Big conversations
about what comes next.
What happens when the career, title, role or identity you worked so hard for no longer define you?
The Podcast
Beyond the Applause is a podcast about ambition, identity, reinvention and what comes next. Through candid conversations with each other and their guests, Christopher Gillis and Tanya Howard explore how our ideas of success evolve, what we carry forward, and what becomes possible when we make room for a new chapter.
Beyond The Podcast
Beyond the Podcast brings those ideas into the real world through coaching, speaking, salons and event hosting. Drawing on Christopher and Tanya’s backgrounds in executive leadership and elite performance, it creates space for thoughtful conversation, fresh perspective and meaningful growth.
The conversation doesn’t have to end when the episode does.
Beyond the Applause is growing beyond the microphone.
Christopher and Tanya bring the same honest conversations about ambition, identity, transition and reinvention into rooms, organizations and communities through speaking, live conversations, facilitation and coaching.
From stages and panels to intimate gatherings and one-on-one work, it’s all rooted in the same idea: asking better questions about who we are, what success means, and what comes next.
Beyond The Podcast
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Big questions. Real stories. No perfect answers required.
Christopher and Tanya are available as keynote speakers, bringing candid, engaging conversations about ambition, identity, transition, performance and the ways our definitions of success can change over time.
Drawing from two very different high-performance careers, one in executive leadership and one on the ballet stage, they bring lived experience, humour and perspective to conversations about achievement, reinvention and what comes next.
Their keynote talks and speaking engagements can be tailored to conferences, organizations, leadership teams, creative communities and other audiences looking for something thoughtful, honest and genuinely human.
Topics can include:
Identity beyond achievement
Reinvention and second acts
Success, ambition and the stories we inherit
Life after high performance
Leadership through transition
Queer identity, belonging and becoming
Creativity after structure
Redefining success when the old version no longer fits
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Smaller rooms. Bigger conversations.
Beyond the Applause salons are intimate, curated gatherings designed for the kinds of conversations that rarely happen at large events.
Part conversation, part connection and part collective curiosity, each salon brings people together around a central question or theme, with Christopher and Tanya helping create a space that feels thoughtful, relaxed and open.
Topics might explore reinvention, ambition, identity, leadership, creativity, belonging or the many versions of what comes next.
Salons can be created for private groups, organizations, communities or special events, and shaped around the people in the room.
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Sometimes the best thing you can do is ask a better question.
Christopher and Tanya bring complementary perspectives from executive leadership and elite performance to conversations that need more than polished talking points.
Together or individually, they can host, moderate and facilitate discussions with warmth, curiosity and enough structure to keep things moving without flattening what makes a conversation interesting.
Whether the room is tackling leadership, transition, creativity, culture or change, the goal is the same: create the conditions for people to say something worth hearing.
This could include:
Panels
Moderated interviews
Leadership conversations
Community discussions
Creative and cultural events
Organizational conversations around transition and change
Event hosting and live Q&As
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Make room for what comes next.
Coaching is already central to both Christopher and Tanya’s professional work.
Christopher works in executive and leadership coaching, helping leaders navigate growth, performance and change. Tanya’s work includes executive coaching and high-performance development, drawing on decades of experience inside an elite performance environment.
Their individual coaching practices are separate from Beyond the Applause, but they share many of the same areas of curiosity: identity, leadership, performance, transition, growth and how we move forward when the old way of doing things no longer serves us.
[Explore Christopher’s coaching]
[Explore Tanya’s coaching]
Ways to work with us
We’re your hosts
Christopher Gillis has built his career across leadership, strategy and organizational transformation, helping executives and teams navigate complexity, change and high performance.
But after years in achievement-driven environments, he’s become increasingly interested in the person underneath the titles. Beyond the Applause gives Christopher space to explore identity, ambition and what happens when the version of success you worked hard to build no longer quite fits.
These days, he’s leaning further into curiosity, creativity, youthfulness, queerness and taking up a little more space, while asking bigger questions about what success actually means.
Christopher Gillis
Tanya Howard spent 25 years with The National Ballet of Canada, rising to First Soloist and performing leading classical and contemporary work on some of the world’s most demanding stages.
Today, she works in high performance, executive coaching and leadership, but she’s also exploring what happens when life becomes a little less choreographed. That curiosity sits at the heart of Beyond the Applause: identity, ambition, reinvention and who we become when the rules change.
Offstage, Tanya crafts, crochets, thrifts, embraces big hair and describes herself as “very vibey.”
She draws the line at kitten heels.
Tanya Howard
New Episode Every Second Tuesday
✳︎
New Episode Every Second Tuesday ✳︎
Asking the hard questions
success doesn’t answer. Tune in today.
Podcast Episodes
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Tanya Howard
EPISODE 01
How did Tanya Howard end up in front of a podcast mic? In our first episode, Christopher turns the questions on Tanya as she reflects on growing up in South Africa, her climb to the top of the international ballet world, and the role friendship and family have played along the way. Tanya talks about changing identity, learning to look more broadly at life and what happens when you can no longer do the thing you've done your entire life. Christopher and Tanya also share some good news, celebrate a few people in their lives, and catch up on what they’ve been up to this summer. -
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Christpher Gillis
EPISODE 02
How did Christopher Gillis end up in front of a podcast mic? In the second episode of Beyond the Applause, Tanya turns the questions on Christopher as he reflects on a life that has moved from dance and theatre to government and executive leadership — and, eventually, through burnout and back toward creativity. Christopher talks about ambition, identity and the complicated relationship between achievement and self-worth, as well as the decision to step away from a life that looked successful on paper and begin asking what he actually wanted his life to look like. Tanya and Christopher also share some good news, celebrate a few of the people in their lives, and catch up on some of the interesting things they’ve been up to this summer. -
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Aaron Hastelow
EPISODE 03
What happens when reinvention becomes about more than your career? In the third episode of Beyond the Applause, Tanya and Christopher sit down with Aaron Hastelow to talk about his new self-help book exploring wellness, personal growth and the lessons he has gathered through his own experiences. Aaron opens up about his newfound sobriety, why he chose to write about it, and what he has learned about himself along the way. The conversation explores wellness, identity, creativity and the ongoing work of examining the lives we’ve built - and deciding what we might want to change. Aaron also reflects on his own remarkable reinvention, from performing on stages across Canada to building a successful career in graphic design and technology. Together, Aaron, Tanya and Christopher explore what it means to evolve, to tell the truth about where we are, and to discover that success can look very different from one chapter of life to the next.
Your questions. Our next episode?
Got something you can’t stop thinking about? Career, ambition, identity, relationships, reinvention, or whatever comes next. Send Christopher and Tanya your question and it could become part of an upcoming Beyond the Applause Q&A episode.
Questions will remain anonymous - we got you.
