Season 6 Kickoff: Reflections, Recharging, and What’s Ahead

In this season opener, Erica D’Eramo returns to the Two Piers Podcast after a deliberate break between seasons. She reflects on the decision to step back in order to better support clients—particularly those in the federal government—affected by recent executive orders and reductions in force. Erica also shares personal insights from the past few months, including navigating illness, grief, and the necessity of taking time to rest and recharge.

This episode offers a preview of what’s ahead in Season 6: a revamped newsletter focused on workplace tools and practices, and a compelling lineup of guests including Coach Anthony, Molly Booker, James Felton Keith, and Amri Johnson. Erica reaffirms the podcast’s mission as a public benefit corporation and the continued commitment to real, grounded conversations that support human potential, fairness, and effective leadership.

Topics Discussed:

• Why the break between Seasons 5 and 6 was necessary
• Supporting clients through workforce disruption and organizational change
• The seasonality of life and the power of rest
• Personal reflections on illness, grief, and reconnection
• The importance of self-awareness in the recharging process
• What to expect in Season 6: guest lineup and new themes
• Recommitment to the podcast’s mission as a public benefit corporation

Resources and Links:

• Learn more at twopiersconsulting.com
• Subscribe to the Two Piers newsletter for tools, practices, and insights on building better workplaces
• Connect with Erica D’Eramo on LinkedIn
• Follow @twopiersconsulting on Instagram

About the Podcast:
The Two Piers Podcast is produced by Two Piers Consulting, a public benefit corporation dedicated to workplace equity, inclusive leadership, and organizational transformation. Hosted by Erica D’Eramo, the podcast features conversations with leaders, changemakers, and practitioners working to create more just and effective workplaces.

Transcript

Erica D'Eramo: 0:04

Hello and welcome to the Two Piers Podcast. I'm your host, Erica D'Eramo, and today we are kicking off season six. Hard to believe that we actually have six years of podcasting under our bell at this point, but we are really grateful to have you here, and we'll just give a little highlight of what's in store for season six. It'll be a short episode today. So welcome to season six. We are coming back from a little bit of a break over the first, I guess, almost half of 2025 decided to take a little breather in between Season Five and season six, just to kind of figure out what I wanted to do with this podcast, get a little Bit of a library and a backlog of episodes recorded and just refocus our energy in the first part of the year. I think a lot of folks know that Two Piers does quite a bit of work with folks either transitioning career paths or, you know, right now, we have a lot of clients that work in the federal government in different ways, different capacities. Some of them are active duty military some folks are civilian military support. Some folks are in various other departments of the government in a civilian capacity. But a lot of folks are experiencing a great deal of change right now, and so we did just take a break from the podcast to really focus our efforts on supporting our current clientele in the coaching space, but also in the consulting space. And some of our organizations that we support, you know, do a lot of work with government contracts, and they have been experiencing changes as well, due to, you know, the swath of executive orders that have been coming through and a lot of the impacts that that's had to various work streams, to, you know, reductions in force. It's been, it's been a lot of turmoil. So we decided to hit pause on the podcast for now, just so that we could make sure we were showing up and supporting people the way that they needed to be supported, and now we're ready to kick it back off. So I'm recording this episode from mid Coast Maine. We finally got some flowers blooming here. I know it's mid May, and I always have to remind myself that we don't usually get bud break. We don't usually get leaves on the trees until about mid May, and this week, the leaves are coming. So got little leaves on the trees. Stuff is starting to turn green. We've got some tulips blooming. And this time of year is always such a reminder for me of the, you know, the seasonality of the year, but also, just like the seasonality of life, that even after a very long winter, I mean, really, in Maine, you know, we kind of get, like, an eight month winter sometimes. And I like, I like that. We get four seasons. I like the lead up to winter. I love autumn. I love that change. I love the nesting that happens in the winter. But I gotta admit, March and April are pretty tough. They're pretty tough months. You know, you're kind of ready. The days are getting longer. You're ready to be outside, but the weather is still kind of tough. Lots of rain this year, but yesterday and today, we've had some sunshine. We had sunshine on Sunday, and it's just been, you know, a little bit of a wake up and a reminder for me, I'm getting over being sick for a couple of weeks, just fighting off a viral bug and and a lot, we've had some grief in our family. And, you know, just a reminder that, like, there are sunny days, there are sunny days, and this too shall pass for all of the challenges. There are cycles, and it's a reminder to really like smell the flowers, to be super cliche, but even in one of my coaching sessions where I was the client, when I was working with my coach, I just found myself overwhelmed the other day by the beauty of like looking outside and seeing the forsythia and realizing that we, you know, even especially maybe when things are super tough and when we are juggling so much and there's so much uncertainty and we don't know what we need to be doing to lead to the best outcomes, those are sometimes the time, the moments when it is Most important to take a moment and reconnect with nature. Get some sunshine on your skin, get some vitamin D through your eyeballs and and just remember that like we are all organisms. And sometimes I'll ask a client, like, if you were a house plant, how? How would you be doing right now? Are you getting. Enough water? Are you getting enough sunshine? Are you getting enough nutrients? And I think, honestly, sometimes the answer is just No. If I were a house plant, I think my leaves would be falling off right now. So just embracing some of that. And honestly, I think I've mentioned it before, but my cats are often a good reminder for me of just taking a moment and, you know, lounging in the sun, if that's what we need to recharge our batteries. But being cognizant, I think this is a time of year where it's especially prescient about, you know, the concept of, like, what recharges our batteries? Because we're getting ready for summer, at least here we just got our we have a little boat, and we're going to put it in the water soon, and we're really excited to be back out on the river and just, you know, exploring nature again. And it's a time of year to remind ourselves of, like, what does fill our cup? And it might not be what society tells us fills our cup, right? It might be that people, some people, relax and are rejuvenated by inactivity, and some people, especially as neurodivergent folks, maybe inactivity is not rejuvenating for us, and there might be a draw towards resting or relaxing. There might be a draw towards lots of activity right now and getting busy and starting to add our social calendar now that we're all coming out of hyper hibernation, and I, I laugh, because I know the folks in Houston, we have so many friends in Houston, you know, it's already like full blown summer down, down in different parts of the US, whereas here we're really Just in springtime. So this, this reflection might, you know, not be seasonally appropriate, appropriate for everyone, but at least for me, it's a time for me to really think through what do I need. And coming off of illness, I was really kind of laid out for a couple weeks. I had to be really clear with myself about what I could do and what I needed to take off my plate. So a lot of triage happening, a lot of surrender in terms of what I could accomplish and what I couldn't, and just letting myself really heal. And you could probably even hear in my voice, there's still a little bit of a scratch, there's still some coughing. I did want to kick off this season a few weeks ago, but I actually just had to wait until my voice healed to be able to even record this episode. So we'll be starting up our newsletter again. It'll be taking a different format so it will not be as lengthy. It won't really be a full kind of coverage of everything going on in the world of diversity, equity and inclusion. Instead, we're we'll be focusing more on what is most supportive for workplace practices, what people can, you know, tools and theories and practices that people can use themselves or within their teams to really create healthy, supportive workplaces and healthy supportive dynamics for ourselves and for those that we work with. So a little bit of a change in direction on our newsletter, but I will still be sharing the podcast episodes. We will still be having some of our favorite reading picks that we'll include in there, and we'll link to blog articles and share what's on the agenda, where you can find us, and what Two Piers is up to. And this season, we've got some great episodes already recorded in the queue ready to go out. Coach Anthony is back with some great reflections. He has a couple episodes that we'll be featuring him on we're also, we'll also be talking about some workplace, you know, structuring the workplace to avoid burnout, and what we can do from a systemic point of view with that, with Dr Marissa Alert, we have Molly Booker, who will be sharing her experiences of really coming into her own in terms of embracing a messy life, coming out of the closet and discovering herself. So she's joining us for June, and we've got some reflections from James Felton Keith JFK, and he talks to us about how insurance companies are looking at the concept of inclusion and looking at it from really like a liability perspective. But how are we ensuring for that? And he talks about his ISO practice that he's published. And we also have a Amri Johnson joining us to talk about this kind of revisiting what dei looks like, and what does that look like in our current environment? And he shares some really great introspective thoughts. So already, a good lineup. We've got other guests in the queue, excited to talk to them and share their insights and share what it is they're passionate about, and bring that. Our audience, and as always, the Two Piers Podcast is not sponsored. We don't take at least right now in the journey, I've decided against any kind of sponsorship, any kind of advertising. This really is just intended to be a resource for individuals to find some tools that can help them survive and thrive in their workplaces, or from a systems perspective, can help create the workplaces that we all want to be working in, and it is a resource out there in alignment with our public benefit corporation status. So we, you know, we put that mission first and foremost, and we will continue to do that as a public benefit corporation. So I am so excited for season six. I'm excited for the newsletter to kick back off. I am just wrapping up my pcc certification, so that will also be a big part of 2026 for me, or 2025 for me as an individual, as a coach, on my coaching journey, so I'll be sharing some insights about that as well, and and how I've grown and embraced some of those changes in my coaching, and what that's looked like. So really such a time of of growth and change, and we're happy to be back. Thanks for joining us for this episode, and we look forward to seeing you on the next one.