Hi there,
How are you, and what does community mean to you? Hit reply and let me know.
As always, I am immensely grateful to Anna DeNardin who creates bespoke artwork and graphics every week to help bring this In The Business of Healthy Masculinity conversation to life. Please do reach out to her if you would like brand, art, or graphics support.
Today, I cannot wait to introduce you to a newer person in my world, Stepheni Mendez.
Stepheni is the co-founder of Soul and Strategy Collective, a nonprofit supporting women in building anti-extractive, decolonial businesses.
As a leadership advisor and coach, she partners with founders, executives, and emerging leaders in tech and creative industries to create high-impact, human-centered organizations.
Stepheni is recognized for blending evidence-based organizational design and leadership psychology with intuitive, soul-aligned frameworks and ancestral wisdom—helping clients move beyond burnout and toward liberatory, sustainable leadership.
Her work centers on challenging traditional business models, cultivating cultures of trust, emotional intelligence, and co-creation, and guiding leaders to embody healthy power that balances masculine and feminine energies.
Based in the US and working globally, Stepheni is committed to reshaping the future of leadership from the inside out.
You can contact Stepheni at the following:
Website: soulstrategycollective.comEmail: me@stephenim.com
You can listen/watch our impactful conversation above (in substack) and on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube.
As a prior UX designer in the US tech space, Stepheni has a super interesting origin story which you will hear more about, however upfront, I wanted to share some of the key insights that I took away from this beautiful conversation:
* An effective and impactful community is not comfortable and homogeneous, it is diverse and at times uncomfortable.
* For us men, especially men that look like me, we have rarely, if ever, had to face the wrath of systemic injustice, or systemic oppression. An in invitation to get curious around that.
* Modelling compassion over resentment is key to re-imagining and co-creating something better and healthier
* Fight the system, not each other. This has something that has been coming up more and more for me.
To what extent do any of the above insights spark your curiosity?
In this below clip, Stepheni speaks to point #4 above really powerfully:
For many of us men, we have been conditioned, as I was, to place our ‘worth’ on things outside of us. Our job, the money we earn, the stories we can tell about how successful we are.
Yet inside, as was the case for me, we can feel empty, hollow, or even my own term, ‘spiritually bankrupt.’
Despite having everything the system conditions us to have, we can at times feel soulless and dead inside. I know I have felt this.
Does this resonate in any way with you in this moment?
It is these feelings, as discussed with Helen Amery last week, that can be very problematic if not cleared/dealt with.
In the below clip, Stepheni also speaks to this ‘outside-in’ chase:
What is your experience and perception of being in community?
One of the things I really loved about this conversation was Stepheni’s consistent reminder that diverse, celebration of difference is such a powerful agent of connection and change within communities.
At a time when, too often, I see the in-groups rewarding one another with job progression or other preferential treatment, these groups are not growing.
They are not evolving their experience of life and that is where healthier masculinity comes in for me.
I am also super inspired by Stepheni’s mission to support founders and business leaders with anti-extractive and decolonial business models.
This platform, honestly, is a partial Trojan horse with a similar mission.
I not only imagine, but I know, that the more we have healthier masculinity role modelled in the world, the more capacity and expansiveness there is to look at our more challenging pasts and presents, with the aim of making better, healthier, more just decisions going forward.
We really hope that you get value from this exploration. Do let us know what you take away, what you may add, and indeed any challenges you may bring. This is a co-created journey and we hope that you will be part of it and share this episode with your network.
A reminder that you can contact Stepheni at the following:
Website: soulstrategycollective.comEmail: me@stephenim.com
I am here if you are looking for a 1-1 Thinking Partner that can be in your corner by voice note, virtually, and in-person, I have found 5 x 60 minutes calls + unlimited voice note communication to work the best.
If you are ready to embrace the journey towards healthier masculinity, drop me a line at garry.turner@radicality.co.uk. Here is what Sudeep Sharma of IMCD India had to say about us working together on a wellbeing workshop:
May I ask, if you get some value from this conversation or the insights shared within, please kindly give this substack a share within your networks so we can reach more people, and consider giving myself and Stepheni a follow on LinkedIn - thank you.
Next week, episode #4 will feature keynote speaker and flow-state advocate Josh Allan Dykstra.
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With much love and best regards
Garry Turner
+44 7928 979358
