Building Leadership Community Podcast Season 4 | Coach Dora Mendez
Season 4 of Building Leadership Community Podcast is underway, with new conversations exploring what it takes to lead, grow your career, build stronger communities, and stay connected to the people around you.
Building Leadership Community Podcast is back for Season 4, and the first two conversations are now available to watch and listen to.
I created this podcast around a simple belief:
It can be lonely at the top. But it doesn’t have to be.
Leadership brings responsibility, difficult decisions, career transitions, changing relationships, and sometimes the feeling that you're expected to have all the answers.
But leadership was never meant to happen in isolation.
Building Leadership Community Podcast brings leaders, professionals, educators, entrepreneurs, authors, and changemakers together for honest conversations about leadership development, career growth, workplace culture, mentorship, community, and the experiences that shape how we lead.
And Season 4 is just getting started.
Nancy Marmolejo: What Changes When Leaders Learn to Truly Listen?
Season 4 begins with leadership strategist and keynote speaker Nancy Marmolejo, creator of HEARD Leadership and author of the forthcoming HEARD: Transforming Leadership Through the Power of Listening.
Nancy asks a wonderfully simple question:
“Do you need to be helped, or do you need to be heard?”
That question can completely change the way we approach a conversation.
In our conversation, Nancy and I explore her HEARD framework and three essential elements of listening: Presence, Patience, and Phrasing.
We talk about psychological safety, leading from your strengths, setting boundaries, authenticity, community, and something many of us could probably practice more often: putting down the phone and giving another person our full attention.
Nancy also shares a lesson from her own leadership journey. Her story begins in her family's business, where she started working at just 13 years old. Those early experiences helped shape the way she thinks about work, leadership, strengths, and the value each person brings to a team.
Watch Nancy Marmolejo on Building Leadership Community Podcast
What Changes When Leaders Learn to Truly Listen?
How Good a Listener Are You?
During our conversation, Nancy talks about the Listening Essentials Quiz, a short assessment designed to help you identify your strengths and opportunities for growth as a listener.
You can take the quiz and learn more about Nancy's work at: HEARD Leadership
You can also connect with Nancy here:
Dr. Angela Arias: Setting Your Own Goals, Mentorship and Lifelong Learning
Our second Season 4 conversation is especially personal to me.
Dr. Angela Arias is a multi-award-winning author, retired educator, mentor, and longtime family friend whose career spans more than three decades in education and leadership.
Born in the Dominican Republic and raised in the Bronx from the age of 10, Angela attended New York City public schools and went on to become the first college graduate in her family.
Our families were next-door neighbors in the Dominican Republic and remained so close after coming to New York that I grew up believing Angela was actually one of my relatives.
She'll always be family.
In our conversation, we talk about her journey in education, the importance of mentorship, becoming an author, supporting the next generation of educators and students, and continuing to find purpose after retirement.
Angela has continued that work by mentoring Latina college and doctoral students, coaching aspiring writers, and supporting educators entering the profession.
One of the most important lessons she shares is also remarkably simple:
“You need to set your own personal goals. Otherwise somebody else will set them for you.”
We explore what that means not only for students and young professionals, but for anyone navigating a career, leadership role, or new chapter of life.
Angela also shares a lesson her father repeated around the dinner table:
“Venimos a trabajar y a aprender.”
We came to work and to learn.
It's a philosophy that followed her through education, mentorship, writing, and a lifetime of learning.
Watch Dr. Angela Arias on Building Leadership Community Podcast
Learn More About Dr. Angela Arias
Angela is the author of the memoirs Half a Century Ago and Stories of My Dad as He Lay Dying.
Her first memoir, Half a Century Ago, shares her story and experiences growing up after immigrating to the United States and has been incorporated into high school curricula.
Learn more about Angela, her books, and where to connect with her:
Dr. Angela Arias:
What You'll Find in Season 4 of Building Leadership Community Podcast
These first two episodes approach leadership from very different directions.
Nancy Marmolejo asks us to think about how well we listen to the people around us.
Dr. Angela Arias asks us to think about who is setting the goals that shape our lives.
Both conversations reflect what Building Leadership Community Podcast is about: learning from the experiences of other people and finding ideas we can apply to our own leadership, careers, workplaces, and communities.
Throughout Season 4, we'll continue exploring topics including:
Leadership development and personal growth
Career development and professional transitions
Workplace culture and healthier teams
Mentorship and developing future leaders
Communication and active listening
Goal setting and lifelong learning
Inclusive and authentic leadership
Community and belonging
The experiences that shape how we lead
These conversations aren't only for executives.
They're for emerging leaders, experienced leaders, professionals navigating their next chapter, entrepreneurs, educators, HR professionals, nonprofit leaders, and anyone trying to make a meaningful difference through their work.
Why Building Leadership Community Matters
One of the reasons I continue these conversations is because leadership can become isolating.
As responsibilities grow, it isn't always easy to find places where you can talk openly about uncertainty, growth, difficult decisions, or the human side of leading other people.
Building Leadership Community Podcast is intended to be one of those places.
Not a place where someone pretends to have every answer.
A place where we can learn from one another.
Each guest brings a different perspective, career path, set of experiences, and way of looking at leadership. My hope is that somewhere in these conversations you hear something that helps you navigate your own path with greater clarity and confidence.
Help Us Reach 4,000 Watch Hours on YouTube
There's another way you can be part of what we're building.
We're working toward our goal of reaching 4,000 watch hours on the Coach Dora YouTube channel.
If these conversations are valuable to you, one of the most meaningful ways you can help is also one of the simplest:
Watch the full episodes on YouTube.
Every minute you spend watching helps us move closer to that goal and helps us continue growing the audience for these leadership conversations.
You can also help by:
Subscribing to the Coach Dora YouTube channel
Watching the full conversations when you can
Liking and commenting on episodes you find valuable
Sharing an episode with a friend, colleague, emerging leader, or someone navigating a career transition
Subscribing is completely free and gives you access to our growing library of conversations and resources about leadership, career development, workplace culture, professional growth, and community.
▶️ Subscribe to Coach Dora on YouTube.
If an episode makes you think of someone, send it their way.
That's how a community grows.
It can be lonely at the top. But it doesn't have to be.
Welcome to Season 4!
Coach Dora Mendez
Host, Building Leadership Community Podcast
CEO, Coach Dora LLC
