NCOMMON

In this episode, Alison is joined by Corina Ocanto, a workplace strategist who has spent her career translating human needs into environments where people can thrive. Their conversation traces the quiet power of leading from the middle—those moments when influence comes not from authority, but from attention, empathy, and the courage to ask better questions.

In this episode, Alison sits down with Rachael Dietkus, a social worker and designer whose practice challenges the false divide between care and design. Together, we talk about luck not as chance or magic, but as something built through persistence, timing, and the quiet work of showing up for others.

In this episode, Alison sits with her lifelong friends — Norma, Delia, and Vanessa — women who have known her through every version of herself. Together, they trace the arc of friendship that began in the streets of 1980s and ’90s New York City and has carried them through love, loss, and reinvention.

In this episode, Alison sits with filmmaker and storyteller Elaine Del Valle, whose debut feature Brownsville Bred captures the beauty and brutality of growing up in 1980s Brooklyn. In a conversation about persistence, self-belief, and the quiet rebellion of creating without permission, Elaine reflects on what it means to keep going when the world tells you not to.

This episode explores the edges of uncertainty with Jessie Shefrin — a conversation about wandering, testing, stumbling, and ultimately emerging into new clarity. Jessie reflects on the sparks that shape us, those fleeting moments of sensation that accumulate into transformation. Together, the dialogue traces how luck, timing, and openness weave into leadership and design, offering listeners a meditative space to consider their own turning points and the practices that help us stay open to what might emerge.