WHERE AMBITIOUS WOMEN RETHINK EVERYTHING WORK TAUGH THEM
WELCOME TO EXECUTIVE UNSCHOOL®Work outgrew the boundaries of our alleged 9-5 jobs a long time ago.
It comes home with us at night, impacts our weekends, and alters the energy we have for the people we love. Along the way work taught us that rest is something you earn through output and that a packed calendar is a badge worth wearing.
Most of us quietly stopped asking one question: is this work helping me build a life I actually want? We just got better at surviving it.
Executive Unschool publishes a weekly publication for ambitious women who want more than the next productivity hack or leadership trend. This is where you get to think differently about work, examine what everyone else treats as normal, and design a career that gives back to your life.
YOU ARE IN THE RIGHT PLACE
Hundreds of readers are already here, exploring what work becomes when people count as much as performance.
WHAT YOU’LL FIND HERE
Every week I publish original essays on the future of work, ambition, leadership, identity, and how to build a career while staying whole.
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Original essays on the future of work, ambition, leadership, identity, and how to build a career while staying whole.
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Conversations with people reimagining how we work and live.
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Original frameworks and practical tools for working in ways that give you more energy, clarity, and choice.
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Private executive retreats and immersive workshops where leaders step back from the noise to decide what comes next.
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Evidence and field observations that connect what's shifting across workplaces, leadership, and culture.
AND WHY IT MATTERSWHY THIS EXISTS
Nobody hands us a guide for the moment work starts claiming more than forty hours a week, when your mind refuses to power down, when Sunday afternoons carry a weight you can't quite name, when the paper version of your success sits far away from how your life actually feels. Advice on becoming a sharper leader, manager, and performer surrounds us.
The conversation about staying a healthy human while building a meaningful career is much quieter.
MUST HAVE CONVERSATIONSThat quieter, more important conversation is the one happening here, because our joy, pleasure, and abundance matter far too much to leave what works takes from us unquestioned.
ABOUT BREEI'm Bree Johnson. For fifteen years I worked inside executive leadership and employment law, helping organizations move through growth, conflict, layoffs, leadership transitions, and culture change. Behind closed doors, the same honesty kept surfacing. "I can't shut my brain off." "I love my work, but I don't like who I am after it." "I can't remember the last time I felt fully present for my family."
Those conversations redirected my whole career. Today I publish Executive Unschool and lead private executive retreats, helping ambitious people build careers they never have to recover from.
START HERE
New here? A few good places to begin.
READ
Explore the latest issue of the EXECUTIVE UNSCHOOL letter.
LISTEN
Catch up on the HOW GOOD IT CAN GET? Podcast.
LEARN
Discover the principles behind WORK RECOVERY.
EXPERIENCE
Join a WORKSHOP or ask about a private RETREAT.
FEATURED ARTICLES
Our MUST-READ selection for you.
What If You Don’t Need a New Job? You Need a New Way to Recover From This One
What if recovering from work is how we become capable of more? I realized something recently had me shocked…
Why a Regulated, Recovered Woman Is Harder to Gaslight
Ask most people what work took from them and they will point to their energy. Their weekends. Their peace. A few years they will not get back. I want to point somewhere quieter…
Why One Question Keeps Expanding What I Believe Is Possible
There's a question I keep returning to. It’s followed me through the last few years like a thread I can't quite put down…
The PODCAST w/ Bree Johnson
LISTEN ON APPLE & SPOTIFY
Ep. 143 — How Good Can It Get? — What I Actually Mean When I Say It
I really wish someone had handed me this one question earlier in my career, back when I was climbing and striving and sure that the next title would finally make me feel like myself. How good can it get? I say it all the time on this show…
Ep. 144 — What Is Work Recovery and How Do You Know You Need It?
I built the thing I most needed, and in this episode I finally lay it all out for you. There is a version of exhaustion that sleep does not fix. You can leave the job, take the vacation, change the boss, and finally close the laptop at 5:00, and…
Ep. 145 — The Whisper That You've Outgrown the Way You Work
I came back from a summer that expanded me in ways I'm still catching up to, and the first thing I felt was a pull to make sure I wasn't leaving any of you behind. Before I tell you where we're going, let me tell you where I've been. This summer held…
The BELIEF behind EVERYTHING
Every essay, conversation, retreat, and framework begins with the same belief: work should expand your life, not consume it. Your career matters. Your ambition matters. They were never meant to become your whole life.
If you're looking for a different way to work and live, welcome.
You've found your people.
