Authentic Leadership Podcast

For nearly four decades, health sociologist Barry Taylor has worked at the forefront of suicide prevention and mental wellbeing in New Zealand and Australia.His work has spanned youth suicide prevention, postvention, community mobilisation, workforce development and mental-health support for LGBTIQ+ communities. However, Barry’s understanding of suicide changed profoundly through his own experience of chronic depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts.In this deeply personal conversation, Barry challenges approaches focused only on risk factors and checklists. Instead, he asks:“If the universe sent you an invitation today to live, what would need to be written on it for you to accept?”Barry explores the importance of compassionate conversations, coping, connection, purpose and meaning. He explains his four foundations for suicide-prevention work—comfort, confidence, competence and compassion—and why people sometimes need others to become custodians of hope when they cannot hold hope for themselves.This is a conversation about seeing the person behind the distress, listening without immediately trying to fix them and inviting people not only to live, but ultimately to thrive.At the end, Barry shares the message he would give his younger self:“You are loved. You are cherished. You don’t have to be perfect.”Hosted by Ivan Yeo for Authenticity Studio™.Content note: This episode includes discussions of suicide, suicidal thoughts, depression, anxiety, trauma and mental distress.

At just 16, Jai Jamali left Singapore alone after receiving a dance scholarship in Wellington—beginning a journey that would eventually take him to the Australian stage in major productions including The Lion King, Grease and Chicago. In this episode of the Authentic Leadership Podcast, Jai shares how he paid for his own dance classes, trained through long, demanding days, faced competitive auditions, and built a professional career through determination, versatility, and a deep love of dance. Now a dance teacher, personal trainer and group fitness instructor, Jai reflects on moving from performing to helping others discover what their bodies can achieve. He also speaks about identity, being different, trusting the future and remaining true to who you are. His message is simple: there are no shortcuts to your dreams. If you do not try, you will never know what is possible.

Born in France to French and Mexican parents, Victoria grew up across Nigeria, Kenya, and Madagascar before studying medicine in Belgium and eventually moving to Aotearoa New Zealand. In this conversation, Victoria reflects on life as a third-culture child, the meaning of home and the family relationships that grounded her through constant change. She shares moving memories of her grandparents and how their love and influence remain present in her life. Victoria also speaks honestly about becoming a GP, the pressures healthcare professionals face, and the importance of understanding the person behind an illness. For her, medicine is not simply about diagnosing a condition—it is about listening to what matters most to each patient and recognising how culture shapes people’s experiences of health and disease. Now working in South Auckland, Victoria reflects on adapting to New Zealand’s healthcare system, finding belonging in a multicultural city and beginning another chapter far from everything familiar. This is a conversation about migration, family, medicine, identity and discovering that home is not always one particular place—it can be wherever the people who understand us are found.

In this thoughtful conversation, Ivan speaks with 20-year-old Annemarie Wen about growing up as a second-generation Chinese New Zealander between Mandarin and English. Annemarie shares that Mandarin was initially her strongest language, but English gradually took over at school. With her parents' encouragement, she later reclaimed her Chinese and became fluent in both languages. Yet this created an unusual experience: Chinese speakers sometimes assumed she could not speak Mandarin, while local New Zealanders sometimes questioned whether she could speak English. From primary school, ESOL and kapa haka to Chinese cultural groups, university friendships and travelling through China, Annemarie reflects on how language shapes identity, confidence, friendship and belonging. She also speaks about experiencing discrimination as a child—recognising that something felt wrong before she had the words to explain it. Her story reveals that learning a language was never simply about vocabulary. It was about understanding people, entering different social worlds and removing the barriers that prevent connection. Ultimately, this is a conversation about holding two languages, moving between cultures and discovering that being connected to both worlds can become a unique strength.

What happens to the stories of people whose lives are never recorded? In this deeply moving conversation, Jenny Janif and Esteban Espinoza explore how poetry and storytelling can preserve history, honour those who came before us and give voice to experiences that might otherwise disappear. Jenny reflects on her multicultural upbringing in Fiji, her family’s history of indenture and blackbirding, and her move to Aotearoa after Fiji’s 1987 coup. She also discusses Fiji Indian identity and using creative expression to confront racism, colourism, inequality and social injustice. Esteban traces his creative journey back to Chile’s 1973 military coup, when his family was separated, and poetry became a way to express, resist and heal. He shares why he writes about people whose suffering and lives may never otherwise be remembered, and how his mother’s community activism has shaped his work. Together, they reflect on migration, identity, oral tradition, ancestral wisdom and our responsibility to pass these stories to future generations. As Esteban reminds us, podcasts are a new form of storytelling—helping preserve the voices, memories and human experiences that time might otherwise take away.