The Lesley Hawkins Podcast
Anchored by the question “What’s one pivotal moment in your life?”, Lesley hosts candid, personal conversations about resilience, reinvention, and the turning points that shape who we are.
With her signature empathy, wit, and warmth, Lesley creates space for guests to open up, sparking insights that challenge assumptions, stir reflection, and ignite personal growth.
Each episode is an honest, unfiltered conversation that leaves listeners feeling inspired, seen, and more deeply connected to the human experience.
Episodes
53 episodes
Tara Porter - When Grief Keeps Coming
Some seasons of life ask more of us than we ever thought we could give.For our guest, grief didn't arrive once. It arrived in waves, each one before she had fully caught her breath from the last. Within the span of a single year, she los...
Katharine Perry - Designing for Dignity
For twenty-one years, our guest was a special education teacher, advocating for those whose voices were too often overlooked. It was work rooted in purpose, patience, and a deep belief in human dignity.Then her parents began to age, and ...
Greg Cochrane - Living With Purpose
Our guest had what most people spend their lives working toward: a thriving business, a loving marriage, two young boys, good health. Every box checked but one question kept creeping in: Is that all there is?A single exercise in...
Joze Piranian - Stop Holding Back
For twenty-five years, our guest stayed quiet. Not because he had nothing to say, but because saying it came at a cost most of us will never understand.He stuttered. And for a long time, silence felt safer than the alternative.So ...
Greg Smith - Safe Brave Spaces
Most of us have had a hard season. But for our guest, eight months of his life brought a convergence of personal and professional challenges that would have broken most people.And for a time, it did. He collapsed under the weight of the ...
Dr. Nicole Murray - Decoding ADHD
Our guest has spent her career deep inside the human brain. As a neuropsychologist, she works with adults navigating some of life's most challenging moments — brain injuries, post-concussion symptoms, stroke. She understands how the brain shape...
Jennifer Robin Wilson – The Heart of Homestay
For our guest, she thought her life was settled; a happy marriage, two young kids, a career she loved; and yet it came apart in ways she never anticipated.In the aftermath, she took what was supposed to be a short stint in her family's h...
Ashima Chopra - From Unfulfilled To Unstoppable - The Founder of FanVerse
Our guest had built a career as a lawyer, and on paper, it checked every box. But something was missing. She had a lifelong love of sports, but the fandom industry was not built for the female fan. On a whim she entered a week-long ...
Leah Ashby - Creativity Sparks Change!
Our guest grew up with a deep love for the arts. Classical piano wasn't just something she studied, it was part of who she was.Then one day, a neighbour overheard her playing.What followed from that single, accidental moment was s...
Joe Lyons-Rising - Pain Remixed
Our guest experienced a loss that most of us cannot begin to imagine. By ten years old, he had lost both of his parents to suicide.What followed was a childhood spent finding his footing in whatever ways he could. One of those ways was n...
Michael Burgess - Nice It Up with Nerpy’s
For our guest, food is where his story began, working in his uncle's grocery store from an early age. After college, he returned to Jamaica to run his uncle's food manufacturing plant before eventually making his way back to Canada to build a c...
Nina Purewal - When Your Darkest Moments Become Your Greatest Work
She was climbing the corporate ladder, working all hours of the day and night, but one question kept surfacing: Is this all there is?So she did something radical by stepping away from everything, sold her house, left her career,...
Gina Phillips - The Power In The Pause
Our guest built a career she loved, working freelance across entertainment, sports, and news media. Then the pandemic arrived. And like so many in her industry, everything went quiet overnight.So she did what felt natural. She went into ...
Meeta Gandhi - Breaking The Cycle
We tell ourselves it doesn't happen here. Not in our neighbourhood. Not behind those doors. Not to someone like her.But domestic abuse doesn't announce itself. And for our guest, it wasn't just her own story, it was a pattern that had qu...
Aaron Logan - For The Love Of The Game
Hockey was never just a game for our guest. It was in his blood. Growing up, he had one dream: to one day be the voice on Hockey Night in Canada.But life had a different play in mind. He found himself in sales, comfortable but restless, ...
Brie Mathers - Love The Skin You’re In
As a teenager, our guest was a high-performance athlete. Her body was strong, capable, built for competition. Then it started to change and what followed was a battle with an eating disorder that reshaped not just her relationship with her body...
Dori Adams - Taking The Leap
Some people wait for the perfect moment to pursue an idea. Our guest decided that maternity leave was hers. While most people use that time to simply survive the newborn stage, she used it to quietly build a two-sided marketplace gig platform t...
Emily O'Brien - From Prison to Popcorn: The Story Behind Comeback Snacks
Our guest was a business owner. Driven, entrepreneurial, building her own social media company. Then she met a client and what started as a business relationship led to a vacation in the Caribbean. But when she returned to Canada, she was arres...
Rachel Barbaro - Listening to Your Inner Voice
From the outside, our guest was living the life. A beautiful family, a career as an executive in the public sector with upward momentum. She had the kind of résumé that screamed success, prestige, power.But something was off. A persisten...
Stephen Clements - When the Family Business Is More Than Business
His father opened a sports store in Toronto, and from an early age, the family business wasn't just where he worked, but where he grew up.But not everything built with love is easy to sustain. So he walked away, not from the work, but to...
Keeley Simpson - Turning Personal Experience Into Sound Financial Advice for Women
When our guest was in university, her family faced two crises at the same time. Her mother, a business owner, fell seriously ill. And without proper financial planning in place, a health crisis quickly became a financial one too.That exp...
Sonia Houle - A Brutal Diagnosis at 28 Changed Everything
At 28 years old, our guest received a diagnosis that stopped her life in its tracks. Breast cancer. And with it, medically induced menopause that no one her age expects to navigate.So she did what many high-achievers do when life becomes...
Leisse Wilcox - Nothing Will be Enough for You, Until You are Enough for You!
She built her dream life. A beautiful home. Three gorgeous daughters. A marriage that checked all the boxes. But inside, something didn’t fit.There was a quiet whisper she couldn’t ignore. A growing realization that nothing would ever b...
Farhan Lalji - From one hard conversation to a Hall of Fame career
Sometimes the path you’re meant to follow starts in the most unlikely place. For today’s guest, it began on Christmas Day, watching football games on TV while the rest of the world celebrated the holiday. That quiet tradition sparked a love for...
Chris Seney - Never Give Up!
At 37 years old, life was moving exactly as planned. A growing real estate business, his first child on the way, the future was bright.Until the diagnosis. What followed was a year defined by radiation, chemotherapy, surgery, and plenty ...