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Posts by Giovanna Rossi

361: The Hidden Experience of ADHD in Women with Dr. Jennifer Dall

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ADHD in women is often misunderstood, misdiagnosed, or missed entirely.

In this episode, Dr. Jennifer Dall, a Grief-Informed Neurodivergence Specialist, educator, and founder of ADHD Holistically, joins us to explore what it really means to live with ADHD as a woman, especially when it shows up in ways that don’t match the stereotypes we’ve been taught to expect.

Dr. Dall shares how her work centers on what she calls “ADHD +1”, the reality that ADHD often exists alongside grief, stress, trauma, or other life experiences that shape how we move through the world.

Together, we talk about why so many women were overlooked in research, how internalized narratives like “lazy” or “too emotional” have shaped our self-perception, and what becomes possible when we begin to understand ourselves differently.

This conversation is for any woman who has ever wondered why things feel harder than they should or who is ready to replace self-criticism with clarity and compassion.

In this episode, you’ll discover:

  • Why ADHD in women has historically gone unrecognized
  • How ADHD shows up differently in women (and why it’s often internal)
  • The connection between ADHD, emotional sensitivity, and rejection
  • What “ADHD plus one” means and why it matters
  • The role of grief and life transitions in shaping our capacity
  • Why diagnosis can be helpful—but not always necessary
  • How to begin understanding your patterns with more self-trust

Whether or not you ever get a formal diagnosis, this episode offers something just as valuable: 

✨ Ease in knowing that the exhaustion of masking isn’t a personal failing, it’s the cost of surviving in systems that were never built to notice you. Jen’s story is permission to stop performing and start understanding yourself instead.

✨ Joy in watching a woman reclaim the very trait she was once criticized for. Jen calls her flexible thinking a superpower now, the same thing that used to be called a distraction. Chances are, you’re carrying something similar: a trait that got labeled a flaw long before anyone considered it might be a strength.

✨ Impact in a truth that ripples well past one conversation: success doesn’t require reaching everyone, just one person. Every woman in this community who names her own ADHD out loud makes it a little easier for the next woman to recognize hers.

✨ Self-trust in the years it can take to gather your own evidence before you trust it enough to act on it. Jen collected hers slowly: research, patterns, a student who reminded her of herself. Many of us are doing the same thing right now, in our own quieter ways. That slow, careful kind of self-trust counts just as much as the instant kind, and it deserves the same credit. 

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✨ Join other smart, high-achieving women to rewrite the rules for how to love, lead, and succeed so you can live with more joy, ease, and abundance, even when life is tough. 

🔗 Click here to join The Well Woman Academy™ group coaching program now! https://wellwomanlife.com/academy

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Resources Mentioned

Connect with Dr. Jennifer Dall

Connect with Giovanna 

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If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the Well Woman Show on your favorite podcast platform and leave us a review. Share it with a woman who needs to hear this. Your support helps us continue bringing you conversations with incredible women leaders who are changing the world.

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Joy as a Leadership Strategy with Bose Akadiri

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Hey Well Woman! We throw the word joy around a lot. In wellness culture, in motivational content, in the kind of advice that sounds beautiful but doesn’t always tell you what to do on a Tuesday morning when everything feels heavy and the revenue targets aren’t moving. So when Bose Akadiri, CEO of Goal and…

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360: Joy as a Leadership Strategy with Bose Akadiri

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We talk a lot about joy on this show. But what if joy wasn’t just a feeling to chase, but a tool you could use to build something — a business, a career, a team, a life?

Bose Akadiri, known as the Joy Amplifier, joins us to talk about something she’s spent her career building a case for: that joy belongs in the boardroom, not just the wellness journal. Bose is the CEO of Goal and Grind LLC, the author of The Stay Joyful Method, and a former Fortune 500 leader who walked away from corporate life to teach people how to use joy as their compass.

Bose shares her two-part framework, the joy bubble and the accomplishments journal, and how together they help you find the overlap between what you love and what you’re good at. We get into the data behind joy and retention, what it looks like to lead a team from alignment instead of friction, and why joy in your finances might be the missing piece you didn’t know you needed.

This is a conversation for the woman who has been told that joy is frivolous, that there isn’t room for it in a serious career or a serious budget. Bose makes the case, backed by both research and her own story, that joy isn’t the reward you get after you’ve done the work. It’s how you do the work.

In this episode, you’ll discover:

  • How to build a “joy bubble” that protects what fuels you and your business
  • Why an accomplishments journal can change how you see your own leadership capacity
  • The data connecting joy at work to employee retention and long-term business health
  • How to lead teams from alignment instead of friction
  • What it means to make financial and business decisions from a place of joy
  • Why having multiple mentors, and being a good one in return, matters for women in business
  • The difference between happiness and joy, and why it matters for how you build

Joy shows up in this conversation in the most literal way it could, but it’s also the thread running through every part of our Well Woman framework. Here’s how this episode connects back to it:

✨ Ease shows up in Bose’s reminder that the most sustainable businesses aren’t built on hustle. They’re built on alignment, knowing what fuels you and building your work around that truth.

✨ Joy is, quite literally, the center of this episode. Bose makes the case that joy isn’t fluff. For women in business, it’s data-backed, it’s strategic, and it’s one of the most powerful tools you’re probably underusing.

✨ Impact comes through in the way Bose talks about leading teams: when the people doing the work are rooted in joy, what they produce ripples outward to the organizations they build and the communities they serve.

✨ Self-trust is woven through Bose’s own story, from the nos she said to roles that weren’t right for her, to the practice of becoming her own cheerleader, one Friday reflection at a time.

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✨ Join other smart, high-achieving women to rewrite the rules for how to love, lead, and succeed so you can live with more joy, ease, and abundance, even when life is tough. 

🔗 Click here to join The Well Woman Academy™ group coaching program now! https://wellwomanlife.com/academy

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Resources Mentioned

Connect with Bose Akadiri

Website: Goal and Grind LLC

IG: http://www.instagram.com/goalandgrind

FB: http://www.facebook.com/BoseAkadiri

Connect with Giovanna 

Website: https://wellwomanlife.com/

IG: https://www.instagram.com/wellwomanlife

FB: https://www.facebook.com/TheWellWomanShow#

YT: https://www.youtube.com/@wellwomanlife128

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/giovannarossi/

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If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the Well Woman Show on your favorite podcast platform and leave us a review. Share it with a woman who needs to hear this. Your support helps us continue bringing you conversations with incredible women leaders who are changing the world.

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359: Building a Culture of Mentoring That Sustains Women Leaders with Tamara Thorpe & Lisa Fain

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Mentoring is one of the most powerful levers for women’s growth and one of the most misunderstood.

In this rich conversation, Giovanna sits down with two women who have dedicated their careers to getting mentoring right: Tamara Thorpe and Lisa Fain. 

Tamara Thorpe  is the Founder of Real Mentors Network while Lisa Fain is the CEO of Center for Mentoring Excellence. They bring a combined 40+ years of mentoring excellence across industries, sectors, and global communities.

Together, they pull back the curtain on why so many workplace mentoring programs quietly fall flat and what it actually takes to build a mentoring culture that helps people thrive, not just perform.  

In this episode, you’ll discover:

  • Why mentoring is “the most promiscuously used word in leadership development” — and what it actually means
  • The three core elements of effective mentoring: reciprocity, learning, and co-creation
  • Why mentoring is a “triple win” for individuals, leaders, and organizations
  • Why mentoring programs fail when treated as a DEI add-on or a technology fix
  • Why great mentors are coaches — but not all great coaches are mentors
  • How top leadership buy-in makes mentoring measurable and how to find your mentoring ROI 

This is a conversation that will make you look at every mentoring relationship — past, present, and future — with fresh eyes. 

✨ Ease in knowing that the best mentoring relationships do not require you to have all the answers. Real mentoring flows from curiosity, not expertise. When you stop trying to give advice and start asking better questions, something opens up for both of you.

✨ Joy in the reciprocity. The mentor gains as much as the mentee. More engaged work, broader perspective, deeper satisfaction — these are not byproducts. They are the point. There is something genuinely joyful in a relationship where both people walk away more whole than they arrived.

✨ Impact in building something that lasts. A single well-supported mentoring culture can change retention rates, career trajectories, and the texture of daily work life for everyone in an organization. That kind of impact is quiet, cumulative, and profound.

✨ Self-trust in knowing when a relationship is truly investing in you and when it only looks like it is. Lisa knew the difference between her lunches and her real mentor, even before she had words for it. You already know the difference too. Trust what you feel in those relationships. That instinct is your compass.

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✨ The Well Woman Show is delighted to partner with the Work and Family Researchers Network and its next conference June 17-20, 2026 in Montreal, Canada. For more information, look to https://wfrn.org/2026-work-and-family-researchers-network-conference/ 

✨ Join other smart, high-achieving women to rewrite the rules for how to love, lead, and succeed so you can live with more joy, ease, and abundance, even when life is tough. 

🔗 Click here to join The Well Woman Academy™ group coaching program now! https://wellwomanlife.com/academy

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Resources Mentioned

Connect with Tamara Thorpe and Lisa Fain

Connect with Giovanna 

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If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the Well Woman Show on your favorite podcast platform and leave us a review. Share it with a woman who needs to hear this. Your support helps us continue bringing you conversations with incredible women leaders who are changing the world.

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