There's this thing that happens when you're carrying a lot. People ask how you're doing, and you say "I'm good." Not because you're lying — but because the truth would take longer than anyone has time for.

In this episode, Lisa gets honest about what her last two weeks actually looked like: two R01 deadlines, fifty resumes, a staffing transition, a LinkedIn post that reached fifty thousand people — and losing her 43-year-old nephew Colby, suddenly and without warning. She connects her invisible inventory to what the world is carrying right now: the dismantling of the Voting Rights Act, a new Ebola emergency, and an NIH budget crisis that's pushing scientists out of the work they love. And she names the thing nobody talks about — that the weight isn't the problem. The loneliness of the weight is.

Soul to Soul with Lisa Carter-Bawa. Where science meets soul.

Soul to Soul with Dr. Lisa Carter-Bawa is a podcast for anyone who is in the middle of becoming — doing the inner work, asking the harder questions, and learning to live from the inside out.

New episodes drop every Monday.

Follow the journey: 📍 Instagram: @lisacarterbawa 📍 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisacarterbawa/ 📍 Website: www.lisacarterbawa.com

Follow me on Substack: https://soultosoulleadership.substack.com/

Enjoyed this episode? Leave a review, share it with someone who needs it, and subscribe so you never miss a Monday.

Not role to role. Soul to soul.

There is a thing nobody tells you about getting what you wanted. The flatness that arrives the morning after. The strange quiet hum of an interior question that the promotion, the credential, the title, the milestone was supposed to answer — and somehow didn't.

Most people, when they feel it, look away. They start chasing the next thing, hoping it will be bigger, brighter, more decisive. It won't be.

This episode is for anyone who has worked toward something for years, arrived, and felt the strange flatness. It is not a sign that you got the wrong thing. It is a sign that you were taught to expect the wrong thing from arrival. There is a gift hidden in the flatness — and a different kind of life waiting on the other side of noticing it.

Soul to Soul with Dr. Lisa Carter-Bawa is a podcast for anyone who is in the middle of becoming — doing the inner work, asking the harder questions, and learning to live from the inside out.

New episodes drop every Monday.

Follow the journey: 📍 Instagram: @lisacarterbawa 📍 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisacarterbawa/ 📍 Website: www.lisacarterbawa.com

Follow me on Substack: https://soultosoulleadership.substack.com/

Enjoyed this episode? Leave a review, share it with someone who needs it, and subscribe so you never miss a Monday.

Not role to role. Soul to soul.

What happens when the leadership vocabulary you inherited from the women before you includes everything except the hardest sentences? In this episode, Lisa reflects on watching a senior woman in a meeting redirect a difficult conversation toward an operational follow-up — a move she recognized instantly, because she'd learned it too. Not from a textbook, but from years of watching accomplished women navigate rooms that would have punished them for saying what was actually true. "I disagree." "I don't know." "I'm scared." "I need help." These weren't sentences the women before us withheld — they were sentences they never had. And yet we inherited the silence alongside the strength. This episode is about the slow, careful work of building a vocabulary no one in your line was allowed to develop — and why saying the sentence they couldn't say isn't a betrayal. It's a translation. If this one brings up a face, a room, a sentence you've been carrying — write it down. Then come find me at soultosoulleadership.substack.com or lisa@soultosoulleaderhip.com.

Soul to Soul with Dr. Lisa Carter-Bawa is a podcast for anyone who is in the middle of becoming — doing the inner work, asking the harder questions, and learning to live from the inside out.

New episodes drop every Monday.

Follow the journey: 📍 Instagram: @lisacarterbawa 📍 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisacarterbawa/ 📍 Website: www.lisacarterbawa.com

Follow me on Substack: https://soultosoulleadership.substack.com/

Enjoyed this episode? Leave a review, share it with someone who needs it, and subscribe so you never miss a Monday.

Not role to role. Soul to soul.

I was in a meeting last week, and I caught myself doing it again. Someone asked me a real question, and before I gave the answer — before the answer — I said the words. Sorry, I just want to add real quick. Sorry for what.

This episode is about the apologies that aren't really apologies. The ones doing some other job entirely — asking permission to take up the space we were already invited into. About the coat I was handed a long time ago by women who learned to wear it in rooms that were not built for them. Who handed it down so faithfully that by the time it reached me, none of us could remember it wasn't mine to begin with.

It's about the half-second pause where the reflexive sorry used to live, what walks through the door when I let it stay empty — and what it means to honor the woman who handed you the coat by no longer needing to wear it.

Soul to Soul with Dr. Lisa Carter-Bawa is a podcast for anyone who is in the middle of becoming — doing the inner work, asking the harder questions, and learning to live from the inside out.

New episodes drop every Monday.

Follow the journey: 📍 Instagram: @lisacarterbawa 📍 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisacarterbawa/ 📍 Website: www.lisacarterbawa.com

Follow me on Substack: https://soultosoulleadership.substack.com/

Enjoyed this episode? Leave a review, share it with someone who needs it, and subscribe so you never miss a Monday.

Not role to role. Soul to soul.

What happens when the weight you’re carrying doesn’t have a name? In this episode, Dr. Lisa Carter-Bawa gets personal about the exhaustion that hides behind high performance—the low hum of too much, for too long, with no clear endpoint. Drawing on her work as a behavioral scientist and her own experience navigating an impossible spring, Lisa explores why we stigmatize our own distress, what it means to be connected but not truly held, and what it looks like to set the weight down—not to abandon it, but to finally see it clearly. If you’ve been carrying something quietly, this one is for you.

Soul to Soul with Dr. Lisa Carter-Bawa is a podcast for anyone who is in the middle of becoming — doing the inner work, asking the harder questions, and learning to live from the inside out.

New episodes drop every Monday.

Follow the journey: 📍 Instagram: @lisacarterbawa 📍 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisacarterbawa/ 📍 Website: www.lisacarterbawa.com

Follow me on Substack: https://soultosoulleadership.substack.com/

Enjoyed this episode? Leave a review, share it with someone who needs it, and subscribe so you never miss a Monday.

Not role to role. Soul to soul.

Yesterday I found out that two grant applications I submitted were not selected for funding. Two in the same cycle. Both I believed in. Both designed to serve communities I care deeply about.

This episode is what happened next.

It is not a framework. It is not a reframe. It is not a story I have already extracted the lesson from. It is the middle — the 48 hours of silence after the news, the loneliness of being the person who holds space for everyone else, and what it costs to keep teaching while you are still in the rawness of your own no.

If you are carrying something right now — a grant that didn't get funded, a paper that got rejected, a position you didn't get — this one is for you.

Soul to Soul, Lisa.

Soul to Soul with Dr. Lisa Carter-Bawa is a podcast for anyone who is in the middle of becoming — doing the inner work, asking the harder questions, and learning to live from the inside out.

New episodes drop every Monday.

Follow the journey: 📍 Instagram: @lisacarterbawa 📍 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisacarterbawa/ 📍 Website: www.lisacarterbawa.com

Follow me on Substack: https://soultosoulleadership.substack.com/

Enjoyed this episode? Leave a review, share it with someone who needs it, and subscribe so you never miss a Monday.

Not role to role. Soul to soul.

In the middle of packing for a move to a smaller space, Lisa opens a box that's been sealed for four years — and finds beautiful pottery she forgot she owned. When a vase shatters on the floor by accident, it cracks open a deeper question: why do we hold onto things long after they've stopped serving us? This episode is a meditation on the boxes we keep sealed — not just the physical ones, but the old credentials, the expired plans, the relationships that ended before they ended. Lisa explores the tension between letting go and honoring what was, and why attachment isn't always a problem to solve — sometimes it's just love looking for a place to live. If you're in the middle of any kind of transition, this one's for you.

Soul to Soul with Dr. Lisa Carter-Bawa is a podcast for anyone who is in the middle of becoming — doing the inner work, asking the harder questions, and learning to live from the inside out.

New episodes drop every Monday.

Follow the journey: 📍 Instagram: @lisacarterbawa 📍 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisacarterbawa/ 📍 Website: www.lisacarterbawa.com

Follow me on Substack: https://soultosoulleadership.substack.com/

Enjoyed this episode? Leave a review, share it with someone who needs it, and subscribe so you never miss a Monday.

Not role to role. Soul to soul.

Here's something no one tells you when you step into leadership: your team is not listening to your words. They're watching your tolerance.

Every time you let something slide — the disrespect you didn't address, the credit that was taken, the standard that quietly dropped — you just taught your team what's actually acceptable here. Not what you said was acceptable. What you showed them was acceptable.

In this episode, Lisa pulls apart the invisible force that shapes every team's culture: not the values on the wall, but the behaviors that go unchecked. She names four honest reasons leaders look the other way — comfort, fear, fatigue, and the one nobody wants to admit. Through two stories that will stay with you — one of a leader whose silence cost him three people he never should have lost, and one whose ninety-second conversation reset an entire team's culture — she makes the case that your authority gives you your title, but your tolerance defines your legacy.

She'll walk you through what she calls the tolerance audit — three questions designed to surface the gap between what you say you stand for and what you're actually allowing. And she'll challenge you to close that gap this week. Not next quarter. This week.

If you've ever sat in a meeting and known something needed to be said — and stayed quiet — this episode is for you.

Not role to role. Soul to soul.

Soul to Soul with Dr. Lisa Carter-Bawa is a podcast for anyone who is in the middle of becoming — doing the inner work, asking the harder questions, and learning to live from the inside out.

New episodes drop every Monday.

Follow the journey: 📍 Instagram: @lisacarterbawa 📍 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisacarterbawa/ 📍 Website: www.lisacarterbawa.com

Follow me on Substack: https://soultosoulleadership.substack.com/

Enjoyed this episode? Leave a review, share it with someone who needs it, and subscribe so you never miss a Monday.

Not role to role. Soul to soul.

Most of us were taught to wait — wait for the title, the invitation, the tap on the shoulder that says now it's your turn. But leadership doesn't work that way. The people who change things aren't the ones who waited for permission. They're the ones who started before they felt ready.

In this episode, Lisa explores the quiet lie that keeps smart, capable people on the sidelines: the belief that leadership is something someone else gives you. She talks about what it actually looks like to lead without a title, why the instinct to wait is so deeply wired, and what shifts when you stop asking am I allowed? and start asking what do I see that needs to happen?

This one is for anyone who's been doing the work but holding back from owning it.

Soul to Soul with Dr. Lisa Carter-Bawa is a podcast for anyone who is in the middle of becoming — doing the inner work, asking the harder questions, and learning to live from the inside out.

New episodes drop every Monday.

Follow the journey: 📍 Instagram: @lisacarterbawa 📍 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisacarterbawa/ 📍 Website: www.lisacarterbawa.com

Follow me on Substack: https://soultosoulleadership.substack.com/

Enjoyed this episode? Leave a review, share it with someone who needs it, and subscribe so you never miss a Monday.

Not role to role. Soul to soul.

Most leaders operate like their role is permanent. And that assumption is quietly destroying the best parts of their leadership.

In this episode, Lisa challenges a belief most of us have never examined: that there’s always more time. More time to have the conversation, to champion the idea, to lead the way we actually want to. She introduces the concept of finite urgency — and asks a question that might change how you show up on Monday: what would you do differently if you knew you had twelve months left in your seat?

This one is going to stay with you.

Soul to Soul with Dr. Lisa Carter-Bawa is a podcast for anyone who is in the middle of becoming — doing the inner work, asking the harder questions, and learning to live from the inside out.

New episodes drop every Monday.

Follow the journey: 📍 Instagram: @lisacarterbawa 📍 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisacarterbawa/ 📍 Website: www.lisacarterbawa.com

Follow me on Substack: https://soultosoulleadership.substack.com/

Enjoyed this episode? Leave a review, share it with someone who needs it, and subscribe so you never miss a Monday.

Not role to role. Soul to soul.

What happens when you stop performing and start saying what you actually think? Not a dramatic reinvention — just one honest sentence at a time. In this episode, Lisa names the tired that sleep doesn't fix: the invisible exhaustion of translating yourself into a safer, smaller version for every room you enter. She traces what it cost her, what surprised her when she stopped, and why the most talented people in the room are often the quietest — not because they have nothing to say, but because they've buried it under years of self-protection. This is an episode about the gap between who you are and who you're performing, and what comes back when you close it.

Soul to Soul with Dr. Lisa Carter-Bawa is a podcast for anyone who is in the middle of becoming — doing the inner work, asking the harder questions, and learning to live from the inside out.

New episodes drop every Monday.

Follow the journey: 📍 Instagram: @lisacarterbawa 📍 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisacarterbawa/ 📍 Website: www.lisacarterbawa.com

Follow me on Substack: https://soultosoulleadership.substack.com/

Enjoyed this episode? Leave a review, share it with someone who needs it, and subscribe so you never miss a Monday.

Not role to role. Soul to soul.

There is a tradition from St. Lucia called Koudmen — a practice where the community comes together to carry what one person cannot carry alone. No payment. No contract. Just hands. In this episode, Lisa names the loneliness that lives inside leadership, shares a message from a team member that stopped her in her tracks, and asks the question most leaders are afraid to ask: what if you were never meant to carry it by yourself?

Soul to Soul with Dr. Lisa Carter-Bawa is a podcast for anyone who is in the middle of becoming — doing the inner work, asking the harder questions, and learning to live from the inside out.

New episodes drop every Monday.

Follow the journey: 📍 Instagram: @lisacarterbawa 📍 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisacarterbawa/ 📍 Website: www.lisacarterbawa.com

Follow me on Substack: https://soultosoulleadership.substack.com/

Enjoyed this episode? Leave a review, share it with someone who needs it, and subscribe so you never miss a Monday.

Not role to role. Soul to soul.

When is the last time someone asked how you were doing — and you told the truth? Every high achiever has armor: the perfectionism, the people-pleasing, the relentless performance of being fine. It kept you safe once. It got you into the room. But somewhere along the way, the armor stopped being something you wore and became something you are. In this episode, Lisa traces the origin story of the strength that saved you, names what it is quietly costing you — your intimacy, your health, your joy, yourself — and asks the question no one dares to say out loud: if you stop performing, will anyone still want you here? This is not a call to tear it all down. It is a call to take it off somewhere. Just one room. Just one person. Just one honest answer to "How are you?"

Soul to Soul with Dr. Lisa Carter-Bawa is a podcast for anyone who is in the middle of becoming — doing the inner work, asking the harder questions, and learning to live from the inside out.

New episodes drop every Monday.

Follow the journey: 📍 Instagram: @lisacarterbawa 📍 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisacarterbawa/ 📍 Website: www.lisacarterbawa.com

Follow me on Substack: https://soultosoulleadership.substack.com/

Enjoyed this episode? Leave a review, share it with someone who needs it, and subscribe so you never miss a Monday.

Not role to role. Soul to soul.

There is a question nobody in leadership is saying out loud right now: What if the thing that makes me valuable is the thing the machine does not need? In this episode, Lisa names the quiet fear that leaders, researchers, clinicians, and anyone in a people-centered profession are carrying — that empathy, presence, and trust-building are becoming obsolete in a world obsessed with speed and AI. She introduces what she calls the slow gifts — listening, presence, trust, and discernment — and makes the case that these are not inefficiencies to be optimized away. They are the whole point. If you have been measuring your worth by your output, this episode is your permission to stop racing and start returning to the thing no machine can replicate: you.

Soul to Soul with Dr. Lisa Carter-Bawa is a podcast for anyone who is in the middle of becoming — doing the inner work, asking the harder questions, and learning to live from the inside out.

New episodes drop every Monday.

Follow the journey: 📍 Instagram: @lisacarterbawa 📍 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisacarterbawa/ 📍 Website: www.lisacarterbawa.com

Follow me on Substack: https://soultosoulleadership.substack.com/

Enjoyed this episode? Leave a review, share it with someone who needs it, and subscribe so you never miss a Monday.

Not role to role. Soul to soul.

There is a woman sitting at Gate B6 at 6:14 in the morning, staring at a flight she has no reason to take — to a city with no meeting, no obligation, no one expecting her to perform. She does not take it. She gives the keynote. People clap. She flies home. And she tells no one about the seven minutes when she almost chose herself. This episode is built differently — it moves like a short film. First, a story. Then, the behavioral science behind why we keep choosing the responsible path over the meaningful one — a phenomenon called the intention-action gap. Then, a challenge: finish one sentence honestly, and see what shows up. If you have ever stood at your own Gate B6 and walked back to the line, this one is for you.

Soul to Soul with Dr. Lisa Carter-Bawa is a podcast for anyone who is in the middle of becoming — doing the inner work, asking the harder questions, and learning to live from the inside out.

New episodes drop every Monday.

Follow the journey: 📍 Instagram: @lisacarterbawa 📍 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisacarterbawa/ 📍 Website: www.lisacarterbawa.com

Follow me on Substack: https://soultosoulleadership.substack.com/

Enjoyed this episode? Leave a review, share it with someone who needs it, and subscribe so you never miss a Monday.

Not role to role. Soul to soul.

THE LIE OF FINE What Nobody Will Say About What's Really Happening Right Now

You know the feeling. Someone asks how you're doing and you say "great" — not because it's true, but because that's what the moment calls for. You write the updates, show up to the meetings, wear the face. And somewhere underneath all of it, a quiet voice keeps asking a question you don't let yourself finish.

This episode is for that voice.

Lisa Carter-Bawa — behavioral scientist and host of Soul to Soul — is naming what's running underneath almost every professional right now. Not burnout. Not quiet quitting. Something quieter and harder to name than either of those. The moment when you realize you've been performing fine for so long, you've lost track of what fine actually feels like.

This is not an episode about resilience tips or morning routines. It's an honest conversation about the cost of the professional mask, the question nobody says out loud, and what actually happens when one person in the room stops pretending.

If you've ever looked at the life you worked so hard to build and thought — wait, is this it? — this one is for you.

Soul to Soul drops every Monday.

Soul to Soul with Dr. Lisa Carter-Bawa is a podcast for anyone who is in the middle of becoming — doing the inner work, asking the harder questions, and learning to live from the inside out.

New episodes drop every Monday.

Follow the journey: 📍 Instagram: @lisacarterbawa 📍 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisacarterbawa/ 📍 Website: www.lisacarterbawa.com

Follow me on Substack: https://soultosoulleadership.substack.com/

Enjoyed this episode? Leave a review, share it with someone who needs it, and subscribe so you never miss a Monday.

Not role to role. Soul to soul.

THE GRIEF NOBODY WARNED YOU ABOUT When Growth Means Grieving People Who Are Still Alive

There's a kind of grief nobody prepares you for.

Not the kind that comes with a funeral. The kind that comes quietly, in the middle of becoming someone new — when you look up and realize the life you've outgrown no longer fits, and some of the people in it don't either.

No one teaches you how to mourn that. There's no ritual for it. No language. Just a loneliness that's hard to explain because nothing technically went wrong.

In this episode, Lisa sits with the grief of growth — the loss that follows transformation, the guilt that makes you question whether becoming who you were meant to be was somehow a betrayal, and the disorienting in-between space where most people quietly give up and go back.

This one is for anyone who has ever felt tender in a way they couldn't quite name. Anyone who has chosen to keep walking, even when walking meant leaving something behind.

Come sit in the quiet with us.

Soul to Soul drops every Monday.

Soul to Soul with Dr. Lisa Carter-Bawa is a podcast for anyone who is in the middle of becoming — doing the inner work, asking the harder questions, and learning to live from the inside out.

New episodes drop every Monday.

Follow the journey: 📍 Instagram: @lisacarterbawa 📍 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisacarterbawa/ 📍 Website: www.lisacarterbawa.com

Follow me on Substack: https://soultosoulleadership.substack.com/

Enjoyed this episode? Leave a review, share it with someone who needs it, and subscribe so you never miss a Monday.

Not role to role. Soul to soul.

What if the restlessness you're feeling isn't burnout — it's your soul asking a question you've been too busy to hear? In this Soul Reflection, Lisa explores the difference between drift and burnout, what behavioral science reveals about the shadow side of adaptation, and why the most radical act of leadership might be a series of small, honest reckonings with yourself. This episode closes with one question worth sitting with.

Soul to Soul with Dr. Lisa Carter-Bawa is a podcast for anyone who is in the middle of becoming — doing the inner work, asking the harder questions, and learning to live from the inside out.

New episodes drop every Monday.

Follow the journey: 📍 Instagram: @lisacarterbawa 📍 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisacarterbawa/ 📍 Website: www.lisacarterbawa.com

Follow me on Substack: https://soultosoulleadership.substack.com/

Enjoyed this episode? Leave a review, share it with someone who needs it, and subscribe so you never miss a Monday.

Not role to role. Soul to soul.

I've spent almost twenty years studying what gets lost between the message and the meaning. Today, I'm trying something I've never done before — no citations, no methodology section, no peer review. Just me, a microphone, and the truth about what it actually costs to lead, to hold multiple identities, and to realize the version of yourself that earned the credentials isn't the version that will carry you forward. This is the story of how "soul to soul, not role to role" went from a quiet essay to the thing I couldn't stop thinking about. And why I believe you don't need reinvention — you need a return.

Soul to Soul with Dr. Lisa Carter-Bawa is a podcast for anyone who is in the middle of becoming — doing the inner work, asking the harder questions, and learning to live from the inside out.

New episodes drop every Monday.

Follow the journey: 📍 Instagram: @lisacarterbawa 📍 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisacarterbawa/ 📍 Website: www.lisacarterbawa.com

Follow me on Substack: https://soultosoulleadership.substack.com/

Enjoyed this episode? Leave a review, share it with someone who needs it, and subscribe so you never miss a Monday.

Not role to role. Soul to soul.