At the Brink with Erica Brinker

Elsa Arend was a marketing executive with the title, the team and the reputation to match. Then, in front of a thousand people at an Ogilvy meeting in New York, she stood up to speak and nothing came out. No words. A colleague ran a water bottle up to the stage. That silence was the start of everything.The diagnosis was a rare vocal cord disorder with no cure. But the deeper problem was burnout — the kind that hides inside ambition and calls itself personality. Elsa tried a sabbatical. She tried stepping down. The symptoms kept coming back, because rest alone was never the fix.In this episode she takes Erica back through the unraveling: the insomnia, the hair falling out, the version of herself she had to grieve. She talks about the coach who helped her see her own blind spots, the calling she heard in her driveway, and the method she now teaches ambitious women — small pattern disruptions, nervous-system regulation and the truth underneath overwork.It is a story about voice, in every sense — losing it, and finding a truer one.Executive Producer: Sara GlassmanFollow At the Brink: Instagram @at.the.brink.media | YouTube @AtTheBrinkPodcastFollow Elsa Arend: Instagram @elsa.arend | elsaarend.comwww.atthebrinkmedia.com | hello@atthebrinkmedia.com

Brady Wald was raised by two educators in North Dakota — a father who taught for 37 years and a mother who taught kindergarten for 34. He followed them into schools and has spent 25 years there himself, most of it in leadership. Then his father visited one of his Arizona schools, sat in his office for a day, and told him he had to start writing about the work. Not long after, his dad died unexpectedly.That conversation became The Principal Diaries, Brady’s first book — 15 years in the making, finished after the one person who asked for it was gone. In this episode he takes Erica through the whole arc: the upbringing, the mission, and a health crisis 12 years ago that nearly stopped him, when his body was, in his words, eating itself from the inside out.Brady talks about what 25 years in schools actually looks like from the inside — why relationships have to come before learning, why he redesigned the principal’s office to feel like anything but one, and why he will fight to keep recess, art and music in the building. It is a conversation about education, grief and the kind of legacy that gets built one day at a time.Executive Producer: Sara GlassmanFollow At the Brink: Instagram @at.the.brink.media | YouTube @AtTheBrinkPodcastFollow Brady Wald: One Lucky Principal - sites.google.com/view/oneluckyprincipal | The Principal Diaries (book) | Instagram @oneluckyprincipalwww.atthebrinkmedia.com | hello@atthebrinkmedia.com

Brandie Heredia spent 15 years in emergency and trauma rooms. She was good at it. But she was also burning out. Then a nonprofit recruited her to help remove branding tattoos from women who had been sex trafficked — tattoos their pimps had put on their faces and bodies to keep them from running away.That work became the foundation of Unmarked Beauty and Wellness, the practice she built from a small salon suite into a facility she now owns. Along the way she went through a divorce, became a single mom, remarried, brought her husband into the business (after initially refusing his help), went back to school to become a nurse practitioner and added hormone therapy to her practice because she kept seeing women’s symptoms go untreated.In this conversation, Brandie talks about what the ER does to you, how the name Unmarked came from the women she was helping heal, the business mistakes she made early on, what working with her husband almost cost their marriage and why she still does pro-bono scar removal through the Cynosure Cares program.Executive Producer: Sara GlassmanFollow At the Brink: Instagram @at.the.brink.media | YouTube @AtTheBrinkPodcastFollow Brandie Heredia: Instagram @brandiesmiles | Website: unmarkedbeautyandwellness.comwww.atthebrinkmedia.com | hello@atthebrinkmedia.com

Anna Roisman walked into our studio as Joan Rivers and didn’t break character. It is, by a wide margin, the most entertaining opening in the history of this show.Before the impressions, before the Kardashian sketches, before she hosted 500 live shows for up to half a million viewers a night on an Emmy-nominated game show, Anna was a theater kid from Philly whose parents partied more than she did. She knew she wanted to perform before she knew the word for the job. There was never a backup plan because there was nothing to back up to.When she got laid off from her day job at a venture capital firm, she did the only thing that made sense to her: she started a live comedy show from her couch called The Unemployed Show. The only rule was that guests had to be unemployed. She prank-called her old boss on air. She took job interviews live on camera. She ran an awards ceremony for Most Unemployed Dad.In this conversation, Anna talks about why she was the serious kid in a wild family, what the creator economy actually looks like from the inside, how she enters a room as anyone from Joan Rivers to Kris Jenner, and why patience is the only piece of career advice worth giving.This episode is different from the rest. It’s funny. Very funny. You’re welcome.Executive Producer: Sara GlassmanFollow At the Brink: Instagram @at.the.brink.media | YouTube @AtTheBrinkPodcastFollow Anna Roisman: @AnnaRoisman everywherewww.atthebrinkmedia.com | hello@atthebrinkmedia.com

Dr. Sima Yakoby Epstein was 13 years old when a head-on collision broke her face. She was sitting in the middle seat with no seatbelt. When she looked in the rearview mirror, all she saw was blood. Her first instinct was to turn to her mother and ask if she was okay.Her parents were Georgian immigrants who didn’t speak the language and couldn’t navigate the medical system. They went to the local dentist because he was the only one they could afford. What followed was years of surgeries, root canals, crowns and implants. As a teenager, Sima wouldn’t smile. She had what she describes as Dracula teeth. She was embarrassed and sad.Then she met an orthodontist who looked like Santa Claus. He never commented on how she looked. What he said instead was: great things will come from you. Those five words changed the trajectory of her life. Today she is a double Penn graduate, a former Cornell surgical resident, a former NYU professor and the founder of OrthoNu. She became the person on the other side of the chair.In this conversation, Sima talks about growing up in the projects in Queens, her father’s 14-year journey from checker cab driver to fleet owner, her mother who was one semester short of becoming a doctor, losing both parents, and why she decided to stop waiting for someone else to build what patients actually needed.Executive Producer: Sara GlassmanFollow At the Brink: Instagram @at.the.brink.media | YouTube @AtTheBrinkPodcastFollow Dr. Sima: Instagram @simayakobyepstein | Website: orthonu.comwww.atthebrinkmedia.com | hello@atthebrinkmedia.com

Alexia Bertsatos left Greece at 18 with almost nothing. She studied architecture and interior design in London, pivoted to real estate during the 2008 crash, moved to Arizona for graduate school and met the man she would marry. She became a stay-at-home mom and spent nine years caught between guilt about not working and guilt about not being with her kids enough.When the marriage ended, Alexia had no professional track record in the United States, two children under eight and a divorce she didn’t see coming. She had to figure out bills, careers and identity all at once. In this conversation, she talks about what starting over actually looks like when you’ve done it three times in three countries, why she chose not to be the victim of her own story and what her kids were watching the whole time.Executive Producer: Sara GlassmanFollow At the Brink: Instagram @at.the.brink.media | YouTube @AtTheBrinkPodcastFollow Alexia: Instagram @realestate.by.alexia | Website: alexiabertsatos.comwww.atthebrinkmedia.com | hello@atthebrinkmedia.com