The Courageous Choice

What would it take to leave a job you love, with steady pay and great people, to bet on yourself? Tacy Riehm, Founder of Vos Consulting, joins Jamie Jacobs to share how her family's adoption of their fourth child pushed her to leave the company where she had spent 15 years and start the consulting, ...

What would it take to leave a well-paid job and start over as a student with barely enough money for tuition? Sri Peruvemba, CEO of Marketer International Inc., joins Jamie Jacobs to share the choices that took him from an engineering career in India to helping grow E Ink and advising technology com...

Why are AI data centers using so much power, and could computers move data with light instead of electricity? In this episode, scientist, inventor and entrepreneur Dr. Raj Dutt talks about more than two decades of work in integrated photonics. His technology replaces copper wiring with light to move...

Why do so many performance reviews leave everyone frustrated? Edie Goldberg, President and Founder of E. L. Goldberg & Associates, returns to The Courageous Choice to talk about her new book, Performance Enablement (Oxford University Press). She makes the case against traditional performance managem...

 What stops an organization from making a change that the data clearly supports? In this conversation, an organizational research scientist from USC's Center for Effective Organizations explains why large companies struggle to act on solid evidence, why leadership turnover derails long-term cha...

What does it take for a senior HR executive to leave corporate life and build an independent consulting practice? In this conversation, Laura Daniels, CPO and Founder of Laura Daniels & Co., shares how she made the leap to executive entrepreneurship, why companies are hiring HR leaders far earlier t...

Raymond Lee, president of CareerMinds, author of Clocking Out, and host of the Clocking Out podcast, explains what courage really looks like in leadership and career change. You’ll learn why handing over the CEO role to someone else was the hardest—and best—decision he made; how his definition of su...

What does AI actually mean for HR teams and the people they support? In this episode, Lisseth Zouhbi, Chief People and Culture Officer at Child Care Resource Center in Los Angeles, explains how to approach AI transformation without losing the human side of work. You'll learn how to decide which part...

This conversation explores why AI transformation succeeds or fails based on people and culture—not just technology. It examines why good tools get rejected, how fear of replacement fuels resistance, and what leaders can do about it. It also covers the stages of AI maturity companies typically move t...

This episode takes you inside the thinking of seasoned CHRO Pat Wadors, who is reshaping what high-impact HR looks like. You will learn how to apply a product mindset to HR strategy using frameworks borrowed from engineering and product development, how to practice genuine co-creation with business ...