Bold Conversations
with Dr Muna Abdi
Conversations for living, leading and working differently.
A podcast about leadership, identity, power and what becomes possible when we stop shrinking to fit lives and institutions that no longer serve us.
What if the life that got you here is not the life you need next?
Most of us were not taught to ask this question. We were taught to work harder, adapt faster, prove ourselves again, and be grateful for a seat at a table that was never designed for us. We were taught that if something is not working, the problem is probably us.
" BOLD Conversations centers Black women's experiences while opening up wider questions about how we can live, lead and work differently. "
These conversations start with real experience — the exhaustion that leadership frameworks do not name, the belonging that requires too much, the ambition that gets policed differently depending on who carries it. They move into the structural: what systems produce these experiences, who designed them, and what it might look like to stop simply adapting to them.
Some conversations will offer clarity. Many will open better questions. None of them will tell you that the solution is more confidence, a better morning routine, or showing up differently in the same spaces that remain unchanged.
Bold does not always mean louder. Sometimes bold means telling the truth, changing direction, resting, refusing, beginning again or defining success differently.
BOLD Conversations — The editorial statement
Your host
Dr Muna Abdi
Muna Abdi is the founder of MA Consultancy and BOLD by MA. She works with individuals and organisations navigating leadership, race and belonging — as a coach, researcher, facilitator, and strategist. She is also the creator of the CARE Framework for ethical research partnerships.
She has spent years working inside and alongside institutions that have struggled to accommodate the people who make them work. That experience, and the conversations it has opened, sits at the centre of BOLD Conversations.
Muna asks questions that leadership frameworks often avoid: about the structural conditions that produce burnout, about the racialised and gendered labour of visibility, about what rest and ambition look like when you stop measuring them against systems that were not designed for you. She is willing to sit with contradiction, to change her mind publicly, and to leave questions open when easy answers would not be honest.
She is also a mother of two, and she has structured her work around what sustainability actually means — not as a self-care strategy, but as a design principle. That informs this podcast too.
The four BOLD principles
Believe. Own. Lead. Define.
B
Believe in your worth
Separating what you've achieved from what you're worth, so your value doesn't depend on constant proving.
O
Own your story
Telling the truth about how you got here, including the parts that don't fit the tidy version, as the basis for what comes next.
L
Lead with purpose
Leadership defined by what you stand for and who you're accountable to, not only by title or position.
D
Define your next chapter
Deciding, deliberately, what the next version of you looks like, rather than drifting into it by default.