On Finding Amazing Podcast Guests + Janelle Kellman Show Notes
An old friend asked me via email this past weekend how I found my podcast guests. She had just listened to my Name & Fame podcast conversation with Janelle Kellman. How did I come across Janelle and then make our interview happen?
It’s a winding map worth noting here, both for ideas on how YOU can become more accessible as a potential podcast guest and as a way to demonstrate what I pay attention to as a host, and how I build resilient relationships with people who may become future guests.
I heard Janelle on a podcast a few years ago - maybe 2023 - and was impressed with her JOY (naturally) and her decision to announce her candidacy for Lt. Governor of California years before the actual election date. I also saw unique potential in her understanding of the climate policy aspects of the particular role. I immediately got in touch. We got on a call. We knew we’d stay connected. I found opportunities to celebrate her work and campaign from my social media platforms, and I just kept an eye on her, and knew I would one day develop a platform that would be worth her valuable time.
I work the same way with my own media relationships, which can lead to me being a podcast guest, too. That’s why I’ve often advised clients on how to think about building relationships with journalists - way in advance and without an immediate agenda.
Relationships are currency, and now I’d argue that is more important than ever.
As much as building influence is a long game, understanding how and when to use it yourself is too. These themes keep coming up in what I write, how I advise, and what I’ll be talking about - in solo episodes and through interviews - for my Name & Fame podcast.
In the meantime, here are extended show notes for the incredible conversation I had with Janelle. As ever, I'd love a follow or share, and a rating/review on Apple podcasts if you are inspired. It really helps new shows find new listeners.
And, stay tuned, as Janelle and I are going to catch up via video soon, and I’ll share that recording in a future newsletter.
Built for This: Janelle Kellman's Case for a Different Kind of California Leader
Janelle Kellman has been training for this moment her whole life — she just didn't know it.
About This Episode
Janelle Kellman is an environmental lawyer, ultra marathoner, former mayor of Sausalito, and candidate for Lieutenant Governor of California. In this conversation, she traces the through-line from flooding streets in Sausalito to the state commissions that could shape California's coastline for generations — and talks about Ikigai, the Japanese concept of finding the overlap between passion, purpose, and what the world needs. She didn't engineer it. She paid attention.
Recorded April 2025. Released now because California needs to know she exists.
What This Episode Is Really About
Ikigai in practice
Janelle's career wasn't a plan — it was an accumulation. Environmental law, ultra running, city council, nonprofit founding, subnational climate diplomacy. It all looked like an intellectual buffet until suddenly it didn't. The Ikigai framing isn't a concept here; it's a lived example of what happens when you keep showing up for the thing directly in front of you.
Resilience vs. sustainability
Sustainability is living in harmony with the earth. Resilience is the ability to bounce back when things go wrong. Janelle calls herself the resilience candidate — and it's a reframe that opens the conversation to people who don't think of themselves as climate voters.
The campaign (climate) trail
Instead of the standard fly-in, coffee, fly-out campaign circuit, Janelle designed five four-day backpacking trips through California's most climate-vulnerable landscapes. It's authenticity not as a strategy but as a default — she runs when she travels. She always has.
The second hockey stick
Janelle references a neuroscience framework: fluid intelligence peaks in your 30s and 40s, then dips — and then, if you've stayed curious, a second upswing arrives. Crystallized intelligence. Everything you've ever learned starts working together at once. Andrea pauses the conversation to name it directly: the people she names and fames are almost never the youngest or loudest in the room. They're the ones who stayed in it long enough for everything to click.
"If you're someone who's been in your field for a while and you're wondering if your moment has passed — it hasn't. It may actually be arriving."
The Line That Says Everything
Janelle didn't become who she is by reacting to the crisis. She became who she is by spending years being exactly herself — on trails, in courtrooms, in city council meetings — until the crisis finally arrived that needed precisely her. That's the long game. And some of you listening are further along than you realize.
Links
CAMPAIGN
NONPROFIT
Center for Sea Rise Solutions — searisesolutions.org
BALLOTPEDIA
ballotpedia.org/Janelle_Kellman
Name & Fame is created, hosted, and produced by Andrea Learned. Edited by Syd Gladu and Kristie Taiwo-Makanjoula. Theme music by Adam Captured. Art by Nancy Bolan.
