EP 113: Learn Back, Lead Forward: The Leadership Lessons Hidden in your Career Journey

 

What if leadership isn’t about constantly pushing forward — but about pausing long enough to reflect?

In this solo episode, Dr. Lola Adeyemo shares a simple framework that has shaped how she thinks about growth, career pivots, and impact:

Learn back. Lead forward.

Drawing on conversations with past guests and her own journey across science, consulting, and workplace inclusion strategy, Lola explores how the strongest leaders don’t just accumulate experience — they make meaning from it.

Through three powerful stories, you’ll hear how curiosity, values alignment, and community responsibility shape sustainable leadership.

If you’re entering a new season, considering a pivot, or rethinking what leadership looks like for you, this episode will help you move forward with intention.

In this episode, we explore:

• Why reflection is a leadership skill

• How non-linear careers often lead to the greatest impact

• The difference between achievement and alignment

• Why leadership eventually becomes service to others

• 3 practical ways to design your next chapter intentionally

Guests & conversations referenced

Dr. Meklit Workneh
From Ethiopia to Stanford to Moderna, Meklit shares how curiosity and courageous pivots shaped her path into biotech leadership and AI-driven clinical trials.

🎧 Listen: Dr.Workneh's Episode Link

Funmi Onamusi
A people-first executive leader who models how values alignment — not title chasing — creates sustainable, integrated leadership. 

🎧 Listen: Funmi's Episode Link

Ukeme Awakessien Jeter
Engineer, lawyer, and mayor, Ukeme shares how belonging and representation inspired her to move from personal success to civic impact.

🎧 Listen: Mayor Ukeme's Episode Link

3 Takeaways to apply this week

1. Audit the beliefs you’re still carrying

2. Lead from integration — your lived experience is an asset

3. Build community intentionally — leadership isn’t solo work

Connect with Lola

Dr. Lola Adeyemo is a speaker, consultant, and founder of EQI Mindset and Immigrants in Corporate, helping organizations build cultures of belonging through ERGs and workplace community strategy.

Website: www.drlola-adeyemo.com 
LinkedIn: @drlolaadeyemo

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hello and welcome to the Thriving in Intersectionality Podcast. A podcast that explores the real experiences of professionals navigating the workplace with layered, leaded identities. I'm your host, Dr. Lola Ateemo, the CEO of EQI Mindset and founder of the nonprofit Immigrants Incorporate, Inc. I'm also an author, speaker, and a workplace inclusion strategist. I work with organizations to build communities of belonging through strategy, storytelling, and systems change. This podcast amplifies the voices of professionals from intersectional backgrounds, immigrants, ethnic minorities, first-gen professionals, veterans, working parents, individuals with disabilities, and so many more. Through solo reflections and guest conversations, we'll uncover the eating challenges, celebrate the wins, and offer insights to help you thrive, not just survive, in the corporate world. Because in today's global workforce, belonging isn't just a bonus, it's the catalyst for real growth and impact. Let's dive in. Hello! Welcome back to another episode of the Thriving in Intersectionality Podcast. And today's episode is a solo episode, but I'm going to be bringing in a few different voices in reflection. So, as I've started this new year, uh, the beginning of the year is always I love new beginnings first. Um, I used to be in project management, I love new projects. I it's an exciting time because it's like you have a very clean canvas and looking forward to planning. And that happens for me in December as we wrap up a year and we look forward to the new year. I love looking back and seeing what went well, what didn't, and then planning ahead, always excited about the new year as far as what's going to happen, what I'm gonna get involved in. So as I think about careers and specifically the insights and the leadership guests that we've had on this podcast, I have been looking back at some of the guests that we've had here. So the phrase that's been sitting with me is learn back and lean forward. The more I think about it, I realize that's actually how leadership works, right? We have to constantly keep learning, keep revising what the plan we the plan we started with doesn't necessarily mean that's what's going to the next one. So we don't rush into the next title, we don't need to constantly prove ourselves, but we have to pause long enough to ask, what has my journey already taught me? What lessons have I already experienced? Because leadership is not built only in the forward motion, right? It's not by racing through. You have to learn and revise and redesign so that you can move faster. It's built in reflection. So when I look back across the conversations I've had on this podcast, across immigrants, executives, public servants, change makers, I see a lot of consistency. And every time I try to reflect back on the episodes, I always end up with two to three guests that I see some alignment and uh similarities and insightful lessons from their journey. The strongest leaders don't just accumulate experience, and as the interviews with the guests I've had shows, they make meaning of it. A lot of times, the soul of the podcast episodes is to learn from the journey of my guests. So today I want to do something a little different. I want to learn back on this episode and provide some insights for you as you look ahead to the next phase of your career, of your journey in this year. I want to reflect on three-past guests and the leadership lessons they are leaving out now. And then we'll talk about how we can use those lessons to lead forward in our next chapter. One of the first people that came to mind immediately, I started reflecting, and I had to go back and listen to some of these episodes is Dr. Merklit Wapney. A story stayed with me first because there was a lot of similarities with my story as well. I came to the US in my early 20s alone without my family. She came even earlier than I did. She came to the US alone at 17.

unknown 5:06

Dr.

SPEAKER_00 5:06

McClitz built a path through Stanford, went in for public health, went to medical school, worked with the FDA, and now she's leading AI integrated clinical trials at a large uh pharmaceutical organization in the US. If you map her career on paper, however, it does not look linear at all. It looks like detours, it looks like changes. It looks like how did I get here? When you hear her talk, you realize something. Every step she took along her career path was guided by curiosity, not fear, not prestige, not what was she supposed to do, but curiosity. And she stressed that a lot as she told her story. She talked about how she kept asking, what else is possible? What problem do I want to solve? Where can I make the most impact? And one of the statements that she said was, I didn't even know this career existed when I started. When I think about the world of work now, I think about career outlook journals and books that we read decades ago when we were thinking about schools and thinking of our dream roles. Everything is shifting now. If you have, if you have not stayed curious, if you haven't stayed uh abreast of career developments and learning new things, that goal that you thought you had years ago could be very much irrelevant right now when it comes to career. Some of the most aligned careers don't exist on the job board. You have to build them. You bring so many pieces of yourself, of your journey, into being able to provide a solution for what the organization needs. And sometimes we get stuck on the job board. Listening to Dr. Merkly reminded me that sometimes the moves we think are off track are actually the training ground. So that's one lesson in learning, learning back. Sometimes your pivots are not mistakes, they are preparation. So then moving on to something deeper, because Sakaria, of course, is not just about what we do, it's about who we are while we're doing it. I went back to my conversation with Fumi Omamousi. Fumi Onomusi leads people and inclusion strategy at a massive NHS trust in the UK. And what struck me about her wasn't just her resume, it was her clarity. She talked a lot about designing her career around values. She was very clear about that. Not chasing titles, not inheriting someone else's expectations, but asking herself along the way, what kind of life do I want? What kind of leader do I want to be? What actually matters to me? And that sounds very simple, but it's radical because so many of us, uh, especially minorities in the workplace, women, immigrants, first-gen professionals, we're taught to survive, to prove first, to say yes first. We don't often pause to ask if something actually feeds us. Fumi reminded me that leadership maturity looks a lot like alignment, not just achievement. Learning back for Fumi meant recognizing these are the environments where I thrive. These are the values I won't compromise. This is the story I want to write for myself. And then she leads forward from that place, not fragmented, but integrated. There's something incredibly powerful about that because when you are fully integrated, you don't burn out trying to perform leadership. You simply embody it. And that's the difference between building a career that is in alignment with your values and building a career that goes where everybody else thinks you should go. Finally, talking about my third guest that I want to bring back, some of the insights from listening to our episode again. And I think this one is actually very timely because she's going through some major leading forward changes in our career right now, that I thought was just a build-up on all the conversation I had with her, and that shows that this is exactly what she has been building towards for a while. Leadership is never just about you, it eventually becomes what you're building for others. That's what I saw in my conversation with Ukeme, awake sinjeda, engineer, lawyer, and eventually mayor of a city. So here's what moved me most about our story. Ukeme didn't enter politics because of ambition. She entered because of belonging. She talks about how our daughter came home from school wanting to change herself to fit in. And that moment ate her. She realized if the system is not creating belonging for my child, then I have to help change the system. Now that's leadership, not title chasing, but responsibility. If you listen to the episode, the conversation, the backstory of Ecome's Live, you see she's had a couple of transitions in successful harcore careers, right? As an engineer, as an immigrant across different countries, not just the US, and then rebuilding career after career and eventually stepping into the role of mayor of a city. And when I talk about major changes, she just got sworn in again for the second term as mayor. She's still building changes, building systems, she's still shaping experiences and leadership for people around her. And some of the things she talks about is networking intentionally, stepping into the rooms you were not invited to, not waiting for permission to lead. So as I was listening to our episode again, I thought this is what leading forward really looks like. It's not just career growth. We go beyond our own career growth to when we actually are making impact for someone else, for people like us, for the people coming behind. It's not just your own career growth, it's the community impact that you're making every single day. He's saying, How do I make this better for the people that are going to come behind me? That's legacy work. So when I look back at these three stories together, I see a pattern, I see a lot of curiosity, I see alignment, and I see community, career, self, and the impact we make. And honestly, I see my own journey in that too. From studying science, taking the step to move to a new country, to get a master's in science, to working in different life science companies, to consulting, to research, to community building. None of it was linear. But when I learn back, I can see the thread for myself. And it helps me lead forward with more intention, less also, more clarity. So I want to wrap this up. Um, of course, telling you to go listen to my conversations with these three guests. The details is in the show notes. I'll link to their contact information, I'll link to the conversations I have with them. But the summary of these reflections, this leaning back on these three episodes is for you, if you're thinking about your own next chapter, here are three simple practices that I pull out from these stories. First, make sure you're auditing the lessons you're still carrying. Some beliefs were survival strategies, not leadership truths. You might need to update them. Some things we did because we felt we had to, because it was cultural, because we needed it at that point in time. But we're growing, we're stretching, we're changing. So review some of the beliefs you had. It might not be the ideal leadership truth, it might be survival strategies. What are some of those lessons that you need to update? Secondly, lead from integration. Stop separating who you are from how you lead. Your lived experience is an asset, not something to hide. Pull everything together, every experience you've had, every lesson you've learned, every role you've taken, even the ones that seem like they didn't work, you learned something from it. Stop separating who you are from how you lead. Every experience, your story is an asset. And finally, build community on purpose. Not a single person sustains leadership alone. Find your people and build with them. In conclusion, I hope this has been helpful as you reassess where you are, what you have learned from where you've been, and where you're going next in this next phase of your career. But learning back is not about dwelling in the past, it's about honoring the past, understanding the past, and choosing differently moving forward. Just because you've done it a certain way and it fits for a certain season doesn't mean that's what you need for the next season. So maybe this week, take a moment and ask yourself, what has my journey already taught me? And how do I want to lead differently because of those lessons? Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for listening to the Thriving in Intersectionality podcast. Please rate and review this episode and let us know your thoughts. Thank you. Immigrants and first-gen professionals, join our free community at www.immigrantincorporate.org for career support, networking and resources in community with peers who understand your journey. Tag our podcast page on LinkedIn or connect with me directly to continue the conversation. Please don't forget to rate and review to help others discover these discussions. Keep thriving in your intersections. Your story matters. I'm Dr. Lola Ademo, and this has been Thriving in Intersectionality Podcast.