Leadership stories with heart, memory, and purpose.
Ronderings gives guests room to trace the life events that shaped how they lead, teach, build culture, and make meaning. The tone is intimate and reflective, with conversations moving from family history and personal loss into practical questions about voice, equity, burnout, and purpose.
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Ronderings is a long-form conversation show about the human side of leadership, especially in education, social impact, wellness, communications, and community-centered work. It has the feel of a close conversation rather than a polished panel. Guests are invited to tell the story before the lesson appears. That gives the show its shape. Childhood neighborhoods, family illness, school experiences, faith, mentorship, burnout, city pride, cultural memory, and professional turning points all become part of the same leadership map. One episode follows Nicholas Pascale from special education teaching into school leadership and corporate philanthropy, using grief, family, culture, and relationships to think about legacy. Another centers Dr. Maya M. Faison and the cost of being a Black woman leader inside education reform spaces that want the work but resist the voice. Hector Calderón brings the conversation toward peace, justice, hip-hop, community-driven schooling, and the belief that education can move from self-definition to self-determination. Amanda Muhammad connects mindfulness, faith, stress, workplace culture, and psychological safety without treating wellness as a slogan. Ellen Petry Leanse pushes into attention, habit, creativity, neuroscience, heartbreak, and the limits of how people are taught to think. Dr. Natalie Neris brings faith, systems change, sustainable leadership, and education through the lens of integrity and whole-person leadership. Danielle Kristine Toussaint reframes communication as strategic intelligence, not surface polish. Across these conversations, Ronderings keeps returning to the same durable questions. What does leadership cost? What does it heal? What gets lost when people shrink to fit institutions? What changes when leaders tell the truth, build culture, and stay connected to their own bodies, histories, and communities? The show suits listeners who want career reflection with emotional texture. It is not a quick-tip business show. It is slower, warmer, and more interested in the path that made the person than the achievement printed on a bio.
Made for: For educators, nonprofit leaders, coaches, advocates, and reflective professionals who care about impact without flattening the person behind the work. It especially fits listeners drawn to identity, wellness, equity, and values-driven leadership.
What sets it apart: Ronderings stands apart by letting life history carry the leadership lesson. The show treats family, grief, culture, faith, burnout, and institutional power as central to how people lead, not side notes.
In RONderings, Ron talks to his guests about their superpowers, including career advice, diversity, mindset, wellness, and leadership. Ron grew up in New York City, and has been coaching and leading executive searches for the last five years, taking what he has learned from 15 years in corporate, higher education, government, and non-profit contexts. He and his wife are obsessed with reality television, and Ron also moonlights as a men's personal stylist and group fitness instructor. Ron says, "I believe in the power of intuition and deepening one’s self-awareness and impact on others. I believe in the power of connection an...
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Ron Rapitalo makes leadership legible through candid conversations about trust, culture, communication, and the daily work of building durable organizations.
Ronderings turns leadership into a conversation about decisions, relationships, and the institutions those choices shape. In one-to-one interviews, Ron Rapitalo traces guests' career changes and asks how values survive contact with organizational pressure.
Ron Rapitalo says what your last school team meeting may have politely avoided about trust.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A grounded leadership story that keeps coming back to relationships, loss, and school culture.
Nicholas Pascal's path reads as a steady argument for leadership built on people, culture, and care, not posture. He moves from special education teacher to principal, district leader, nonprofit consultant, and now corporate philanthropy at Vanguard, and the thread stays the…
A story of migration, movement, and community genius.
Hector Calderon's arc gives this episode a clear through line: education shaped by lived experience rather than abstract policy. It travels from the burning Bronx to a one-room schoolhouse in the Dominican Republic and then to Puente Academy for Peace and Justice, where…
A grounded look at faith, leadership, and burnout in Chicago public schools.
The piece keeps faith, leadership, and the pressures on Chicago public schools in view, especially selective enrollment schools and the strain of poverty-induced trauma.
Clarity matters, and trust is what it builds.
Danielle Christine Toussaint's conversation with Ron Rapitalo frames communication as strategic intelligence, not decoration. It links her early leadership spark, her first-generation Yale experience, and the work of Purple House into a clear argument for why leaders need to…
Education leadership shaped by family legacy, service, and lived experience.
Dr. Chantelle George is presented as a leader shaped by education, family legacy, and service. Raised in Lafayette, Louisiana, she points to a line of educators, French immersion, 14 years of dance, and a home shaped by an Air Force veteran and a mother who spent more than two…
A grounded conversation about trust, school inequity, and AI that aims to give teachers time back.
Leadership is treated less as a growth tactic than as a relationship problem. Nick Freeman's path from an MBA in corporate finance through a quarter-life crisis at 26 and into Chicago education gives the episode its clearest shape.
Stephen Dubner tests bourbon economics, Alzheimer's research, and money advice against hard data.
Daily business news with Kai Ryssdal, tracking Fed policy, oil shocks, and private credit.
Galloway rotates Office Hours Q&A, Raging Moderates politics, and China Decode geopolitics weekly.
Joel and Matt answer listener money questions weekly in the show's Ask HTM segments.
Nicholas Pascal starts with family, loss, and purpose.
This episode features a conversation with Dr.
Ron Rapitalo sits down with Hector Calderon for a sweeping conversation about education, memory, and community power.
This episode features a conversation with Amanda Muhammad about mindfulness, burnout, and conscious leadership, exploring how stress manifests in bodies and workplaces, and discussing psychological safety, faith, and the future of work.
This episode features Ellen Petry Leanse discussing how her experiences at Apple led to a 35-year neuroscience journey exploring how brain hemispheres shape perception, creativity, and human potential.
Ron opens with real-life banter and then settles into a thoughtful conversation with Dr.
Ronderings sits down with Danielle Christine Toussaint, founder and chief strategist of Purple House, a communications consultancy helping CEOs and social impact leaders say what they mean with clarity and compassion.
Ron Rapitalo welcomes Dr.
["Nick Freeman says Innovare is saving educators time so they can focus on relationships, cutting some student-planning work from hours to minutes.", "Ron Rapitalo presses him on how a Chicagoan from Hyde Park went from an MBA in corporate finance to Chicago Public Schools, then into entrepreneurship with AJ DeLeon and Fernando DeLeon.", "Freeman traces the roots to a basement baseball league his parents ran for 25 years, Chicago school closures in 2013, and the Englewood-Gresham classrooms where he saw leaking roofs and uneven staffing.", "The conversation turns blunt on venture capital, with Freeman citing less than half a percent for black and brown founders, the strain of representation, and why not all money is good money."]
This episode features a conversation between the host and Donnell J.
This episode features a conversation with Niloy Gangopodhyay about the intersection of education, sports, and leadership, exploring personal stories and cultural values.
This episode features an interview with De-Lea Deane-Allen, discussing her personal and professional journey in education, including topics like DEI in hiring, athletic background, and trusting intuition.
This episode features an interview with Dr.
This episode features an interview with Mike Montoya, CEO of Stronger Consulting, discussing his personal journey growing up in a conservative environment, discovering his LGBTQ+ identity, and how youth development programs shaped his path to entrepreneurship.