A weekly podcast for white collar workers who feel the ick — and are ready to understand where it comes from, what it's costing them, and what they can do about it.
Something is wrong at work — and it's not you.
Each week, we dig into what it actually takes to build a future of work worth showing up for with hosts Aparna Rae and Lars Gallien. We bring together systems analysis and somatic wisdom to help white collar workers name what they're feeling, understand why it's happening, and find their power to change it — together.
Circle Back Club is for the manager who feels complicit. The ERG leader who's tired of performing wellness. The high achiever who has followed every rule and still feels like something essential is missing. The person who suspects that the problem isn't their productivity, their mindset, or their personal brand — but doesn't yet have the language to say what the problem actually is.
This is that language. This is that community.
The future of work is not happening to us. We get to build it — one truthful conversation at a time.
Season 1: Coming Home
A 13-episode arc that takes white collar workers on a journey from naming the ick — that low-level feeling that something at work is fundamentally wrong — to understanding its roots, counting its costs, and finding the collective power to build something different.
We start with your experience. We move through the history of how we got here. We sit with what it's costing us — materially, somatically, and civically. And we end with the counterculture already being built by people who decided that the way out is in.
Spotify knows you're listening. We want to actually know you.
The Circle Back Club community is for white collar workers who are done going it alone — who want the frameworks, the language, and the people to build something different at work and beyond it.
Sign up below and we'll send you the Circle Back Club Season 1 Reading List — the books, data, research, and frameworks we draw on throughout the season. Plus you'll get each week's episode action steps delivered directly to your inbox.
Lars Gallien
Lars is a somatic coach, group facilitator, and DEI practitioner with 15 years of experience working with people inside some of the world's largest organizations — including Catalyst, Riot Games, and Nike. A former Division I collegiate athlete, Lars understands what it means to perform under institutional pressure — and what it costs the body over time.
Trained in somatic abolitionism by Resmaa Menakem, Carlin Quinn, and Jennifer-Lee Koble, and certified by the Strozzi Institute, Lars brings to Circle Back Club the question that systems analysis alone can't answer: what does your body already know about all of this — and what would change if you listened?
Learn more about Lars's coaching and facilitation work →
Aparna Rae
Aparna is an educator, entrepreneur, and organizer who has spent 15 years working at the intersection of equity, data, and systems change. She has built companies, grown movements, and helped organizations including the Gates Foundation, Nordstrom, and Evergreen Goodwill translate their equity commitments into real outcomes — $300 million deployed to communities of color, $4 million in annual wage increases for 2,000 workers, equity integrated across 67 organizations.
She brings to Circle Back Club what she brings to every stage she steps on: the data, the history, the systems analysis, and the refusal to let any room stay comfortable with a lie.
Learn more about Aparna's speaking and consulting work →
Bring This Conversation Into Your Organization
Circle Back Club exists because this conversation needs to happen everywhere — including inside your organization.
If you lead an ERG, book speakers for a conference, run a philanthropic foundation, or sit on a people and culture team at a Fortune 1000 company — and you want to bring the ideas in this podcast into a room where decisions get made — that's exactly the work I do.