (Founder of Wild Redbird) for a conversation about redefining success as peace and contentment, without shrinking ambition or living by someone else’s scoreboard. Susi shares what it looked like to leave a corporate leadership role without a plan, take time to soften, and rebuild from self-love. They explore the practice of returning to the moment, through breath, nature, and small rituals, and why legacy isn’t what we leave behind,but how we show up every day. Key themes: redefining success • presence aspractice • breath and nervous system grounding • self-love and self-worth •“medicine” moments • the ripple of how we treat others. If you’ve been feelingpressure to prove, this episode is a gentle return. Listen, and ask yourself: whatwould success look like if it felt calm on the inside? If you would like to contact Susi, here are herdetails: https://www.wildredbird.com/ [https://www.wildredbird.com/] https://www.linkedin.com/in/susi-hutchison/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/susi-hutchison/]

Dignity by Design: Acne, Self-Perception, and the Unseen Ripples of Care

This episode explores what happens when skin healthntools are designed as systems, not quick fixes, and what that reveals about howplatforms shape dignity, behavior, and trust at scale. In this episode of BeThe Ripple, Sabine speaks with Dr. Akvile Ignotaite, founder of System Akvile,about the unseen impact of acne and skin issues, especially for young people growing up in the world of TikTok, filters, and fast misinformation. Akvile shares how her platform evolved from “fixingskin” to supporting self-perception, using micro-learnings, myth-busting quizzes, and a calmer, kinder environment that reduces shame instead of amplifying it. You’ll hear why quick fixes don’t work in health, why language matters, and why her mantra is simple: you are not alone, and it’s not yourfault.