What if your shoes could be a vote for a different world?

In this episode, María Lucia speaks with Stefan Woben, co-founder of NOOCH, a 100% plant-based footwear brand built around one question: What if Mother Earth was our CEO?

Stefan and his co-founder Lotte have spent 13 years rethinking not just what a shoe is made of, but how a brand is financed, how products are ordered, how customers are kept close, and how honesty becomes the business model.

You will hear how a visit to an eco-camp in Spain started everything.

How anger, despair, and a glimmer of hope all arrived at the same time, and what they did with all of that.

How they handled a key supplier going bankrupt.

How over a thousand customers were waiting, with barely five cancellations, because Stefan and Lotte write emails from the heart.

This is a story about a perfect sustainable brand. It is a story about what it really costs to build one, and why that cost feels worth it.

Explore the brand at https://nooch.earth/

What happens when you lose the one thing your career depends on?

Judit Nagy was a news anchor in Hungary. Her schedule ran on adrenaline and early alarm calls. Then burnout arrived quietly, and not long after, a near death experience during childbirth took her voice entirely. Literally. She woke from a coma and could not speak. Surgery failed. Recovery was not guaranteed.

What she built from that silence is the episode.

In this conversation, Judit shares how chocolate making taught her patience and self-expression before she had words to speak.

She talks about the internal messages we carry from childhood, the ones that make us say yes when we mean no, and perform when we need to rest. And she gives us something practical: breathing, posture, warm-up rituals that change how we show up before we even open our mouths.

Key takeaways from this episode:

• Why losing your voice can be the beginning of finding it

• How internal drivers from childhood shape the way we communicate today

• The Choco Coaching method and how the senses unlock what words cannot

• Practical breathing and posture techniques you can use before any presentation or difficult conversation

• Why your voice is your business card and your communication is your power

  
  

  Get in touch with her, here: https://www.juditnagy.info/choco-coaching

Most people think that having more, more experience, more resources, more certainty, is what makes building easier.

Arthur Salkin has been doing this for over 20 years and he will tell you the opposite.

In this episode we get into the real mechanics of building across uncertainty.

How clarity works as a decision tool when emotions are high.

How to identify the problems worth solving and ignore the noise.

How to lead people when nobody knows exactly where things are going. And what it actually costs you when you choose the easy option over the right one.

He also talks about something most people with his track record skip. A moment where he had to walk away from a company he built with people close to him, and what it took to stop letting it hurt and start understanding what it was telling him.

Honest, grounded, and very concrete. This is the kind of conversation that gives you something to think about long after it ends.

Katrijn woke up one morning and couldn't speak, couldn't write, couldn't get back to the person she was the day before, and she had to decide what to do with that.

In this episode she talks about what it actually looks like to build work around what you have, not what you planned, including the moment a stranger's creative chaos became her unexpected calling.

If you're somewhere between who you were and who you're becoming, and you're not sure the two will ever connect, this one is for you.

How Your Voice Shapes Your Personal Brand

Sound is something we experience every day, yet very few people think about how powerful it really is.

In this episode, María Lucia Romero speaks with Christophe Strotz, singer, creative audio producer, and Managing Director of Linster Studios in Luxembourg.

Their conversation explores the emotional power behind sound and why tone of voice plays a deeper role in communication and branding than many people realize.

Christophe shares his personal story, from arriving in Luxembourg as an adopted child from South Korea to discovering how music allowed him to connect with people even before he fully understood the language around him.

Through that experience, he began to understand something powerful. Sound communicates emotion faster than words.

Together, María Lucia and Christophe reflect on how tone of voice shapes the way we connect with others, whether in personal relationships, public speaking, leadership, or brand communication.

From the recognizable sound of global brands to the simple act of recording and listening to your own voice, this episode invites listeners to think about communication in a completely different way.

Because sometimes, the most powerful message is not what we say.
It is how we sound when we say it.

What does it truly mean to lead when you are the only one of your kind in the room?

Sharon March joins me to explore the powerful acronym WIN: What’s Important Now.

With over 25 years in corporate finance and international boardrooms, Sharon offers a perspective on leadership that goes far beyond strategy.

We talk about the essential "inner work" of defining your values before the world tries to define them for you.

Sharon shares her journey of dealing with high-pressure environments with a "can-do" attitude, the importance of quality education as a lifelong anchor, and why feeling uncomfortable is often the surest sign of growth.

This episode is an invitation to stop second-guessing your seat at the table and start trusting the foundation you’ve built.

It’s a warm, honest look at how character, ethics, and a simple question can shift the way we show up in our lives and our careers.

Josh’s story does not follow a straight line.

From studying psychology in England, to working in luxury fashion at Harrods, to moving into higher education in Luxembourg, to starting his own boutique consulting space… his path looks far from conventional.

What becomes clear in this conversation is that none of those chapters were random. Each one shaped his understanding of identity, self-worth, and contribution.

We talk about burnout. Divorce. Starting again at 34. The courage it takes to stop apologizing for who you are. And the idea behind his book Delightfully Dysfunctional, which challenges the stigma around the traits we label as “too much” or “not enough.”

If you have ever felt behind, misaligned, or unsure whether you are on the “right” path… this episode might feel very close to home.

Find the links to his book here: https://jnb.lu/

In industries driven by speed and scalability, other ways of building often remain unseen.

In this episode No. 124 of the Brilliantly Branded Podcast, María Lucia Romero speaks with Ase Elvebakk, Cofounder of Natural Nuance, about building a circular luxury brand while working with time-intensive processes, artisans, and long-term thinking.

Ase shares her transition from tech and innovation into product creation, how motherhood influenced the questions she asks as an entrepreneur, and why clarity of direction matters before empowerment can take place.

The conversation touches on vision, responsibility, and the practical realities of creating inside the luxury industry without following the pace of fast fashion.