Podcast: Kristen Hadeed, Permission to Screw Up

March 13, 2025
  • Brent Stewart
  • Brent Stewart
    Digital Strategy & Content Leader at Barry-Wehmiller

"I hope, most importantly, that people feel less alone in their struggling and screwing up and making mistakes.”

Kristen Hadeed hadn't turned 30 and she was already the CEO of a successful organization and well on her own leadership journey.

Through her company – Student Maid, an all-student cleaning company – she was able to touch the lives of hundreds of college students and hundreds more clients. She helped these students work their way through school, but she also created a culture that helps them develop important life and leadership skills.

Today, Kristen spends her time helping leaders, teams, and organizations around the world embrace their humanity. She has worked in just about every industry,in almost every U.S. state and several other countries, and in hundreds of virtual meeting rooms. Whether she is delivering a keynote talk, multi-day workshop, or facilitating ongoing development, her goal is always the same: to ignite the kind of human leadership that builds trust, belonging, and wildly engaged cultures.

Her work has been featured in news outlets including PBS, FOX, Inc., NBC, TIME, and Forbes. Her first TED Talk has more than three million views on YouTube.

Kristen has long been a friend of Barry-Wehmiller and she wrote about her leadership journey in Permission to Screw Up: How I Learned to Lead by Doing Almost Everything Wrong, a book that has sold more than 50,000 copies worldwide. Kristen was previously a guest on our podcast for a profound conversation about the Millennial generation. She returned to talk to us around the time Permission to Screw Up was released. Listen to this conversation through one of the links above.

 

 


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