Meme Callnin spent two decades inside global human capital consulting, building talent strategies, advising on M&A integrations, and leading the Mountain States for Mercer across all things human capital.

Then she went to a Harvard executive program on women in the boardroom, and everything shifted.

She came back with a clear mission. 2024 was going to be her year. Then she hit the wall: her firm didn’t allow paid board seats. Within months, the pieces fell into place. She raised her hand for a package, walked out, and entered what she calls her “rewirement.”

Today, Meme Stokes Callnin is an independent board director and growth strategist, sitting on the boards of Select Health, Wonderbound, and the American Heart Association’s Colorado Go Red for Women campaign, which she chaired in 2024. She has helped raise over $1 million for the AHA, driven by a single realization at a breakfast back in 2018: women’s heart attack symptoms are different from men’s, and most women don’t know it.

In this episode of Inspiring Women, host Laurie McGraw sits down with Meme at the WBL Summit to trace the full arc, from corporate executive to professional board director, and unpack what it actually takes to land a seat in a room that doesn’t post its openings.