On this episode of BEP Talks, I sat down with Stephanie Mikulasek—former diplomat, executive coach, and founder of The Servant Edge—to dive into her global journey from Silicon Valley to the savannas of Africa. We explored the power of immersion experiences, why real growth often starts with discomfort, and how human connection can transform lives and businesses. Stephanie reminded us that the smallest acts of kindness and curiosity can create big change. Ready to reboot your thinking and impact the world? Tune in and be inspired!

Please follow Stephanie on substack! https://substack.com/@stephaniemikulasek?

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Well, hey there. And welcome to this edition of BEP Talks,

where, you know, we bring you fascinating people from all over the world

doing fascinating things. They're at all different stages

of career and life, have all different expertise.

But what they all have, one thing is the generosity to share their

story. Everybody has a story, and they're all worth hearing. So

here at BEP Talks, it's about sharing beliefs and

experiences and passions. And of course, today,

no exception to the rule, we have a fascinating guest today.

There are so many dimensions to today's guest.

I really just kind of don't know where to start. I will say that

Stephanie is a former U.S. diplomat. We're not going to talk too much

about that. She's an executive coach and a

speaker. She is the host of an international

Immersive Experience, founder of the Servant

Edge. I'm reading this because I want to make sure I get all the names

right. Stephanie has actually gone from Silicon Valley

to the mountains of Chile, the savannas of Africa.

That's quite a trip. That's a lot of story to share. So

with no further ado, please welcome today's

guest, Stephanie Mikulashek.

Hey there, Stephanie. Thank you so much for joining us today

on BEV Talks. It's an honor, Beth. Thanks for having me.

My absolute pleasure. Truly. Truly something that I. Well,

I read a lot about you. As I said, your. Your bio is so multidimensional,

it's kind of hard to know where to begin. We never know

where we're going to go. We never know where we're going to end. But it's

going to be a fun journey. Kind of like your journey from

Silicon Valley to the mountains of Chile and to

the savannas of Africa. What does all of that. How do you interpret that?

How could we interpret that?

She's got sand in her shoes would be what my mother would say,

and. Callus is on the bottom of her feet. It's a long journey.

It's a long journey. It is. You know, and actually, I should have started

that with. With my sojourn to Zimbabwe

back in the mid-90s. Yeah, I had

actually had a chance to go get a master's in world religions and

cultures. I grew up in a Christian home, and I wanted

to understand about other religions and how they thought and saw the world.

And so I started my journey actually living

very unique opportunity with the Lakota people on Pine

Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. And it was the first time that I

saw a completely different

culture and way of living that was right here in Our

beautiful country. And, and that led to a scholarship to

Germany, which was the first time I had a passport. Why not go to Europe?

You know, I was 25 years old. Threw on a backpack and headed out.

And then I, I had a professor in my master's program

who, no joke, imagine the disheveled,

graying hair and the leather satchel with the papers falling on the

ground as he's running past me. And he stop. And no

joke, we used to follow him and pick up papers and hand them to him.

And no joke, he stops. His name is Dr. Snook, long past, God bless his

soul. And he, he said, stephanie, I'm taking a group

to Zimbabwe and I want you to be part of it. And I said, yes,

of course, I'm going to go. And Beth, I had no idea where Zimbabwe was.

I had no idea. And so what I did is I signed up not just

for a quarter, we were on a quarter system. I decided

to stay for six months and write my master's thesis over there.

So I flew out in December and the next thing I knew, it began

a five year relationship with a country that I. I still consider

holding a part of my heart and home. What was it that was so special

about Zimbabwe? You know, it sounds

cliche, but truly it was the people I have never

met to this day in all the 60 some countries that

I've traveled in, worked in, lived in, been in. I've

never met people like the Zimbabweans that I met

all those years ago over the course of. Oh

goodness, I don't know how many immersion experiences that I used to

host for different people, whether they were students or

professionals trying to figure out this beautiful place. But

there is a sincere generosity of spirit,

in fact, in the language when you greet someone,

you. You are literally saying, how are you? I am okay if you are

okay. And the answer, I must say, is

I am okay. Therefore, you are okay. So there's this

deep sense of community and relationship

that I have truly never witnessed quite

like that. It's a beautiful thing. And the country

is absolutely gorgeous. Very lovely

exchange of feeling and commitment and,

and not making it all about me. That's right.

Like, I'm fine, you're fine, we're both fine. It's all good.

It's. That's really quite lovely. So that's your favorite country. You

said 60 countries that you've been to. Yeah. You know,

to say favorites, that's sort of like asking which child's your favorite.

I'd say it's one of my many Many

favorites. I think it holds a special place because it was my first

sub Saharan African country that I spent time in. But, you know,

every country that I've traveled, worked, or lived in offers

something to teach us, which is frankly why I do immersion programs now.

There is a value in going into

a different environment, experiencing the uncomfortable.

Right. That moment when nothing is the way it should be.

Right. Even knowing what the name of a grocery store is, or how do you

say, where's the bathroom? Or any of those basic things. Right.

There is something so crucial for us as

humans to go through those what I call dissonant growth

points where we have to sit in that this isn't comfortable. How do

I manage this? And what happens after that when you grow from that? And

I've experienced that literally in every country, whether it was Afghanistan

or Panama or Tanzania or Malawi or

Germany, all of them offer something. What

was it that brought you to all of those different locations?

Yeah, so great question. So my foray into

Zimbabwe, of course, was through graduate school, and then

from there I traveled quite extensively in Southern Africa, so I spent

quite a bit of time in South Africa, for example, and then

I joined the Department of state as U.S. diplomat.

And that, of course, you know, you sign up and it's sort of like the

military. Right. You're ready to go, bags are packed. And so

through that career, both with Department of State and usaid,

I managed to spend quite a bit of time on multiple different

continents for. For work and living in many of

those places. And then just my own interest and passion to see

the world. You know, I. I really was that kid who

imagined. Never. Never had a passport Till I was 25, but I used to

imag would be like to, you know, go someplace

that different. And, yeah, my own home state probably wasn't

enough. Yeah. So was Dorothy correct? Is it

true that there is no place like home?

Yes and no. And I'll. And I'll say it this way, you

know, my kids had to move a lot. I have two daughters. And

we used to laugh that we knew we were home when I was there,

when the green carpet was there, I have this green Persian

carpet. And when a couple of the particular pictures were hanging on the wall, and

as soon as they saw those, they knew we were home.

And then there came a time when they both said, and they're both now at

the stage where they don't have any interest in ever

traveling extensively again. But I think home

is, I've learned over the years, is much more of an

emotional connection than necessarily a physical

location. It's not for everybody, but at least for me,

it's true. Home is where your heart is, wherever that might

be, whenever it might be there. So a very important

question then. You said you have two daughters. Which one do you like better?

Oh my goodness. Oh

my goodness. Totally, totally teasing. I just wanted to

see what you. What your response would be. So

you ask. I read in your bio, you ask the

age old question, can't we all

get along? Can we?

Why don't we? Why aren't we? Talk to us a little bit about that.

Yeah. Thank you for this. In 2004,

I was in Puebla, Mexico, which is just about an hour or two

south of Mexico City. I was studying Spanish for

an onward assignment to Santiago, Chile. And I

had one of those restless nights when you can't sleep. My

oldest daughter was about a year year and a

half old and I should be sleeping when she's sleeping, right? And I

couldn't sleep. So I was up most of the night making countless

cups of tea and I was writing. And it was almost like something just had

to be born. It was the strangest feeling.

And it was that night, after about three, four hours, that I

wrote down the following, which is, my mission is

to build bridges of understanding and compassion while

tearing down walls of prejudice and fear.

Wow. I have dedicated my life both personally and

professionally, to building bridges of understanding and

compassion. I believe strongly

that when we can set down

whatever visceral

or strong opinion we might have

just to listen, to genuinely listen to another. And

in fact, we teach at the servant edge. We teach how to listen.

We are amazed at when we get to our essential

humanness. We're all craving community. We're all craving

belonging. We're all creating a sense of wanting what's best for our

families. If we can go back to that point,

I do believe it's possible. I think right now we're

struggling with that, but I do think it's possible. Right.

So I believe that we are all so much more alike

than we are different. But we focus

on what I call majoring in the minors. We

focus on the smaller things that differentiate us,

which should be celebrated, honored,

respected. Yes. Why do we make or do we. I

don't want to assume this. You're the expert here. Do we assume that things that

make us different are wrong just because

they're different? Well, you're

tapping into a fascinating field that I've been studying for a

long time, and it has to do with a couple of topics. One is

adult Development theory and the other is intercultural competency.

I'm not going to bore your listeners with the details in that space, but

suffice it to say that one of the challenges we

have, particularly here, I think in the United States and elsewhere, this isn't

just a US problem, is that to your point, we

do sometimes associate different with

wrong. And one of the areas that

we focus on in some of the work we do at the servant edge

is reinterpreting that. So when we take

people, for example, we were, I'm planning a women's leadership experience

right now to Guatemala for this fall and then another excursion

into Costa Rica and so forth. So on. One of the things that we do

is when the disruption happens, which is they're driving on

the wrong side of the road or. Well, that's not how you're supposed to do

it. You're supposed to wait your turn or you're supposed. Just these basic things. Right.

We do this every day when we're driving, you know, we go to a different

city and they don't, they don't drive the way that we drive back home. You

know. We can

retrain ourselves to look at those moments of,

if you will, dissonance or you did it wrong,

to reframe our minds and say, how interesting is

that? Let's get curious about that. I didn't realize that I had a

norm about how you're supposed to drive on a street like this. Right.

So it is possible, we just have to be intentional about it.

Right. I think that when it comes down to basics

kind of survival, the differences

become, they're no longer black and white, they're any

shade of gray until they kind of just dissipate. And

when we need each other, we can

get along. When we choose

to get along, we can. It is sometimes

that simple. Yeah. It is much easier

to keep ourselves in some sort, and

I'm going to say this word broadly in some sort of a victim stance. Right.

It's not my fault someone else did this to me.

It's very easy to fall into that space which there

might be a level of truth to that. The, the challenge is, is

if we stay there and, or, or

conversely we make ourselves into almost like a villain or a, you

know, a hero, I'll save the day. Or

when we stay in that space, we keep ourselves caught

in a never ending loop with an intentional

moment of pause and say, wait a second, okay, maybe this did

happen to me. This is true. And

I could still take action. That's different moving forward. I can

still look at someone who might live in a different environment or have

a different opinion than I do about whatever it is.

And maybe it's just a different opinion. Maybe it's not right or wrong

or better or worse. What would it be like just to even

imagine that might be possible? That's where we start.

Where we start. And it sounds so easy. So are we

putting too much energy into resisting how

easy that really could be? I think

so. Trying so hard not to get along. In

some ways it feels that way, right? It does, doesn't it? It really does.

So sad. It is very sad because to your earlier comment,

we are so similar. You know, for example, you know, many of your

listeners are probably Americans and. Or maybe from other countries, I would

guess. Yeah. You know, and we, we're all Americans and

we all have different opinions and different backgrounds and different colors of skin and

identities or whatever it is. Who cares how we define ourselves? But the

core, we're humans that are in a

place that we want to work together and just learn how to get along better.

And so that's a lot of what we do is teach basic human

essential skills in that space. You mentioned the Servant Edge.

Is that what the servant Edge is? You mentioned that a couple of times. Tell

us a little bit more about that, please. Sure. The Servant Edge is a servant

transformational leadership development company that in this

crazy context of technology saturation and AIs

accelerating everything, it's really a return turn back

to, if you will, learning how to

use our human intelligence, learning our human

centered nature and how to re engage with that. So

part of that are immersion programs that we offer. Part of that is leadership

development training, which is, I even hesitate to use the word

training there because it really is just learning and development. Part of it that's public

speaking. Part of that's coaching, helping individuals,

teams and organizations find ways to

find common ground, re engage, reconnect,

relearn how to coordinate and collaborate, relearn how to innovate

together, how to move themselves from here to

where they want to go, get unstuck. And funny enough, a lot

of times that's just, it's learning how we want to engage

again. It's learning how to make those connections. And I

think that there are a lot of people, I've met a few that are

just happy being unhappy or

living in their own misery kind of thing. And what I always, I, I said

it earlier, majoring in the minors and is it just easier to

be a victim than to be accountable for your

own happiness? It's always easier to blame someone

else for our problems. Yeah, I. I think truly

one of the differentiators between people is.

Yes, it's not to minimize. Bad stuff

happens. There have been legacy bad stuff that's happened.

That is absolutely true. And we today

have a choice of how we want to move forward and whether or

not we want to take responsibility for what we're going to do. And some of

that may be, hey, you know, I am really happy and content

with just doing what I'm doing. That's enough. That's okay.

Absolutely. It's. It's owning it, though. It's owning it and

saying, what can I. What can I do? And then the second question is, and

how can I make another person's life better?

We are innately born, I believe this strongly,

to share and to give back. And

when something good happens, you know, what's the first thing you do, Beth? When you

see a great movie, we tell someone about it.

Share. Yeah, you share the experience. Exactly. You want to go tell. So

you want to tell your partner, your kid or your friend, oh, I just saw

this great movie. You should really see it. Let me tell you all about it.

Right. We are. We are innately born to do that. We

want to ship. We want to give other people those. Tap back

into that again. I was a waitress for a long time. That's how I got

through school. And I'll never forget, one day I had this person came in.

I was doing a breakfast shift and I. Dinner shifts, breakfast. I had this gentleman

come in. He came in and. Every Saturday morning for a year,

right? And one day he stopped and he looked at me and he said, he's

very nice fellow and probably double my age. And he said, I just want you

to know your smile here every Saturday morning is why I came in.

And you made a difference in my life this year. Oh, isn't that. See

something so simple as that? That's. Yeah. Yeah.

That's. Yeah. You know,

I'm a friendly person. I. I have no problem being

approached. I have no problem, like, looking at someone

and trying to assess and something just as simple as,

like a Mona Lisa smile. You know, it's really not

that, but you see the way people respond. And I've had people say

to me, I've talked to so many strangers. And I said, but I

connect with them. And you never know the last

time someone may have been kind to them. You don't know

what they go home to. Do they go home to anybody? Do

they have anybody who cares so even something as

simple and easy to do, a

gesture, a grin, a nod, can

make such a difference. So the simple little things

so we can all get along. We just have to stop trying not to.

Is. And I have to say, when you were talking about

the gentleman who came in every Saturday morning for breakfast

because of your smile, I had in my notes,

I can show them to you. Look at her picture.

Look at her picture. Full of joy. There is something

so obvious in

the expression on your face. It's peace,

it's calm, it's understanding, it's.

It's rare, it's lovely,

it's evident. And you saw that I had that on my

little notes. Look at her picture. Can you see it?

Look at her picture, full of joy. That. That is

you. You obviously have led an extraordinary life. You've been

to 60 countries. You. You're the mom of two. You.

Thank you to the country and

to all of us. If you could

choose to do anything

that could make a difference on the most number of people,

kind of just by wishing it to be, what would that be?

I spent quite a bit of time thinking about that question

earlier this time, and thinking, or

rather 20, 25 and thinking about

how can I use my gifts and my

talents and my skills to. To help make the world a

better place. To shorthand it right. And what I

came to is that I believe

each one of us, wherever we are, in whatever we're

doing, has something to contribute. My

gift happens to be a skill

at not only engaging with another person and with people, whether

I'm coaching them or listening or however that might be,

but it's giving them an opportunity to see the world.

Nothing makes me more sad than when I hear someone

talk about a place outside the country or even in the country

with a. A negative. A negative comment without really

knowing anything about it. I'm sad because what

I see is someone who's missing an opportunity to really

get to know themselves. Not just the place they're going,

but themselves. If I could give one gift

to every single American, it would be

to the gift of going to another country that they've never

been to, they have no connection to, and allow

them to engage meaningfully with

those people in that land, in that culture, with the

myriad that happens and complexities and interesting things

where they have that aha moment where suddenly they

say, and this has happened to me. It's. It's what feeds my soul

when they look at me and they say, ah, I had

no idea, I had no idea. And it's

Usually Beth. About themselves. That's the beauty of travel. It's not

about whether or not you're to know the culture of Egypt or Zimbabwe or

Tanzania or Panama or wherever else you were talking about. It's actually

you get to know who you are and you take that back

and that gift keeps on giving. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm going to hazard to guess that you don't have to cross an ocean to

do that. That you can do it very close to home,

sadly, maybe even in your own home. That's right.

That kindness, gentle thing. Going back

to what? Tell me about what the international

immersive experiences are all about. Oh,

thank you. Yes. So these are game changing

immersion experiences where we take individuals or

groups. Sometimes we have a team, a corporate team who wants to join

us, but most of the time they're individuals. Generally

speaking, these are folks who are at some pivot

point in their lives or they're stuck and they need a reboot.

They're looking for some kind of a renewal. They're caught in

a quandary of relationship or a work situation or they don't

know where to go next. Right. We all have stuck moments.

I don't know another human who doesn't have a stuck moment. And so what we

provide through the international immersion experiences are

highly curated, very local

containers through which you're going to experience

something that you cannot get on your own.

We are not tourism companies. We're not a tourist company. Not to say that what

they do is not a good thing, but that's not who we are. We are

taking people through an experience where they're going to meet local

game changers, innovators and change makers.

Taking a look at who these folks are and how they're doing what they're doing,

immersing in the culture and having facilitated conversations.

So there's group coaching, individual conversations, there's. There's

reflection, time processing what's happening, what's

showing up for me, what is it, what's occurring. And then

we funnel through this whatever period of time. Sometimes

they're just a few days, sometimes they're a couple weeks, depending on where we're going.

They're powerful times. Reality show,

great reality TV show that you should be the star of.

You know, it's so refreshing to meet someone like you because

it is easy. I'm not a cynical person, but

it's easy to have cynical moments, cynical

thoughts, kind of because we're surrounded by them.

So we can choose to distance ourselves from certain people.

I would suppose

it's so Refreshing to know that there's someone like yourself who is

so experienced globally and

in service to the United States of America. As a

diplomat that has had so many unique and

wonderful, I hazard to guess, experiences. Just to know

one person like you is a blessing and it

gives hope and it says that it, it can become

contagious. And I hope that's

what a lot of people are getting out of hearing you today

on BEP talks. And there's information below on

how you can be in touch with someone

as grand as Stephanie. And I mean

that so sincerely, someone as and truly humble. You're so

honest and humble and how you can work with her, whether it's through

the service servant edge or whether it's through the

international immersive experience that she was just speaking about

or just to have a conversation with. I feel,

I feel like my blood pressure has come down over the last 30 minutes.

I do. And I mean that in the best possible way. I feel like my

heart's not beating as fast. I get so excited. But you have

such a demeanor about you and I mean that in the

best way possible. And it's good to know that

someone like you is out there

because you have two daughters. So there's a good chance you've

multiplied all the goodness. So you need

to know someone like Stephanie

Mikulashek. And here you now, you know her. You know her. We have never

spoken before. This is just an off the cuff conversation like we always

have on BEP talks, which is what I love about it most.

You need to be in touch. And the information to be in touch with

Stephanie is below. And as I said at the

beginning, there is so much dimension to your story, Stephanie. I really

didn't know where to begin or what to concentrate on.

So I wanted to touch on just a couple of the little points that I

found out about you because there is so much that

I still want to learn about you. And I cannot thank you enough for taking

the time to share your story, but to share

yourself on today's Bev Talk. No, you're unique.

You are. You are. You were all unique. I get that. But no, there's something.

You have a very special quality about you and it's lovely

to see. And you know, we talk about

rebooting. You use that word. Can I

suggest that every morning when

we're brave enough to put our feet back on the floor for the

start of another day, which we might not know what's ahead of, that's a

reboot opportunity. With every sunrise is an

Opportunity to be a better you than you were yesterday or to

help someone else become a better version of themselves. And

it doesn't take a lot. You don't have to go to Zimbabwe. You can go

to the grocery store. You can do simple little things. You can, you

know, call, smile at somebody, say, you know, I walk

my dog every morning and it amazes and you kind of see the same people

and, you know, good morning. Hello, how are you? Are you. And, you know, pet

the dogs and share a little this and that. And there are some people that

you pass every day. And I continue to say

good morning and no response, but I'm

not going to stop. You give me so much hope. I'm going to keep doing

it. And eventually one of them is going to say, good morning. And my sister

always says, oh, Beth, you know, it's because they have EarPods and they're not hearing

you, they're not ignoring you. I go, no, I get that possibility.

But when you walk past someone, you just go, you know,

some sort of an acknowledgement, acknowledge the people around you is, I guess

what I'm trying to say. Because you never know who can make a difference in

your life. You, Ms. Stephanie Mikulashek has made a

difference in my life today. And I'm sure for everybody listening to BEP

talks, what this proves about BEP talks,

we all have a story. Doesn't have to be as multidimensional as Stephanie's,

but we all have a story. We all have experiences and they are all

worth sharing. And we want to hear them. We

want to hear your beliefs, your experiences, your passions

and simply share them in an off the cuff conversation like I

just had with my new friend Stephanie. Thank you so much,

Stephanie. I can't wish you enough goodwill and

that a boomerang effect

for all that you've put out there. It comes back to you and your daughters

in abundance. It's an

honor to be with you. Thank you. Such a pleasure to get to know you.

And I hope that we will. Well, we'll make a point of it. That's what

we can do. We can make those decisions. So as we always say on

BEP talks, your story matters. It can make a difference.

I always end by saying, may the best always be yet

to come. Because I believe we can determine

that it can be always getting better. So when you

put your feet, when you have the courage to close your eyes tonight and the

strength to put your feet on the floor tomorrow, to start another, to

reboot, make it a great experience for

yourself. And for at least one other person. So

you brought out the philosopher in me. Oh, my goodness.

My goodness. So, as I always say again, may the best always be yet to

come. And until we talk again, bye for now.