Speak Your Mind Unapologetically Podcast

His Boss Told Him He'd Never Rise Above Engineer Level. Three Years Later, That Boss Reported to Him. Samuel Moody Santos on Getting Noticed at Work
Early in his career, his manager told him the company had a prototype for success: blonde hair, green eyes. Samuel Moody Santos was mixed race, Black, an immigrant who had started his working life as a waste picker. His manager told him he would never advance past engineer level. Three years later, Samuel was a manager and that man reported to him.
He went on to retire as Senior Vice President at Johnson & Johnson, one of the top 40 Fortune 500 companies in the world. He speaks five languages. He holds an engineering degree and an MBA. And he wrote the book on how he did it: "In Spite of the Headwinds."
In this episode, Samuel shares the specific mindset shifts, communication strategies, and career moves that took him from invisible to indispensable, as a minority, an immigrant, and someone who was actively told he didn't belong.
You'll learn:
Why "success depends on who you know" is the wrong mental model, and the one-sentence reframe Samuel used to challenge a corporate trainer in a room of 40 people that changed how he thought about visibility for the rest of his career.
Why doing excellent work and staying quiet about it is the same as doing nothing, and how he marketed his ideas without ever bragging about himself.
How he turned a direct manager who tried to limit his career into a stepping stone by building relationships with leaders two and three levels above that manager.
The "poor photograph" framework: why being visible without being skilled fails, and why being skilled without being visible fails just as badly.
Why he treats every "no" the same way: either he didn't explain the idea well enough, or he needs a different audience. The Starbucks founder knocked on 242 doors. Samuel applied that same logic to ideas inside a corporation.
How he disagrees with superiors without triggering defensiveness: "I never disagree with any person. I disagree with ideas." The specific language he used to pose challenges as questions so people moved toward his position instead of defending against it.
The performance review confrontation where someone tried to penalize a team member for a mistake from two years prior, and how Samuel addressed the entire room to win that argument on the spot.
Why he focused ruthlessly on the one skill he could take above average (presenting technical ideas to non-technical executives), and chose not to develop things that wouldn't move the needle, including declining to learn Mandarin during a two-year assignment in Shanghai.
About Samuel Moody Santos: Retired Senior Vice President at Johnson & Johnson, Samuel is an engineer, MBA, minister, polyglot (five languages), honorary consul, former university professor, public speaker, and author of "In Spite of the Headwinds: My Journey from Waste Picker to Vice President at a Top-Forty Fortune 500 Company."
Book: https://www.amazon.com/Spite-Headwinds-Picker-Senior-Executive-ebook/dp/B09KGRQ61W Connect with Samuel on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samuel-moody-santos-56601a10/

Her Dad Found a Rolex and Returned It. What That Taught Her About Asking for Everything.
Her father came to the United States in 1989 with next to nothing. He found a Rolex in a locker room while working as a janitor and returned it. The owner gave him a job. He stayed 27 years. In that time, he asked his employer for a green card. They sponsored it. He asked for college tuition. They paid for his associate's and his bachelor's degree. He asked to pivot into chemistry. They made a role for it.
Darlene Reina watched all of this and had one thought: if he could ask for all of that with nothing in his pocket and no English, why was she self-editing her ambitions?
She stopped. Now she opens job interviews by telling the people who will decide whether to hire her exactly what she wants: to be CIO of an organization. She told her future boss. She told the Calendly interviewer. Both were supportive. She uses it as a filter.
Darlene is Head of IT at Calendly, and in this episode she breaks down the frameworks she's built for speaking up, pitching ideas, and asking for exactly what she wants without apology.
You'll learn:
How to know which conversations are worth inserting yourself into, and which ones to let go based on span of control, stakeholder complexity, and how badly you want the outcome.
The self-interest framework: why "selfless" leads to burnout, "selfish" kills collaboration, and the middle zone of self-interest is where real buy-in happens.
Why she describes senior leadership as "glorified salespeople" and what changed when she stopped clicking on the backend and started selling visions instead.
The "directionally correct" approach to numbers: why giving a C-suite executive "$270K plus or minus 20%" is infinitely more persuasive than "decreased time" or a 6-decimal-point calculation that took two weeks to produce.
How self-editing language like "I think the answer might be..." quietly signals low confidence, and how to hit the delete button on it.
Why she tells every interviewer exactly what she wants out of her career, and how she uses their response as a filter for whether the organization is actually a place where she can grow.
About Darlene Reina: Head of IT at Calendly, Darlene has built her career at the intersection of technology leadership and organizational influence. Originally from a Venezuelan family in Rhode Island, she leads IT strategy and operations at one of the most widely used scheduling platforms in the world. She is candid, direct, and unabashedly ambitious.
Connect with Darlene on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darlene-reina/

She missed the scholarship deadline for her MBA. She asked anyway. She got it. She was the only woman in her group project cohort, a single mom with a one-year-old, living paycheck to paycheck. She told her group on day one exactly what she could do and when she was leaving. They respected it. On a business trip with a relatively new manager, she admitted mid-conversation that she wanted to move into a strategy role that didn't even exist yet. That manager became her greatest champion. That pivot launched the career that led her to become Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer at Lee Health.
Lisa Martinez has spent her career figuring out what fearless authenticity actually looks like in practice: not as a concept, but as a set of specific choices made in specific moments of risk. In Part 1 of this two-part conversation, she walks through the mindset shifts and early career moves that built her foundation.
You'll learn:
The exact moment Lisa realized intimidation was her own internal problem, not something others were doing to her and how that realization changed every difficult room she walked into after
Why the post-it on her monitor reads "no one wants to feel insignificant, incompetent, or unlikable", and how she uses it to decode defensiveness in herself and others
The MBA-as-single-mom stories: how she advocated for a scholarship she'd missed the deadline for, set hard boundaries with her group project team from day one, and created an independent study that wasn't in the curriculum
How a candid conversation on a business trip, admitting she wanted a completely different role, launched her entire strategy career, and what she learned about speaking up to managers about your real aspirations
Why her first attempt at people management felt completely wrong, and the leadership philosophy she arrived at: "developing leaders, not amassing followers"
How conflict made two of her most important professional relationships stronger, not weaker
About Lisa Martinez: Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer at Lee Health, Lisa leads strategic planning, innovation, and organizational transformation across one of Florida's largest health systems. She is a passionate advocate for women in leadership and women of color in senior roles.
Connect with Lisa on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisa-martinez-csio

The Mirror Method, the WAIT Acronym, and Why "Learn Fast" Beats "Fail Fast": Lee Health CSIO Lisa Martinez on Challenging the Status Quo — Part 2
She walked into a conference room as the only woman in a room full of men in technical data roles. They introduced themselves to each other and started the meeting without acknowledging her at all. She paused, said "excuse me," stated her name, her role, and why she was there. It startled them. She was glad she did it. Because if she hadn't, she wouldn't have belonged in the conversation that followed.
In Part 2 of this conversation, Lisa Martinez, Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer at Lee Health, moves from personal story into the specific leadership tools she uses every day to challenge the status quo, orchestrate high-stakes conversations, and move organizations through change without creating enemies.
You'll learn:
The Mirror Method: why the most dangerous thing you can do when entering a new organization is come in with a fix-it mentality, and the structured listening approach that gets people to agree the status quo needs to change before you ever propose a solution
WAIT — "Why Am I Talking?" — the acronym she uses to decide when her voice advances a conversation and when silence does more
How she reads the nonverbals of an entire organization the same way she reads body language in a room, and what signals tell her when trust is building and when it isn't
Why she stopped relying on PowerPoint and what changed when she started looking people in the eye instead of at her slides, including the mentor advice that saved her: "be ready to deliver a 5-minute version of what you just created" 
The difference between intellectual sparring and debate, and how she creates conditions for divergent thinking that actually leads to decisions, not just more discussion
Why she says "learn fast" instead of "fail fast", and how she navigates naysayers, skeptics, and the inevitable "you paid how much for what?" moments in healthcare innovation
What she looks for when building a team: curiosity, courage, and comfort with ambiguity, and why trustworthiness ranks above everything else
About Lisa Martinez: Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer at Lee Health, Lisa leads strategic planning, innovation, and organizational transformation across one of Florida's largest health systems. She is a passionate advocate for women in leadership and women of color in senior roles.
Connect with Lisa on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisa-martinez-csio

For years, Daisy Xia's performance reviews said the same things: hardworking, great team player, result-driven, quiet. Cycle after cycle, different managers, same words. Then she realized: those were her brand hashtags, and they were never going to get her to where she wanted to go. She wanted "confident," "influential," "driven," "leadership." And nobody was going to give her those labels. She had to earn them by using her voice.
Daisy is Head of Strategy and FP&A at Revolut, one of the world's fastest-growing fintechs. Originally from China, she built her career navigating the cultural expectation that hard work and results would speak for themselves. They didn't. In this episode, she breaks down exactly how she changed that, and what she now teaches every junior person who reports to her.
You'll learn:
The performance review pattern that finally made her realize she was building the wrong brand, and the specific words she decided to own instead
Why she stopped being the silent note-taker in every meeting, what she lost by doing it, and why AI has made that role completely obsolete
The 4-phase framework for asking questions in town halls and large meetings, from canned questions that still get you seen, to strategic dialogue that opens collaboration doors with senior executives
The "golden three months" strategy: how to use your newness as a security blanket to ask anything, map broken processes, and deliver visible value before anyone expects it
Why there is no such thing as over-communication at work ,and how staying quiet to avoid being "too much" is actually the riskier move
The one mandate she gives herself and every person she mentors: say something in every meeting, even if it's just a rephrasing
If you've ever been called "hardworking" but not "leadership material," or if you have great ideas that only come out in one-on-ones but never in the room, this episode is the blueprint.
About Daisy Xia: Head of Strategy and Financial Planning & Analytics at Revolut, Daisy leads strategic and financial operations at one of the world's largest fintech companies. Originally from China, she coaches and mentors junior professionals on speaking up, building visibility, and translating strong technical work into leadership presence.
Connect with Daisy on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daisy-xia
Stop Taking Notes, Start Getting Noticed: Revolut Head of Strategy Daisy Xia on Building Your Brand Through Your Voice