Tune Up Your Warrior

Jenny Chen
  • 5.0 (1)
  • Society & Culture
  • Updated Biweekly

As a lifelong learner, I believe that understanding different perspectives is key to growth. Tune Up Your Warrior is a space where I invite warriors in their fields to dig into the topics that shape our world, challenge our beliefs, and impact everyday people. No lip service. No performative actions. No fake conversations—just real, honest dialogue with guests who bring unique experiences and perspectives to the table. Each episode, we explore stories that matter—whether it's navigating identity, challenging norms, or confronting the complex realities of our industries and communities.

  1. 4d ago

    Niigaan Sinclair | Who Gets to Tell Canada’s Story? A Conversation About History, Identity & Belonging

    Can we love a country and still tell the truth about it? For Dr. Niigaanwewidam Sinclair, understanding Canada requires us to hold more than one truth at the same time. The beauty and the harm. The things worth celebrating and the things we were never properly taught. The country Canada says it is and the people whose histories and contributions have too often been left outside that story. Niigaanwewidam Sinclair is an Anishinaabe scholar, writer, educator and Professor of Indigenous Studies at the University of Manitoba. In this episode of Tune Up Your Warrior, Jenny and Niigaan explore history, identity, belonging, reconciliation and ultimately, what kind of country Canada might still become. Niigaan begins by sharing his Anishinaabe identity, the meaning carried through names and greetings, and how his own political consciousness began taking shape as a teenager during a transformative period of Indigenous activism in Canada. Jenny shares how reconnecting with her own Chinese Canadian history led her to recognize how much of Canada's story she had never learned, and how understanding one missing history made her more curious about others. Together, they explore what happens when national history becomes too simple. Niigaan challenges the idea that acknowledging colonial violence, dispossession and the residential school system requires rejecting everything about Canada. Instead, he argues for moving from an “or” mindset to an “and” mindset, where Canadians are capable of holding complexity. He also challenges listeners to reconsider where some of the values Canada celebrates about itself actually came from, sharing his perspective on Indigenous influences on ideas of community, democracy, freedom, multiculturalism and mutual responsibility. And the conversation isn't only about the past. It's about what we do with the truth once we know it. Niigaan shares why he remains hopeful about Canada, what he sees changing in Canadians' willingness to engage with Truth and Reconciliation, and why reconciliation isn't simply an Indigenous responsibility. The episode ends with a beautiful redefinition of a word at the centre of this podcast: warrior. Niigaan explains the Anishinaabe concept of ogichita as he understands it: not someone defined simply by fighting, but someone with a big heart who commits themselves to peace, justice and relationships. Released on September 30, National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, this conversation is an invitation to listen, learn and make room for complexity. Because telling the truth about our history doesn't mean giving up on Canada. It might be part of imagining a better one.

    Niigaan Sinclair | Who Gets to Tell Canada’s Story? A Conversation About History, Identity & Belonging

  2. Sep 23

    Roger Greenberg | How We Govern Is How We Grow: Boards, Leadership & Stewardship

    If Roger Greenberg could change one thing about his career, he would have built a board sooner. After decades of leadership, including more than 20 years as CEO of Minto, that might not be the answer you'd expect. But Roger has experienced governance from almost every angle: as a CEO accountable to a board, a family-business leader, a board member and chair, and through organizations spanning private business, nonprofits and professional sport, including the CFL and Ontario Hockey League. And he has learned that the right board can do far more than oversee an organization. It can challenge assumptions. Bring perspectives management doesn't have. Help leaders navigate difficult decisions. Create accountability. And in a family business, it can provide independent perspective when business, family, history and emotion become difficult to separate. In this episode of Tune Up Your Warrior, Jenny welcomes Roger back for Part Two, this time for a conversation about something that may not sound particularly exciting at first: Governance. What is a board actually supposed to do? Where does governance end and management begin? What makes someone a valuable board member beyond an impressive résumé? How should a board challenge management without trying to manage the organization itself? Does the right governance model depend on the organization and its culture? And why doesn't Roger recommend advisory boards? Roger shares what he learned from establishing a functioning board at Minto in 2007, why he wishes he had done it earlier, and how governance can be particularly valuable when navigating the complexity of a multigenerational family business. Jenny and Roger also explore board composition, the value of disagreement and independent thinking, the relationship between governance and organizational impact, and why boards have a responsibility to think beyond today's performance. Because ultimately, governance isn't just about meetings, committees and oversight. It's about stewardship. Who has responsibility for the decisions being made today? Who is willing to challenge them? And are we building organizations that are stronger for the people who will eventually inherit them? 🎙️ How We Govern Is How We Grow: Roger Greenberg on Boards, Leadership & Stewardship

    Roger Greenberg | How We Govern Is How We Grow: Boards, Leadership & Stewardship

  3. Sep 16

    Keith Chang | Making People Feel: Storytelling, Leadership & the Work That Matters

    What makes a story unforgettable? For Keith Chang, it isn't the biggest production, the fanciest technology or the most recognizable person in the room. It's whether you made someone feel something. Keith has spent more than 30 years doing exactly that. Today, he is President, Canada at SenovvA, but his entrepreneurial story began when he founded Silverpoint Media at just 26 years old. Over the decades since, he has built a career across film, live events and experiential storytelling, learning that some of the most compelling stories inside an organization are rarely found only in the executive suite. Sometimes they're found in the salesperson who used to be a ballet dancer. Or the marketer who trained as a chef. Or the employee whose life outside their job completely changes the way you understand what they bring to it. In this episode of Tune Up Your Warrior, Jenny and Keith explore what happens when we stop telling corporate stories about organizations and start telling stories about the people who make those organizations what they are. Keith shares how his approach to storytelling evolved, why his team searches for the human stories hiding underneath a company's brand, and how trust, relationships and attention to detail shape everything from a commercial shoot to a major live production. But the conversation quickly becomes about much more than creative work. Keith reflects on becoming an entrepreneur in his twenties, navigating an industry where he rarely saw Asian Canadians in leadership, managing the pressure of high-profile productions, and why empathy and knowing the people on his team have become central to the way he leads. He also talks candidly about one of the harder lessons of entrepreneurship: realizing that building something you love can still cost you moments you can never get back. After years of working relentlessly and missing important family moments, Keith began redefining what success meant, making deliberate choices to be present for his children and the people he loves. That leads to one of the most personal parts of the conversation: his daughter Anna's decision to pursue music at NYU, Keith's evolution as a parent, and what it means to support your children in pursuing a life that may look nothing like the one previous generations imagined for them. Jenny and Keith also explore Asian representation, breaking generational patterns, entrepreneurship, creativity, resilience, the future of human connection in an increasingly technological world, and why Keith remains optimistic about the goodness of people. Recorded on Keith's birthday and released just after Jenny's, this conversation ultimately asks a question bigger than storytelling: What makes the work, and the life we're building around it, actually matter?

    Keith Chang | Making People Feel: Storytelling, Leadership & the Work That Matters

  4. Sep 11

    Brian Wong | The First Fan in the Family: Sport, Culture & Belonging

    When Brian Wong arrived in Calgary from Hong Kong at 17, he thought his English was pretty good. Canada quickly taught him otherwise. Suddenly, Brian was navigating culture shock, language barriers and the complicated experience of trying to find your place in a country that is now supposed to be home. Sport became one of the places where those barriers began to disappear. First through soccer, where Brian found community and the comfort of speaking Cantonese with people who understood him. Then through hockey, a sport he had first encountered through NHL video games before becoming a Calgary Flames fan sitting in $5 seats in the nosebleeds. Inside the arena, something shifted. Thousands of people from different backgrounds could cheer, celebrate and belong to the same thing. Years later, Brian would go from being a first-generation hockey fan to becoming the host of Flames TV Chinese, using culturally relevant storytelling to help make hockey more accessible to Chinese-speaking communities. In this episode of Tune Up Your Warrior, Jenny and Brian explore what happens when we stop thinking about sport as simply entertainment and start recognizing its power as a vehicle for belonging, representation and community. They talk about Brian’s immigration story, language and identity, soccer and hockey as cultural equalizers, the evolution of Flames TV Chinese, why translation and cultural relevance are not the same thing, and why representation in sport has to extend beyond the athletes we see on the field or ice. They also dig into the gaps that remain in marketing, leadership and decision-making across Canadian sport, why a heritage night is not the same thing as a long-term relationship with a community, and what sports organizations could gain by treating multicultural engagement as a strategy rather than a campaign. Because for many newcomer families, fandom isn’t inherited. Someone has to become the first fan in the family. Brian was one. And today, he’s helping more people see that Canada’s game can belong to them too.

    Brian Wong | The First Fan in the Family: Sport, Culture & Belonging

  5. Sep 10

    Celeste Warren | Beyond DEI: What It Really Takes to Build Equity

    What happens to equity when the DEI department disappears? Over the last several years, organizations have changed how they talk about diversity, equity and inclusion. Teams have gotten smaller. Roles have disappeared. Programs have been renamed. In some places, even the language has changed. But who gets hired, promoted, sponsored, heard and given access to opportunity still matters. So if equity disappears when the person with DEI in their title disappears, was it ever really embedded in the organization to begin with? In this episode of Tune Up Your Warrior, Jenny sits down with Celeste Warren, a global equity and inclusion leader who spent 28 years at Merck, including a decade leading its Global Diversity & Inclusion Center of Excellence. Today, Celeste is the founder of Celeste Warren Consulting, co-founder of Destination STEM, and the author of How to Be a Diversity and Inclusion Ambassador and The Truth About Equity: What It Really Takes to Create an Inclusive Workplace, which examines what organizations and individuals can actually do to move equity from intention into action. Having spent nearly three decades creating change from inside a Fortune 100 organization, Celeste brings a perspective that goes far beyond programs, statements and initiatives. Jenny and Celeste talk about what it actually takes to embed equity into the way an organization operates, why responsibility for inclusion cannot live exclusively with a DEI team, and what leaders need to understand about creating sustainable change. They explore the systems behind workplace outcomes: who gets access, how talent is developed, where accountability lives, what gets measured and rewarded, and why good intentions don't necessarily create equitable experiences. They also unpack what happens when the political or organizational appetite for DEI changes. Because organizations can change the terminology. They can eliminate a department. They can retire an acronym. But they still have to attract great people, develop them, retain them and create workplaces where people have the opportunity to contribute and succeed. And that makes the question bigger than whether DEI survives this particular moment: Did we learn enough from the work to build something that survives without the label? Celeste's philosophy is simple: Equity is everyone's work. If this conversation leaves you wanting to go deeper, pick up Celeste's book The Truth About Equity, where she explores what it really takes to build a workplace where equity becomes something people practice, not simply something organizations promise. Learn more about Celeste and her work:

    Celeste Warren | Beyond DEI: What It Really Takes to Build Equity

  6. Sep 9

    Daniel MacMillan | A Million Times: Five Years of Choosing Each Other

    Five years later, would you still choose the same person? On September 9, 2021, Jenny Chen and Daniel MacMillan got married. Five years, a cancer journey, career changes, entrepreneurship, a growing and changing blended family, and more than a few adventures later, Dan is back for Part Three of Tune Up Your Warrior to open Season 5 on their fifth wedding anniversary. And this time, the conversation is less about how they got here and more about what they've learned since. With questions submitted by listeners, Jenny and Dan talk candidly about what their marriage looks like when nobody else is watching, how they navigate conflict differently, their 18-year age gap, why partnership sometimes means choosing the relationship over being right, and what five years of actually building a life together has taught them about love. Dan also shares what it was like watching Jenny walk away from a stable career and build a business, why he never doubted what she could create, and what he's watched change in her along the way, including learning to accept help instead of carrying everything herself. They revisit how cancer changed Dan's relationship with time, why family time matters more to him now, and what he still hopes to be here to witness as their children build lives of their own. There are also dad jokes, terrible movie references, debates over how long Jenny should be required to give a movie before abandoning it, an alleged talent for making paper airplanes, hypothetical cults, and plenty of evidence that an 18-year age gap occasionally reveals itself in very unexpected ways. But underneath all of it is a simple question: Knowing everything the last five years would hold, would you still do it? Dan's answer? “A million times.” Season 5 of Tune Up Your Warrior begins with a conversation about marriage after the wedding, partnership through change, the time we're given, accepting help, choosing each other, and what Jenny and Dan hope the next five years will hold. Happy fifth anniversary. 🤍

    Daniel MacMillan | A Million Times: Five Years of Choosing Each Other

  7. Aug 12

    Season 4 Finale: Belonging, Becoming, and the Courage to Say Yes

    In this closing solo episode of Season 4 of Tune Up Your Warrior, Jenny Chen reflects on belonging, what it means, where we find it, and how we learn to create it for ourselves and others. She shares more of her own story, including the experiences that shaped her understanding of identity, visibility, and finding her place in spaces that were not always designed with her in mind. From there, Jenny looks back on her year of yes, a year of choosing possibility, taking risks, and saying yes to opportunities she never could have planned for. And then came the summer of yes. A summer spent with people who made her feel like she belonged. A summer filled with unexpected invitations, new friendships, community, laughter, uncomfortable firsts, and some pretty incredible opportunities that she never went looking for. What she realized is that almost none of those opportunities came from chasing them. They came through relationships. Through people she had met in this chapter who were doing incredible things themselves and who invited her into their worlds. Because maybe that is what belonging actually looks like. Not one giant moment when somebody finally tells you that you have made it, but hundreds of smaller ones. Being invited. Being remembered. Being trusted. Making room for somebody else. And leaving people feeling a little more seen than they did before they met you. Jenny also reflects on what four seasons of Tune Up Your Warrior have taught her, and expresses her gratitude to every guest who trusted her with their story, everyone behind the scenes who helped make these conversations possible, and every listener who pressed play, shared an episode, or reached out to say that something they heard stayed with them. Season 4 may be ending, but the year of yes isn't over yet. Tune Up Your Warrior is taking a short summer break before returning for Season 5 on September 9, with a very special guest joining Jenny behind the microphone: her husband, Dan. Until then, thank you for listening, for sharing these stories, and for being part of this little podcast that somehow became something much bigger than Jenny ever imagined. 🎙️❤️

    Season 4 Finale: Belonging, Becoming, and the Courage to Say Yes

  8. Aug 5

    Cassandra Dorrington | Supplier Diversity: From Initiative to Economic Strategy

    What if supplier diversity is not a side initiative, but one of the clearest indicators of whether an organization actually understands growth, innovation and economic resilience? In this episode of Tune Up Your Warrior, Jenny sits down with Cassandra Dorrington, President and CEO of the Canadian Aboriginal and Minority Supplier Council, for a conversation about supplier diversity as a real business and economic strategy. For more than fifteen years, Cassandra has championed the growth of Indigenous and racialized suppliers in Canada and internationally. She has helped corporations build more inclusive procurement practices, connected suppliers with potential buyers and created stronger access to opportunity. Cassandra has also been recognized as one of Atlantic Business Magazine’s 25 Most Powerful Women and one of DiversityCan Magazine’s Top 10 Leaders in People Strategy and Workplace Culture for 2025. In this episode, they explore: 🌱 Why supplier diversity is not charity or optics, but strategy 💼 What organizations are still getting wrong about access and opportunity⚖️ The difference between performative commitment and real accountability 🚪 The systemic barriers diverse suppliers continue to face 📈 What companies leave on the table when they ignore diverse suppliers ✨ What meaningful leadership looks like when inclusion is built into how business is actually done This conversation is an important reminder that organizations cannot expect greater innovation, stronger ecosystems and more resilient growth while continuing to build through the same narrow channels. Learn more from CAMSC CAMSC has several upcoming opportunities for businesses and suppliers looking to grow, build relationships and better understand the certification process. Its upcoming Trade Missions are designed to help diverse suppliers connect with new markets and corporate opportunities, while the Supplier Certification session offers a closer look at how certification works and the value it can create. Trade Missions: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/5RVQ8B7 Supplier Certification session: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/bMhRYcJyQlukNVqtrwbwUg#/registration Find out more about CAMSC here: https://camsc.ca/

    Cassandra Dorrington | Supplier Diversity: From Initiative to Economic Strategy
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About

As a lifelong learner, I believe that understanding different perspectives is key to growth. Tune Up Your Warrior is a space where I invite warriors in their fields to dig into the topics that shape our world, challenge our beliefs, and impact everyday people. No lip service. No performative actions. No fake conversations—just real, honest dialogue with guests who bring unique experiences and perspectives to the table. Each episode, we explore stories that matter—whether it's navigating identity, challenging norms, or confronting the complex realities of our industries and communities.

Information

  • Creator
    Jenny Chen
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    78
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Jenny Chen
  • Show Website
    Tune Up Your Warrior