Leadership, meaning, and work with a conscience.
Working on Purpose treats business as a place where identity, service, ambition, and culture all meet. Dr. Elise Cortez hosts warm, patient conversations with guests on AI, appreciation, burnout, soft skills, and purpose-led performance.
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Working on Purpose is a leadership interview show with a strong belief that work should be more than survival, status, or quarterly pressure. It is warm by design. Dr. Elise Cortez hosts conversations that move slowly enough for guests to explain not only what they think, but how they came to think it. The show is interested in vocation. It is also interested in culture. Recent episodes look at AI in the workplace, political division, the burden of being driven, soft skills, appreciation, Henry David Thoreau, creativity as medicine, and designing a more balanced life. That range gives the program a particular texture: part executive development, part personal reflection, part humane critique of modern work. It can talk about AI agents through categories such as offload, elevate, and extend, then shift into questions about fear, curiosity, and human acumen. It can treat ambition as a force that builds companies while also naming its destructive side. It can bring Thoreau into a business conversation without turning him into a slogan. The better moments often come when the host pauses to affirm a guest, recap an idea, and invite a deeper story. Listening itself becomes one of the show’s recurring values. So do appreciation, emotional intelligence, simplicity, creativity, and the belief that leaders set the emotional tone of a workplace. The episodes sometimes carry radio-style sponsor blocks and repeated station language, but the core conversations are intimate and values-forward. This is not a show chasing contrarian business takes. It is more patient than that. It asks what kind of people workplaces are forming. It asks what leaders owe to the people around them. For listeners drawn to purpose-driven leadership, reflective management conversations, and the inner life of professional ambition, Working on Purpose offers a steady place to think aloud with serious guests.
Made for: For leaders, managers, founders, coaches, and professionals who want workplace performance connected to purpose, empathy, and personal growth. It especially suits listeners who prefer reflective interviews over quick tactical lists.
What sets it apart: Working on Purpose stands apart by treating business challenges as human-development questions. Its conversations link AI, ambition, appreciation, burnout, and culture to the deeper work of becoming a more conscious leader.
Do you want TO HELP CREATE a world where people are passionate about their work? Where INSPIRATIONAL LEADERS HELP team members REALIZE THEIR GREATNESS, and capitalism thrives while serving the highest causes? Me, too. The Working on Purpose program is a thought leadership engine that ENLIGHTENS AND INSPIRES listeners with insights from ELITE business leaders and novel subject matter experts. Together, we’re WORKING ON PURPOSE TO STEWARD the future of work and BUSINESS to elevate us all. Working on Purpose is broadcast live Tuesdays at 6PM ET and Music on W4CY Radio (www.w4cy.com) part of Talk 4 Radio (<a href="https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__ww
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Dr. Elise Cortez makes leadership frameworks concrete by connecting organizational decisions with conflict, emotional awareness, burnout, and AI-driven workplace change.
Working on Purpose turns workplace questions into thoughtful, interview-led conversations about how people lead, collaborate, and keep their footing under pressure. Host Dr.
Thanksgiving plans and a co-founder hire can use the same conflict playbook when your life refuses compartments.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A workplace AI conversation that treats adaptation as a skill.
The episode presents AI as a workplace skill rather than a mystery, with Dr. Elise Cortez steering a calm discussion about balance and adaptation. The guest makes a practical case for building AI acumen, arguing that the person who uses the tools better can help set the pace.
A grounded conversation about pausing, listening, and keeping empathy present across political divides.
Leadership can become a listening problem when politics turns ordinary conversation into an us-and-them exchange. This episode of Working on Purpose stays with that tension, focusing on how a pause can keep empathy available when people are speaking past one another.
Driven ambition gets a hard look here, with responsibility never far behind.
Working on Purpose stays centered on people with drive and the damage that drive can sometimes leave behind. Caro presents the group as company-shapers and world-shapers, while also making room for the problems they can set in motion.
Thoreau's simple life becomes a clear question about bills, work, and the cost of enough.
Working on Purpose turns to Henry David Thoreau's Walden to frame a durable question about work: how much of a working life is shaped by bills that make a job difficult to leave? Dr.
Creativity is treated as a practical workplace tool, not decoration.
The conversation makes a clear case that creativity is not ornamental in the workplace; it helps set tone, and leaders who show vulnerability, curiosity, and openness can make that permission feel real for others.
A grounded conversation that gives conflict a human scale, from holiday tension to a co-founder hiring decision.
Working on Purpose treats conflict as something that shows up inside ordinary family choices and shared work decisions, not as a separate professional problem. Renee McGinnis talks with Dr.
A grounded look at making kindness visible in the way teams communicate and work.
Leadership is framed as a daily practice: making people feel that they matter, and letting kindness influence how a business actually runs. Dr. Elise Cortez draws out the guest's approach to organizing work in pods, then linking similar pods so teams do not become isolated.
Business leaders, market lessons, real operating stories.
Leadership thinking under real pressure.
Calmer leadership, clearer teams, stronger trust.
This episode explores how to design a fulfilling life using a 'life score' framework to align work with personal purpose and meaning.
Dr.
This episode explores how companies can measure and amplify purpose to create meaningful workplaces that drive employee engagement and business performance, featuring an interview with Dr.
This episode explores how executives can lead with clarity, credibility, and purpose to create cascading positive impacts in their organizations through developing inspirational leadership and high-performance cultures.
Dr.
AI is not the enemy here.
Pause first.
Dr.
This episode explores why soft skills are essential for team success through the framework of the Five C's, focusing on creating meaningful work environments where people can thrive.
This episode explores how appreciation transforms workplace culture and drives high performance, featuring psychologist Dr.
Dr.
The conversation looks at how art and creativity can help people inside demanding workplaces.
This episode features an interview with Bill Juszczyk about using a life score to design a balanced and fulfilling life, connecting personal purpose with workplace inspiration.
This episode explores how leaders can unlock their full potential through higher awareness to achieve greater service and organizational success, featuring Brian Cunningham's journey from parking attendant to CEO.