Author: ritavalente

WE LEGENDARY EDITION PRESENTS RICH STRILOWICH THE MAN WHO STOPPED LEAVING HIS SOUL AT THE OFFICE DOOR He spent more than four decades inside corporate leadership and more than three decades exploring the spiritual traditions of East and West. But it took a daughter whose middle name is Grace, the pain of letting people go, and a heart pushed to its limit for Rich Strilowich to understand that he had never been living two separate lives. The boardroom itself was sacred ground. By Ana Rita Valente | The Legendary Edition The Sentence That Changed the Conversation I need to begin…

ENTREPRENEURSHIP • AI • E-COMMERCE Zahid Muhammad and the First $10K: A Practical Path from One Salary to an Online Business Through Conzia, the entrepreneur and educator is helping ordinary people turn AI, e-commerce and disciplined action into real opportunity—one achievable milestone at a time. PROFILE BY THE WE LEGENDARY EDITION The internet is crowded with promises of instant wealth. Scroll for long enough and someone will tell you that the right store, product or artificial-intelligence tool can make you a millionaire almost overnight. Zahid Muhammad offers a different starting point. Before the million, he says, make the first $10,000.…

THE STORY YOU NEED TO HEAR BEFORE SOMEONE YOU LOVE NEEDS YOU TO SAVE THEIR LIFE A father lost his 18-year-old son to alcohol poisoning. Then he carried his ashes 1,400 miles. Nearly two decades later, Barry Adkins is still walking — because Kevin’s story is not supposed to end with Kevin. By ROCKY VALENTE • We Legendary There are interviews that give you information. There are interviews that give you ideas. And then there are conversations that quietly rearrange something inside you. My conversation with Barry Adkins did that. I knew the outline before we spoke. His son, Kevin,…

MAN WHO CAME HOME ON BONUS TIME A combat veteran, lawyer, husband, father and songwriter spent decadesmoving from one mission to the next. Then life finally became quiet enoughfor him to open the boxes he had kept closed — and turn what was insideinto songs.By Ana Rita Valente | The Legendary Edition There are people who tell you immediately why they are extraordinary. And then there are people who become slightly uncomfortable when you suggest the possibility. Matt Weingast belongs to the second group. I opened our Becoming Legendary conversation by asking him a question I normally do not ask…

CAN YOU HOLD THE SUCCESS YOU’RE ASKING FOR? There are conversations that are interesting. There are conversations that teach you something. And then there are those rare conversations where, halfway through, you suddenly think: Where has this person been all these years? That is exactly what happened to me when I met Carmen Wiesinger. I interview founders, entrepreneurs, authors, speakers, creators and people building extraordinary things. I have spent years working around visibility, media, positioning, growth and the complicated psychology of what happens when somebody begins becoming more successful. Because of that, I have seen the same strange pattern repeat…

THE MONSTER WE FEAR MAY BE THE ONE WE NEED TO MEET What if the darkness is not the end of the story — but the place where meaning begins? By Ana Rita Valente | The Legendary Edition There are people you meet whose work can be explained in a sentence. Then there are people you meet and realize that explaining what they do requires first understanding what happened to them. Adi Kanda is one of those people. When I first began learning about Adi, words like author, transmissions, intuition, fear, shadow and divine guidance appeared everywhere. And I could…

ASK WHY BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE What 36 years in psychiatry taught one doctor about family, guilt, medical decisions — and the conversations we should have before someone else is forced to have them for us. By Ana Rita Valente | The Legendary Edition Dr. David A. Kent is a board-certified psychiatrist with more than thirty-five years in practice. For sixteen of those years he served as medical director of the largest geriatric psychiatric inpatient facility of its kind in his region, where life-and-death decisions were a daily reality. He is the author of Why Me? The Brain on Tilt and Ask Why? Medical Ethics…

SHE TURNED THE VOICE THAT SAVED HER INTO BOOKS A childhood shaped by abandonment, abuse and inherited trauma. A mysterious presence she calls Whispers. And the dark humor that helped Nancy Heart turn survival into story. By Ana Rita Valente | The Legendary Edition Some people become storytellers because they love stories. Others become storytellers because, at some point, telling the story becomes a way of surviving. When I met Nancy Heart, I knew almost immediately that I was not speaking with somebody who wanted to give me a polished biography. Good. I am not particularly interested in polished biographies.…

After losing her mother at 32, Beth Lynch began a search for answers that transformed her own grief — and eventually became a way of helping others navigate loss, intuition and the questions that do not have simple answers. By Ana Rita Valente | The Legendary Edition There are women you meet and immediately understand. And then there are women who quietly disturb the borders of what you thought you understood. Beth Lynch is one of those women. I met her expecting to talk about grief, spirituality, mediumship and healing. I finished our conversation thinking about something much bigger: What…

SHE DIDN’T LOOK LIKE A SCIENTIST. SO SHE BECAME ONE. Three children. No degree at 26. Three degrees later, a PhD in her 40s — and a mission to make the science of speed understandable to everyone. By Ana Rita Valente | The Legendary Edition There are stories about success that begin exactly where we expect them to. The gifted student. The obvious prodigy. The person whose résumé have been designed from childhood for the career they eventually built. And then there are stories like Dr. Amber Murphy’s. Those are the ones I love. Because at 26, Amber did not…