052: you carry your calling with you | joanna meyer
In this episode, Deb Knupp sits down with Joanna Meyer, founder and executive director of Women, Work, and Calling at the Denver Institute for Faith and Work and author of the book Women, Work, and Calling. Through a rich, deeply personal conversation, Joanna reframes calling not as a destination to hunt for but as a through line woven through every season of work and life.
"Calling isn't a specific destination we're trying to determine. It's a through line that we see in our lives."
Drawing on 12 years at a faith-based nonprofit and a patchwork career that spans international student ministry, global telecom, and nonprofit consulting, she brings both theological grounding and hard-won practical wisdom to one of the most compelling questions in leadership: what does it mean to do work that truly matters?
At the heart of the conversation is a clarifying distinction: values, purpose, and calling are not interchangeable words for the same idea. They are separate concepts that, understood together, become a powerful framework for navigating career transitions, organizational culture, and the universal human need to feel that your work is worth your one life. Joanna grounds the conversation in the Latin root of vocation and invites listeners into a more expansive, whole-life understanding of calling that frees them from the pressure of finding the one right thing and instead asks: how am I faithfully stewarding who I am in every space I fill?
KEY HIGHLIGHTS
Why calling is not a specific destination to hunt for but a through line connecting every season of professional and personal life.
The moment inside a corporate implementation project that convinced Joanna a values-based leader can create outsized impact in any industry.
How regional culture quietly shapes our definitions of success, and why surfacing those cultural idols is the first step toward building a leadership identity that is truly your own.
Why the rise of AI makes it more urgent than ever for organizations to have razor clarity about what it means to be human.
What it looks like to live out calling in the most unglamorous places.
Practical counsel for the person who feels soul-crushed at work.
Why a sense of calling untethered from a specific role makes leaders and professionals more resilient.
About Our Guest
Joanna Meyer is the founder and executive director of Women, Work, and Calling at the Denver Institute for Faith and Work, a faith-based nonprofit in the Denver metro area where she has spent the last 12 years building programming, thought leadership, and community at the intersection of faith, vocation, and public life. Her career spans international student ministry across the University of Nebraska and Latin America, organizational development in global telecom, nonprofit consulting, and leadership development — a patchwork quilt of experiences that informs her deeply integrated view of work and calling. She is the author of Women, Work, and Calling, a 20-chapter devotional-style book designed for women of faith navigating ambition, purpose, and identity in a complex working world. Joanna is a speaker, writer, and organizational leader whose work invites people to stop searching for calling as if it were a needle in a haystack, and instead discover it as the thread already running through their lives.
CONNECT WITH JOANNA MEYER
Joanna Meyer on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joannameyer/
Women, Work, and Calling (book): https://www.amazon.com/Women-Work-Calling-Place-World/dp/1514007932
Denver Institute for Faith and Work: https://www.denverinstitute.org
About The HX Collective:
The HX Collective explores the human experience through three lenses: work, relationships and self, through raw, authentic conversations rooted in human-centered design. Each episode offers gripping stories, thought-provoking discussion, and concrete tools that help you rethink your relationship with distress and strengthen your whole human experience.
