Off the Record Leadership

Giovanni Zaccariello takes Melissa behind the résumé—from beginning her career on Wall Street and betting on herself as an entrepreneur to building The Lionesque Group, navigating its acquisition by MG2, and learning to lead within something much bigger.

Melissa opens up about the moments that changed her direction, including witnessing 9/11 early in her career and facing a life-threatening medical emergency in 2024. She shares how those experiences reshaped her relationship with ambition, wellbeing, vulnerability, and purpose—and ultimately inspired her book, The Purpose Pivot.

Leadership is easy to define in a title. It is much harder to define in practice.

Off the Record Leadership hosts Melissa Gonzalez and Giovanni Zaccariello share how their understanding of leadership has evolved—from learning to coach rather than always do and creating clarity without certainty, to taking bold risks, delivering honesty with humanity, and making room for others to grow.

They explore authenticity, empathy, resilience, creativity, and why strong leadership requires the self-awareness to ask: What do the people and the moment need from me now?

Hosts Melissa Gonzalez and Giovanni Zaccariello introduce their new show, Off the Record Leadership Podcast- sharing why they are drawn to the conversations leaders rarely have publicly: the moments behind the resume, the identity shifts behind growth, and the lessons success does not prepare you for. A leader's public record usually lists what got built: the companies, the titles, the growth, the wins. It rarely shows the doubts behind a decision, the trade-offs that were accepted, or the moment when someone realized the job required a different version of themselves. That gap between the polished account and the lived one is where a new leadership interview series has chosen to work, and it frames its inquiry around one question: "what did success not prepare you for?"