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.

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.

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.

Dee Meecham, 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.

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.

When you’re at the top, no one can hand you a map. The path forward is yours to navigate, and sometimes, the only compass you have is your own intuition. In this solo episode, host and Soul Medic Rachel Alexandria explores how leaders can learn to trust their inner knowing when logic and strategy fall short. Drawing from her own journey and lessons from past guests, she shares how intuition speaks through the body, why so many of us were taught to ignore it, and how reconnecting with this internal guidance becomes essential for making brave, heart-centered decisions.

In this candid conversation, real estate developer Ginger Hitzke joins Lonely at the Top to talk about what it really costs to lead with heart. A first-generation business owner who went from housing insecurity to building over 2,000 affordable apartments, Ginger shares how she carries the emotional and ethical burden of her work — deciding rent increases, managing cash flow, and being both landlord and renter advocate.

She opens up about the loneliness of being “the one who decides,” her lifelong fear of slipping back into poverty, and why compassion often costs money. Ginger also talks about embracing Soft Girl Summer as a new boundary practice, the power of “unearned self-confidence,” and why every leader should be brave enough to say, “I don’t know.”

This episode is an honest portrait of a woman who leads from both grit and grace, proving that strength and softness can coexist at the top.

✨ Episode Highlights

• Isolation is part of the deal: Ginger describes how even after 18 years leading her own company, the sense of isolation “never ends” within an organization.
• The cost of conscience: The woman behind 2,000 affordable units shares how deciding rent increases for hundreds of residents each year tests both her heart and her balance sheet.
• Better me than someone who doesn’t care: Ginger explains why she continues to shoulder difficult decisions because she knows she’ll do it with integrity.
• Scrappy by necessity: Growing up with housing insecurity, she built her business from survival instinct, and yet still carries the fear of “ending up in the gutter.”
• The reality of leadership: From cash flow panic to employee dynamics, Ginger names the unspoken truth: leadership is hard, and pretending otherwise helps no one.
• Soft Girl Summer: After decades of overextension, she’s learning to do less, set tighter boundaries, and become “less accessible” as an act of growth.
• Unearned confidence: Ginger reflects on the self-assurance she’s always carried and how owning it has become one of her greatest assets.

Ginger recommends:
Support LGTBQ Latino elected officials in California via Honor PAC.

In this episode, Erin Reeves, co-founder and principal at Next Level Org, brings over 25 years of executive strategy and HR leadership to an open, grounded conversation about what it really feels like to sit at the decision-maker’s table. Erin shares how each step up the leadership ladder expands not only your view but also your sense of isolation — and how asking better questions can become a quiet act of courage. She talks about navigating self-doubt, building self-awareness, and finding outside perspectives when your inner critic grows loud. Drawing on her experience guiding organizations through mergers, restructures, and personal reinvention, Erin offers a deeply human look at how leaders can steady themselves, reconnect with purpose, and lead with both clarity and compassion — even when they feel most alone.

Episode Highlights
The shifting view: Each promotion brings a new perspective — and bigger gaps between those who’ve “been there” and those who haven’t.

The power of questions: How asking thoughtful questions creates space, builds credibility, and reshapes executive conversations.

Managing the inner critic: Erin shares her own internal stories of self-doubt and how leaders can reframe the question, “Is this true?”.

Outside-in thinking: Why every executive needs people who can see what they can’t — mentors, coaches, or truth-tellers outside the organization.

Steadying the self: How self-awareness, discipline, and vulnerability allow leaders to lead their teams with integrity, even under pressure.

Redefining success: Erin’s insight that leadership isn’t about always being right — it’s about asking what needs to happen next, even when the map isn’t clear.