What would it feel like to show up fully in your career without shrinking, masking, or performing your way through the day?
In this episode of Unspeakable Leadership Season 6, Rohene Bouajram sits down with Mercedes Swan, Career Love Coach and founder of the Black Women Bliss Community and Career Love, for a deeply rich and expansive conversation about career liberation, collective freedom, and what it truly means to build a vision so big it scares you.
Drawing on her background in HR and DEI and her own journey through workplace-induced anxiety, depression, and an ADHD diagnosis, Mercedes unpacks what liberation actually looks like from the inside out and why the workplace was never designed to hold the fullness of who Black women are.
We cover:
Why liberation is the missing ingredient in how we talk about career success
The ideation vein: how possibility and reinvention are already embedded within us
Why love belongs in the workplace and what changes when we bring it back
What liminal spaces are and why understanding them is critical during identity transitions
How to move from a what if mindset to a what now mindset
The difference between shrinking your vision and letting go of an old identity
Why white supremacy culture was designed to keep us from thinking outside the system
How to unpack limiting beliefs and replace them with what if thinking
The Career Liberation Project and what collective liberation looks like in practice
Why releasing your old identity is the fastest path to your new one
How ideation, intuition, and ancestral wisdom can guide your next chapter
This conversation is expansive, liberatory, and deeply affirming for every Black woman and woman of colour who has ever felt too big for the spaces they were placed in.
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Connect with Mercedes Swan:
Website: mercedesswan.com
Instagram: instagram.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com
Listen to Mercedes' podcast: https://www.mercedesswan.com/black-woman-bliss-podcast
Join the Black Woman Bliss Community: https://www.mercedesswan.com/career-and-business-community-for-black-women
To Join the Career Liberation Project: https://newsletter.careerlove.io/
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Access resources here to redefine your leadership.
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Listen to the episode here or watch the episode on Youtube.
