Ep5: When the Body Breaks, the Real Life Begins

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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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