In this episode of Leaders and Learners, host Tonya McKenzie sits down with award-winning actor, director, producer, and author Blair Underwood to talk about his new book A Soldier's Wife: My Mother, the Marvelous Mrs. Marilyn A. Underwood (April 14, 2026).Marilyn Ann Scales Underwood was the first Black female executive at Barmon Brothers Company, a trained fashion designer, a military wife who moved 22 times, a 30-year MS warrior, and the woman who quietly built the foundation for one of Hollywood's most enduring careers.This conversation covers grief as a love language, Black motherhood as unrecognized leadership, what it cost Blair to write this book, and the fraternal bond that makes this interview unlike any other.Like. Comment. Share. And come back for more. Subscribe to the CTRL the Narrative Newsletter: https://tonyamckenziepr.substack.com

She grew up under the Duvalier regime. She survived an earthquake that shook an entire nation. She uncovered a family secret that changed everything she thought she knew about herself. And then she wrote the book.

Monique Clesca's memoir Silence and Resistance: A Girlhood in Haiti is about growing up where fear, silence, and family secrets shaped everything (Busboys and Poets) and then deciding that silence was no longer an option. On this episode of Leaders and Learners, we go there. Identity. Trauma. What it means to CTRL the narrative when the narrative is your own bloodline.

This one is not for the faint. It IS for the ready.

Listen now. Leave a review. Share with somebody who is carrying a secret that is carrying them.

Tonya McKenzieFounder, Sand & Shores PR | Host, Leaders& Learners Podcast
🌐 sandandshores.com| 🎙️ Leaders & Learners Podcast

💻 Editor, CTRLthe Narrative Newsletter

Black women have always led. The question is, who benefits from our leadership?

The authors of The Next Little Black Book of Success break down the new rules of power, strategy, and sustainability in a climate that feels increasingly hostile to progress.

Kudos to the authors:

• Elaine Meryl Brown
• Marsha Haygood
• Rhonda Joy McLean

If you are ambitious, exhausted, brilliant, and ready to stop shrinking, this episode is your blueprint.

Subscribe. Share. And let’s control the narrative.