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Wilma and Keri have known each other since their PR days in London almost fifteen years ago. Keri spent eleven years at Nando's, latterly as Global Head of Communications, and created the legendary Nando's Black Card — the underground membership scheme that connected the brand to Stormzy, Little Simz and Ed Sheeran before any of them were household names.

Then she walked away. A yoga teacher training in Costa Rica that she swore wasn't about becoming a yoga teacher. She came home a teacher anyway.

This episode tracks the whole arc. Fashion to chicken to yoga to sound. From "I'm no Lauren Hill, I shouldn't be singing" to building Healing Sound System and co-founding Wykd, the free wellbeing project she started for the Notting Hill community after Grenfell. Wilma and Keri get into radical self-care as activism, why "sound bath" isn't quite the right word, the difference between magic and bullshit, and what it costs to back yourself when no one else is convinced yet.

About the Guest

Keri Perkins is a cultural strategist, sound practitioner and yoga teacher. Founder of Healing Sound System, co-founder of Wykd, and a board member of Bridges for Music in South Africa. She has spoken at Tate Late, the House of Commons, International Music Summit and ADE.

Connect with Keri:

• Instagram: @itskeriperkins
• Healing Sound System: @healingsoundsystem

Key Topics

• The pivot nobody saw coming: eleven years in PR, sleeping with her phone, walking away when most people stay forever
• The Black Card story: building underground cultural cachet before the word "influencer" existed
• How yoga found her: a stranger called Andy at Snowbombing, a studio in Notting Hill she'd walked past every day, "the most natural high I'd had ever"
• Backing yourself: her father's saying "three cheers for me and to hell with the rest of them" and why having your own back is a radical act
• Radical self-care as activism: Angela Davis, George Floyd, and why activists were arriving at DRK Beauty Healing therapy rooms on their knees
• Sound, voice, and why Keri won't call herself a healer — facilitator vs. practitioner
• Kemetic yoga and the question of where yoga really came from
• Wykd in Notting Hill: free yoga where Soho House members and people who can't afford a class practice side by side
• Magic, mysticism and discernment in a post-truth world
• Using her voice: the throughline from communications to mantra

Memorable Quotes

| “It was a whisper, and then it was a bolt.”

| “You did that. You can do this. It might take some time. Invariably it does, but it's okay. I believe in myself. I really do. I back myself.”

| “Radical self-care, as Angela Davis talks about, is so important when we're in this political time. That has to happen from within.”

| “The truth is in here. It's not out there.”

Resources Mentioned

• Jivamukti Yoga — the method Keri trained in
• Snowbombing — the Austrian festival where it began
• Alexander Tannous — ethnomusicologist whose work shaped Keri's approach to sound
• Kemetic Yoga — taught at Wykd by Aethe (Djedi)
• Bridges for Music — South African nonprofit Keri sits on the board of
• Ram Dass — on "shedding the meat suit"
• Angela Davis — on radical self-care

Sordoe

Wilma and Keri are working together on the launch of Sordoe Intention Water.

• Instagram: @SordoeOf

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Michelle K. Gagnon is the founder and chief bio alchemist of Bio Alchemy Olfactive, an aromatic design lab exploring the sensory intelligence of plants to cultivate deeper human-earth connection. Her work blends ancient tradition and modern design with a focus on sustainability, botanical storytelling, and ethical sourcing. She partners with farms and artisan distillers globally, creating formulations and scent experiences that engage memory, emotion, and embodied presence.

Core Focus Areas:

• Botanical sensory intelligence and scent design
• Wildcrafted/organic ethical sourcing
• Aromatherapy as ritual practice
• Fragrance as memory and embodiment
• Collaboration with global artisan communities
• Sensory education and olfactory awareness

Compelling Interview Questions:

1. When you talk about plants as “master communicators,” what does that mean in a real, felt sense for someone listening?
2. Most people understand scent through preference. How do you shift someone into relating to smell as a tool for self-awareness?
3. You work closely with ecosystems and indigenous traditions. What has that taught you about your own relationship to place?
4. Walk us through the alchemical arc from raw plant material to something that can shift the nervous system.
5. Where does scent intersect with the nervous system in ways other healing tools don’t?

What surprising insight about consciousness has emerged from your work across cultures?

If all industry frameworks fell away, what is the purest essence of the work you want people to remember?

What’s the difference between “smelling” and “sensing,” and how does it transform presence?

Signature Closing Question:

If you could leave people with one shift — one thing they can do today to become more present, more resourced, or more themselves — what would it be?

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Róisín Branch had a career that looked like a dream on paper: twenty years in senior marketing roles at AB InBev, Diageo, Equinox, SoulCycle, Blade, and most recently Fountain Life, the longevity company co-founded by Tony Robbins and Peter Diamandis. Then, in 2021, a car knocked her off her Citibike on Fifth Avenue. She lay on the ground with bones visible through her leg and knew she was not getting back up. What followed was two years of daily physical therapy, complete reconstruction of her professional identity, and the beginning of her real work in the world.

This episode traces that arc in full. Wilma and Róisín met during the pandemic, brought together by a shared sense of purpose when Wilma's nonprofit DRK Beauty Healing was working with the SoulCycle team in the weeks before the 2020 election. Years later, Róisín became one of Wilma's earliest investors and supporters in Sordoe. Their friendship is the frame for an unusually honest conversation: about what corporate success actually costs, why our bodies send signals we are trained to ignore, and what it takes to step off a path that looks correct to everyone around you but feels wrong in your bones.

Róisín now works as a purpose coach for corporate executives and high-performers, using a framework she calls the Freedom Flywheel. She is also launching a membership tier and immersive multi-day experiences in 2026. This is a conversation about listening before you have to, sitting with discomfort before it becomes catastrophe, and building a life that gives you energy instead of draining it.

About the Guest

Róisín Branch is a purpose coach and founder who spent two decades as a C-suite marketing executive at some of the world's most recognisable brands. After a life-changing accident in 2021, she rebuilt from the ground up and now works with corporate executives who can feel there is more for them but do not yet know how to find it. Her proprietary framework, the Freedom Flywheel, helps clients move from performance and proving into purpose, flow, and impact. She is based in New York and expanding her practice in 2026 with group coaching, a membership programme, and immersive retreats.

Connect with Róisín:

• Instagram: @roisinbranch
• TikTok: @roisinbranch
• Website: RóisínBranch.com

Key Topics Discussed

How Wilma and Róisín met

• Wilma's nonprofit DRK Beauty Healing provided free therapy to women of color during the pandemic.
• Róisín, then head of marketing at SoulCycle, brought Wilma's clinician network in to help staff stay grounded ahead of the 2020 election.
• The friendship deepened after the pandemic. Róisín became one of the first people Wilma told about Sordoe, and one of her first investors.

The accident and what it broke open

• In November 2021, Róisín was cycling home from a SoulCycle ride on a Citibike when a car, swerving to avoid a bus, knocked her to the ground on Fifth Avenue.
• She lay on the pavement with compound fractures to her leg and a dislocated shoulder. Her surgeon told her she would never return to full fitness.
• A full year of daily physical therapy and another year of intensive training followed. She is now back to 100 percent.
• The question that changed everything: moving from 'Why did this happen to me?' to 'What am I not listening to?'

The body as compass

• Róisín describes years of overriding physical signals in service of performance: pushing through illness, wearing resilience as a badge, never stopping.
• Two examples of the body speaking: severe sciatica before her weddi

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