About this podcast
SUBSCRIBE to get alerted anytime I release new episodes and free tools & resources:
https://www.worthytolead.co/subscribe
Have you ever thought to yourself: “How can I get to be one of those leaders who truly inspires their team? I don't just want to manage the work, I want to impact the trajectory of their career."
Maybe you want to be more strategic, but you’re constantly stuck in the weeds, feeling overwhelmed by managing all the details.
You find yourself tethered to the desk, making every decision, and desperately wishing you could take a vacation without things falling apart. If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone.
Whether you are a new leader, an aspiring leader, or an experienced leader who has seen it all, this podcast has you covered.
Kristiana Corona is a corporate leader, mom of 3, and certified executive coach. She's spent more than two decades building design and technology teams for Fortune 500 companies.
Like so many leaders, she started off with very little training and made every mistake in the book. She felt completely unworthy of the title of “leader.”
Along the way, a surprise encounter with executive coaching changed her life and led her to dramatically improve her leadership style and results.
Fast forward to today and you’ll see the thriving teams that she has led: confident, resilient, strategic, and empowered. They’re making a real impact on the world.
If you’re a leader looking for the tools, the mindset and the inspiration to help you become the leader you’ve always dreamed of - a leader who does feel worthy to lead - this podcast is for you.
The Worthy to Lead Podcast is a business podcast that blends insights and interviews to provide you with the tools and mindset you need to develop teams of any size to be empowered and effective.
Using techniques from executive coaching and other leadership best practices, you’ll learn to create a “coaching leadership style” that will transform the way you lead forever.
Kristiana brings you step-by-step tools, frameworks, and insights into coaching, leadership, neuroscience, behavioral psychology, emotional intelligence, focus, mindset, and so much more.
She won’t shy away from sharing personal stories of her own mistakes and challenges (and yes, there have been so many!). She dives deep, shares real talk, and takes the learnings to help guide you on the path to overcoming similar challenges for yourself.
Along the way, she’ll interview amazing and inspiring leaders and experts across many industries who share their personal journey to feeling worthy and the strategies that got them there. Each episode is packed with inspiration and practical steps that you can use to start taking action today.
Learn the best-kept secrets of coaching as a leadership style and how it can transform your life and unlock new potential in your teams. Join us as we go deep and explore what it takes to build an authentic leadership style that you, and others, are going to love.
Episodes
The newest 20 of 53 episodes
- Episode 52: Reduce Stress by Living in Sync with Your Circadian Rhythms · 57 min · Season 3We’re bringing back one of Kristiana’s favorite episodes, and it feels just as relevant today as we all adjust to the shift in daylight saving time. In this episode of the…
- Episode 51: Innovation isn’t Random: Amazon Design Leader, Lexie Spiro, on the Process for Thinking Bigger · 57 min · Season 3Where do big ideas actually come from? For Lexie Spiro, Director of Amazon Delivery Experience, they come from a process you can learn and repeat. Lexie has spent more than 20…
- Episode 50: Stop Overselling: A 30-Year Investor on What Actually Builds Confidence in a Pitch Conversation | with Rayna Lesser Hannaway · 48 min · Season 3Leaders often walk into a pitch ready to defend their idea. The big market. The happy customers. The risks that are all "manageable." Kristiana sat down with Rayna Lesser…
- Episode 49: Was It Designed Or Just a Default? How Multiplayer Built a Company Around Happiness with Gianmichael Di Lallo · 45 min · Season 3Every company has a process nobody can explain. A meeting that runs long. A form that takes 20 minutes. An approval chain with 15 names on it. Kristiana sat down with…
- Episode 48: 5 tips for making your high-stakes pitch feel relaxed · 27 min · Season 3Kristiana recently sat down with a small business banker to talk through funding for her business, and something unexpected happened. Instead of feeling like she was walking into…
- Episode 47: Executive Influence and Strategic Storytelling · 19 min · Season 3Kristiana has spent the past twenty years leading innovation for design and technology teams at Fortune 500 companies, and there is one pattern that keeps showing up no matter…
- Episode 46: FRICTION: How Tension, Emotion, and Change Reveal Better Leaders | with Dr. Maggie Sass and Dr. Ross Blankenship · 1 h 1 min · Season 3Dr. Maggie Sass and Dr. Ross Blankenship are consulting psychologists and executive coaches who have spent decades working with executives and senior leaders, and they came to a…
- Episode 45: Building Company Culture That Thrives with AI | with Dr. Kevin Sakamoto · 37 min · Season 3Dr. Kevin Sakamoto and I go way back. We worked together at Target, we've spent years comparing notes from our different corners of the world (he's a professor and product…
- Episode 44: INTEGRITY is NOT a Liability in the C-Suite. It’s Your Competitive Edge | Interview with Rusty Atkinson · 56 min · Season 3Rusty Atkinson spent twenty-five years climbing into the highest levels of corporate technology, including time as a CIO, and he vowed not to stop caring about his people in…
- Episode 43: How Coaching Changed Everything About How I Lead · 40 min · Season 3For once, I'm not the host – I'm the guest. My friend and fellow coach Laurie Hall flips the script and interviews me about my own path: small-town Minnesota roots, unglamorous…
- Episode 42: From Fear to Fluency: VP Andy Vitale on How to Lead AI Innovation with Confidence · 49 min · Season 3Andy Vitale has been building with AI since 2015, across healthcare, banking, mortgage, marketing, and now tax software, long before it became a leadership talking point. He was…
- Episode 41: The Phrase That Changed Everything: "I Can Fit That In" with Erin Coupe · 43 min · Season 3Erin Coupe spent over 17 years inside high-performance corporate environments: Goldman Sachs, CBRE, Fortune 140 companies. She was commuting 10 to 12 hours a week, working…
- Episode 40: From NASA Engineer to Leadership Coach: Navigating Life's Chaos with Authenticity & Purpose with Laurie Hall · 50 min · Season 3Laurie Hall spent years working on space exploration and the International Space Station. She was a chemical engineer at NASA and Lockheed Martin, doing exactly what she had…
- Episode 39: Why Creativity Is Your Most Untapped Leadership Tool — Van Lai-DuMone on Curiosity, Innovation, and the $8.3B Story You've Never Heard · 38 min · Season 3Powerful leadership skills go beyond your strategy and experience. One of the most untapped sources of potential is your team’s creativity and curiosity. Here’s why that matters…
- Episode 38: Life After Losing Your Job - Greg Bro on Navigating Career Transition with Creativity · 57 min · Season 3What do you do when the identity you built your entire career around disappears overnight? For Greg Bro, losing his job after 20+ years as a UX design leader wasn't just a…
- Episode 37: From Imposter Syndrome to Earned Authority with Anya Cheng · 48 min · Season 3Anya Cheng didn’t build her career by waiting to feel ready. She built it by acting in moments when nothing felt certain. After immigrating from Taiwan and graduating into the…
- Episode 36: Leading With Calm Through Chaos, Discrimination, and Financial Hardship with Craig Nishizaki · 53 min · Season 3How do you stay grounded as a leader when everything around you is falling apart? Craig Nishizaki has answered that question more than once. Early in his career, a manager told…
- Episode 35: How to Lead Through Constant Chaos (Insights from the 2026 GROW Conference) · 19 min · Season 3What if you started looking at chaos as a transition to a new operating system? Governments are shifting, layoffs are spreading, AI is rewriting entire industries, and somewhere…
- Episode 34: Find Your Leadership Blind Spots Before They Find You · 22 min · Season 2You think things are fine. Your team seems okay. But your best people are quietly checking out, and the reason might be something you can't see about yourself. In this episode…
- Episode 33: You Don't Have to Be Pushy to Sell: How Good Humans Close Deals | Catherine Brown · 54 min · Season 3You know you need to sell. Your business depends on it. But every time you think about reaching out to someone, you feel like you're about to do something sleazy. In this…







