Podcast
Meet Bridget
Hosted by Asha Gabriel & Keshiia Rosenberg · EN
The best career conversations happen when women get honest. Meet Bridget is a career storytelling podcast hosted by besties Asha Gabriel and Keshiia Rosenberg. Each episode, a successful woman shares two stories: the career she built — and the teenager she used to be. The nitty gritty. The good and the shitty. When you can relate to a woman's story, her path becomes possible. 150+ episodes across 30+ industries, now in full studio video for Season 6. New episodes every week. Find us on all podcast platforms, YouTube, Instagram @meetbridget, TikTik @meetbridgetshow and at meetbridget.com.
19episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
"Strength Bleeds Into Every Single Aspect of Your Life" — Chelsea Leigh, Holistic Nutritionist & Women's Strength Coach @chelsleigh
6d ago01:03:55Tap to summarizeNo description available
Transcribe →"71 Lines on the Card. 1,002 Ways to Win." — Jodie McCollum, Founder of Mahjong OC
2w ago01:06:29Tap to summarizeJodie McCollum learned Mahjong in 2023 at a friend's house in Dallas. She came back to Orange County, taught a neighbor group as a dare, walked away from that first class completely invigorated, and thought: I wonder if there is a demand for this. There was. Within a year she had taught 175 classes, reached 2,000 students, built a team of nine, and started expanding to San Diego, LA, and potentially London. In this conversation, Jodie talks about what it took to build Mahjong OC from a Friday afternoon game into a real business, how her corporate HR and marketing background all came back to her at once after years on a shelf, and why she thinks Mahjong is having a moment not because it is trendy but because it gives women exactly what they actually need: a room, a game, a reason to stay, and a conversation that happens on its own without any pressure. She also talks about growing up across three countries, what it felt like to land in American high school at thirteen with a New Zealand accent and no friends, and how the girl who coped by keeping her world small ended up building one of the fastest growing community businesses in Orange County. The detail that ties everything together: she was once the new person in a room full of strangers who all knew each other. She never forgot what that felt like. Now she makes sure nobody leaves her tables feeling that way. 🎙️ Meet Bridget | Season 6, Episode 164
Transcribe →What to Do When Something Feels Off — Teen Mental Health with Christina King, LMFT
3w ago00:32:44Tap to summarizeNo description available
Transcribe →"We Were Complete Strangers. Now We're Best Friends Running a Company Together." -Jewel Zimmer & Taylor Lamb of Juna
4w ago01:29:08Tap to summarizeTwo women. One supplement company. Zero plan to become best friends. Jewel Zimmer and Taylor Lamb co-founded Juna out of a simple frustration: neither of them could find what they actually needed. Jewel healed her postpartum experience through amino acids after conventional approaches left her without answers. Taylor spent three years with terrible gut health, acne, and depression before she did her own research and discovered that plants were the thing nobody had thought to suggest. When they met through mutual contacts in the marketing world, the connection was obvious. The company followed. In this conversation, Jewel and Taylor talk about the science and philosophy behind Juna, what it actually means to build from the root cause up rather than chasing symptoms, and why they believe plants carry something synthetics simply cannot. They also go back. Jewel grew up in a small mountain town in British Columbia that never felt like hers, moved to Europe at thirteen when her parents sold the house on a whim, and moved out on her own at sixteen because she needed out. She found her way to culinary school, then to some of the best kitchens in the world, then to cannabis, then to Juna. Taylor was diagnosed with ADHD in school, rebelled her way through high school in all the ways that look bad on a report card and excellent in retrospect, built her graphic design and brand skills one gig at a time, and became one of the most respected brand builders in the women's wellness space. The doctor who diagnosed Taylor told her parents not to worry. Most CEOs have this, he said. She'll be fine. He was right. 🎙️ Meet Bridget | Season 6, Episode 162
Transcribe →"Jump and Build the Parachute on the Way Down" - Jacquelyn Umof, Founder of Barre Definition
Jun 2401:09:22Tap to summarizeContent note: This episode includes brief discussion of a history of amenorrhea and a stress fracture connected to undereating during the guest's teenage ballet years. It is discussed as a resolved part of her past. If this is something you are navigating, support is available through the National Alliance for Eating Disorders helpline. Jacquelyn Umof trained as a professional ballet dancer before a fractured tibia at seventeen ended that chapter of her life. Her mom signed her up for a Pilates class to get her out of the house. She got certified at seventeen, walked into a USC gym with zero teaching experience, and asked for a job anyway. That is basically how she has done everything since. In this conversation, Jacquelyn talks about building Bar Definition from a beach camera and thirty videos into a real business, the years of bootstrapping before she would let herself spend real money on ads, and the moment her now-husband convinced her to make one good ad instead of a post every single day. She talks about collecting certifications not because she needed all of them, but because she didn't have a fitness degree and wanted to feel sure of what she was teaching. She also goes deep into motherhood: a genuinely painful pregnancy connected to hypermobility, a three hour home birth she calls the hardest and best thing she has ever done, and the recalibration of her relationship with her body and her time that came after. She talks honestly about the pressure to look a certain way after having a baby, and her decision to prioritize breastfeeding over getting her body back faster. And she goes back to seventeen year old Jacquelyn: quiet, introverted, more comfortable expressing herself through movement than words, competing only with herself, never her sister. The tibia fracture that looked like an ending turned out to be the beginning of everything she has built since. 🎙️ Meet Bridget | Season 6, Episode 161 Resources: National Alliance for Eating Disorders helpline
Transcribe →The Choiceful Timing of Vulnerability — A BFF Conversation with Asha & Keshiia
Jun 1700:25:34Tap to summarizeNo guest this week. Just us. We have been thinking a lot about the difference between vulnerability as connection and vulnerability as performance. About what it means to go through something hard in an era when everyone has a camera and a comment section and the cultural message is that sharing equals healing. We do not think that is always true. In this episode, Asha and Keshiia talk about what it actually looks like to process something hard without putting it on display. The value of cocooning. The small group of two or three people who get access to the raw version. The difference between being honest that you are going through something and live-streaming the middle of it. The way oversharing while you are still in it can actually slow the processing down, not speed it up. We are both going through things right now that we are not naming here. That is intentional. It is also the whole point. For anyone who is in something hard and feels the pressure to perform it publicly before they have processed it privately — this one is for you. 🎙️ Meet Bridget | Season 6, Episode [#1160]
Transcribe →"Will This Help Heal Me?" - Alec Treffers, Food & Fitness Influencer @alectreffs
Jun 1001:16:18Tap to summarizeAlec Treffers started What Alec Eats as a question, not a strategy. She was a freshman at Arizona State, had just blown out her knee playing Division I volleyball, and was quietly developing an eating disorder she had no name for and no plans to talk about. She started posting food on Instagram because she wondered if falling back in love with cooking might help her fall back in love with food. It did. Eventually it became her career. In this conversation, Alec talks about the injury that changed everything: the athletic identity that got ripped away in a day, the months in a soft cast watching her leg muscle deteriorate, the mental weight of rehabbing a knee when you do not know if you will ever play again. She talks about how orthorexia developed in that void — the need to control something when everything else felt out of control — and how Instagram became an unlikely path back. She also walks through the career timeline honestly: seven years in corporate PR including Taco Bell, getting laid off in COVID, giving herself six months to make real money from content creation, and the moment she called it a business and never looked back. She talks about counting macros as a second healing — how the woman who once tried to survive on Special K red berries ended up eating over 2200 calories a day and finally trusting her body. And she ends with the trait she has carried since childhood that she once found annoying and now understands completely: attention to detail. The kid who color-coordinated her crayons is the one who makes the content that other people cannot stop watching. 🎙️ Meet Bridget | Season 6, Episode 159
Transcribe →"Life Is Not Meant To Be Lived All At Once" - Shannon McLaren, Founder of Prairie Interiors
Jun 301:04:56Tap to summarizeShannon McLaren did not set out to become an interior designer. She set out to be in fashion. She studied business in London, worked at Stella McCartney, moved back to LA to become a celebrity stylist, and spent years working for Petra Flannery — her most formative mentor — learning how to run a small team, stay proactive, and never say die. Then she accidentally flipped a house. Someone asked who staged it. She said she did. And that was that. In this conversation, Shannon talks about what it actually looks like to build a design practice from staging to studio to retail, why her sweet spot is twelve clients and four or five in active construction, and what it means to design for how people live rather than how it photographs. She talks about the through-line from styling to interiors that she did not see coming: the same skills, the same brief, the same instinct for the unexpected mix. She also goes back to the girl she was: an only child rearranging her room in the middle of the night so she could sleep, drawing floor plans at thirteen on the shores of Lake Washington because it was just fun, transitioning from middle-class Orange County to living down the road from Bill Gates and figuring out how to show up somewhere new. And she ends with the quality she now cherishes that nobody would have told her to keep: her impulsiveness. The gut that fires before the brain catches up. The instinct she did not know was the whole thing. 🎙️ Meet Bridget | Season 6, Episode 158
Transcribe →"It's Okay to Not Be Okay." -Brooke Medina, Founder of AR Workshop OC
May 2700:51:32Tap to summarizeContent note: This episode discusses themes of substance abuse, grief, and loss. Resources available at SAMHSA.gov or by calling 1-800-662-4357 (free, confidential, 24/7). Crisis support: call or text 988. Brooke Medina grew up around craft. Her dad owned a craft and floral store. Her mom was an interior designer who helped people fall back in love with the things they already had. Creativity was everywhere, but for a long time, she wanted nothing to do with it. In this conversation, Brooke shares the story behind the story. The teenage years marked by instability, loss, and substance use. The overdose at 18, the drug class the morning after, and the pregnancy that arrived less than a year later that she calls the thing that saved her life. The grief she carried through early adulthood — a stepbrother, a grandfather, a best friend, a mother — and what it took to learn to carry it without being buried by it. She also talks about the pivot she did not plan: closing her brick-and-mortar AR Workshop after seven years and going mobile. Why she calls it the best decision she ever made. What it looks like to let go of something before you are ready and trust that the next thing is already forming. And she talks about building community as a practice, not a marketing strategy. The way hands-on creativity drops people's guards. The women's networking group she just started. The belief she has carried since long before it was a tagline: there is a seat for everyone. This one is honest, warm, and goes somewhere real. 🎙️ Meet Bridget | Season 6, Episode 157 Resources: SAMHSA.gov | 1-800-662-4357 | Crisis line: 988
Transcribe →"Comparison Is the Thief of Joy" — Leland Drummond, Co-Founder of AZIONE PR & LDMA
May 2001:08:01Tap to summarizeLeland Drummond has spent over 20 years building other people's brands. Somewhere along the way, she figured out the only way to do that well is to understand yourself first. In this conversation, Leland walks through the dual life of running two businesses at once — Azione, the PR and marketing agency she co-founded that works with brands like Sol de Janeiro, Hoka, Caraway, and Sweetgreen, and LDMA Activewear, the active women's brand she built from the inside out, literally: starting with underwear and bras before working outward. She talks about what it's like to be a creative person who became a CEO, the chaos and the humility that comes with it, and why she still believes quality of output matters more than hours clocked. She also goes back. To boarding school at 13 after her parents separated, to arriving in a place where relationships were already formed and feeling very alone, to snowboarding down a mountain in Connecticut because of a boy she had a crush on, and to the career that built from a blown-out knee and a few brand sponsorships she didn't want to lose. And she ends with the word she had to dig for: discernment. The quality her mom recognized when she was a baby. The thing that looked like aloofness in high school. The instinct that has guided every business decision, every partnership, every person she's allowed into her orbit. She always had it. She just finally has the word. 🎙️ Meet Bridget | Season 6, Episode 156
Transcribe →