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But was quitting an option? Could she and her family—which now included her husband and two young children—survive with- out the benefi ts and bonuses? She told herself, "I sure hope so, because I can't do this for an- other day." Th e rollercoaster could have started then. After 10 years, Slattery- Moschkau was leaving the only career path she had ever known. Stepping away from the cushy job and fi nancial stability, she moved forward without a set path in front of her. "I was so nervous the day I gave my notice. Th en I was scared when my manager came to [my house to] clean out all my samples and swag. Will I be fi lled with regret? Will we be able to pay our mortgage? What am I doing?" she remembers thinking. Th e ride stopped the moment her boss pulled out of her driveway. "Th ere was so much uncertainty leading up to it, but I never looked back. I think people feel uncertainty and are afraid to act," she muses. "But when it's the right thing, you know." Nevertheless, leaving the daily grind wasn't easy. Undecided on the road ahead, she relied on running and regular yoga practice to help ease her concerns. "It felt really uncomfortable at fi rst," she recalls, fi dgeting at the memory. "I couldn't sit still and I didn't want to." Yet a change was slowly brewing: She was fi nally learning to trust herself. "It came from that fi rst decision to leave, which gave me the confi dence to realize that I can take a different route," she explains. Feeding off the assuredness yoga was helping her fi nd, Slattery-Moschkau felt ready to tap into talents that had gone un- used for so many years. She felt ready to take a risk. During her decade in sales, writing wood standards) budget of $190,000 resulted in a 16-day shooting schedule, all on location in Madison. Months of editing and promoting the fi lm followed until March 2005, when "Side Effects," her satirical fi ction-based-on-fact fi lm, premiered at the Cinequest Film Festival in San Jose, Calif. After receiving a great response, she followed up the effort a year later with a documentary-style fi lm, "Money Talks: Profi ts Before Patient Safety," which presented a more in-depth look behind the curtain of the pharmaceutical industry. Both fi lms garnered press worldwide for showing what Slattery- Moschkau saw as a dangerous side of a powerful industry. Sudden- ly, she had a platform. With it came opportunities to write, speak and send her message to a wider audience. But along the way, as she gave interview after interview about her fi lms, the spotlight began to shine on her personal life. "I exposed these things in the pharmaceutical industry so people would ask better questions and make better choices about what they're putting in their bodies," she says. "Th en they were asking, 'how the hell do you go from selling pharmaceuticals to making movies?'" "I AM WHO I AM. It's about not living someone else's life or how society says you should be living. Somewhere in you, you know what you want, what you like, had been her creative outlet. Whenever confronted with something shocking or hilarious on the job, her impulse was to dive for a pen and record the moment. She wrote in her spare time, read up on the writing process and even took mini-courses and weekend writing seminars. Once she stepped back she saw the recipe for her next big step. "I started thinking about all of these notes I had [from my expe- riences]; all of these things people would not believe," she says. "I thought: people need to know this stuff [about the industry]." She reasoned the best way to get her message across was to aim high. For her, that meant taking her message to Hollywood, and she began to put her idea into the form of a screenplay. Reminiscing about the fi lmmaking experience, Slattery-Mosch- kau ticks off the steps that followed: Get an agent, pitch it to Hol- lywood, work with a rewriter to put the fi nishing touches on her draft, and get actors on board. Th ough it sounds so simple now, Slattery-Moschkau laughs and admits, "I got tons of nos!" Offers came in, but with each new draft for different production teams, Slattery-Moschkau felt her message slipping away. "[Movie studios] kept taking out all of the information that I thought was so critical for people to know," she says. As she worried she was selling out again for the paycheck, her husband, Steve, offered a solution: Th ey could just make the movie on their own. And they did. Money was tight and time was short—their miniscule (in Holly- WHAT SINGS TO YOU." What she thought was a very personal experience was exactly what people were hungry to talk about: How do you fi nd the courage to take those bold risks? How do you walk away from the security of that paycheck? How could they fi nd their path, too? Th e questions were a spark. No matter how bumpy the ride had been, Slattery-Moschkau's next adventure was in front of her. Th e one option that stood out, and the only one where she didn't have to wear make-up and "could [work] in my underwear if I wanted to," was radio. "Th is [would present] an opportunity to explore all those juicy areas with thought leaders and experts from around the world," she says, excitement shining in her eyes. By the summer of 2006, "Th e Kathleen Show" debuted on radio stations nationwide. Th e pitch of her voice, steady and sure yet soft and tinged with a sense of humor, lends itself perfectly to the virtual world of radio and podcasts. "Th e Kathleen Show's" catchy tagline, "grabbing life by the ovaries," made the mood of her production clear from week one: She was here to shake things up. "[Radio] was a great way to continue the conversation, but at a much deeper, more personal level," she says. Th e focus was broad but each show had a common thread: Exploring ways to live December 2011 bravamagazine.com 41