The Quiet Tension

Sidebar: Dawn Atkins on "Making the Jump"

Dr. Sharon Chirban — Wed, 04 Nov 2026 12:30:00 -0500

Miami City Ballet Principal Dancer Dawn Atkins talks with Dr. Sharon Chirban about changing companies, rebuilding trust in her shoulder after surgery, and helping young dancers learn about how to best fuel their bodies to continue practicing their art. Join the conversation as they explore the uncertainty of recovery and the question every performer eventually faces: when will it feel right to step away?

The Quiet Tension: Sidebar is a mini-series spinoff of Dr. Sharon Chirban’s podcast The Quiet Tension, where she explores the hidden cost of high performance with artists, athletes, coaches, and entrepreneurs across a range of professions and specialties. The Sidebar series takes a deeper look at each of these conversations with peers in the field, from principal dancers to Olympic competitors.

In this episode:
00:00 - Performing the evening before shoulder surgery
02:12 - Dawn Atkins speaks on learning to trust her body again after her injury
04:06 - How unpredictable moments can rebuild confidence
05:43 - Why Dawn Atkins became a nutrition coach
06:22 - Supporting young dancers with the Ballerina Fuel Pack
07:53 - What might signal the right time to retire

To learn more about the Ballerina Fuel Pack, visit Dawn’s website.

Watch John Lam’s Season 1 episode.

Photos in podcast and thumbnail are courtesy of Dawn Atkins. Photography credit Alexander Iziliaev.

The Quiet Tension: Sidebar is released every other Wednesday. You can find full episodes of The Quiet Tension and new episodes of The Quiet Tension: Sidebar on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.

"Give the Credit, Take the Blame" with Steve Pagliuca

Dr. Sharon Chirban — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 08:00:00 -0400

It is easy for high performance to look like individual achievement, but no one gets there alone. Often, the values that shape success are inherited long before they are consciously understood: work hard, stay humble, remember where you came from, and when others help you rise, find a way to do the same for someone else.

In this episode of The Quiet Tension, host Dr. Sharon Chirban speaks with Steve Pagliuca, Co-Chairman of Bain Capital and former co-owner of the Boston Celtics, about how the values you inherit can become a responsibility you carry forward. At this stage in his life, Steve is thinking deeply about gratitude, legacy, mindfulness, and what it means to give back to the people and the communities that helped make his success possible.

Before becoming a leader in business, Pagliuca's path had already been shaped by several key influences: growing up with the values modeled by his immigrant grandparents, finding his footing at Duke, and discovering his instincts for business during his early years at Bain. Through each chapter, he carried forward the lessons he learned early on while beginning to see how instinct, discipline, and the right mentors could shape a life in business.

Listeners will hear Pagliuca talk about:

(03:04) Remembering his roots
(07:51) Forging his path from Duke to Bain
(14:18) Looking back to move forward
(15:42) What he tried to build in his children
(21:35) Learning to let go
(27:57) Giving credit and taking blame
(34:05) Stewarding something bigger than yourself
(39:39) Passing it forward

Photos included are courtesy of Steve Pagliuca.

New episodes of The Quiet Tension are released every other week. If you’d like to stay updated, subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen. To learn more about topics like today’s, follow Sharon on Substack or visit the show website.

“Being a Disruptor” with Kate Ackerman

Dr. Sharon Chirban — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 08:00:00 -0400

Many high performance athletes learn to work, function, and thrive within systems not built for them. Others struggle with where those systems fall short, go against the grain, and build something better.

In this episode of The Quiet Tension, host Dr. Sharon Chirban speaks with guest Dr. Kate Ackerman, sports medicine physician, endocrinologist, former national team rower, and co-founder of the Women’s Health and Sport Performance Institute (WHSP), about what it means to be a disruptor and build a system for high performing women from the ground up. Together, they discuss what sports medicine historically missed about female athletes, why women’s health was treated as a special case rather than a foundation, and how Ackerman’s own experience in rowing shaped the way she thinks about pain, performance, leadership, and care.

Before co-founding WHSP, Ackerman found rowing almost by accident. The sport gave her a new identity and a clearer sense of what she wanted to pursue. After moving into medicine, she began hearing from female athletes whose questions about their bodies, health, and life after athletics were not being answered. That gap pushed Ackerman towards asking the questions the system avoided and building the care model that did not previously exist for these women.

Listeners will hear Ackerman talk about:

(03:52) Understanding the Pain Cave and Going All In
(08:44) Learning How Other People Work
(13:09) The Problem She Couldn’t Look Past
(18:47) Building a System That Didn’t Exist
(28:37) When Directness Comes From a Woman
(33:43) Choosing a New Path With Her Family
(41:14) Life Works in Phases

"Sharing an Armrest” with Thor Steingraber

Dr. Sharon Chirban — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0400

Throughout life, we share armrests with strangers in all kinds of places: on airplanes, in stadiums, in rooms organized around commerce, competition, or conviction. But for this week’s guest, the performing arts offer something rarer. They ask us to sit beside people we did not choose, release our expectations, and enter a shared experience together.

In this episode of The Quiet Tension, host Dr. Sharon Chirban speaks with Thor Steingraber, opera director turned arts executive and incoming president and CEO of Vivo Performing Arts, about what live performance can make possible. As Vivo enters a new chapter in Boston, Steingraber is thinking not only about what appears onstage, but about who gathers in the room, what they experience together, and how art can bring people into proximity across differences.

Before joining Vivo, Steingraber’s life in the arts has already moved through many chapters: choir, opera, and more recently his leadership at The Soraya in Los Angeles. Through each chapter, he has been drawn to the magic of how performance can gather strangers into a room, and remind them what can happen when they surrender to the experience.

Listeners will hear Steingraber talk about:

(04:54) Many Voices Becoming One
(10:12) Sharing an Armrest with a Stranger
(17:27) Reimagining the Story in Front of Us
(19:01) Leading Vivo Into Its Next Chapter
(25:42) When Boston Becomes the Venue
(28:52) Leading from the Back of the Pack
(33:40) His Deepest Concerns

Photos included are courtesy of Vivo Performing Arts / Robert Torres.

“Not Just Mental Toughness” with Dr. Jessica Bartley

Dr. Sharon Chirban — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0400

An identity built on toughness and strength can make it devastatingly difficult to ask for help. That is why support can’t depend on athletes reaching breaking points; it must be built into the world around them. In this episode of The Quiet Tension, host Dr. Sharon Chirban speaks with Dr. Jessica Bartley, who leads psychological services for the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee (USOPC), about the urgent work of building crisis response systems for Olympic athletes. Together, they explore how the invisible pressures that athletes face, such as income struggles, meteoric rises to fame, or mental health pressures, can easily rival the pressures they face in the games.

Before joining the USOPC, Jessica was already more than familiar with the demanding worlds of performance, from eating disorders and body image work to Colorado Ballet and professional bull riding. Across these varied worlds, she saw the same need for care that reaches the person beneath the performance. As Jessica reminds us, everyone has performances, and the work of building healthier systems around them is never finished.

Listeners will hear Jessica talk about:

(04:00) Building the system athletes needed
(05:46) What crisis looks like at the olympic level
(7:22) The difficulty of asking for help
(12:01) The myth that Olympians don’t need help
(14:06) When opportunity becomes just another pressure
(20:14) Building healthy systems for every pivot
(26:52) Behind the person building the system
(39:33) Why everyone has performances

"Relaxed Chaos" with Katie Uhlaender

Dr. Sharon Chirban — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0400

Content Note: Please note this episode includes discussion of grief, substance use, and moments of crisis in elite sport. Please take care while listening.

Some athletes are extraordinary because they can hold pressure. The danger is that people keep asking them to hold more. In this episode of The Quiet Tension, host Dr. Sharon Chirban speaks with five-time Olympian Katie Uhlaender about the “relaxed chaos” of skeleton, and how the skill that made her extraordinary on the ice similarly helped her to move through the whiplash of grief, celebrations, loss, and advocacy.

Katie’s career has taken her through some of the most defining highs and devastating lows an athlete can face. From losing her father while on tour, to grieving friends inside the Olympic world, to missing a medal because of a doping scandal, Katie reflects on what the Olympic system gave her without neglecting its costs. Despite this, she still believes strongly in the pursuit of excellence, and as she thinks beyond the track, Katie asks for the sports world to adopt greater honesty, understanding, and stronger systems for the athletes who come next.

Listeners will hear Uhlaender talk about:

(02:53) Finding the “Relaxed Chaos” Zone
(08:15) The Cost of Natural Ability
(14:48) Grief Without Regret
(18:10) When the System Misses the Person
(21:22) HBO’s The Weight of Gold
(27:59) Losing a Medal, Finding a Voice
(37:25) What Comes After the Track

Mental health resources:

If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, support is available. In the U.S. and Canada, call or text 988 to connect with crisis support or visit 988.ca for more information. If you are outside the U.S. or Canada, please contact your local emergency number or a crisis line.

“I’m Not a High Performer” with Dennis Kelly

Dr. Sharon Chirban — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0400

What if the path to excellence doesn’t begin with certainty, confidence, or a clear sense of who you want to be, but instead with curiosity? In this episode of The Quiet Tension, host Dr. Sharon Chirban speaks with restaurateur and Master Sommelier Dennis Kelly about the winding path that led him from wrestling, architecture, music, and bartending to head Sommelier at The French Laundry and ultimately to co-owning Protege, a Michelin-starred restaurant in Palo Alto.
Dennis’s story is one of a dark horse. For much of his early life, he struggled to see himself as exceptional, moving through identities and environments before wine gave him a place where his curiosity could take root. What resulted was an atypical journey of fulfillment first, mastery later.

Listeners will hear Kelly talk about:

(02:28) Finding the right environment
(07:45) Chasing what he wanted
(14:48) When wine finally clicked
(18:40) Gaining confidence through competence
(20:58) Building his own ways of learning
(25:56) Choosing his own vision
(34:15) The power of the people who believed in him

What Fearlessness Makes Possible with John Lam

Dr. Sharon Chirban — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0400

A career is rarely one fixed identity. It is a long evolution that asks us again and again who we are becoming next. In this episode of The Quiet Tension, host Dr. Sharon Chirban speaks with former Boston Ballet principal dancer John Lam about the responsibility of building new pathways for dancers after a lifetime of being shaped by the people who opened doors for him.
Lam’s career has been spent performing at the highest levels of ballet, including two decades with the Boston Ballet. Today, through his work, both as a Associate Professor at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee (BOCO) and founder of Lam Dance Works, he is focused on shaping the next generation of dancers, building the kinds of opportunities that made his own career possible.

Listeners will hear Lam talk about:

(03:37) The mentors who shaped him
(06:48) Being seen without being accepted
(09:34) Fearlessness as a way of being
(13:58) What made him John Lam
(18:08) Life after the Boston Ballet
(25:11) Shedding old skin
(27:59) Building Lam Dance Works
(32:18) Recovering the fearlessness
(35:32) Defining success beyond the stage
(39:10) When purpose becomes responsibility

When Knowledge Isn’t Enough with Stu McMillan

Dr. Sharon Chirban — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0400

What happens when someone who has built a career on expertise becomes more interested in curiosity, uncertainty, and asking better questions? In this episode of The Quiet Tension, host Dr. Sharon Chirban speaks with renowned sprint and performance coach Stu McMillan about what decades spent guiding elite athletes have revealed to him about the deeper work of coaching.

Stu has spent his career coaching at the tip of the spear, working with athletes performing at the highest levels possible. As the CEO of ALTIS, he has worked with elite athletes across track and field, bobsleigh, and other high-performance environments, helping to shape Olympic champions and world-class performers.
Listeners will hear Stu talk about:

(2:15) Finding his unique edge
(5:55) Meeting Dan Pfaff, the mentor who reshaped Stu’s understanding of coaching
(10:45) Seeing the human beyond the athlete
(13:10) Coaching at the tip of the spear
(19:37) Identity and reinvention: how athletes can get boxed into an identity
(28:27) What Stu has learned from long-term relationships with athletes
(33:45) Why Stu is energized by coaching, while questioning what he wants to carry forward
(35:39) Stu’s honest reflection on where he turns for support

New episodes of The Quiet Tension are released every week. If you’d like to stay updated, subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen. To learn more about topics like today’s, follow Sharon on Substack or visit the show website.

Welcome to The Quiet Tension

Dr. Sharon Chirban — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 21:50:38 -0400

Welcome to The Quiet Tension.

Hosted by clinical sport psychologist and executive coach Dr. Sharon Chirban, this is a show about what really drives high performers — and what it asks of them in return.

Through intimate conversations with founders, athletes, executives, and creatives, Sharon moves past the résumé and into the pressure, ambition, doubt, and identity questions that often sit beneath achievement.

What does excellence give you — and what does it take?

Subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

For more from Sharon, visit LinkedIn, Instagram, the show website, and follow along on Substack.

Thanks for listening closely.