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Voices of Disruption with Deborah Olatunji
Voices of Disruption with Deborah Olatunji
Author: Deborah Olatunji
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© 2025 Voices of Disruption with Deborah Olatunji
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The Voices of Disruption Podcast is all about showcasing the visionaries of Generation Z and is hosted by the author of Unleashing Your Innovative Genius: High School Redesigned, Deborah Olatunji. This show is for young people with disruptive mindsets (early adapters to much-needed change) who are redesigning systems that do not work and do not serve their purposes anymore, all while having conversations about how to continue to turn our LOUD disruptions into IGNITED agency and CONSISTENT actions. There’s a whole lot of pain and loneliness in the world right now and it’s easy to get overwhelmed with the prospect of knowing what you want to do with your life. This podcast will show you that you can still be a disruptor without having everything all figured out! Each episode will empower you to realize that you can still share your voice with having the entire script perfectly written and edited. The Voices of Disruption Podcast speaks directly to how you can learn to unleash and use your disruptive voice while having a place to plug into to learn new ideas and perspectives and develop yourself as a member of Gen Z! Watch out world, Gen Z is taking over!!
19 Episodes
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Welcome back to the Voices of Disruption podcast! I am glad that you’re here. This episode is all about coming back to spaces that we’ve left and asking ourselves: what gets to stay? and what still serves us this season of life? I get real and honest about how the past 10 months have been, including talking about friendship, emotional growth, my relationship with my therapist, and stillness. TW (trigger warning), there is a mention of depression in this episode. I want to be authentic about w...
We’re celebrating one year of the Voices of Disruption podcast on this week’s episode as well as the return of the podcast. After a much-needed break between the transition of summer to the new school year, the stories that need to be heard are coming in HOT from this space of vulnerability, empathy, and rejuvenation. One year ago, I sat in my freshman dorm room and hit record on a software I was unfamiliar with using. This week’s episode was recorded in my sophomore dorm room with complete...
Happy August! Last week, we started to get into how our upbringing affects the way we view relationships, so it only makes sense to dive deeper this week into how culture shapes our entire lives and beliefs. As a Nigerian-American, I grew up between the crossroads of two different worlds, or as today’s guest would call it, the realities and stories of having a hyphenated identity. In this week’s episode, I chat with Phoebe Omonira to discuss empathy, growing gains and pains, leading generatio...
Let's get straight to the point. The very thought of "shooting your shot" has a clear meaning—making your desires about another person known to said person. They are the forbidden crushes that our parents tell us to ignore in place of academic success, especially if you grew up in an immigrant household. It's the 5 stages of denial, a learned practice we've become way too familiar with in navigating our emotions. But what if I told you that the act of shooting your shot is so much big...
Every other week, I get a message in my DMs asking about how to start a podcast and manage time. The people have (LOUDLY) spoken! This week, I go into the tools that I use, talk about some behind-the-scenes logistics for the VODPOD, and lessons I’ve learned from podcasting for almost a year now. For starters, podcasting is a slow burn. I dive into questions from you all like, “how to stay consistent with editing and recording?” “how I learned graphic design?” and “what was the hardest part of...
Change is something we’ve become all too familiar with over the course of the past 16 months. Along with the newness comes the chance to confront our self-limiting beliefs and unpack what we’ve been taught to believe about exploration and growth. In this episode, I share the story of how changing my major from nursing has disrupted the path of my life. I talk about how I came to making such a big decision, what I had plans for beforehand, and what plans I have for the future. This is probably...
Welcome back to the Voices of Disruption Podcast! It's so great to be back. Thank you for being here. In this episode, I recap what the last five months have been like, borrow from the genius of the New Happy Co's Stephanie Harrison's philosophy on creating a healthy digital home, and share some tidbits of what Season 2 will be like. We've even got new cover art and there are some new life updates in this episode! I also talk about some skills I want to learn over the summer, some of what I l...
Happy New Year!! What are some non-negotiables in your relationships? How do you remain positive in a pandemic that lasted for almost an entire year? What did the last four months of 2020 teach you? In this Season 1 Finale episode, I talk about what challenges I faced in creating the podcast, lessons that I've learned from the slow burn that is podcasting, and answer some questions from you!! I reflect on what it means to have a dream school (and if I had one), the new hobbies that I picked ...
What does it mean for you to be powerful? Has 2020 felt like a pressure-cooker and have you felt guilty for not doing what you were “supposed” to do? How can we create thoughtful connections in the years ahead? In this episode of the VOD POD, I sit down with Maria Gilfoyle, the founder of the Power Thread, a community that celebrates what it means for YOU to be powerful. Maria created this platform while she was a college student at Washington University to showcase the stories of powerful wo...
What does personal development look like for you? If you could describe yourself in 5 words, what would they be? I've been talking about self-awareness and core values all season long! What's all the hype about? The answer is finally here. In this episode, I share the steps to creating a culture code for your life and core values to understand yourself better. I breakdown my own core values, explain the definitions behind them, and discuss the importance of defining these words in a context t...
How many times have you heard the phrase “college and career ready?” Would you say that your education experience has made you “life-ready?” What skills do you wish you were taught in high school? How well do you know yourself? There are key skills that we should have learned like personal development, cultural awareness, civic engagement, and self-advocacy. In this heartfelt episode, Deborah sits down to chat with Zoë Jenkins, an education activist from Kentucky, NatGeography Young Explorer,...
What are you more afraid of, failure or success? And why? The deeper answer to the second question will surprise you! In this episode, Deborah sits down to talk about the power of our joy and what it means to acknowledge and honor it. She also shares the words of Joel Leon and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie to discuss what understanding the intersection between success and failure. In 2020, there has been so many moments of grief, sadness, tragedy, and disappointment. This episode deals with what e...
What does growing up mean to you? Have you ever accidentally washed your debit card...or created your own budget for a grocery trip by yourself? How do you build new relationships in an environment that is entirely new to you? Are you friends with yourself? The pandemic has certainly changed the way we see many areas of our lives. Human connection is needed more than ever before...but how can we achieve a level of authenticity in the virtual spaces we interact with daily? Without the convenie...
Are you a student learning virtually this semester? How has the pandemic affected your academic experience? What have you discovered about yourself and your community during this time? Students all over the country have entered college during one of the most challenging years of the decade. In this episode, Deborah takes the time to talk about her college experience thus far. She describes her relationship with the University of Pennsylvania as one of "love and hate" as she continues to see t...
Have you ever had two interests that were glaringly different from each other? Have you ever tried to combine them? What about this: how do spelling and science come together? In this down-to-earth guest interview episode, Deborah sits down to chat with Snehaa Ganesh Kumar, an astrophysics major at UC Berkeley and the Scripps National Spelling Bee Runner-Up (2016), to talk about navigating life in the pandemic, reflecting the social impact space as the founder of a non-profit organization, an...
What is an idea or goal that you wake up thinking about? What resources exist in your network, whether that be people, experiences, skills, and projects, do you feel inspired by daily? How are you working towards building a life of impact? And how do you turn the fear of starting into a solid bet on your potential? In this episode, Deborah takes the time to explain the story of the creation of this podcast. It started as a suggestion from a friend a year ago, but the journey that it has taken...
Have you ever listened to a podcast with identical twins who have nearly identical voices? In this first interview episode of the season, Deborah Olatunji sits down with Dorcas Olatunji, her twin sister, to talk about disrupting the worlds of technology, advocacy, education policy, social entrepreneurship, and business. Don’t worry about the similar voices though, as this episode explores their upbringing in a household of 7 and how their unique identities have helped them in creating disrupt...
If you could describe 2020 in only one word, what would it be? For Deborah Olatunji, she would have to choose the word "pivot." There are so many "what if's" that could have happened during this rollercoaster of a year from weddings, family gatherings, scheduled book tours, sports seasons and competitions to concerts, graduation ceremonies, and more. By using the word pivot, both unintentionally and intentionally, we all had to decide to turn those "what if's" into "what now's." In this epi...
Have you ever felt an urge to make an impact, but you didn't know how? Have you ever felt alone in your search for purpose and identity? If so, this new podcast will speak to you in a thousand different ways. Here's the official trailer for the Voices of Disruption podcast by Deborah Olatunji. The Voices of Disruption Podcast is all about showcasing the visionaries of Generation Z and is hosted by the author of Unleashing Your Innovative Genius: High School Redesigned, Deborah Olatunji. This ...













