Wellbeing Ignites Welldoing

Physicist. Operations research analyst. Space scientist. Crime novelist. Elizabeth Heider doesn't have a career path — she has a pursuit. She holds a doctorate in physics from Tufts. She has worked with the US Navy, INTERPOL, Northrop Grumman, NASA, and the European Space Agency. She has operated alongside military personnel across Army, Navy, Marines, and Special Forces. And then, in 2024, she published May the Wolf Die — a crime novel set in Naples that the New York Times named one of the Best Crime Novels of 2024, the Washington Post named one of the Best Mystery Novels of 2024, and Publishers Weekly starred and named one of its Best Books of 2024. The sequel, Children of the Savage City , followed in February 2026 to immediate critical acclaim. Her protagonist, Nikki Serafino, asks a question that sits at the heart of this podcast: How do I remain ethical in a broken world? Is it possible to fight the wolves without becoming one? That question is not fictional. It is the question Elizabeth has been living across a career at the intersection of science, research, military operations, and literature. She has seen power up close. She has watched systems break people. She has studied how surveillance enables authoritarianism and how corporate greed reshapes the planet. And she has chosen, deliberately, to respond through story — because fiction, she believes, is one of the most honest ways we have of telling the truth.

Aaron Minkovich is a technology leader who has spent over two decades at the intersection of transformation, scale, and human complexity. As Chief Technology and Security Officer at Manulife, he oversees one of Canada's most consequential technology ecosystems — spanning cloud platforms, AI, DevSecOps, 5G, and global distributed teams — within a highly regulated financial services environment. But what makes Aaron a compelling voice for the Wellbeing Ignites Welldoing podcast is not just his technical range. It is the humanity that shows up alongside it. He walks for cancer research in honour of his father-in-law. He cheers his teams on charity rides. He champions the people behind the platforms. In a domain that often reduces humans to headcount and systems to tickets, Aaron seems to understand that the engine of great technology is, fundamentally, people — and that people run best when they are well. That mirrors Manulife's own mission of making decisions easier and lives better — connecting financial wellbeing directly to health, so people can live longer, healthier, more optimized lives. Aaron isn't just running the systems; he's building the infrastructure behind that mission at global scale. This conversation explores what wellbeing looks like at the top of one of Canada's most complex technology organizations: the weight of transformation, the pressure of responsible AI in a regulated world, the resilience required to lead global teams through constant change, and why the most powerful infrastructure a CTO can build might not be in the cloud — but in the culture.

Eric Whaley is a CIO who has spent three decades quietly doing something that most technology leaders only talk about: building cultures where people actually want to show up. Across Canada Trust, HSBC, IIROC, and now Wolseley Canada — part of Ferguson, the country's leading national distributor of plumbing, HVAC/R, and PVF products — Eric has led transformations of extraordinary complexity while consistently being described in one way: as someone who engages and motivates people and builds highly collaborative work cultures. Known as a business technology executive with a talent for leveraging technology and building inspired teams, Eric is recognized for his leadership in setting goals and fostering collaboration. Outside of his day-to-day work, he stays connected to the startup community and emerging technologies through partnerships with educational institutions and participation in community forums. This conversation explores what it means to lead technology transformation with a fundamentally human orientation — how collaborative cultures are built and sustained through change, what wellbeing looks like inside organizations navigating digital disruption, and why the softest skills in a CIO's toolkit may be the most strategically consequential ones of all.

Amisha Miller brings a rare perspective to the conversation on wellbeing at work — one forged over more than two decades of operational leadership within a single organization. Rising from Office Manager to VP of Services & Operations at Levata Canada, a global IT services and technology products distributor specializing in barcode, RFID, access control, POS, and networking solutions, Amisha has lived through every phase of organizational evolution: growth, restructuring, rebranding, and the ever-accelerating pace of technology change. Her journey is not just a career story — it is a masterclass in resilience, adaptability, and the kind of institutional trust that only comes from staying deeply committed to people and purpose over time. In a world that increasingly celebrates the new hire and the fast mover, Amisha represents something we rarely celebrate enough: the wisdom and wellbeing that comes from depth, loyalty, and staying the course. This episode explores what it takes to sustain personal wellbeing through decades of organizational change, how operational leaders can cultivate cultures where people genuinely thrive, and why the human infrastructure of a business matters just as much as the technology it deploys.

Brent Maney is an Air Force Pararescue veteran and Department of Defence Human Space Flight Support specialist, he has built his professional life around a single principle: when conditions are at their worst, you go in anyway. That creed That Others May Live , is not a motto. It is an operating system. But the most demanding mission of Brent's life didn't come with a uniform. In 2007, his wife Trudie was diagnosed with young-onset Parkinson's disease at 33. What followed wasn't a crisis to manage and resolve. It became the permanent structure of their life: cognitive changes, financial collapse, bankruptcy, foreclosure, and the compounding weight of full-time caregiving alongside full-time federal work. No exit ramp. No end in sight. What Brent did next is what makes him essential for this conversation. He didn't soldier through alone. He didn't perform resilience. He did the actual work: therapy, veteran programs, licensed counselling, coaching — and he sat, unflinchingly, with what sustained pressure had cost him. Out of that reckoning, he created HeldLight: a platform built on the radical premise that real strength isn't the absence of struggle. It's the willingness to name it. For executives who lead through uncertainty, carry invisible weight, and are expected to project composure while absorbing pressure, Brent doesn't offer a model for avoiding discomfort. He offers something far more valuable: a hard-won, battle-tested framework for moving through it and emerging more capable, more grounded, and more genuinely fit to lead.

Tyler Chalk, Executive Vice President & Chief Strategy Officer at Southlake Health , a large healthcare organization that is embarking on one of the most significant healthcare transformation efforts in Canada—shifting from a traditional hospital-centric model toward a Distributed Health Network model that redefines how care is designed, delivered, and scaled. At its core, his work is about strategic system redesign under extreme complexity —balancing population growth, resource constraints, infrastructure pressure, and evolving community needs. While grounded in healthcare, the principles extend far beyond it. This conversation is designed for leaders across sectors who are navigating transformation, scale, and uncertainty. It explores how Tyler’s approach to system-level strategy, execution discipline, and cross-sector collaboration can inform how executives think about strategy, operating models, and long-term value creation in their own organizations.

Dr. Ulrich Vogel has spent more than 25 years helping organizations understand what truly drives people. As the founder of profilingvalues, he has conducted over 7,000 assessments using a values based approach that reveals the deeper structures shaping how we think, lead, and relate to others. In this conversation, Uli challenges the assumptions we make about talent, performance, and potential. We explore why behaviours can be misleading, how blind spots emerge, and what happens when organizations fail to recognize the qualities they say they value most. Together, we examine what it means to see people more clearly and why doing so may be one of the most powerful ways to strengthen wellbeing, build healthier cultures, and unlock human potential.

Jeff Schwartz is a CEO who believes that how you treat people — customers, employees, partners — is not a soft consideration sitting alongside the business strategy. It is the strategy. His leadership journey began not in a corporate boardroom, but around a campfire at Camp Timberlane in Haliburton, Ontario, where his time as a camper, counsellor, and unit head instilled in him lessons of teamwork, resilience, and community that became the foundation of his leadership style. From there, nearly two decades at Bell Canada and a high-growth run at Brookfield Infrastructure's Enercare brought him to Go Lime — Canada's leading digital first provider of home and commercial services — where he has led one of the most interesting business transformations in the Canadian consumer market: dismantling an opaque, high-pressure rental industry and replacing it with radical transparency, digital access, and genuine customer trust. Go Lime was founded to restore transparency, trust, and choice to the home comfort industry — and under Jeff's leadership, it has done exactly that, earning nearly 7500 five-star reviews and closing a transformational partnership with Basalt Infrastructure Partners in 2025. He also holds a Workplace Mental Health Leadership certification from Queen's University — a quiet but telling signal that his people-first language is more than positioning.

Regina Fuchs brings a progressive and deeply human perspective to early childhood education—one rooted in curiosity, questioning, emotional safety, and learning through play. In a time when many systems prioritize performance, structure, and measurable outcomes, her work reminds us that wellbeing, creativity, resilience, and healthy development begin much earlier in life than most organizations realize. This conversation explores how the environments we create for children shape not only individual development, but also the future of workplaces, leadership cultures, and societal wellbeing. Through the lens of early childhood education, Regina offers insights into emotional intelligence, intrinsic motivation, community, and the role of nature and exploration in human flourishing. While grounded in childcare and education, this episode is designed for leaders, parents, educators, and professionals across sectors who are rethinking how healthier humans—and healthier systems—are developed from the very beginning.

RJ Casey defies every standard category. He is a combat-decorated Special Operations veteran with tours on four continents. He is the first hire on SpaceX's Personnel Recovery Team, providing technical rescue and remote medicine for human spaceflight missions. He is a SAG stunt performer and military advisor on films including Extraction 2, Jack Ryan, Dunkirk, and Inception. He is a co-founder of Four Branches Bourbon — a service-disabled veteran-owned spirits company featured on the NBC Today Show — and of Brigands Co., a community platform built for veterans, first responders, and their families. He is a NAUI scientific diver doing marine conservation work with FORCE BLUE. He is a physician assistant trained at Fort Sam Houston. He speaks Spanish. And woven through every single one of those chapters is a single thread: service. Not as a resume line, but as a lived philosophy about what it means to show up fully — for your team, your community, the ocean, the mission, the people who didn't make it home. Wellbeing Ignites Welldoing rarely gets a guest like this. This conversation is not about corporate wellness programs or leadership frameworks. It is about what it takes to sustain a human being across thirty-five years of operating in some of the most extreme physical, psychological, and moral environments on earth — and what RJ has learned, sometimes the hard way, about resilience, purpose, grief, brotherhood, and the kinds of wellbeing that nobody talks about until it's almost too late.

Chris Schmelzer has spent more than a decade inside some of the most complex organizational transformations in North America, first at Deloitte and ScottMadden, and now as the founder of The ChangeMindset Co. His new book, The Missing Link , offers a radical reframe of why change programs fail, not because of poor strategy or weak communication, but because of something more fundamental: organizations systematically ignore the biological reality of the human nervous system under pressure. Chris’s central thesis is disarmingly clear. For more than a century, we have designed organizations as if humans were interchangeable units of cognition. But the brain’s primary job is prediction, not execution. When sustained change destroys predictability, the prefrontal cortex, the seat of reasoning, creativity, and empathy, goes offline. Survival circuits take over. And no communication campaign, training program, or culture initiative can reach a nervous system that is signaling danger. The correct sequence, Chris argues, is: Regulation, then Coherence, then Mindset, then Behavior. Most organizations begin at step three or four and wonder why nothing sticks. In this episode, we go deep into the book, the biology, and what it actually looks like to lead change in a way that honors the most fundamental system we have.

Sam Valentine is the head of Employee Performance and Experience at miro, operating at the sharp edge of where people strategy meets business performance. At Miro, he’s shaping both employee experience and building people infrastructure designed to protect revenue, accelerate decision-making, and sustain performance through transformation. His work reframes HR from a support function into a core lever of competitive advantage. From retaining talented people through change to compressing strategic decision timelines from weeks to days using AI-powered insights, Sam brings a deeply data-driven, outcome-oriented lens to culture, performance, and leadership. In this conversation, we unpack what it really means to build human sustainability systems that scale, how AI is reshaping people leadership, and why the future of work belongs to organizations that can connect culture directly to measurable business outcomes.

Dr. Jonathan Ellerby has spent more than three decades sitting with healers, elders, and spiritual teachers across forty cultures — and just as long translating that wisdom into something practical, accessible, and genuinely transformative for modern people. His work spans 5-star wellness resorts and Indigenous community halls, corporate boardrooms and remote African villages. What stays constant is his conviction that spiritual practice isn't a luxury — it's a survival skill. In this conversation, we explore what it actually means to support young people in developing inner capacity during one of the most turbulent transitions of their lives — and why the integration of ancient contemplative traditions with modern behavioural science may be exactly what we need to stop falling through the cracks and start building lives of meaning, resilience, and genuine belonging.

Shana Francesca is an ethical leadership architect, keynote speaker, and founder of Concinnate LLC whose work focuses on transforming workplaces through intentional relationships, psychological safety, and inclusive leadership. Drawing on her lived experience as a survivor, scholar, and advocate for the neurodivergent community, Shana helps organizations reimagine leadership through the lens of curiosity, respect, and accountability. Her work demonstrates that cultures built on trust, inclusivity, and ethical leadership are not only healthier for people but also more innovative and profitable. In this episode, we explore leadership as a relational practice, the role of psychological safety in driving innovation, and why organizations that honor diverse ways of thinking are better positioned to thrive in an increasingly complex world.

Silvia Via has turned lived experience into entrepreneurial innovation. As the founder of multiple mission-led ventures—from ethically sourced coffee to fashion-forward nonprofits—she exemplifies how business can serve as a vehicle for healing, inclusion, and global impact. This conversation explores the role of creativity, recovery, and social enterprise in advancing employee wellbeing, inclusive leadership, and purpose-driven strategy —especially relevant as companies rethink culture in the age of AI and burnout. For executive listeners, Silvia’s work offers insight into: How lived experience can inform regenerative leadership Why employee-led social impact drives brand authenticity The power of storytelling, design, and wellness in building belonging

Zach Baumer has spent over a decade shaping one of the most ambitious municipal climate agendas in North America. From technical data modeling to frontline community resilience, Zach’s leadership at the City of Austin has helped bridge the gap between sustainability vision and scalable systems change. Now Director of the newly formed Office of Climate Action & Resilience, Zach is focused on turning policy into practice—whether through multi-site solar procurements, cooling solutions for unhoused residents, or embedding financial feasibility into climate compliance frameworks. This episode dives into what it takes to sustain long-term momentum, how climate leaders can push progress without burnout, and why resilience starts not with flashy headlines—but with human impact, local trust, and data that actually drives decisions.

Jeff Melanson is a rare kind of leader, one who has navigated the worlds of global technology, creative institutions, family enterprises, and civic systems with equal fluency. From serving as President & CEO of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and President of the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, to advising multigenerational family enterprises and partnering with one of the world’s leading real-time 3D technology platforms, Jeff’s career reflects a deep understanding of systems, stewardship, and human potential. Across arts, business, technology, and advisory work, Jeff has consistently focused on one central question: how do organizations sustain creativity, performance, and purpose over time? In this episode, we explore leadership as an act of stewardship, the role of creativity in organizational wellbeing, and what it takes to lead complex systems with clarity, care, and long-term vision.

To explore how small, science-backed lifestyle and workplace behaviors can drive large-scale sustainability and wellbeing outcomes, Lori Myren-Manbeck—author of Mars Can Wait , clinical psychologist, and sustainability advocate—invites us to rethink how everyday decisions, at home and at work, can close the gap between corporate ESG goals and meaningful real-world impact. This episode unpacks the behavioral psychology behind sustainable action, the urgency of climate leadership, and how inclusive wellbeing strategies can catalyze enterprise-wide transformation from the inside out.

Burnout is often framed as a workload, mindset, or motivation problem. Yet across recovery environments, workplaces, and public institutions, a deeper pattern is emerging: when people are physically depleted, emotional regulation, engagement, and belonging become biologically inaccessible. Marie Gardiner brings seven years of applied experience working at the intersection of cellular health, recovery, and human resilience. This episode explores why physical regulation is the missing foundation beneath many wellbeing strategies—and how restoring the body’s capacity enables deeper engagement, emotional stability, and genuine belonging.

Earl Foote is not your typical tech CEO. A bass-playing adventurer, community builder, and mindset-driven entrepreneur, he has spent over two decades building Nexus IT into one of the nation’s top managed security service providers. But behind the accolades: Inc5000, Utah Fast50, and multiple “Best of State” wins, lies a deeper mission: to build a business where people thrive. Through bold leadership, transparent culture, and a fierce belief in personal growth, Earl has cultivated a company where high performance and human wellbeing go hand in hand. In this episode, we explore how work can be both intense and uplifting, why discomfort is often the sign you’re growing, and how leaders can create space for others to succeed—even in the face of rapid technological change.