Women Advancing

The Business Of Blooming: Cameron Hardesty On Building Poppy Flowers From Idea To Investment

Floral design is the last big-ticket purchase you are making when planning your wedding. Although it may seem beautiful on the outset, it is downright ugly behind the scenes. When Cameron Hardesty was planning her own wedding flowers, she encountered unclear pricing, rigid minimums, sourcing issues, and manual workflows. After going through such a nightmare, she decided to turn it into a business idea. She joins Kate Byrne to discuss how she became the CEO and Founder of Poppy [https://www.poppyflowers.com/], a company that’s rethinking floral sourcing, pricing, and logistics using technology, transparency, and deep customer empathy. Cameron explains how she found her sweet spot to thrive in the vast wedding market, what it takes to modernize a legacy business, and how to navigate motherhood and a venture-backed company at the same time. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Visit katherinebyrne.com [https://katherinebyrne.com/]

From Corporate To Impact Tech: Equera.ai Founder Danielle Finch On Career Pivot & Industry Transformation

Are you successful on paper, but feel like something is missing inside? In this episode, we sit down with Danielle Finch [https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniellefinch], Founder and CEO of Equera.ai [http://equera.ai/]. Danielle made the bold career pivot from twenty years of corporate success—including roles at GE, Michelin, and as Director of Customer Experience at HomeToGo—to become a social entrepreneur in the impact tech space. Her story isn’t one of impulsive reinvention, but a thoughtful reorientation from chasing profit to pursuing equity as the ultimate outcome. Danielle recognized that ‘staying is also a choice’ and realized she ‘had to get off her path’ to follow a greater purpose. We dive into how Danielle is leveraging systems thinking to disrupt the extractive tourism industry, turning it into a powerful lever for addressing wealth inequality by redirecting capital back into local communities. Discover how she built a practical runway for her leap and how she redefined success by shifting her focus from the what to the why. If you’re contemplating a big move or want to learn how to find real leverage inside broken systems, tune in to understand what it truly takes to build something that shifts, not just scales. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Visit katherinebyrne.com [https://katherinebyrne.com/]

Designing A Good Future: Reimagining Sustainable Design, Waste, And Leadership With Kathryn Soter

Are you overlooking the unseen systems that cost us the most? In the U.S., a staggering 12.2 million tons of furniture waste is discarded annually—enough to furnish 8.8 million one-bedroom apartments. This isn’t just a waste problem; it’s a crisis of sustainable design, mindset, and leadership. Today, we welcome Kathryn Soter [https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathrynsoter], Executive Director of the Good Future Design Alliance [https://goodfuturedesign.org/], who has spent decades at the intersection of media, design, and sustainability. We dive into how to tackle overwhelming problems with “simple baby steps”, why the focus must shift to residential design (which accounts for two-thirds of US building square footage), and how connecting creativity, cost, and impact is the invisible work of modern leadership. Tune in to learn why the future depends on making the unseen impossible to ignore, and how you can embrace progress, not perfection, to build a truly good future. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Visit katherinebyrne.com [https://katherinebyrne.com/]

Success Without Self-Abandonment: Redesigning Work, Wellness, And Ambition With Forbes 30 Under 30 And Founder Of The Clearly Collective, Olivia Cleary

What if the secret to scaling your business wasn’t more hustle, but more humanity? In this episode of Women Advancing, Olivia Cleary, Founder of The Clearly Collective [https://www.theclearlycollective.com/] and Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, joins us to flip the script on traditional career growth. We’re moving beyond the "more, more, more" mentality to explore wellness as infrastructure—not a reward for hard work, but the very foundation that makes it sustainable. Join us as we discuss how to redefine ambition, set radical boundaries, and design a version of success that supports the human doing the work, all without the cost of self-abandonment. It’s time to opt into a career that actually works for your life. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Visit katherinebyrne.com [https://katherinebyrne.com/]

What If Work Worked For Humans? Learning Design, Human Design, And The Leaders Shaping The Future Of Work With Snjezana Slabek

In a world rapidly reshaped by Artificial Intelligence, the conversation often centers on the tools. But what if we shifted the focus to the people? Join host Kate Byrne on Women Advancing as she dives deep with global thought leader Snjezana Slabek  [https://www.linkedin.com/in/snjezana-slabek-3022157/]into the timely intersection of AI, human-centered learning, and organizational effectiveness. Snjezana—an expert in human-centered AI learning, gamification, and design thinking—reveals why traditional learning and leadership models are failing in the AI era, and how we can adapt, unlearn, and relearn alongside technology. Discover: * Why the biggest challenge in the AI era is not technology, but creating organizations capable of continuous adaptation. * How gamification and human-centered design turn “consequences” into safe “trade-offs,” encouraging the experimentation vital for innovation. * Why the “power of the query” is the new essential skill, shifting our focus from getting answers to asking the right questions. * How communities like She STEAMS are empowering women to embrace playfulness, collaboration, and bolder leadership in an AI-driven future. Stop focusing on keeping up with AI and start focusing on leading the loop. Read on to explore how we can build a future where work truly works for humans. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Visit katherinebyrne.com [https://katherinebyrne.com/]