In Her Words
In Her Words is a podcast for women navigating life’s turning points—with clarity, heart, and a little bit of mess. Hosted by Roberta Dombrowski, each episode features honest reflections and grounded conversations about career shifts, motherhood, identity, and ambition. Whether you're stepping into a new role at work, preparing for a baby, or just figuring out what’s next, this show offers a place to feel seen, supported, and inspired. You don’t need to have it all figured out to begin—just start here.
In Her Words
Ep 30 | How Failure Builds Confidence with Aïcha Doucouré
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What happens when you've burned out not once, not twice, but three times and finally realize you're the common denominator? In this episode of In Her Words, I sit down with Aïcha Doucouré, coach and founder of Wise Wild, who moved from France to the Bay Area by checking a single box on an employee survey and never looked back.
Aïcha shares her winding path through GE, Uber, OpenTable, and Dropbox, the psychedelic therapy experience that reset everything, and how a sing circle taught her more about failure, fear, and resilience than any corporate role ever did.
Topics Discussed in the Episode
- Moving from France to the Bay Area by accident
- Three burnouts across tech and what they finally revealed
- How psychedelic therapy cracked open a new definition of success
- Reframing fear as the foundation for courage and trust
- Finding confidence through failure in a sing circle
- Wise Wild - creating in-person spaces where failure is genuinely welcome
About Aïcha Doucouré:
Originally from Paris and rooted in the Bay Area for over 20 years, Aïcha knows what it means to have the courage to reinvent herself. After 15+ years leading global strategic programs in tech and corporate, she hit a wall. In 2019, burnout brought everything to a stop. Rather than rushing back, she took the time to truly understand what had happened and what she wanted her life to look like on the other side. That turning point became her greatest teacher. It led her to become an Integral Coach, who coaches the whole person: cognitive, somatic, emotional and relational intelligence. She is deeply committed to helping leaders and individuals reconnect with themselves, build healthy work cultures, and show up with more clarity, resilience, and purpose. Today, Aïcha teaches and coaches on effective communication at UC Agriculture and Natural Resources. Additionally, she is a leadership coach with Behavioral Essentials, the organization behind Blindspotting, a Harvard Business Review science-based tool helping leaders identify the blind spots getting in the way of their full impact and fulfillment.
Connect with Aïcha Doucouré:
Season 2 reflection exercises https://www.learnmindfully.co/store
Grab Consciously Crafting Your Career Path: https://www.learnmindfully.co/store
Connect with Roberta on LinkedIn
If this episode sparked new insight, please consider rating, following, or reviewing the show. It’s the best way to help more people find and benefit from these vital conversations. Thanks for listening!
I had to let go of certain definition of success in order to continue being an entrepreneur. There's a type of self-compassion that you have to develop, a time of, you know, self-care that is more like almost like you need to parent yourself to be able to go through these things. So it's beyond self-care. To me, it's like more even spiritual, right? Like I'm gonna care for myself in a way that I would care for my kid.
SPEAKER_01Welcome to In Her Words. This podcast is for women navigating through change, career, identity, motherhood, and just figuring out what's next. I'm Roberta Dembrowski, host of In Her Words and founder of Learn Mindfully. Each episode, I sit down with women who are asking big questions, navigating transitions, and trying to make sense of life as it shifts. You don't have to have it all figured out. You just need space to be real. Let's get into it. Welcome, Aisha, to In Her Words. I'm so excited to chat with you today.
SPEAKER_00Yes, me too. I'm so excited to see you and to talk with you. It's been a while.
SPEAKER_01Same, same. As listeners may hear from your voice, you're French and you've lived in the Bay Area for over 20 years. I'm curious what motivated you, what brought you to the US? It's kind of an accident.
SPEAKER_00Obviously, I was working with a large company in an American company in Europe and a European team. And at the end of one year, there was like an employee survey. And the last question at the survey was would you be open to working overseas? And I checked the box. That's basically what happened. Oh wow. I checked the box. And then the next question was like, where? And I I thought about it. And I was working in, you know, setting up technology for the team there. So I thought, well, why not San Francisco? And that's and a year later they said, hey, here's your visa. You have three weeks to move. And that's how I came to the US.
SPEAKER_01Wow. Wow. Did you know anything about like moving to the US or anything about like really the culture and like living over here prior to Yeah?
SPEAKER_00I had, yeah, luckily. Okay. Yeah. When I was 19, I came to New York. I lived in New York for a month. And then later on, I had an internship in Madison, Wisconsin, because I had a boyfriend who lived there.
SPEAKER_01Oh wow. Okay.
SPEAKER_00That's it. Yeah. So it was like West and West. I was not, I was happy in Europe. It was just like the call for adventure, I guess.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. I love that. Yeah. And what a I imagine your family is is in France. Like, was that a hard transition?
SPEAKER_00For me, no. I'm kind of a person who just get up and go. So it was, I think it was probably a harder transition for my family, my parents. And yeah, I have a sister now who lives in in Boulder area. So yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. That's awesome. I didn't know that about like you just checked a box on a form. That's amazing. How did you do it? Well, check the box. Fearless. Fearless. Oh my goodness. That's awesome. So we started talking a little bit about your career. I'm wondering if you could walk us through a little bit about your background and like the corporate space. I know you've worn many different hats and your road has been a little bit winding. I'm wondering if you could walk us through it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So I would say the long story short, the whole the general theme is that I've always wanted, ever since I was a kid, I was always interested in like how the world works and in particular like how what like what motivates people? Like where why are people doing the things they do? Like how do people work? I remember even one day in my early 20s, I asked a daughter if there was like a user guide for being an adult. Yeah. I was really like kind of this, you know, like curious and fascinated by that mystery. And so my background is a little bit windy because I think I was trying to answer this question from different angles, and it was never the perfect one. So I started off at GE. I was working on processing improvement projects, but the way they set it up, and it was really wonderful, is I was doing mostly like design research, actually. So spending a lot of time with people from different teams, whether it's finance or HR, whoever they asked me to go help, I would just go there, spend a lot of time with them, make friends with them, see how they work, be there in their key moments at work, learn how they work, and then together we would co-create a new way of working using technology. So it was, yeah, and it was, I really loved that that work. And then when I moved to the US after two years, I won the green card at the lottery, which is also, I don't know, totally accident.
SPEAKER_01Luck is a theme I am hearing from your journey.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I don't know if it's luck or chance, but yeah, something like that. And so I decided to go to design school. But I was tired of the digital space, honestly. And so I went to a master's program in industrial design where I could make things with my hands, and and then I visited a turning point was visiting a recycling center outside San Francisco, and I was actually traumatized by it. I thought saw all the waste and how we don't, it's like it all goes, we like throw it away, like it's going nowhere, it's just disappears. But then we go to this place where they all end up. It all comes in one place, yeah. And and so I decided that the world had enough people making more things. And so I then that's when I went into design research. So coming out of that, I I worked, you know, it was hard to find work in design at the time. I worked for a design company doing the work I did at GE before, and then I then I got an opportunity to work with Uber as their first one of the first researchers when they were not famous at all. And it was like what was fascinating for me is like that space where like the real world touches the digital, like that moment between space. And it was a really tough environment for me. And I I had a burnout after a year. Then I continued to design management, open table. I had a burnout, second burnout. Okay, and so like it was just like, oh yeah, just take a week off and then get a new job, right? And so then the third place where I was a drawbox, I ended with a burnout as well. And so at the third, it's really painful every time. And I realized, like, okay, there's something that I don't see that's getting in my way. I need to pause.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, very wise of you to be able to recognize that because I think I think that a lot of workplaces make burnout to be an individual issue when really it is a systemic issue. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But at first I thought, like, oh, it's you know, like I had a reason for going back into tech, and one of them was I was divorced and I my son's dad was around like very actively here. But for me to be renting a two-bedroom as a single mom, single parent, was the the cost of living was such that like technology was like the default place, right? So I thought at first I was like, oh, it's just the wrong job. But I was care, like I realized I was the common denominator to all these problems. So I realized, okay, there's something about me, and yes, the resilience is really high, so that's a challenge when it's out of control, you know, it was too far, it needs to be balanced. But then I actually went into psychedelic therapy after doing a lot of research and working with someone to integrate it over time. For like, I worked with him for two years, and that was really important. After I came out, it was just like a newborn. It was like everything that I cared like worried me that I cared about didn't make sense as much. And it was just like, okay, I don't know who am I and who do I want to be in this world. And so it was, you know, I decided that I need to do study philosophy, psychology, and spirituality to kind of get some bearings. And the pandemic just started, and I was like, Well, I need community. A friend of mine said, Hey, you need to check this coaching school. And I was like, I don't want to be a coach, it's kind of sleazy.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, it sounds familiar.
SPEAKER_00I've had those thoughts too. What about like the guru coach? And I was like, I don't want to be that person, and he said, just check it out and see. And it was actually aligned with my values, and I joined and I was like, I just want to study in community. And when the first time they asked me to coach some someone as an exercise or like a practice, I realized, oh, this is what I've been looking for all my life.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00I found myself that moment, and so it feels like it's not a job for me, it's just it's me.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. I love that. I can relate to that as well. It's a way of being and holding space and communicating with another person.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it permeates into all the parts of my life. Like, how can I like my lifestyle change to support how I want to be as a coach?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I'm curious, you mentioned after the therapy that you went through, you felt like a newborn. I imagine that your definition of success shifted in that time. Like when you were in tech, and then after therapy, I'm curious if you could tell us a little bit about that. Like, yeah, confusing.
SPEAKER_00So I actually stuck with so after the therapy, I I felt like okay, I couldn't trust all these structures or these ways that the whole is the ways holding. I couldn't trust any like ways of seeing by default. I had to decide for myself, right? And so failure, but the thing is the lesson around failure took a while to hold. So I was still like trying to be doing like what people are expecting, what's right. Okay, you need to have a job, you need to do this, you need to make money. Like all these ways that we're all like kind of held in the culture. And what happened is I when I became a coach, I started failing, like economically failing, but in my my body and in my mind, it was like at peace and healthy, and like I felt like there was like this disconnect between like how I felt inside and then like the how do you make money as an entrepreneur, right? Yes, yeah. Becoming an entrepreneur, and I'm sure you you've had this topic come before before in your podcast is a whole journey of transformation, yes, yeah. And with like someone like me who tends to have anxiety, it's like it's what I call the curriculum. It's like you learn, yeah.
SPEAKER_01It is, it's so funny because I had a session with Viviane earlier this morning. She's both of our coaches, and yeah, it's like starting a business and being an entrepreneur is probably the deepest healing experience and also the most triggering experience because it illuminates every everything that you've worked on, everything that you think you've gotten past before, just becomes even more amplified. It highlights your relationship with money, partnerships, like there's just so much there. Scarcity, your sense of security, your sense of self and autonomy. There's just so much there.
SPEAKER_00This period of time where I studied being an entrepreneur was also a period of time when I was dealing with some health issues, and so like the anxiety was like even more amplified because of that. But in some ways, it's funny how I'm gonna say it. Sometimes being sick is like doing psychedelic therapy because it it forces you to stop and look at okay, what's going on here, right? And so what I what I saw is that I had to let go of this definitive certain definition of success in order to continue being an entrepreneur. There's a type of self-compassion that you have to develop, a time of you know, self-care that is more like almost like you need to parent yourself to be able to go through these things. So it's beyond self-care. To me, it's like more even spiritual, right? Like, I'm gonna care for myself in a way that I would care for my kid.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and it's like even as an entrepreneur, too, it's like there's this belief in the mission that you have and like overcoming obstacles. And and then it's like anxiety brings this fear, and it's like you you have to have this belief and like not necessarily push down the fear, but like recognize it and be able to like pull yourself out of it when it's kind of it keeps coming back up, and it's this like tug-a-war almost that I feel myself in constantly, actually.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, and I and I'm trying to like reframe that. And one of the ways that has worked so far, I don't know if it will work forever, but it's this sense that you need fear to find courage, and then you need courage to accomplish what you didn't think you could you could, and so like in a way I'm trying to dissociate like the sensation of fear with the from the thoughts around fear.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. I'm curious what is well, because there's two parts that we're talking about when we say fear. One, I'm curious about how do you define it, and then two, how does it show up for you somatically?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so I define it as it's almost like a program that's designed to move you away from your worst fear, from your worst, the the worst case scenario, right? So there is kind of like a benevolence about it, right? It's like a program that's designed to protect you by avoiding what you imagine in your mind as the worst thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so for me, like what I recognize, especially during that two-year period when I started, you know, entrepreneurship, is that all my fears, all the things that I was trying to avoid happened. So, and yet I'm still here. Yeah, you're still standing. I know. I'm still figuring out. And so, like, in a way, like it causes me to like trust, trusting that no matter what's coming, I can have the support system around it. I have I can trust my my ability to understand and to look for solutions, I can stand my resourcefulness, all that stuff. And so I feel like over time it the trust grows in some way.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and it it loosens the it takes away the intensity of the fear as well over time. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00And then over time, for me personally, I've decided to not get so attached to what I think is good versus bad, right? Yeah. More thinking, well, like I have almost like the purpose, like the thing you talked about, like the purpose carries you. Yeah. So being like, okay, I'm gonna stay with that purpose, but not be attached to how it will show up for me, so that if it shows up in a way that I didn't imagine, I can recognize it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, I love that. Yeah. What it has me thinking of is I've been reading, I read this book a few months ago called How to Manifest. And it talks about like listening to messages around you and just like being really aware of like your intuition and like basically little messages that the universe is sending you about things. And that's what just came up to for me as you were saying that is like not being attached to the outcomes and like, hey, it may show up in a different way for you and me, and just being open to that.
SPEAKER_00Right. And I feel like the sure way to get stuck in fear is to be attached to this one image of success or like because it's one out of an infinite number of possibilities. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, yeah. Like open and receptive to the infinite, then you're more likely to see more options. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I know that kind of pulling on that thread a little bit, one of your favorite topics to support clients in around is failure. And it's interesting because I feel like failure can sometimes be this like black and white topic. Either you win or you fail. And so I'm curious if you can talk a little more about that and like why is this one of your favorite topics and like focus areas to work with people on? And how did you get to this place around failure? And yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think we said a little bit of that, right? Yeah. I I look back at my whole life, and I, you know, like when you're 20, you're like, okay, my life's gonna be this way, this way, and that way. Yeah, it doesn't look like this, it's fail, right? I failed everything. So it's like, oh wait, I actually felt every single point, and then I was like, huh, that's interesting. Like, I think it helped me like realize like I'm there's something solid in me that I can trust. There's something about life in general that is so unpredictable, it will serve you whatever it you know, it will serve you your spheres. And if you can sense in yourself that solidity or anchoring, that you know, whatever wind or like wind or rain is coming at you, you're anchored in some ways, versus like trying to grapple outside of you for support or for you know like for safety, looking outside for other people to guide you, or for all like then it feels more like you're floating and you're trying to grab stuff. I don't know how to say this, it really feels different for me in that moment. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, what so I had an experience during these two years where I was really struggling. I was I started to sing out of curiosity. I went to a sing circle and I kept on failing. I remember, like, you know, you you asked to be in the middle and then conducting people around you, so there's a circle of people around you. Yeah, you're in the middle, and you have to come up with something with your voice that sounds great. Offer it to people. So for me, like in my own sense of like, you know, like they talk about like what are people most afraid of is like public speaking. To me, way worse than public speaking because number one, singing is more personal, yeah. Number two, there's like 20 people, 30 people around you waiting for you to come up with something. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I remember like going in and I would literally my legs would shake and I I would like tremble, right? Like I would literally tremble, and and sometimes it was so horrible. Like people would look at each other like, what? Oh, and you're like, that's weird. Like you look up, you're like, What?
SPEAKER_01Out of body experience.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and when I I wanted to freeze, like I could feel my to freeze. Yeah, that's the first time I observed it. Like, oh, when you're in freeze, you feel small, everybody feels really far away. Yeah, and then I can't I couldn't even hear the the sounds I was making. I was my ability to listen was broken. Wow, wow, and so I felt like I remember at some point I felt like back to back three times in a row. And every time I would come back, people would welcome me back, like nothing happened. And even when things were bad, some people would come after me and say something kind, you know. And I realized that so that gave me a lot of joy in my life while everything else was hard, and it was a source of resilience for me, a source of strength, something I could bring in the rest of the week. But also, what I recognized is that as I was Building up more and more confidence in the singing, sing circle. Now it's easy, it's no big deal for me to do that. Yeah, I was building more confidence outside of myself, too. That kind of reminds me of the this, like there's a thing that they said at the coaching school is in a seed, there is the same DNA as in a tree, right? Or in a leaf of the tree, there is the same DNA as in the branch over there, right? So what that means is if you can grow confidence in another area of your life, it will permeate all the parts of your life. And I really felt that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I love that. Yeah, because it's a system, is what it's yeah, trying to convey.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. I mean, you're a whole full person, right? All the parts of your life are connected to you. Yeah, yeah. So what I realized is the reason why I gained confidence is because there was an environment that was completely open to failure, where there is no people bad judgment, people were encouraging, everybody's like here to learn, even the professional singers sometimes fail. It doesn't matter, right? And I felt like there we need more of these environments that are designed for that kind of space where you can express yourself and risks and fail.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and so I'm assuming you've created environments and spaces like that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01We would love to hear more about that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's my new project I'm about to launch. It's called uh Wise Wild. Okay, yeah. And the idea is that you can like we lost these parts of us, one express a deeper part of us in because we had to conform, we had to be like everyone else, we had to be at work or whatever. Like we had all these roles. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So creating those spaces where failure can is welcome, but like really honestly, authentically, is allowing people to go deeper in taking risks and learning from failure and building that confidence over time, getting to a level of trust, the solidity that they can bring in other parts of their lives.
SPEAKER_01Very cool.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So the way that would work is that every time it's in person, in Oakland for now, I have a guest person that offers a kind of practice that is creative. So it could be like a sing circle, for example, but it could be something around drawing, like it could be anything, or led into being more in their bodies, more present, and then just try things and break things basically, just like kids, you know, like when you are two-year-old, they they learn by breaking, by throwing, by and that's how you learn.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm uh the image that's coming to mind is my son who is 14 months now, and he's just like banging stuff around all the time.
SPEAKER_00So, yeah, that's how they learn about themselves and their environment. Yeah, yeah. So like creating that space for adults, you know, and have that community of people who like to learn that way. Yeah, that's yeah, that's my project.
SPEAKER_01Very cool. Well, I speak for I'm sure many of our listeners that they would love to hear you in a sing circle format. You really hyped it up.
SPEAKER_00So I feel like we would love to if you're around in Oakland or in San Francisco area, come come contact us. I will give you opportunities to even try it if you'd like.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. And hopefully I can foresee you expanding to virtual at some point as well. Yeah. I'm curious with your coaching work. Is there a particular type of client that you enjoy working with?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so it's gonna be a little bit, you know, that's to me, honestly, it's like anybody who is curious and open. Okay, like curious and open, and with like uh, you know, wanting to learn more deeply about themselves and others and especially how to relate. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Amazing, amazing. And I feel like the the workshops that you're talking about tie in so nicely with that too. So yeah, great practice for embodiment and creativity. How can folks keep in touch with you if they want to connect? Or yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00So they can email me. So the email will be in the description. Like email me or like check my website, contact me through the form, and yeah, I'm around. And I love to share with people or if you feel like you're what I'm saying is something that you've been craving for, that you've been looking for. I just love to have a wider community of people around me. And and yeah, that's so feel free to connect with me.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely. And we will leave your information in the show notes. And I definitely can attest to that. That's how Aisha and I have connected. We've had many conversations and talked about resources and topics that we like. So definitely reach out to her if you feel inclined to. So thank you so much for sharing your story and being here. Really appreciate it.
SPEAKER_00Thank you for having me here. It's uh it's a pleasure to be here.
SPEAKER_01Thanks for being here. If something in this episode landed with you, feel free to pass it along to someone who might need it too. You can leave a review, subscribe, or just keep tuning in. We're figuring it out together. And remember, your story, your voice, your becoming. It all matters.
