Transformational Change with Jacqueline Corbelli
Transformational leader and three time author Jacqueline Corbelli joins the show to talk about her latest book, Changemaker: A Modern Playbook for Creating Personal Impact and Transformational Change. Crisis, she says, is where her mind goes quiet and she does her clearest thinking. Over time she has learned to tell the difference between acting on impulse and acting on trained instinct, and she won’t share an opinion until she has challenged her own reasoning first. Her biggest mistake, by her own account, was holding other people to the same punishing standard she held herself to. Her first mentor, Paul Allen of the bank restructuring firm where she was employee number one, told her she would limit her own success until she let go of the “never good enough” voice, and he nudged her toward meditation. She traces much of her drive to her family breaking up when she was young, which sent her out of her hometown near Buffalo on a path she only later recognized as purpose.
From there, Ryan asks how people turn bold visions into reality. Corbelli’s answer is that most people confuse planning with doing. Thinking bigger leads to better plans, she says, and real change means playing the long game and treating setbacks as adjustments rather than failures. These days she uses AI tools to build three, six, and nine month accountability playbooks. Her personal board of five includes two banking executives from her early investors, Paul Allen, economist Jeffrey Sachs, and the late Pope Francis. The Sachs story is a highlight: after reading The End of Poverty, she walked up to him at a lectern and told him her whole career had prepared her to help his work in Africa, which eventually led to her chairing the Millennium Villages Project across 12 African countries. Looking ahead, she sees AI as the most powerful problem solving tool humanity has ever had, but worries it is moving like a bullet train while too few leaders think deeply or move past agreeing on the problem.
Buy Jacqueline’s book here: https://www.amazon.com/Changemaker-Playbook-Creating-Personal-Transformational/dp
Jacqueline Corbelli, leadership, crisis decision making, meditation, Jeffrey Sachs, Millennium Villages Project, personal board of advisors, goal setting, artificial intelligence, transformational change
