Actress, Producer, and Brilliant Podcaster Monica Padman on Embracing Change

Welcome to Second Life, a podcast spotlighting successful women who've made major career changes—and fearlessly mastered the pivot. Hosted by Hillary Kerr, co-founder and chief content officer at Who What Wear, each episode gives you a direct line to women who are game changers in their fields. Subscribe to Second Life on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere you get your podcasts to stay tuned.

About five years ago, podcasts experienced a major boom, gaining never-before-seen popularity. In 2018, a new show, Armchair Expert Podcast, entered the scene and quickly stood out among the rest. The overnight sensation became Apple's most-downloaded podcast of the year and won the iHeart Radio Award for Best New Podcast. Behind the hit podcast was actress, producer, and creator Monica Padman alongside actor Dax Shepard. Through vulnerable, honest conversations with celebrities such as Kristen Bell (Shepard's wife and the show's first guest), Ashton Kutcher, and Jimmy Kimmel about the messiness of being human, Armchair Expert found evangelists—or Armcherries as they've become known—who devour the long-form series. Though Padman is a familiar voice on-air as co-host and fact-checker extraordinaire, she does even more behind the scenes, producing the show, booking guests, editing, and managing promotions to ensure the podcast content remains authentic to her and Shepard's ethos. Impressively, the show currently averages over 1 million downloads a week and recently signed an exclusive deal with streaming company Spotify.

Now, Padman produces the entire Armchair Expert umbrella network, which includes a wide range of other shows such as Experts on Expert, Race to 270, and Nurture vs Nurture. Last year, she also released a 10-episode spin-off podcast called Monica & Jess Love Boys about the journey to healthy relationships and dating. This June, she'll introduce a new show: Shattered Glass. Alongside her co-host and longtime collaborator Kristen Bell, Padman will deep-dive with women who have put a crack in the glass ceiling. 

While Padman is a natural at creating one-of-a-kind content and producing some of the most-downloaded episodes in the space, she actually began her career in a creative yet entirely different industry: acting. Before Padman became an Emmy-nominated producer, she began her acting career in Atlanta on the television series Drop Dead Diva. She then moved to L.A.  and began taking classes with the renowned Upright Citizens Brigade and ultimately appeared in series such as The Good Place, Bless This Mess, and Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Tune in to the latest episode of Second Life to hear how Padman found fulfillment in an unexpected career pivot and how embracing it led her to a path beyond her wildest dreams.

Up next, Meet Tiffany Masterson: The Founder Behind Beloved Beauty Brand Drunk Elephant