This is a quick episode to thank everyone for listening in on Season Two. I loved hearing everyone’s stories and am excited for the promise of 2021. I just wanted to let everyone know we’ll be taking a hiatus from November 2 until February of next year. I’ve loved every minute of this show and hope to continue it in one form or the other but I’m taking a few months off to focus on my family and friends and to re-configure my personal activism at a more grassroots level. I’m recording this prior to the US election and no matter what happens I promise to keep fighting the good fight, sharing women’s stories that need to be told, and celebrating the bold, brave and badass women all around me.

Our last special episode on philanthropy is in honor of Veterans Day. Over 2 million American Veterans suffer from PTSD and we lose over 20 A DAY from suicide. That number is staggering and so I’m willing to do whatever I can to help those who have given so much for our freedoms. And that’s why I wanted to interview today’s guest Deb Jeanette. Deb is the President of the Board of Directors of Veterans Yoga Project (VYP) and mom of a marine helicopter pilot. Deb took a leap of faith and left the comfort of corporate life to teach yoga for veterans full time, and so we talk about her path to helping our underserved veterans in the mental health space, providing them tools for mindful resilience, overcoming PTSD and integrating back into civilian life. We also talk about how important it is to have peer to peer support in the veteran community, how VYP works with the VA and individual donors, and how they have helped thousands of veterans to undo the underlying nervous system dysfunctions that underlie most stress-related conditions. We also get into the unique needs of creating a safe space to serve the unique brotherhood of the military community and where she is seeing a tremendous positive with veterans teaching veterans and showing how trauma-informed yoga has changed their lives. We also talk about the five self-regulation tools that VYP teaches that can be utilized by anyone who has experienced trauma in their lives, and their specific VYP methodology for training trauma informed yoga teachers and healthcare workers. Lastly, Deb shares some powerful experiences of veterans who have participated in the program.

Sindee Lee, SL for short, is a self-described farm girl from Canada turned serial entrepreneur. We talked about how she got her entrepreneurial spirit from her grandfather growing up on the farm, and how she discovered her passion for business building at a very early age with her first lemonade stand. Then we talked about how you discern the difference between failing and pivoting as feedback versus failure, as well as defining who you are by experiencing people who you are not, including her experiences bumping against the status quo in the oil and gas industry. After that we get into her big pivot and how she used her “can-do” spirit and experiences as a pet foster mom, as well as her passion for animals, to inspire her to create Profits For Pets, a platform that allows animal charities to focus on helping animals versus fundraising. And lastly, she shared her five rules for living her life out loud. As SL puts it, “it never occurred to me that I couldn’t do it” and I hope this episode inspires you to feel the same way.