Separating Yourself From The Role | Brian Sano

What do you do when the biggest case of your career ends in a loss the whole country is watching? Brian Sano spent years as a federal prosecutor, including a seat at the table for one of the most closely watched trials of the financial crisis. In this episode, he takes us inside the courtroom the moment the verdict was read, and what he felt in his body before he had words for it. Brian shares how he learned to separate who he is from the role he's playing, why he believes leadership is "an art of seeing," and how a sticker in his father's car when he was fifteen, "I am a human being, not a human doing," has quietly shaped every chapter of his career since. We also talk about the small, tight-knit team that got him through the trial and taught him what real psychological safety looks like, and the uncle he lost to the AIDS epidemic as a teenager, an early lesson in where systems support us and where they fail us. A conversation about grief, authority, and what it really means to lead with curiosity.