If It’s Worth Doing, It’s Worth Overdoing: A Career Journey with Holly McIlwain

Pathfinders Podcast: Navigating Your Career Map with a Personal Board of Advisors

On this episode of the Pathfinders Podcast, we’re joined by the incredible Holly McIlwain, an organizational consultant, psychometric expert, and founder of Brave Woman Project. Holly’s career journey is anything but linear. She went from growing up on a farm and dreaming of being a child psychologist, to training as a middle school teacher, to leading school assemblies out of a 12-person van, to entrepreneurship, and now to executive coaching.

Holly shares how her career maps evolved; not by always knowing what she wanted, but by knowing what she didn't want. Along the way, she built a powerful personal board of advisors, leaning on mentors from all chapters of her life, including former professors, nonprofit leaders, and business executives.

We get into a deep discussion about feedback, psychometric assessments, and how the right tools (with the right science behind them) can transform both individual growth and organizational effectiveness. Holly’s no-nonsense approach is a masterclass in aligning values, behaviors, and data to drive real change at work. Plus, we dig into the origin story of her nonprofit, Brave Women Project (BWP): a community created during the pandemic to support women in leadership navigating mental health, grief, and career challenges.

If you care about feedback, mentorship, retention, and building cultures that actually support people, you’re going to love this conversation.