What does it take to stay in the game when life doesn't go your way? In this engaging and deeply personal conversation, Space In Between host Leigh Morgan welcomes back longtime friend, former tech CEO, author, TEDx speaker, and fellow Duke University athlete Everett Harper for a conversation that begins on the playing field—but quickly expands into leadership, resilience, and what it means to stay connected in turbulent times.

Drawing on stories from their years competing at Duke—Everett as a national championship soccer player and Leigh as a standout point guard for the Blue Devils—they revisit memorable victories, painful losses, difficult teammates, legendary competitors, and the coaches who shaped them. Together, they explore how the lessons learned in elite athletics continue to influence the way they lead organizations, navigate adversity, and show up for others.

At a time when many people feel exhausted by polarization, uncertainty, and declining trust, Leigh and Everett offer a refreshing reminder that resilience isn't a solo pursuit. Staying in the game requires agency, connection, humility, and the willingness to lean on teammates when the pressure is greatest. Through laughter, candid storytelling, and thoughtful reflection, they reveal why some of life's most enduring leadership lessons were learned long before either stepped into the executive suite.

In this solo episode of The Space in Between host Leigh Morgan explores how to stay awake, engaged, and fully human in a time when fear, outrage, political division, and emotional overwhelm can sometimes constrict our capacity to lead and be our fullest selves. Drawing from her own experience responding to the 2025 dismantling of USAID, Leigh reflects on what happens when we care deeply about suffering in the world — but find ourselves consumed by doomscrolling, dread, and the constant churn of unsettling headlines. The episode offers a powerful invitation to creating inner spaciousness, where we stay awake, but do not let fear consume us.

Leigh shares practices to feel grief without drowning in it, hold conviction without hardening, and reclaim agency even when we cannot control the outcome. She shares her personal journey, reflecting on her global development work in sub-Saharan Africa and northeastern India, insights from psychology, and how a powerful podcast conversation with Kaye Foster about reflective practice, leadership, and hope helped her remember and reclaim agency. The result is a timely and deeply human reflection on how we keep our hearts open, our minds clear, and our spirits steady in chaotic times.

Key messages:

• Fear is human, but it does not have to lead - Leigh names fear, dread, and grief as normal responses to real suffering and real uncertainty. The goal is not to deny those feelings, but to keep them from occupying more space inside us than we want to give them.
• Negativity bias and emotional contagion are real - Our brains are wired to notice threat, and our social systems often amplify fear, outrage, and grievance. Understanding these dynamics helps us respond with more awareness and less reactivity.
• Doomscrolling can feel like responsibility, but left unchecked can become constriction - Staying informed matters. But there is a difference between learning what we need to know and repeatedly consuming information that leaves us depleted, anxious, or numb.
• Agency is not always about controlling the outcome - Leigh reminds us that agency does not mean we can single-handedly change policy or prevent suffering. Sometimes agency begins with reclaiming our inner ground — how we breathe, what we notice, where we place our attention, and how we choose to show up.
• Inner spaciousness is where personal and collective agency can flourish - Inner spaciousness allows us to bear witness, work for justice, remain connected, and resist becoming hardened by fear or despair.

Check out the detailed show notes on the Space In Between website: http://spaceinbetweenpodcast.com/culvivating-inner-spaciousness/

What happens when data challenges something you deeply believe — something that has shaped your identity, your work, and your moral compass? In this episode of The Space In Between, Leigh sits down with Alice Shobe for a powerful conversation about feminism, boys and men, blind spots, and what it takes to expand our frame without abandoning our convictions.

Alice has spent her life pushing into spaces that were not designed for women and building pathways of opportunity for people too often left out. But when she read Richard Reeves’ Of Boys and Men, she found herself confronted by data she could not ignore: boys falling behind in education, men dying by suicide at alarming rates, and men drifting away from many of the caregiving and service professions society urgently needs. Rather than see this as a threat to her commitment to women’s equality, Alice began asking a harder question: what am I not seeing?

Episode Overview

In this conversation, Leigh and Alice explore what it means to hold two truths at once: that women and girls still face real barriers to equality and opportunity, and that boys and men are also struggling in ways that deserve serious, compassionate, evidence-based attention. Alice shares how her own story — from being the only girl on an all-boys hockey team after Title IX, to growing up as a fraternal twin with a brother, to leading in corporate and nonprofit spaces — shaped her commitment to opportunity. She also reflects on what it was like to raise the topic of boys and men inside women-centered spaces, where the reaction was often mixed, protective, and deeply human.

Key Themes:

• Alice's op-ed for the Puget Sound Business Journal Leadership "Expert Confronts Blind Spot After Decades Championing Women's Opportunity"
• How new data can reveal blind spots without requiring us to abandon our values
• Why personal story can open conversations that data alone cannot
• What it means to be willing to be misunderstood in service of a larger truth
• How “yes, and” can help us stay curious in moments of discomfort or disagreement

Main Discussion Points (see full show notes at http://spaceinbetweenpodcast.com/when-conviction-expands-with-alice-shobe/)

1. Expanding the frame without abandoning conviction

2. What the data reveals about boys and men

3. The emotional complexity of being misunderstood

4. Practicing “yes, and” in a polarized world without giving ourselves away

Why This Conversation Matters

We live in a time when many public conversations push us into either/or thinking: either you care about women or you care about men, either you stay loyal to your cause or you are betraying it. Alice’s story offers a different path. She reminds us that conviction can expand, that curiosity can strengthen rather than weaken our values, and that asking “what am I not seeing?” may be one of the most important leadership practices of our time.

About Alice Shobe

Alice Shobe is a respected leader whose career has focused on expanding opportunity, strengthening communities, and addressing inequities across the corporate, nonprofit, housing, homelessness, philanthropy, and workforce development sectors. She has held senior leadership roles at Amazon and in the nonprofit sector, serves on the board of Jobs for the Future, and is a founding board member of the American Institute for Boys and Men. A longtime advocate for women’s equality and opportunity, Alice brings to this conversation a rare combination of moral clarity, humility, and curiosity.