Some people have the kind of résumé that makes you want to sit up straighter.
Toni Will is one of those people.
She has spent 25 years in leadership, starting in banking and eventually becoming the General Manager and Governor of the Kalamazoo Wings, a men’s AA professional hockey team in the ECHL. She was the first female GM in franchise history and the first woman to serve on the ECHL Board of Governors. Under her leadership, the Wings have earned multiple awards for sales, revenue growth, and diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.
Casual.
And somehow that’s only part of the story.
Toni is also the founder of Mindfulness Elevated, a lifestyle coaching business she launched in 2021, and later expanded into professional development coaching through Toni Will Coaching. In 2024, she became a TEDx speaker and launched Women In…, a podcast that celebrates women in all walks of life and the people helping lift them up along the way.
So yes, when I say I was honored to be a guest on her podcast, I mean it.
I met Toni for the first time in person at the Amplify Sober Voices podcast convention in Orlando this past January — which is one of those very niche sentences that somehow also tells you everything you need to know about both of us. We were in a room full of sober podcasters, creators, advocates, and storytellers. The kind of room where people are building something bigger than themselves and are not especially interested in playing small.
Toni fit right in.
She’s warm, thoughtful, accomplished, and refreshingly real. The kind of person who can talk leadership, recovery, disruption, and purpose without sounding like she swallowed a LinkedIn post whole. Which is harder to find than it should be.
So being invited onto Women In… felt like a natural extension of the conversations we were already having.
A Podcast That Makes Space for Ambition, Honesty, and Real Life
At its core, Women In… is a podcast about celebrating women and the people who shape them, support them, challenge them, and help them rise. It’s curiosity-driven, uncensored, and centered on what motivates people in their day-to-day lives — not just what they do, but why they do it.
That’s what makes it work.
This isn’t a show built around polished talking points and safe little soundbites. It’s built for women who are doing big things, often while carrying complicated stories, evolving identities, and the occasional internal monologue that deserves its own producer credit.
My kind of conversation.
Recovery, Reinvention, and Telling the Truth Out Loud
On the episode, we talked about my own journey — one shaped by recovery, reinvention, media, purpose, and a fairly stubborn refusal to live a small life.
I’ve been sober for nearly 20 years, and that experience has changed everything. Not just the obvious things, but the deeper things too. The way I lead. The way I connect. The way I tell the truth. The way I understand purpose now versus the way I used to chase performance, approval, or external validation.
Recovery gave me my life back, yes. But it also gave me my voice.
And once you get your voice back, it becomes increasingly difficult to use it for anything fake.
That truth has shaped every chapter of my career. I built my way up through media without a college degree, eventually landing as Publisher of Seattle Met magazine by 35 and Director of Business Development at KING 5 Media Group — the kind of career path that looks linear on paper and felt anything but in real life. Today, I run The Sober Curator, the recovery lifestyle platform I founded to prove that sober living can be stylish, funny, smart, culturally relevant, and fully alive. What started as a passion project has grown into a top-ranked recovery lifestyle site with more than 1.1 million unique visitors worldwide, along with a podcast and weekly newsletter.
So yes, there were a few threads to pull on.
Why Toni Was the Right Person to Host This Conversation
What I appreciated most about talking with Toni is that she understands ambition and transformation from the inside out.
She knows what it means to lead in spaces where you are the first.
She knows what it means to challenge norms.
She knows what it means to build something while also becoming someone.
That matters.
Because conversations about recovery, leadership, and reinvention can get flattened so quickly. They can turn into tidy little narratives with a clean lesson and a neat ending. But real life is rarely that cooperative.
Real life is messier. More layered. More interesting.
Toni gets that.
This is a woman who has broken barriers in professional hockey, launched coaching businesses, become a TEDx speaker, earned two Guinness World Records with the Kalamazoo Wings, finished two full Ironman triathlons, and is preparing to release her first book, Not the Norm, while also building a conference called empowHER.
Honestly, at some point the rest of us need to sit down and hydrate.
But that’s what made this conversation feel so grounded. Toni is clearly high-achieving, but she’s also deeply invested in helping others rise. Women In… isn’t about putting women on pedestals. It’s about creating room for their full humanity — their ambition, their leadership, and the experiences that helped shape them.
The Power of Being Seen in Full
One of the things I’ve learned in sobriety is that being seen clearly is both terrifying and freeing.
You can spend years curating your image, polishing your edges, saying the right things in the right rooms. And then one day you realize the most powerful thing you can do is tell the truth — not the PR version, not the cleaned-up version, but the version that actually costs you something to say out loud.
That’s where the good stuff lives.
That’s also where connection lives.
On Women In…, I had the chance to talk about how recovery shaped my path, how storytelling became part of my purpose, and why I care so deeply about building spaces where people feel seen, represented, and inspired to live more honestly.
That’s what I’m trying to do with The Sober Curator.
That’s what I try to do in my work.
That’s what I hope happens every time I get behind a microphone.
Not because I have all the answers. But because I know how powerful it is when someone tells the truth in a way that makes another person feel less alone.
Grateful for the Invitation
I’m grateful to Toni Will for inviting me onto Women In… and for creating a platform that celebrates bold women, honest stories, and the people who help us become who we are.
Toni is the kind of leader who makes you believe there is still room to do things differently — with more courage, more curiosity, and more intention. She’s building that kind of space through her podcast, her coaching, and her work in the world, and I was honored to be part of it.
Any woman who can break barriers in pro hockey, coach people through transformation, earn Guinness World Records, finish Ironmans, and write a book isn’t just multitasking.
She is operating on a different spiritual bandwidth.
And frankly, I support it.
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Who is Toni Will?
Toni Will is a leader in professional hockey, a coach, TEDx speaker, and the host of Women In…, a podcast celebrating women in all walks of life and the people helping lift them up.
What is Women In… with Toni Will about?
Women In… is a podcast focused on women’s stories, leadership, purpose, and the people and experiences that shape who we become. It is curiosity-driven, honest, and built around real conversations.
What did Alysse Bryson talk about on Toni Will’s podcast?
Alysse Bryson shared her journey through recovery, reinvention, leadership, storytelling, and building The Sober Curator into a recovery lifestyle platform.
How did Alysse Bryson meet Toni Will?
Alysse first met Toni in person at the Amplify Sober Voices podcast convention in Orlando in January.
Why does this podcast episode matter to the recovery community?
The episode highlights how recovery can shape leadership, purpose, and identity, while showing that sober living can be honest, ambitious, and fully alive.
What is The Sober Curator?
The Sober Curator is the recovery lifestyle platform founded by Alysse Bryson. It covers sober living through culture, storytelling, and community, with a voice that is smart, stylish, and real.
What themes are explored in this article?
The article explores recovery, reinvention, women in leadership, truth-telling, storytelling, and the power of being seen fully.
