The Impact List

The Impact List is a leadership podcast for professionals who want more than soundbites and surface-level advice. Hosted by Laurie Fainer, CEO of Dynamic Alchemy Advisors, The Impact List features candid conversations with leaders shaping the future, not by titles, but by how they show up. Each episode explores the real moments behind leadership, the decisions made under pressure, the conflicts that demand clarity, and the practices that create lasting impact. This show cuts through leadership noise to focus on presence, integrity, and human-centered leadership in modern organizations. Guests include executives, founders, operators, and people leaders who share hard-won lessons on navigating responsibility, building trust, leading through uncertainty, and creating cultures that actually work. The Impact List is for: Mid-career and senior professionals stepping into greater influence Executives seeking

The Impact List is a business podcast hosted by Laurie Fainer, with 16 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

Laurie Fainer hosts The Impact List, a business show with 16 episodes published.

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  The Impact List

  015: The Moments You'd Never Post About Are the Ones That Change You | Laurie Fainer

  Sep 16, 202622 min

  Over the past six months on The Impact List, Laurie Fainer, founder of Dynamic Alchemy Advisors and leadership advisor to founders, sat down with fourteen leaders and asked them to go past the polished version. Nine of those conversations surfaced a moment that shifted something. Not a framework, not career advice, but the kind of honest leadership stories that don't make it into a keynote or a LinkedIn caption. This episode pulls those nine moments together into one conversation about what real leadership actually looks like. If you're a leader, a founder, or someone in the middle of a career pivot, listen for the one that lands. We talk about: 00:00 What actually changes a leader underneath the surface 00:39 Hannah Yardley on the 47 classmates who reshaped her identity 02:35 Caroline Baird on the report nobody was reading 05:18 Michael Murphy on the mentor who spotted his missing spark 07:25 Angela Bond on rebuilding her identity three separate times 09:05 What Diana Mohan tells her team about being replaced by AI 10:35 Why can you only control how you show up, not the outcome 13:32 Robin Bailey on recording his mother's voice before she died 15:42 Lauren Posesorski on the version of herself she lost 17:03 Numrah Irfan on leaping into consulting with no safety net 20:12 What nine conversations taught Laurie about her own leadership Connect with our guests: Hannah Caroline Michael Angela Diana Nadia Robin Lauren Numrah Connect with me Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dynamicalchemyadvisors LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dynamic-alchemy-advisors/ Personal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauriefainer/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61592450590459 Website: https://amplified-authenticity.com/ Music created and produced by Riley Fouchier, DarkSky Productions

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  The Impact List

  014: Leadership Isn't Loud: The Case for the Quietest Person in the Room | Jillian Perkins

  Sep 2, 202634 min

  You know the person who changed the direction of your career without ever raising their voice. That is quiet leadership, and it works through listening rather than volume. Most workplaces still reward whoever speaks first and loudest, which means the people quietly redirecting careers rarely get named for it, rarely get promoted for it, and often do not see themselves as leaders at all. Jillian Perkins is one of them, and she still resists the word. Laurie Fainer, Founder and CEO of Dynamic Alchemy Advisors, sits down with Jillian Perkins, an alumni career counsellor at McMaster University’s Student Success Centre with a master's in counselling psychology and more than twenty years spent across the table from students and alumni at the exact moment they are deciding what comes next. Twenty years ago Jillian was across that table from Laurie in a Starbucks, and that conversation is part of why Laurie went and did her master's. Learn how she unlearned the belief that leadership has to be loud, how her listen first approach turns introversion into an advantage, what she does when she misses her turn in a room full of louder voices, and how she uses planned happenstance theory to help people choose when the future will not hold still. In this episode, you'll discover: What introversion actually gives a leader, including the pattern recognition that comes from observing a room first. The real cost of staying quiet at work, including missing your turn in a meeting. Planned happenstance theory made practical: the traits of optimism, flexibility, persistence and reasonable risk taking. The difference between managing a room and caring about the people in it. We talk about: 00:00 Why quiet leadership changes careers 01:28 The moment this week that gave her pause 04:27 Why she won't call herself a leader 06:50 Unlearning that leadership has to be loud 08:17 The first manager who changed everything 12:34 What does listen first actually mean 14:48 How introverts lead in loud rooms 17:11 The real cost of staying quiet 19:43 From career counsellor to career instructor 22:25 The student who finally felt cared about 31:26 Advice for anyone at a crossroads If this conversation surfaced the gap between how you are leading and how you want to be leading, that is the conversation worth having. Reach out to Laurie at https://amplified-authenticity.com/contact Connect with Jillian: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jillianmperkins/ Website: Student Success Centre | McMaster University Connect with me Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dynamicalchemyadvisors LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dynamic-alchemy-advisors/ Personal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauriefainer/ Website: https://amplified-authenticity.com/ Music created and produced by Riley Fouchier, DarkSky Productions

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  The Impact List

  011: What Grief Taught This Marketing Leader About Trust, Teams, and Letting Go | Lauren Posesorski

  Jul 22, 202633 min

  What if resilience was never about becoming who you were before? Most leadership advice treats recovery as the goal. Get through the hard thing, return to baseline, pick the plan back up. Lauren Posesorski's experience says otherwise. In this episode of The Impact List , Laurie Fainer, Founder and CEO of Dynamic Alchemy Advisors sits down with marketing leader Lauren Posesorski, a marketing leader with seventeen years of experience building teams from the ground up for one of the most candid conversations this show has featured. In 2021, Lauren went into preterm labour at 28 weeks. Her daughter Eleni lived for 60 days. As Lauren puts it, when Eleni went, a version of herself went too, and that version never came back. What she rebuilt in the space that followed is the reason she is on this list. A different way of asking her team how they are doing. A different definition of what she owes the people who report to her. And now, a deliberate pause instead of a reach for the next title. This conversation is about what leadership looks like when you stop trying to return to who you were. In this episode, you'll discover: Why the trust Lauren experienced from her team while she was on leave taught her more about real leadership than any framework could, and how to build that kind of trust before you ever need it. The exact question Lauren changed when she returned to work, why simply asking someone how they are doing stopped being enough, and what she asks instead. Why losing a former version of yourself is a normal part of leading through crisis, not a sign that something has gone wrong. What Lauren says every leader gets wrong about mentorship, and why cross functional relationships often teach you more than the person you report to ever will. Why Lauren stepped off a linear seventeen year career path to take an intentional pause. We talk about: 00:00 Meet Lauren Posesorski and her leadership story 01:46 What gave Lauren pause this week 04:07 Going into premature labor at 28 weeks 05:02 What did her team do while she was away 07:41 What must a leader believe to fully let go 09:42 Returning to work after unimaginable loss 10:25 Losing the version of yourself grief takes 12:12 How she leads differently since coming back 14:43 What people actually need from a leader 16:31 Why she is taking an intentional career pause 25:15 The leadership belief she had to unlearn 28:24 The leader who shaped her career the most Subscribe so you don't miss who's coming next. Connect with Lauren: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauren-posesorski-kerhoulas-54a2b220/ Connect with me Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dynamicalchemyadvisors LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dynamic-alchemy-advisors/ Personal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauriefainer/ Website: https://amplified-authenticity.com/ Music created and produced by Riley Fouchier, DarkSky Productions

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  Episode #10

  010: Great Employees Make Bad Leaders. Here's Why Promotions Backfire | Amber Johnson

  Jul 8, 202634 min

  Most bad hires aren't skill problems. They're fit problems. In this episode of The Impact List, host Laurie Fainer, Founder and CEO of Dynamic Alchemy Advisors, sits down with Amber Johnson, CEO of Forge Performance Group. Amber has spent over a decade helping companies in energy, construction, oil and gas, and healthcare hire and keep strong teams, and she breaks down why chasing the resume instead of the person is where most hiring processes go wrong. Amber shares how she uses core values conversations and DiSC profiles to spot real fit before a resume tells the story, why promoting a top individual contributor into leadership without a coaching plan is one of the costliest mistakes a growing company makes, and the story of her very first client, whose advice changed the trajectory of her business. In this episode, you'll discover: Why promoting your best individual contributor into a leadership role without a coaching plan is one of the most common and costly startup hiring mistakes. Why authenticity in an interview, on both sides, uncovers whether someone is the right fit instead of just skilled at selling themselves. Why trusting your recruiter or hiring process, even when it feels uncomfortable, is often the real skill a first time founder needs to build. We talk about: 00:00 Amber Johnson introduces Forge Performance Group and her hiring philosophy 02:09 The client story that shows why core values beat a perfect resume 04:06 What leaders miss about themselves in the hiring process 07:00 How to give a candidate an honest picture of a role 09:01 What to do when a candidate stops showing up as themselves 12:00 What it takes to stay authentic across every environment 14:07 What Amber had to unlearn from her early oil and gas career 16:52 Why leaders assume everyone should operate exactly like they do 22:55 Why promoting your best individual contributor can be an expensive mistake 27:08 Who is Sean Stinson and how he shaped Amber's leadership 32:06 How to connect with Amber Johnson and Forge Performance Group Subscribe so you don't miss who's coming next. Connect with Amber: Email: amber@forgeperform.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/forgeperformanceservices LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/forge-performance-group/people/ Website: https://www.forgeperformancegroup.ca/ Connect with me Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dynamicalchemyadvisors LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dynamic-alchemy-advisors/ Personal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauriefainer/ Website: https://amplified-authenticity.com/ Music created and produced by Riley Fouchier, DarkSky Productions

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  The Impact List

  009: Intentional Leadership: Are You Living the Life You Want or Just Planning To | Robin Bailey

  Jun 17, 202643 min

  Intentional leadership is not a framework you learn in a course. It is a decision you make every single day about how you show up, who you trust, and what you do with the time you have. This episode is about what that actually looks like in practice. Robin Bailey, Managing Partner of Aria Benefits, host of the award-winning Success Leaves Clues podcast, and the person who, about a year ago, looked at Laurie after she had been a guest on his show and said: you should start your own podcast. In this episode, Laurie and Robin get into what it actually looks like to build a business on trust as a daily operating decision. They talk about the podcast community Robin built almost by accident, the Stoplight Strategy Report he developed from 300 conversations with senior leaders, the award he named after his mother, and the moment 20 years ago that permanently changed how he sees time. This one stayed with us, and we think it will stay with you too. In this episode, you'll discover: Why two deaths in one week became Robin's most clarifying lesson on intentional leadership and how he sees time The single belief that drives everything Robin does in business and in life: everything starts with one How Success Leaves Clues went from a branding exercise to a 300-episode community of senior leaders and CEOs The Stoplight Strategy Report: the green, yellow, red client tool Robin built directly from 300 podcast conversations What Robin did 14 months before his mother passed away, and why pressing record is one of the most important leadership decisions he has ever made The Gene Bailey Legacy Award: what it means to name something after the person who showed you what kindness looks like How a breast cancer diagnosis at 35 permanently changed Robin and his wife's relationship with time, travel, and each other The moment Robin stopped trying to be in every client meeting and what it unlocked for his business and his life We talk about: 00:00 - When Two Deaths in One Week Change How You See Time 03:34 - Why Robin Leads With Generosity and No Agenda 06:15 - How Success Leaves Clues Was Born From One Branding Problem 14:12 - The Podcast Awards and the Legacy of Jean Bailey 20:48 - How the Podcast Became a Business Development Engine 22:33 - The Stoplight Strategy Report: Honest Client Conversations at Scale 27:15 - The Leadership Shift: Letting Go and Trusting the Right People 31:12 - His Wife, Breast Cancer, and a 20-Year Lesson on Living Now Subscribe so you don't miss who's coming next. Connect with Robin LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robin-bailey-a8157b15/ Website: https://www.ariabenefits.ca/ Connect with me Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dynamicalchemyadvisors LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dynamic-alchemy-advisors/ Personal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauriefainer/ Website: https://amplified-authenticity.com/ Music created and produced by Riley Fouchier, DarkSky Productions

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