Sense Making. Making Sense.

In this episode, Alison is joined by two former colleagues. Women who have shaped both her both professionally and personally: Jackie Velasquez-Ross, a recruiting leader and talent strategist who has built design and research teams at Meta, InVision, Twitter and Tiny, and Dominique Ward, a design leader and systems thinker. Together they move through Beyoncé's work, from Self-Titled to Cowboy Carter, as a way of talking about leadership — what it looks like to evolve in public, claim your own voice, and share power back.

In this episode, rooted in Sentido's El Yunque chapter, Alison is joined by futurist and speculative designer Monika Bielskyte to talk about Protopia Futures — a framework built on the premise that the futures worth inhabiting are neither utopian nor extractive, and that most of the people designing ours are still working from a model of the human that science abandoned a long time ago.

In this episode, Alison is joined by director and cinematographer Soraya Sélène to talk about Who in the Hell Is Regina Jones? — a documentary about the founder of Soul newspaper, a nationally distributed publication that predated Rolling Stone, launched out of a dining room in 1966 by a woman with five children whose name most people still don't know.

In this episode, Alison is joined by Aimee Meredith Cox and Seouraya Wilson, teachers at The Class whose work is grounded in embodiment, care, and long-standing practice in collective spaces. Their conversation explores what it means to be honest with one another in real time, and how trust is built—not through polish or performance, but through presence, attention, and the willingness to stay with what’s uncomfortable.

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.

This episode explores the edges of uncertainty with Jessie Shefrin — a conversation about wandering, testing, stumbling, and ultimately emerging into new clarity.

In the final episode of season one, Jacqui and Alison celebrate making it through an entire first season during the midst of a global pandemic, economic crisis, and the Black Lives Matter movement. They reflect on the times with Quinnton Harris, his journey, and the importance of Juneteenth not just as a day, or a moment, but a call for organizational change.