Episodes
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Episode Summary
In this final episode of Season 4, I bring you Rob Kapilow. A musical savant, innovator, and global presence, listening to Rob is like taking a master class in music, and in life. From Duke Ellington to Joseph Campbell, from Beethoven to the Beatles, and from Yale to Paris to Native American reservations, Rob Kapilow will take you on the classic Sydcast journey of discovery, creativity, and learning.
Sydney Finkelstein
Sydney Finkelstein is the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. Professor Finkelstein has published 25 books and 100 articles, including the bestsellers Why Smart Executives Fail and Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent, which LinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman calls the “leadership guide for the Networked Age.” He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Management, as well as a consultant and speaker to leading companies around the world. His latest projects include the leading podcast, The Sydcast, that uncovers and shares the stories of fascinating people in business, sports, entertainment, politics, academia, and everyday life, as well as a new series of online courses based on his life’s work available at Coursera.
Rob Kapilow
For over 30 years, Rob Kapilow has brought the joy and wonder of classical music – and unraveled some of its mysteries – to audiences of all ages and backgrounds. Characterized by his unique ability to create an “aha” moment for his audiences and collaborators, whatever their musical sophistication or naiveté, Kapilow’s work brings music into people’s lives: opening new ears to musical experiences and helping people to listen actively rather than just hear.
Kapilow’s range of activities is astonishingly broad, including his What Makes It Great?® presentations (now for over 20 seasons in New York and Boston), his family compositions and Family Musik® events, his Citypieces, corporate programs, and residencies with institutions as diverse as the National Gallery of Canada and Stanford University. The reach of his interactive events and activities is wide, from Native American tribal communities in Montana and inner-city high school students in Louisiana to audiences in Kyoto and Kuala Lumpur and tots barely out of diapers to musicologists in Ivy League programs.
Insights from this episode:
Where Rob’s love for music came fromLearning about different genres of musicGrowing his skills in musicGetting the right skills for musicWhat makes a great songWhat is creativity, and how to tap into itThe importance of listeningInsights into American musicHow music connects usQuotes from the show:
“To me, really, I didn’t know there was any difference between The Beatles, jazz, and piano music. To me, there was just music. Only later did I learn that you are in separate niches, separate categories” —Rob Kapilow [7:22]“One of my favorite quotes is from Joseph Campbell, the brilliant writer on mythology, and he says ‘The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are’” —Rob Kapilow [8:42]“Aside from taking apart what actually makes a song like She Loves You by The Beatles great musically, which I can certainly do, there’s also the sense that it often is part of someone’s life experience” —Rob Kapilow [18:34]“At the heart of all great creators, is the kind of ability to pay attention, but not only to just pay attention to what’s happening but to listen for possibilities” —Rob Kapilow [23:17]“I realized that listening is such a larger thing than just hearing” —Rob Kapilow [28:46]“You cannot hate immigrants when you’ve heard their stories. Let's not politicize this, but humanize it” —Rob Kapilow [45:45]“The whole purpose of a piece of music is to show that we are all connected. That beneath our surface differences, we are all connected” —Rob Kapilow [58:00]Stay connected:
Sydney Finkelstein
Website: http://thesydcast.com
LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein
Twitter: @sydfinkelstein
Facebook: The Sydcast
Instagram: The Sydcast
Rob Kapilow
Website: https://robkapilow.com
Twitter: Rob Kapilow
Facebook: Rob Kapilow
Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode on Stitcher, iTunes, and Spotify.
This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.
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Episode Summary
How does it happen that an English teacher and sports coach becomes a renowned actor? Ben Koldyke – who played Don Frank on How I Met Your Mother and many other roles – tells us, along with cameo insights about Aaron Sorkin, Second City, and Dartmouth College.
Sydney Finkelstein
Syd Finkelstein is the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He holds a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. Professor Finkelstein has published 25 books and 90 articles, including the bestsellers Why Smart Executives Fail and Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent, which LinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman calls the “leadership guide for the Networked Age.” He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Management, a consultant and speaker to leading companies around the world, and a top 25 on the Global Thinkers 50 list of top management gurus. Professor Finkelstein’s research and consulting work often relies on in-depth and personal interviews with hundreds of people, an experience that led him to create and host his own podcast, The Sydcast, to uncover and share the stories of all sorts of fascinating people in business, sports, entertainment, politics, academia, and everyday life.
Ben Koldyke
Ben Koldyke has worked on some of the most renowned comedy series, including THE GOOD PLACE, SILICON VALLEY, and CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM. He starred in the NBC comedy series MR. ROBINSON with Craig Robinson was featured in a series-long arc on MASTERS OF SEX with Michael Sheen. Before that, Koldyke was in Craig Gillespie’s THE FINEST HOURS for Disney opposite Chris Pine. He most recently appeared in Peacock’s RUTHERFORD FALLS opposite Ed Helms. He is based in LA.
Insights from this episode:
Ben Koldyke’s early daysChallenges Ben has faced transitioning from an athletic aspect to the artsThe ups and downs of an acting careerWhy he made the shift from sports to actingLearning how to actUsing his sports background as an advantage in actingWhat it takes to be a good actorQuotes from the show:
“What’s interesting to me about sports and acting, when you are trained as an athlete, it’s challenging to take on an artistic sort of way of life” —Ben Koldyke [6:09]“This (acting) is an incredibly competitive environment, but if you are on the creative side there just has to be a temperance, there just has to be an understanding that this is not an all or nothing sort of thing; that opportunities will come and go and you just have keep a sort of middle ground, almost a meditative middle ground, that allows you to deal with the whims of what is a very up and down business” —Ben Koldyke [8:13]“At age 30, much my parents chagrin and utter confusion, I said I was going to go to California and teach at the Kipp School, in Inglewood and I was going to study how to be an actor and a writer; and that’s what I did!” —Ben Koldyke [13:08]“Instead of it being a hindrance (sports background), instead of it being something that I needed to overcome, he taught me to incorporate it, to use it, (…) I was taught to really celebrate it and utilize it which I thought was really insightful and helpful for me” —Ben Koldyke [17:08]“To get a pilot having never acted before is very very rare: it seemed normal to me for about a second, and then I came down to earth” —Ben Koldyke [33:46]Stay connected:
Sydney Finkelstein
Website: http://thesydcast.com
LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein
Twitter: @sydfinkelstein
Facebook: The Sydcast
Instagram: The Sydcast
Ben Koldyke
Website: Ben Koldyke
Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode on Stitcher, iTunes, and Spotify.
This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.
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Missing episodes?
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Episode Summary
What is it like being on the radio? In New Hampshire, that means interviewing would-be Presidents, but for Mike Morin it also means being curious, open-minded, and occasionally even pulling crazy stunts that upset half of his listeners. A life in radio in the “Live Free or Die” state.
Sydney Finkelstein
Syd Finkelstein is the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He holds a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. Professor Finkelstein has published 25 books and 90 articles, including the bestsellers Why Smart Executives Fail and Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent, which LinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman calls the “leadership guide for the Networked Age.” He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Management, a consultant and speaker to leading companies around the world, and a top 25 on the Global Thinkers 50 list of top management gurus. Professor Finkelstein’s research and consulting work often relies on in-depth and personal interviews with hundreds of people, an experience that led him to create and host his own podcast, The Sydcast, to uncover and share the stories of all sorts of fascinating people in business, sports, entertainment, politics, academia, and everyday life.
Mike Morin
All-around media man Mike Morin began his writing career in 2004 with his first humor column in the Nashua Telegraph. Since then, his list of publications includes this magazine, The Boston Globe, the New Hampshire Business Review, Clean Eating, and more. He’s also the author of several books, including “50 Shades of Radio” and his most recent, “Lunch With Tommy and Stasia,” about the glory days of candlepin bowling (for which he was a TV announcer once upon a time). He spent more than four decades in radio, with a memorable stint on WZID’s morning show. He took some time off from broadcasting but has since returned to the early morning radio waves – you can find him on 106.3 FM, Monday to Friday, from 6-9 a.m.
Insights from this episode:
When Mike discovered he wanted to be on radioMike’s life growing upHow Mike got on radioWhat makes a good talk show hostMaintaining a bond with your listenersInteresting guests Mike has interviewedBeing on air after 9/11Life after vocal cord surgeryQuotes from the show:
“Within a year, I actually had my first professional radio job while I was still in college. So I was driven, and I was determined i’m not gonna wait till my degree to get my first job” —Mike Morin [11:20]“Everybody has a story, you just have to know how to get it out of them. So to get people to talk to me, you have to know the kind of buttons to push” —Mike Morin [14:08]“At some point you have to come terms with the fact that there’s someone that is just larger than ordinary, and ideally embrace it and love it, respect it and admire it, but not let it get you kind of in a funk, or down ” —Syd Finkelstein [32:49]“This is one of the tricks I have learned over the years, is when you interview people, you give them one or two kind of soft ball questions and let them get comfortable with you” —Mike Morin [38:34]“Thinking out of the box is what you gotta do sometime, doesn’t always work. When you take a chance and bet on yourself, good things do happen” —Mike Morin [42:25]“First of all, no matter who you have on, you’re gonna upset your half your audience (…) People don’t accept you for your views these days, they just accept you if they like you, or not” —Mike Morin [46:59]Stay connected:
Sydney Finkelstein
Website: http://thesydcast.com
LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein
Twitter: @sydfinkelstein
Facebook: The Sydcast
Instagram: The Sydcast
Mike Morin
Website: Mike Morin
Facebook: Mike Morin
Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode on Stitcher, iTunes, and Spotify.
This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.
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Episode Summary
Laurie Wallmark is a pioneer – one of the first women at Princeton, a software engineer, a computer science professor, an entrepreneur who created an online bookstore before Amazon ever did, and now, an award-winning writer of picture book biographies of women in STEM, for kids. Passionate about science, writing, teaching, and learning, Laurie shares her story, on this episode of The Sydcast.
Sydney Finkelstein
Syd Finkelstein is the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He holds a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. Professor Finkelstein has published 25 books and 90 articles, including the bestsellers Why Smart Executives Fail and Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent, which LinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman calls the “leadership guide for the Networked Age.” He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Management, a consultant and speaker to leading companies around the world, and a top 25 on the Global Thinkers 50 list of top management gurus. Professor Finkelstein’s research and consulting work often relies on in-depth and personal interviews with hundreds of people, an experience that led him to create and host his own podcast, The Sydcast, to uncover and share the stories of all sorts of fascinating people in business, sports, entertainment, politics, academia, and everyday life.
Laurie Wallmark
Award-winning author Laurie Wallmark writes picture book biographies of women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) as well as fiction. Her books have earned five starred trade reviews, been chosen as Junior Library Guild Selections, and received awards such as Outstanding Science Trade Book, Best STEM Book, Cook Prize Honor Book, Crystal Kite Award, Mathical Honor Book, and Parents’ Choice Gold Medal. Her titles include Ada Byron Lovelace and the Thinking Machine, Grace Hopper: Queen of Computer Code, Hedy Lamarr’s Double Life, Numbers In Motion, Code Breaker, Spy Hunter, and her debut fiction picture book, Dino Pajama Party. Laurie has an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts and is a former software engineer and computer science professor.
Insights from this episode:
How Laurie ended up writing booksLaurie’s supportive parents while pursuing STEM coursesTeaching kids about failureInsights on Laurie being an outlier What it feels like to represent a minority groupBuilding her own companyInsights into Laurie’s e-commerce businessInsights into illustrations in booksWhat makes a successful picture bookLessons she has learned from being a children’s book authorQuotes from the show:
“The key to writing is rewriting and editing” —Syd Finkelstein [6:15]“When you first start writing like that and you are not coming from this whole background where you’ve been writing all your life, you don’t tell people because what if it doesn’t sell? what if it’s no good?” —Laurie Wallmark [9:59]“One of the things that we are trying to show kids, especially in the sciences, is that failure is a part of the process. That it really is part of the process of advancing science” —Laurie Wallmark [10:58]“An individual has that inner strength and support, family support, friendship support, to be able to show that YES, she can do it, in spite of the naysayers” —Laurie Wallmark [14:08]“That stereotyping is so common and it’s something that is being recognized in business, in schools, in society, way more than ever before, but it’s still there” —Syd Finkelstein [14:56]“I started a mail order company that sold books about adoption and infertility (…) I had a bookstore on the web before Amazon did!” —Laurie Wallmark [25:16]“What makes a good picture book? That one is easy. A good picture book is one that kids are going to want to read or be read to over and over again. You know it’s not a one and done” —Laurie Wallmark [38:42]“I started way before this current wave of picture book biographies, and especially picture book biographies of underrepresented women in STEM. I like to think that I started the wave and then people just followed right behind me” —Laurie Wallmark [45:59]Stay connected:
Sydney Finkelstein
Website: http://thesydcast.com
LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein
Twitter: @sydfinkelstein
Facebook: The Sydcast
Instagram: The Sydcast
Laurie Wallmark
Website: Laurie Wallmark
Twitter: Laurie Wallmark
Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode on Stitcher, iTunes, and Spotify.
This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.
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Episode Summary
How do we make it easier for people around the world to learn and get the tools to innovate and become entrepreneurs? In this episode, founder Alejandro Juárez Crawford shares his answer: RebelBase, a company that is helping people understand problems and launch experiments that can become solutions. Erudite and articulate, Alejandro is that unique leader who can share his philosophy about innovation and purpose while grounded in the everyday reality of what works and what doesn’t.
Sydney Finkelstein
Syd Finkelstein is the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He holds a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. Professor Finkelstein has published 25 books and 90 articles, including the bestsellers Why Smart Executives Fail and Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent, which LinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman calls the “leadership guide for the Networked Age.” He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Management, a consultant and speaker to leading companies around the world, and a top 25 on the Global Thinkers 50 list of top management gurus. Professor Finkelstein’s research and consulting work often relies on in-depth and personal interviews with hundreds of people, an experience that led him to create and host his own podcast, The Sydcast, to uncover and share the stories of all sorts of fascinating people in business, sports, entertainment, politics, academia, and everyday life.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford
Alejandro Juárez Crawford, co-founder & CEO, leads RebelBase, the SaaS equipping students, employees, and citizens to build solutions of their own. He serves as a Professor of Entrepreneurship at the Bard MBA in Sustainability. Previously, he led the boutique consultancy Acceleration Group. He earned his BA at Cornell and his MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. Crawford led RebelBase as it built and successfully commercialized its library of educational modules, cloud-based interactive tools, and state-of-the-art methodology. In 2020-2021, his research has expanded to university systems from Bangladesh to Kyrgyzstan, through Bard’s new course sequence for changemakers supported by the Open Society University Network. He writes and speaks widely on expanding access to innovation, and keynotes events such as Erasmus+ ISYEC and Europe’s Towards Collaborative Practice. Recent publications include “An Ecosystem Framework for Credentialing Entrepreneurs,” from the Research Triangle Institute, and a chapter in the Federal Reserve’s Investing in America’s Workforce (Upjohn, 2018). In 2020 he co-won the Roddenberry Award to create a documentary about game-changing initiatives developed using the RebelBase platform.
Insights from this episode:
Details about RebelBaseWhat RebelBase doesHow to deal with pessimistsSolving problems with people who understand the problemDetails on the bottom-up approach to solving problemsHow to build a culture of experimentationHow to maintain a culture of experimentation as the company grows biggerThe importance of constructive criticism when building a productQuotes from the show:
“Up until now, it’s been very difficult for regular people to think that they could launch an experiment and how to make it work better, and RebelBase makes that possible. RebelBase democratizes and accelerates bottom-up innovation by enabling people who understand problems to launch experiments that could become solutions” —Alejandro Juárez Crawford [7:00]“When you give folks the tools to create these experiments, something dramatic happens (…) suddenly you’ve actually asked the person who understands the problem what needs to be solved” —Alejandro Juárez Crawford [17:25]“We do a lot of work on researching skills and mindset change by users on this platform because not every solution, not every experiment is going to succeed” —Alejandro Juárez Crawford [27:43]“Often, actually the experimentation that most people do is taking things we already know work and figuring out how to do them in new places and new ways” —Alejandro Juárez Crawford [35:50]“Comfort with failure is itself a trainable mentality” —Alejandro Juárez Crawford [41:02]“We are not just trying to encourage risk-taking, we are trying to encourage calculated experimentation where the point of our experiments is to learn what works, to learn from your users what to adopt, to learn how you could then move to a larger group of users and get them to existing channels” —Alejandro Juárez Crawford [46:45]Stay connected:
Sydney Finkelstein
Website: http://thesydcast.com
LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein
Twitter: @sydfinkelstein
Facebook: The Sydcast
Instagram: The Sydcast
Alejandro Juárez Crawford
LinkedIn: Alejandro Crawford
Website: https://rebelbase.co
Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode on Stitcher, iTunes, and Spotify.
This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.
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Episode Summary
Hannah Kearney is an Olympic Gold Medal Winner in freestyle skiing. She’s won 46 World Cup races. And now she’s retired, and ready to reflect on what it’s like to be the best in the world and how you come down from that high to live a productive, and energizing, life.
Sydney Finkelstein
Syd Finkelstein is the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He holds a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. Professor Finkelstein has published 25 books and 90 articles, including the bestsellers Why Smart Executives Fail and Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent, which LinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman calls the “leadership guide for the Networked Age.” He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Management, a consultant and speaker to leading companies around the world, and a top 25 on the Global Thinkers 50 list of top management gurus. Professor Finkelstein’s research and consulting work often relies on in-depth and personal interviews with hundreds of people, an experience that led him to create and host his own podcast, The Sydcast, to uncover and share the stories of all sorts of fascinating people in business, sports, entertainment, politics, academia, and everyday life.
Hannah Kearney
Hannah grew up in Norwich, Vermont, and was introduced to Freestyle skiing through the Ford Sayre after-school program at the Dartmouth Skiway. She went on to win Olympic gold in 20210 and a bronze in 2014 in mogul skiing. She also won 46 World Cup competitions and 6 World Cup Overall Mogul titles during 13 years on the U.S. Ski & Snowboard Team. Hannah completed her freshman year at Dartmouth by attending each spring trimester during the last few years of her athletic career. Upon retiring in 2015, she moved to Park City and graduated from Westminster College with a Marketing degree. Hannah now works in development for the U.S. Ski & Snowboard Foundation; she trains young athletes in the gym and founded Fitness From Afar to teach virtual workout challenges.
Insights from this episode:
The Beijing OlympicsWhat determines a score in skiingSkills and techniques in skiing How Hannah learned skiingWhat she loves about skiingWhen she knew she was good at skiingThe role of role models in Hannah’s skiingHannah’s failure in skiing and bouncing backMental health issues in athletesWhat happens leading up to the raceQuotes from the show:
“I enjoyed that adrenaline, and I think it allowed me to perform better. You know adrenaline can be a pressure that paralyzes you or can allow you to perform better. And just like being an athlete, I sort of embraced it, and I think it made the experience more interesting” —Hannah Kearney [8:01]“I was 16 years old; I was a sophomore at Hanover High School when I both made the U.S ski team and when back flips were permitted in the sport” —Hannah Kearney [19:06]“One of the things I love about skiing is it's one of the few Olympic sports that’s also a lifelong sport, and not just a lifelong sport; tennis and golf would fall under this category, but its a family sport” —Hannah Kearney [22:11]“I do think there’s some belief by the people around me, my parents and my coaches, that helped me excel cause they thought I could be good, so they gave me the attention. I, in turn, also took that, and I wanted to work really hard” —Hannah Kearney [26:31]“Even the best athletes in the world, Mikaela Shiffrin is certainly one of those; nobody has a 100% winning percentage. So, inevitably, there’s going to be stumbling blocks along the way” —Hannah Kearney [32:59]“If you are in these sports that are so acrobatic and skill-based, that pressure then creates physical symptoms where you are unable to perform your best” —Hannah Kearney [37:25]“Whether it’s because it’s like the nature of the sport or it’s whether the way that I was driven, I was very self-centered, I suppose, and I say that hopefully not in a bad way, but just, I was so focused on what I needed to do to improve week after week, especially towards the end of my career where I was winning fairly consistently” —Hannah Kearney [49:46]Stay connected:
Sydney Finkelstein
Website: http://thesydcast.com
LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein
Twitter: @sydfinkelstein
Facebook: The Sydcast
Instagram: The Sydcast
Hannah Kearney
Instagram: Hannah Kearney (@hannahakearney)
Twitter: Hannah Kearney (@HK_Ski)
Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode on Stitcher, iTunes, and Spotify.
This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.
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Episode Summary
How’s life growing up in a neighborhood where no one looks like you? In this episode, I talk to a former student, Wendy Pease, who grew up overseas and learned to adapt to life where she was the one who stood out. Now, many years later, perhaps unsurprisingly, she runs a business focused on managing cultural and language barriers. From melting pots to immigration, on this episode of The Sydcast a deep dive into an entrepreneurial life set in motion long ago.
Sydney Finkelstein
Syd Finkelstein is the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He holds a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. Professor Finkelstein has published 25 books and 90 articles, including the bestsellers Why Smart Executives Fail and Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent, which LinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman calls the “leadership guide for the Networked Age.” He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Management, a consultant and speaker to leading companies around the world, and a top 25 on the Global Thinkers 50 list of top management gurus. Professor Finkelstein’s research and consulting work often relies on in-depth and personal interviews with hundreds of people, an experience that led him to create and host his own podcast, The Sydcast, to uncover and share the stories of all sorts of fascinating people in business, sports, entertainment, politics, academia, and everyday life.
Wendy Pease
Wendy MacKenzie Pease is the owner and president of Rapport International, a translation and interpretation services company specializing in marketing, legal, and medical/life sciences translation. Throughout her career, she has worked with hundreds of companies to help them communicate across more than 200 languages and cultures. She is the author of the book, "The Language of Global Marketing," and the podcast host of the "Global Marketing Show."
Wendy has an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College and a BA in Foreign Service & International Politics from Penn State.
She is passionate about connecting people, especially across languages and cultures. She lived in Mexico, Taiwan, and the Philippines, where she fell in love with the richness of international cultures and understood that we are all human, no matter the language we speak.
Insights from this episode:
Wendy’s life growing up Growing up in a culturally different neighborhood Getting into business and buying her companyGetting laid off while on maternity leaveLessons Wendy learned running her own company Details about what her company does Building a formidable workforceDetails on her competitor, Google translateThe beauty of different languagesAdvice for people going to other countriesQuotes from the show:
“I am an off-the-scale extrovert: I always made friends wherever I went, and I think that’s what’s given me the love I have for what I do now” —Wendy Pease [14:24]“After two lay-offs on maternity leaves, I decided I was done with doing the corporate thing and wanted to own my own business again. So that’s how I ended up buying the company I run now” —Wendy Pease [22:22]“I think the hardest thing for me was work-life balance. When I owned my company before, I was single and young, and in my twenties with tons of energy and a lot of time went into work” —Wendy Pease [27:07]“What we do: our mission is clear, communication for peaceful and prosperous worlds. So what that boils down to is that we do written translations, and spoken interpretation in over 200 languages” —Wendy Pease [28:12]“People used to come into the U.S and say, ‘I’m gonna get rid of my language and culture, and I’m gonna assimilate, and I’m gonna be American’ that’s not happening anymore. People are keeping their language” —Wendy Pease [35:17]“My biggest advice is if you are going somewhere to conduct business where English is not the native language (…), my advice is to get an interpreter who fully understands the two languages and two cultures, and then you use your interpreter as your cultural conduit“—Wendy Pease [43:44]“You can go out and hire them (in manufacturing), but if you don’t train them in their language, give them opportunities to promote and make them feel included, they are not gonna stay” —Wendy Pease [47:10]Stay connected:
Sydney Finkelstein
Website: http://thesydcast.com
LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein
Twitter: @sydfinkelstein
Facebook: The Sydcast
Instagram: The Sydcast
Wendy Pease
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/wendypease
LinkedIn: Wendy (MacKenzie) Pease
Twitter: Wendy Pease (@RapportIntl)
Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode on Stitcher, iTunes, and Spotify.
This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.
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Episode Summary
John Carreyrou literally wrote the book on Theranos – the bestseller “Bad Blood,” which built on his earlier writing at the WSJ that broke the story. With Elizabeth Holmes scheduled to be sentenced this week, I sat down with John to get the inside scoop on how he uncovered the Theranos fraud, his take on Holmes, what went wrong and why, and what her sentence is likely to be.
Sydney Finkelstein
Syd Finkelstein is the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He holds a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. Professor Finkelstein has published 25 books and 90 articles, including the bestsellers Why Smart Executives Fail and Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent, which LinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman calls the “leadership guide for the Networked Age.” He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Management, a consultant and speaker to leading companies around the world, and a top 25 on the Global Thinkers 50 list of top management gurus. Professor Finkelstein’s research and consulting work often relies on in-depth and personal interviews with hundreds of people, an experience that led him to create and host his own podcast, The Sydcast, to uncover and share the stories of all sorts of fascinating people in business, sports, entertainment, politics, academia, and everyday life.
John Carreyrou
John Carreyrou is the author of the New York Times bestselling book Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup. In his reporting for The Wall Street Journal, he was the first to break the scandal surrounding the failed biomedical startup Theranos and the disturbing lies of its wunderkind founder, Stanford dropout Elizabeth Holmes. A compelling speaker, Carreyrou discusses the ethical lapses, the credulous media coverage, and the lax oversight that allowed Theranos to achieve a “unicorn” valuation of $9 billion and shares with audiences the lessons that can be learned from its fall.
Bad Blood was also named the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year. The HBO documentary based on the Theranos story, The Inventor, was directed by Academy Award winner Alex Gibney and premiered at Sundance. A graduate of Duke University, Carreyrou lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife and three children.
Insights from this episode:
Details about John’s bookTheranos scandal and how John discovered itThe intimidation, threats, and stonewalling John experienced when covering the scandalDetails about Elizabeth Holmes's trialConfidential informants being stalked during the trialWhat Elizabeth Holmes did wrong and how she was able to build credibilityQuotes from the show:
“I had done a lot of reporting about health care medicine by then and enough to know that that’s not usually how things happen (Theranos scandal). Usually, people who make advances in medical fields are trained and then do decades of research before they add value” —John Carreyrou [9:14]“It wasn’t until late April/May of 2015 that I began approaching the company and letting them know that I was doing a story and could they answer these questions. At that point they tried to stonewall me, they gave me the silent treatment for about a month, but then I think it dawned on them that I wasn’t going away” —John Carreyrou [20:21]“They knew that those three employees (Adam Rosendorff, Tyler Shultz, and Erika Cheung) had left with objections and raising doubts, and their suspicions immediately gravitated toward them” —John Carreyrou [24:39]“That’s what you call affinity fraud. You surround yourself with people who have a lot of credibility and prestigious names, and you borrow their credibility. That is very much what took place. In this case, Elizabeth was able to do that” —John Carreyrou [40:23]“She was convicted of defrauding investors. To me, that isn’t the worst part of the scandal. What I consider to be the worst part is the fact she went live with a medical product that didn’t work. She had a machine called the Edison, it was very limited and its capabilities could only do a handful of blood tests, and it didn’t perform it accurately” —John Carreyrou [29:23]“To me, her biggest crime is that she knowingly commercialized a medical product that she knew was deficient, that she knew was flawed, that she knew didn’t work. She put patients in harm's way, she endangered the public health” —John Carreyrou [30:30]“[About cutting corners] Elizabeth Holmes is someone who was well aware of this history, of this lure. She knew that people like Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs had cut corners earlier in their careers and she felt entitled to do the same” —John Carreyrou [33:21]“The Theranos scandal is a reminder that fine, bring your new ideas and your money to the problems in healthcare but, you got to remember it’s not the same world as software and that the stakes are much higher. If you don’t bear that in mind then what happened to Elizabeth Holmes will happen to you” —John Carreyrou [37:07]Stay connected:
Sydney Finkelstein
Website: http://thesydcast.com
LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein
Twitter: @sydfinkelstein
Facebook: The Sydcast
Instagram: The Sydcast
John Carreyrou
LinkedIn: John Carreyrou
Twitter: John Carreyrou
Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode on Stitcher, iTunes, and Spotify.
This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.
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Episode Summary
What’s it like to work at the top levels of marketing in major companies? Kenny Mitchell – an Emmy Award nominated leader who combines creativity with business smarts – describes his move to Big Tech, life at Snapchat (he's the CMO there), augmented reality, and what he wished he knew when he was 20 years old that he knows now.
Sydney Finkelstein
Syd Finkelstein is the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He holds a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. Professor Finkelstein has published 25 books and 90 articles, including the bestsellers Why Smart Executives Fail and Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent, which LinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman calls the “leadership guide for the Networked Age.” He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Management, a consultant and speaker to leading companies around the world, and a top 25 on the Global Thinkers 50 list of top management gurus. Professor Finkelstein’s research and consulting work often relies on in-depth and personal interviews with hundreds of people, an experience that led him to create and host his own podcast, The Sydcast, to uncover and share the stories of all sorts of fascinating people in business, sports, entertainment, politics, academia, and everyday life.
Kenny Mitchell
Kenny Mitchell is the Chief Marketing Officer of Snap Inc., the parent company of Snapchat. He guides the brand and business marketing efforts, focusing on driving the growth of the global Snapchat community and the base of advertising and developer partners. Previously, Mitchell was an accomplished leader at McDonald's U.S., Gatorade, and NASCAR, where he oversaw the marketing efforts related to key consumer touch-points – creative, digital, design, retail and experiential. Over his 20-year career, Mitchell has received numerous awards and recognitions, including being named one of “The Most Creative People in Business” by Fast Company, Forbes CMO NEXT, AdWeek 50, Business Insider: 25 Most Innovative CMOs, and Campaign Power 100. He has also won numerous creative awards, including multiple Cannes Lions, film festival selections, Tribeca, and two Emmy nominations. Mitchell also is a Member of the Board of Directors for e.l.f. Beauty. Mitchell holds a B.A. from Dartmouth College and an M.B.A. from Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business. He was inducted into Dartmouth’s Sports Hall of Fame as a men’s basketball team member. He and his wife, Heather, live in Los Angeles and have a daughter, Carter.
Insights from this episode:
Details about SnapKenny’s career journeyDeveloping new appsKenny’s biggest competitorDetails about augmented reality and the metaverseThe future of the metaverseThe role of AR in the real worldThe role of marketing in an organizationKenny’s nomination for an Emmy AwardKenny’s hiring processQuotes from the show:
“At its core, Snapchat is a kind of visual communication app or platform that helps to enhance relationships between your friends and family and give you a connection to the world with augmented reality (AR)” —Kenny Mitchell [5:53]“What a lot of new apps and businesses find is that it can be tricky to quickly build a dependable and honorable business against platforms in many cases that already have the audience that you are looking to build” —Kenny Mitchell [8:53]“Our focus is really building out more and more advanced AR experiences and looking to establishing an ecosystem around augmented reality, that’s what we believe is the true next computing platform” —Kenny Mitchell [19:36]“We think that unlocking computing all over the world through hardware that is connected to the real world is probably what the future looks like, and we have a little bit of confidence because we are seeing the way that AR is being used in our platform so much right now” —Kenny Mitchell [22:34]“The center of gravity really sits with the marketing of an organization” —Kenny Mitchell [28:35]“Personally, I’ve always had a proclivity towards innovation. That’s probably more the reason that when they (Snap Inc) circled around a few years later looking for a CMO they wanted someone who understood the Snapchat audience, understood product and platform really well, and was great from the innovation, creativity, and storytelling perspective” —Kenny Mitchell [36:48]“The other thing that is pretty unique and special about Snap is that its culture is underpinned by these three core values of kind, creative and smart” —Kenny Mitchell [43:03]“The thing that is very specific to marketing is that we make stuff that goes out into the world. There is something incredibly gratifying about that” —Kenny Mitchell [46:46]Stay connected:
Sydney Finkelstein
Website: http://thesydcast.com
LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein
Twitter: @sydfinkelstein
Facebook: The Sydcast
Instagram: The Sydcast
Kenny Mitchell
LinkedIn: Kenneth Mitchell
Twitter: Kenny Mitchell (@kmitch)
Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode on Stitcher, iTunes, and Spotify.
This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.
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Episode Summary
Dave Johnson is a Silicon Valley attorney and climate change activist whose attention to design thinking suggests a less well-traveled approach to dealing with global threats.
Sydney Finkelstein
Syd Finkelstein is the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He holds a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. Professor Finkelstein has published 25 books and 90 articles, including the bestsellers Why Smart Executives Fail and Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent, which LinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman calls the “leadership guide for the Networked Age.” He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Management, a consultant and speaker to leading companies around the world, and a top 25 on the Global Thinkers 50 list of top management gurus. Professor Finkelstein’s research and consulting work often relies on in-depth and personal interviews with hundreds of people, an experience that led him to create and host his own podcast, The Sydcast, to uncover and share the stories of all sorts of fascinating people in business, sports, entertainment, politics, academia, and everyday life.
Dave Johnson
Dave Johnson is a lawyer, teacher, and writer. Over the last twenty years, he has served as general counsel for several tech companies in Silicon Valley. For the last decade, he has held teaching and research posts at Stanford Law School and the Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford. He is currently working on a book titled Climate Activism by Design, bringing design principles to bear on citizen activists responding to corporate and government inaction on this immediate, existential crisis facing all of humankind.
Insights from this episode:
What design thinking isEmpathy in businessBuzzwords in leadership Differences between empathy and sympathyImportance of criticismDesign thinking for legal systemsApplication of design thinking to social systemsDetails about the content in his bookQuotes from the show:
“My take on this is that design thinking in its most core form was always somewhere inside the sphere of design work” —Dave Johnson [11:20]“I think empathy can be categorized as yet another buzzword, which is a term that has some inherent meaning, but it gets lost on a larger crowd because it's more about saying the most current idea that is coming out of the business schools or engineering schools” —Dave Johnson [18:00]“Empathy is a sort of innate skill that oftentimes sociopaths are very adept at using. It’s important to understand that it’s a powerful tool and has to be used with quite a bit of care” —Dave Johnson [22:19]“Some of that criticism is healthy and useful for furthering, both restraining and honing the idea as it moves forward and some of it is just, for lack of a better phrase, complaining” —Dave Johnson [23:31]“Steve Jobs is famous for, I’m going to paraphrase him, ‘People think that design is how the product looks. We don’t think that at all, design is how the product works’” —Dave Johnson [26:09]“Design is going from the idea, the concept, to actually creating the service or product. Virtually none of which has anything to do with the marketing department” —Dave Johnson [26:17]“It's in human nature, it’s deep in our brain DNA: We respond to critical threats, and we do not respond well to chronic threats. We respond to the acute and not the chronic, and climate change is the chronic” —Dave Johnson [40:46]“We are waiting for, in America, too long, for some kind of trigger spark that gets everybody to take the step from outside of the circle to inside the circle, and that then develops its own momentum” —Dave Johnson [48:30]Stay connected:
Sydney Finkelstein
Website: http://thesydcast.com
LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein
Twitter: @sydfinkelstein
Facebook: The Sydcast
Instagram: The Sydcast
Maron Greenleaf
LinkedIn: Dave Johnson
Website: David Johnson
Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode on Stitcher, iTunes, and Spotify.
This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.
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Episode Summary
Climate change is here, from wildfires to hurricanes and a gradual rise in temperatures. Carbon offsets have become prominent weapons in the war against climate change, but what does it really mean in practice? And on the ground in Brazil? Maron Greenleaf is an anthropologist studying these very questions. What is she learning about the economics, science, and politics that underpin the battle for global sustainability?
Sydney Finkelstein
Syd Finkelstein is the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He holds a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. Professor Finkelstein has published 25 books and 90 articles, including the bestsellers Why Smart Executives Fail and Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent, which LinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman calls the “leadership guide for the Networked Age.” He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Management, a consultant and speaker to leading companies around the world, and a top 25 on the Global Thinkers 50 list of top management gurus. Professor Finkelstein’s research and consulting work often relies on in-depth and personal interviews with hundreds of people, an experience that led him to create and host his own podcast, The Sydcast, to uncover and share the stories of all sorts of fascinating people in business, sports, entertainment, politics, academia, and everyday life.
Maron Greenleaf
Maron Greenleaf is a sociocultural anthropologist, political ecologist, and legal scholar studying climate change, forests, and green economies. Maron is completing an ethnographic book manuscript on carbon offsets in the Brazilian Amazon and is starting new research on reforestation in post-industrial England. She also co-founded Dartmouth’s Energy Justice Clinic, where she works with community partners and Dartmouth students to understand and support socially just transitions to renewable energy. Maron holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Stanford University, a JD from New York University, and a BA in Political Science from Yale University. She is an Assistant Professor in Dartmouth College’s Department of Anthropology.
Insights from this episode:
Maron becoming a professorMaron’s Buddhist practice and how it helped spark interest in sustainabilityMaron’s life growing upGrowing up in a Buddhist home in AmericaDeveloping interest in anthropologyInsights into carbon offsetsMaron’s work in BrazilConcerns of creating concernsQuotes from the show:
“I went to law school with the intention of studying carbon markets, and how markets and law could address this looming crisis” —Maron Greenleaf [8:38]“One thing my parents taught me, I think this does come from the Buddhist tradition, is that boredom is okay. It’s okay to be bored and out of boredom comes a lot of creativity and self-sufficiency” —Maron Greenleaf [11:45]“It was (Buddhist practice) very nurturing and the kind of basic teaching was that everyone is basically good, but there’s inherent desire to live a good life” —Maron Greenleaf [12:34]“One way for a company to reduce or eliminate their emissions is through, actually, polluting less, but another way is through buying offsets so that other people pollute less” —Maron Greenleaf [25:27]“Forests are not empty of people, even though they are often imagined to be. In fact, hundreds of millions of people are connected to tropical forests” —Maron Greenleaf [31:42]“They (Brazilians and their ancestors) spent a lot of time in the forest, and so, they understand that the forests can be very valuable economically: so they don’t really want to deforest, but that’s the only way that they have been able to make money” —Maron Greenleaf [41:36]“That book is an account of what I have been talking about. It’s not optimistic in a lot of ways, but I think understanding the way the efforts to create green economies have worked so far, their limitations, but also their successes (…) I think that can help inform the measures that are going to be taken in the future” —Maron Greenleaf [43:20]Stay connected:
Sydney Finkelstein
Website: http://thesydcast.com
LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein
Twitter: @sydfinkelstein
Facebook: The Sydcast
Instagram: The Sydcast
Maron Greenleaf
Website: Maron Greenleaf – Anthropology and Environment Society
Twitter: Maron Greenleaf
Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode on Stitcher, iTunes, and Spotify.
This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.
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Episode Summary
Two women – one studying economics with her own fashion line (Avalux) and a member of the US 2020 Olympic team in rugby, the other a first-generation low-income Latina college student in bioengineering looking to increase representation in academia while studying developmental genetics in women’s health. An up-close conversation with Olympian Ariana Ramsey and aspiring PhD student Samantha Carranza, on The Sydcast.
Sydney Finkelstein
Syd Finkelstein is the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He holds a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. Professor Finkelstein has published 25 books and 90 articles, including the bestsellers Why Smart Executives Fail and Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent, which LinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman calls the “leadership guide for the Networked Age.” He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Management, a consultant and speaker to leading companies around the world, and a top 25 on the Global Thinkers 50 list of top management gurus. Professor Finkelstein’s research and consulting work often relies on in-depth and personal interviews with hundreds of people, an experience that led him to create and host his own podcast, The Sydcast, to uncover and share the stories of all sorts of fascinating people in business, sports, entertainment, politics, academia, and everyday life.
Ariana Ramsey
Ariana Ramsey was born in Philadelphia and raised outside the King of Prussia. She is an Economics major at Dartmouth College and a Division I Women’s Rugby team member. She recently was named and participated in the 2020 Olympic Games on Tokyo's Women’s USA Rugby team.
Samantha Carranza
Sam is a senior at Dartmouth College pursuing her Bachelor of Arts in Engineering Sciences and her Bachelor of Engineering in Biological Engineering. On campus, she’s a QuestBridge Scholar and dedicates much of her time to advocating for equity and inclusivity in the spaces she takes part. Upon graduating, she aspires to obtain her Ph.D. in biological engineering with a focus on developmental genetics in women’s health. As a first-generation low-income Latina, her ultimate goal is to increase representation and equity in academia while making impactful contributions to the biological field.
Insights from this episode:
Samantha and Ariana’s lives growing upSamantha’s experience at Dartmouth CollegeHow their parents impacted their livesHow Samantha found a support group in collegeHow Ariana started playing rugby Joining the Olympic teamBuilding resilience in their lives Discrimination in campusAriana's entrepreneurial journeyQuotes from the show:
“When we think about what these great schools can do for students, for young people, when we bring in more people that have not had all kinds of advantages, the first kids in their families to go to university, the impact, the depth of that impact is really gigantic” —Syd Finkelstein [2:47]“I have always known that I wanted to go to college and my mom, she has always encouraged me to go, and my father always encouraged me to go, as well as my grandparents” —Ariana Ramsey [13:36]“That year of training, 5 hours a day, is crucial for improvement and development. I think that applies to anything that people are trying to accomplish. If you put those hours in every day, daily for every week, I think you can really accomplish a lot” —Ariana Ramsey [16:44]“It’s because of those people who came from backgrounds like mine, who came before me that I have the opportunity to be in a school like this, and I have the opportunity to do things I do and to engage in all these activities on campus” —Samantha Carranza [21:02]“It’s so hard for me to address what the actual discrimination is because it’s so deeply ingrained that you can’t really put it into words” —Ariana Ramsey [25:41]“One thing I think that is very prominent here that people don’t talk about is the implication behind the beauty standards of being a woman of color around this campus. I feel like being a woman of color on this campus means that we are held to much different almost more intense beauty standards than white women. It’s really unfortunate” —Samantha Carranza [27:20]“It’s really remarkable how just having someone that looks or acts or behaves or thinks the way you do makes such a difference” —Syd Finkelstein [38:51]Stay connected:
Sydney Finkelstein
Website: http://thesydcast.com
LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein
Twitter: @sydfinkelstein
Facebook: The Sydcast
Instagram: The Sydcast
Ariana Ramsey
Website: https://arianaramsey.com
Instagram: Ariana Ramsey
Samantha Carranza
LinkedIn: Samantha Carranza
Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode on Stitcher, iTunes, and Spotify.
This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.
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Episode Summary
University students and Covid. Scholar-athletes fighting to preserve their sport in a diminished resource environment during Covid. African-American students willing to have the “uncomfortable” conversations with classmates, professors, and administrators. Competing to get better every day. Kevin Boyce from Brown University, on The Sydcast.
Sydney Finkelstein
Syd Finkelstein is the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He holds a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. Professor Finkelstein has published 25 books and 90 articles, including the bestsellers Why Smart Executives Fail and Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent, which LinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman calls the “leadership guide for the Networked Age.” He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Management, a consultant and speaker to leading companies around the world, and a top 25 on the Global Thinkers 50 list of top management gurus. Professor Finkelstein’s research and consulting work often relies on in-depth and personal interviews with hundreds of people, an experience that led him to create and host his own podcast, The Sydcast, to uncover and share the stories of all sorts of fascinating people in business, sports, entertainment, politics, academia, and everyday life.
Kevin Boyce
Born and Raised in Columbus, Ohio, Kevin Boyce is a Brown student. He most recently graduated undergrad studying Business, Entrepreneurship, and Organizational studies and intends to complete his master's in Public Affairs this spring. He is a sprinter on Brown’s track and field team doing his college career. Outside of Track, he has also been involved in community building and advocacy for marginalized communities at Brown, most recently serving as a staffer for the Brown Center for Students of Color and having been appointed to Brown’s Anti-Black Racism Task Force, whose goal was to best address how the university handles issues of racism in a way that reflects Brown’s mission of education, scholarship, and service to society.
Insights from this episode:
The impact of Kevin’s classes on his lifeDiversity in campusKevin’s life on campusStudying during COVID-19Kevin’s copying mechanisms during COVID-19The importance of setting boundariesWhat it takes to be a fast learnerKevin’s definition of winningQuotes from the show:
“It (studying during COVID-19) was such a chaotic experience just particularly the way that everything unfolded so fast” —Kevin Boyce [15:19]“For me personally, it was hard to not be as active as I had been. I had to find new ways to be active” —Kevin Boyce [18:24]“It was still nice to have some sort of social interactions. I personally appreciated and appreciate my friends a lot more than I have before. I am not saying I didn’t appreciate them, but we really take that for granted when you have it and it’s taken away from you” —Kevin Boyce [20:26]“Sprinting in particular is a very technical experience. It’s not just going out there and just running as fast as you can. A lot of it is form, a lot of it is positioning of your body, a lot of it is general strength” —Kevin Boyce [26:28]“For me personally, and I think for a lot of people on the team, it’s not always just about being the very best of the best, but what it’s about is just being better incrementally each and every day. I go to practice every single day just trying to be a little better than I was the day before, a little better than I was the week before, and that progress gets me to be able to win” —Kevin Boyce [30:38]“I just think that in general if you know you are not going to be the very best of the best, you have to 1) believe that you can be and 2) work to get incrementally better every single day” —Kevin Boyce [33:19]“We as a community need to have conversations that do make us feel a little uncomfortable from time to time” —Kevin Boyce [42:42]“I think that putting ourselves in a position to have uncomfortable conversations allows us to really have the progress we seek to make as a collective group, as a human race in general” —Kevin Boyce [43:25]Stay connected:
Sydney Finkelstein
Website: http://thesydcast.com
LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein
Twitter: @sydfinkelstein
Facebook: The Sydcast
Instagram: The Sydcast
Kevin Boyce
Twitter: Kevin Boyce
Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode on Stitcher, iTunes, and Spotify.
This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.
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Episode Summary
Diversity in the workplace is top-of-mind for my MBA students and senior leaders alike. In this episode of The Sydcast, I want to profile one organization that’s on the front lines, creating opportunities for women in particular to fulfill their career potential. Kristy Wallace, up until very recently head of the Ellevate network, talks about unequal pay between men and women, transparency at work, imposter syndrome, and how to help women in the workforce break through these barriers.
Sydney Finkelstein
Syd Finkelstein is the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He holds a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. Professor Finkelstein has published 25 books and 90 articles, including the bestsellers Why Smart Executives Fail and Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent, which LinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman calls the “leadership guide for the Networked Age.” He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Management, a consultant and speaker to leading companies around the world, and a top 25 on the Global Thinkers 50 list of top management gurus. Professor Finkelstein’s research and consulting work often relies on in-depth and personal interviews with hundreds of people, an experience that led him to create and host his own podcast, The Sydcast, to uncover and share the stories of all sorts of fascinating people in business, sports, entertainment, politics, academia, and everyday life.
Kristy Wallace
Kristy Wallace is the former CEO of Ellevate Network, where she was responsible for executing Ellevate Network’s mission to close the gender achievement gap in business by providing professional women with a global community to lean on and learn from. She directed the Network’s staff, was responsible for business growth and strategy and worked closely with Ellevate's chapter leaders, business partners, and champions to further Ellevate's impact. She stepped down as CEO in July 2022 to pursue new opportunities.
Insights from this episode:
Details about Ellevate networkKristy’s thoughts on the stakeholder capitalism ideaEffects of COVID-19 on employeesWhat a social movement isInsights into activismHow we can impart change in the worldDifferences between women and men in the workplaceDiversity in the workplaceWhy women are still being paid less in the workplaceOvercoming the imposter syndromeQuotes from the show:
“As we go through our career, oftentimes the people within our networks might not have the expertise or the insights that we need” —Kristy Wallace [9:36]“As a leader myself, I recognize that the greatest strength for us as a business is our employees” —Kristy Wallace [16:50]“Each of us individually do have some degree of agency, some power, some influence. If a billion people speak up and start talking, and caring, and asking, more progress could be made” —Syd Finkelstein [19:49]“I think if people believe that they actually have the opportunity to make a difference, even as one individual, I think it would be a big thing” —Syd Finkelstein [26:48]“What women bring to the workplace is diversity” —Kristy Wallace [29:13]“I think as humans: always best intent, always hold yourself accountable, create trust in lines of communication” —Kristy Wallace [47:03]“Always stay curious. What I mean by that is just continue to learn and grow as a human, as a leader, and look out for inspiration everywhere in life” —Kristy Wallace [54:33]Stay connected:
Sydney Finkelstein
Website: http://thesydcast.com
LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein
Twitter: @sydfinkelstein
Facebook: The Sydcast
Instagram: The Sydcast
Kristy Wallace
LinkedIn: Kristy Wallace
Twitter: Kristy Wallace (@kristyawallace)
Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode on Stitcher, iTunes, and Spotify.
This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.
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Episode Summary
Cannabis is booming. Whether for medicinal or recreational purposes, more and more US states have legalized the business. How did we get here and where are we going next? A conversation with cannabis insider Chris Walsh on regulation, public policy, market growth, and which established industries will be the first to enter the game.
Sydney Finkelstein
Syd Finkelstein is the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He holds a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. Professor Finkelstein has published 25 books and 90 articles, including the bestsellers Why Smart Executives Fail and Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent, which LinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman calls the “leadership guide for the Networked Age.” He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Management, a consultant and speaker to leading companies around the world, and a top 25 on the Global Thinkers 50 list of top management gurus. Professor Finkelstein’s research and consulting work often relies on in-depth and personal interviews with hundreds of people, an experience that led him to create and host his own podcast, The Sydcast, to uncover and share the stories of all sorts of fascinating people in business, sports, entertainment, politics, academia, and everyday life.
Chris Walsh
Chris served as the founding editor of Marijuana Business Daily during the company’s launch in 2011, becoming the first journalist in the United States to focus exclusively on covering the business of cannabis. As CEO, he now guides the company's strategic vision and its sister publication – Hemp Industry Daily – while educating mainstream industries about the marijuana and hemp sectors. Chris has been quoted as one of America’s foremost cannabis industry analysts by dozens of media outlets, including Harvard Business Review, NPR, CNBC, and the New York Times. He earned an MBA in international business from Regis University.
Insights from this episode:
How Chris got involved in the cannabis industryInsights into the cannabis industryThe evolution of the cannabis industryDifferences between the U.S and Canadian marketsThe biggest companies in the US marketDifferences in the growing and development of cannabisQuotes from the show:
“When it comes to cannabis, every state in the US has done it (regulations) completely differently” —Chris Walsh [8:18]“For many years, when the industry first started to flourish 10/11 years ago, you couldn’t really expand out of state, and you couldn’t really expand outside your city. A lot of the companies were very locally based” —Chris Walsh [9:57]“That variety of mechanisms to grow and create a national footprint completely depends on ways to deal with the various state regulations” —Syd Finkelstein [12:22]“The U.S market is still growing and is growing rapidly. It actually hit records during COVID” —Chris Walsh [15:12]“This industry has professionalized because it’s regulated. It’s still very controversial the types of regulation, but it’s professionalized now, and the latest wave is mainstream professionals coming into the industry” —Chris Walsh [20:49]“As an industry gets bigger, and certainly as it becomes more national and there are more choices for consumers, it’s hard to figure out what the right one is. If a doctor is prescribing it, it’s one thing, but if it is recreational, it’s a whole another story” —Syd Finkelstein [25:38]“There is plenty of research that shows that in states that have legalized cannabis, opioid abuse has gone down” —Chris Walsh [38:18]“It has created hundreds of thousands of jobs. It creates business opportunities, it creates tax money, that if used effectively, can go to schools and roads, and we’ve seen that in many states, and can revive communities” —Chris Walsh [54:09]Stay connected:
Sydney Finkelstein
Website: http://thesydcast.com
LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein
Twitter: @sydfinkelstein
Facebook: The Sydcast
Instagram: The Sydcast
Chris Walsh
LinkedIn: Chris Walsh
MJ Biz Twitter: MJBiz (@MJBizDaily)
Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode on Stitcher, iTunes, and Spotify.
This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.
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Episode Summary
The Music Cognition Lab at Princeton University is where researchers study why we love music, how we process while listening, why we like what we like, and countless other creative questions that combine music, cognitive science, and neuroscience. Our guest on this episode of The Sydcast is the scholar and creative force behind the Lab, Professor (and pianist) Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis.
Sydney Finkelstein
Syd Finkelstein is the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He holds a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. Professor Finkelstein has published 25 books and 90 articles, including the bestsellers Why Smart Executives Fail and Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent, which LinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman calls the “leadership guide for the Networked Age.” He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Management, a consultant and speaker to leading companies around the world, and a top 25 on the Global Thinkers 50 list of top management gurus. Professor Finkelstein’s research and consulting work often relies on in-depth and personal interviews with hundreds of people, an experience that led him to create and host his own podcast, The Sydcast, to uncover and share the stories of all sorts of fascinating people in business, sports, entertainment, politics, academia, and everyday life.
Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis
Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis, author of On Repeat: How Music Plays the Mind and The Psychology of Music: A Very Short Introduction, directs the Music Cognition Lab at Princeton University. Her research uses theoretical, behavioral, and neuroimaging methodologies to investigate the dynamic, moment-to-moment experience of listeners without special musical training. She was also trained as a pianist.
Insights from this episode:
How Elizabeth got into music cognitionHow music is connected to our cognitive stateHow long it took Elizabeth to write a bookInsights into repetition in musical listeningHow repetition affects our musical tastesHow people use music for pleasureSimilarities between ritual and the repetitive aspect of musicEffect of adolescence on people’s musical preferencesQuotes from the show:
“I genuinely feel very comfortable in situations where I have less expertise or people have more experience in a certain area than me. I find that very energizing and exciting” –Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis [8:00]“There are all kinds of music, and there are types of music that expressly try to avoid this kind of repetition, as they are trying to explore another aspect” –Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis [18:50]“The expectations you have while you listen are important because you need to be familiar enough to generate these expectations” –Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis [23:16]“People use music for all these kinds of purposes including mood regulation, sports preparation. You can find untold, enumerable playlists on Spotify whose title is about some function” –Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis [25:46]“I think there is something about the way ritual often has this repetitive aspect is connected to music’s repetitive qualities as well” –Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis [27:22]“Actually, one of the best ways to teach language is through music” –Syd Finkelstein [28:29]“We know that adolescence is the period in life that’s most relevant to setting a person’s musical preferences: so people are seeking out new stuff and discovering it and choosing it actively as adolescents” –Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis [36:50]“That’s part of why you get people’s music preferences in their profiles on dating apps and what not: it’s because people really do feel like there’s something about their identity that resides in these kinds of aesthetics and preferences ” –Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis [40:25]Stay connected:
Sydney Finkelstein
Website: http://thesydcast.com
LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein
Twitter: @sydfinkelstein
Facebook: The Sydcast
Instagram: The Sydcast
Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis
Website: Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis
Twitter: Elizabeth Margulis
Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode on Stitcher, iTunes, and Spotify.
This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.
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Episode Summary
Gina Bianchini is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and founder of Mighty Networks, a platform for creators (of anything) to build out and monetize their content. As a past business partner with legendary entrepreneur and investor Marc Andreessen, Gina has deep roots in startup culture. Who is Gina Bianchini, what is Mighty Networks, and what’s it like to be a female entrepreneur in Silicon Valley in the age of Elizabeth Holmes?
Sydney Finkelstein
Syd Finkelstein is the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He holds a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. Professor Finkelstein has published 25 books and 90 articles, including the bestsellers Why Smart Executives Fail and Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent, which LinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman calls the “leadership guide for the Networked Age.” He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Management, a consultant and speaker to leading companies around the world, and a top 25 on the Global Thinkers 50 list of top management gurus. Professor Finkelstein’s research and consulting work often relies on in-depth and personal interviews with hundreds of people, an experience that led him to create and host his own podcast, The Sydcast, to uncover and share the stories of all sorts of fascinating people in business, sports, entertainment, politics, academia, and everyday life.
Gina Bianchini
Gina Bianchini is the Founder & CEO of Mighty Networks. Her mission at Mighty Networks is to usher in a new era of creative business built on community. Mighty serves “creators with a purpose,” selling experiences, relationships, and expertise to their members via community, content, online courses, and subscription commerce–all offered in one place under the creator’s brand.
Before Mighty Networks, Gina and Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen launched Ning, a pioneering global platform for creating niche social networks. Under her leadership, Ning grew to ~100 million people in 300,000 active social networks across subcultures, professional networks, entertainment, politics, and education.
In addition to Mighty Networks, Gina serves as a board director of TEGNA (NYSE: TGNA), a $3 billion dollar broadcast and digital media company, and served as a board director of Scripps Networks (NASDAQ: SNI), a $12 billion dollar public company which owns HGTV, The Food Network, and The Travel Channel that merged with Discovery Communications in 2018.
Gina and Mighty Networks have been featured in Fast Company, Wired, Vanity Fair, Bloomberg, and The New York Times. She has appeared on Charlie Rose, CNBC, and CNN. She grew up in Cupertino, California, graduated with honors from Stanford University, started her career in the nascent High Technology Group at Goldman Sachs & Co., and received her M.B.A from Stanford Business School.
Insights from this episode:
Details about Mighty NetworksWhy it is important to bring communities togetherDetails on how private communities can help build connections How creators build their communitiesThe importance of creating valuable communitiesHow Gina created online courses on Mighty Networks Where Gina’s initial idea for Mighty Networks came fromHow Gina’s childhood shaped her into building communitiesInsights into building sustainable relationshipsLessons Gina learned from Mark AndersonGina’s experience as a female entrepreneur in Silicon ValleyQuotes from the show:
“The world needs community innovation, and specifically software that makes each and every one of us better” –Gina Bianchini [8:06]“What motivates me as an entrepreneur and a human being is there is all sorts of things that software can do that we have not built yet” –Gina Bianchini [10:02]“The things that make us human are our interests, our passions, and our goals. The things that we are curious about, following that curiosity and doing it alongside people because that is the single best way to build relationships ” –Gina Bianchini [23:55]“We are social animals that are meant to live in communities with other people, and communities are the single best path to us being able to realize our full potential and live the lives we wanna live” –Gina Bianchini [25:53]“When I started Mighty, it was all about how do we continue the mission of unlocking a host ability to create not just an innovative community, but an innovative online business as well” –Gina Bianchini [29:53]“Innovation comes from the blending and bringing together teams of people that represent science and art” –Gina Bianchini [36:19]“Life’s not fair and winning matters. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose, but winning matters, and the winners get to define what the culture is” –Gina Bianchini [39:41]“I fundamentally believe that each and every one of us as human beings are multifaceted, and that the happiest most fulfilling life is one where we have our core values and that we can then experiment and try new things and evolve and live out different parts of our lives in different ways” –Gina Bianchini [42:51]Stay connected:
Sydney Finkelstein
Website: http://thesydcast.com
LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein
Twitter: @sydfinkelstein
Facebook: The Sydcast
Instagram: The Sydcast
Gina Bianchini
LinkedIn: Gina Bianchini
Instagram: Gina Bianchini
Twitter: Gina Bianchini
Mighty Networks’ website: Mighty Networks
Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode on Stitcher, iTunes, and Spotify.
This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.
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Episode Summary
Boarding school. Enrichment and personal growth experiences. A supportive community. Natalie Tung is creating all of this … for black and brown high school girls in Trenton. The idea took shape while Natalie was at Princeton and reflected on her own experience growing up in Hong Kong. Now, just a few years later, she’s hit the tipping point. Meet the budding “Sal Kahn” for minority high-school girls.
Sydney Finkelstein
Syd Finkelstein is the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He holds a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. Professor Finkelstein has published 25 books and 90 articles, including the bestsellers Why Smart Executives Fail and Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent, which LinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman calls the “leadership guide for the Networked Age.” He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Management, a consultant and speaker to leading companies around the world, and a top 25 on the Global Thinkers 50 list of top management gurus. Professor Finkelstein’s research and consulting work often relies on in-depth and personal interviews with hundreds of people, an experience that led him to create and host his own podcast, The Sydcast, to uncover and share the stories of all sorts of fascinating people in business, sports, entertainment, politics, academia, and everyday life.
Natalie Tung
Natalie is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of HomeWorks Trenton, a free community-based after-school boarding program. Growing up in a numbers-driven public school system in Hong Kong, Natalie had an unhealthy relationship with learning. This relationship changed when she had the opportunity to attend a boarding school in New Jersey. More importantly, living with 40 girls at such a young age empowered her to become more empathetic and confident, and these women are still her support system today. While earning her teaching certificate as a sophomore at Princeton University, Natalie started HomeWorks with the idea of replicating this experience for girls in marginalized communities around the world. Since 2016, she has run five programs with 50 participants, raised over $1.9 million in cash and in-kind donations, and built a diverse team of 6 full-time and five part-time staff, board members, interns, and volunteers. Natalie and HomeWorks have been recognized by McKinsey & Company, Camelback Ventures, Barclays, Comcast, Hollister, TRESemmé, Echoing Green, Vital Voices, Penn Graduate School of Education, Princeton University, and more.
Insights from this episode:
Details about HomeWorks Trenton programThe problem HomeWorks Trenton is seeking to solveHow Natalie’s school experience shaped herNatalie’s conviction to help women of colorHow HomeWorks Trenton program is aligned to Natalie’s missionPartners she has worked with to equip her scholars and make them ready for collegeNatalie’s challenges running the programNatalie’s aspiration for HomeWorksQuotes from the show:
“What we are doing here is not only replicating a boarding school and bringing it to public schools and with all the benefits of the wrap-around learning and all that, but also doing so in a way that reverses the narrative that our kids need to leave their communities to be successful.”–Natalie Tung [6:29]“At the core of what we are doing, we are creating a community specifically for our black and brown girls here in Trenton to reclaim power over their cultures, identities, and experiences.“ –Natalie Tung [6:41]“I truly believe in the power of women. I believe that when women come together and when we really are at the forefront of things, magic happens” –Natalie Tung [17:39]“I was in a community of women who were my age, and just being able to live with so many different kinds of girls and to be vulnerable with each other at the age of 13/14, it was such a unique experience. It did make me more confident” –Natalie Tung [18:40]“Our values are intentionality, empathy, and community. Something that we are trying to do is making sure that we are being intentional about every single thing we do at HomeWorks, every decision, every policy we have” –Natalie Tung [22:48]“We want to build a culture where our kids feel safe, where they are here to grow. We all make mistakes but we are here to learn and just feel like we have each other's backs” –Natalie Tung [23:03]“I very much believe in the power of women and I very much believe in the power of community, and I know a lot of other who people believe in it too” –Natalie Tung [33:24]“I think the beauty about HomeWorks and about our team is that we have a really diverse group of people within our staff” –Natalie Tung [43:28]Stay connected:
Sydney Finkelstein
Website: http://thesydcast.com
LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein
Twitter: @sydfinkelstein
Facebook: The Sydcast
Instagram: The Sydcast
Natalie Tung
LinkedIn: Natalie Tung
Instagram: Natalie Tung
HomeWorks Trenton Website: https://www.homeworkstrenton.org/
HomeWorks Trenton Brochure: https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/view/62642925/homeworks-trenton-pamphlet
HomeWorks Trenton Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOjhQRJT7Vg
Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode on Stitcher, iTunes, and Spotify.
This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.
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Episode Summary
“Knowing the history of my family, knowing what my grandparents decided to do, changed my life.” On this episode of The Sydcast, a story of Hispanic culture in America and how Marcela Gómez connected the dots in a way that others seldom did. Her journey, from Bogota, Colombia to Miami, Atlanta, Nashville, and New York City.
Sydney Finkelstein
Syd Finkelstein is the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He holds a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. Professor Finkelstein has published 25 books and 90 articles, including the bestsellers Why Smart Executives Fail and Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent, which LinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman calls the “leadership guide for the Networked Age.” He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Management, a consultant and speaker to leading companies around the world, and a top 25 on the Global Thinkers 50 list of top management gurus. Professor Finkelstein’s research and consulting work often relies on in-depth and personal interviews with hundreds of people, an experience that led him to create and host his own podcast, The Sydcast, to uncover and share the stories of all sorts of fascinating people in business, sports, entertainment, politics, academia, and everyday life.
Marcela Gómez
A native of Bogotá, Colombia, Marcela graduated from high school in Charlotte, North Carolina, and earned a bachelor’s degree in advertising from Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano in Bogotá. Following graduation, Marcela moved to Miami, Florida to work as an advertising coordinator with Editorial Unilit and as a member of Expolit’s (Spanish-language Christian literature trade show) leadership team. In 1996 she joined Thomas Nelson Publisher’s Spanish language division in Nashville, Tennessee as a sales representative and later was promoted to marketing director.
Her life as an entrepreneur started in 2002 with Hispanic Marketing Group; in 2017, she became a founding partner of the Culture Shift Team. Marcela has also been a partner and investor in other entrepreneurship ventures, most recently with Mi Tribu, an import and retail business of arts and crafts handmade by disenfranchised women in Latin American countries.
Miss Gómez specializes in connecting effectively with the diverse and continuously changing Multicultural markets, helping Culture Shift Team clients understand the diversity of the U.S. consumer. Marcela has worked with packaged goods companies, universities, public utilities, consumer, corporate, nonprofit, and business-to-business clients in wireless, sports, transportation, education, government, banking and finance, food, healthcare, and the arts. She plays a key role in developing multicultural and multilingual marketing, communications, and grassroots campaigns, from conception and brand development to production.
In early 2021 she relocated to New York City, where she continues to lead the multicultural marketing, advertising, and public relations division of the Culture Shift Team.
She enjoys traveling, films, theater, ballet, opera, and symphony. She is a member of the National Speakers Association New York City Chapter, the Statewide Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of New Jersey, the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce, the NYC Hispanic Chamber, and PRSA New York City. Marcela has a 31-year-old son, Esteban Pedraza, an award-winning film director and musician residing in New York City.
Insights from this episode:
Marcela Gómez’s life growing upHow her grandmother has shaped her view of lifeHow her life experiences influenced her careerMarcela moving back to the U.S from BogotaWhy she moved to NashvilleHow the Hispanic marketing group came to beOvercoming imposter syndromeThe importance of diversity in board membersWhat led Marcela to the cultural shiftQuotes from the show:
“My mother was actually fully bilingual. My mother had had the chance to go to high school in Atlanta, Georgia, so we grew up fully bilingual, not only because my mother would speak to us in English at home but because we were going to fully bilingual schools in Bogota” –Marcela Gómez [6:18]“We asked nanny [Marcela’s grandmother] why did she say yes to come to the U.S, and she said because of education. Education for women and the abundance that this country had” –Marcela Gómez [7:27]“Knowing the history of my family, knowing what my grandparents decided to do changed my life” –Marcela Gómez [12:25]“High school is challenging for everyone and I guess when you are different in any way, it’s even more challenging ” –Syd Finkelstein [16:12]“I realized that part of what I do in advertising, public relations and marketing is through the lens of culture, and that’s where it starts” –Marcela Gómez [18:53]“If you did not grow up here, if you do not know about the U.S culture, why do I call 911? I immediately realized there is a need for my services from a cultural perspective, marketing perspective and not only from a language perspective, and that’s when I decided to launch Hispanic marketing group” –Marcela Gomez [31:17]“I had proven myself to be a good person in marketing, but no one opened the door. So, that’s when you know that’s not where you are supposed to go” –Marcela Gomez [33:35]“You bring something very different to the table than everybody else does. Your experience is not the same not even as your siblings” –Marcela Gomez [43:03]“The reason why I like history, the reason why I would like to know where I come from is because I would also like to remember who I am and what I have accomplished in life” –Marcela Gomez [44:40]“The entire company is based on the platinum rule that says treat others the way they want to be treated, and in order for me to do that, I need to know who they are and what they like, and how they want to be treated” –Marcela Gomez [1:00:46]Stay connected:
Sydney Finkelstein
Website: http://thesydcast.com
LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein
Twitter: @sydfinkelstein
Facebook: The Sydcast
Instagram: The Sydcast
Marcela Gomez
LinkedIn: Marcela Gómez
Personal Website: Marcela Gómez
Twitter: Marcela Gómez
Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode on Stitcher, iTunes, and Spotify.
This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.
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Episode Summary
A wide-ranging discussion with the multi-talented Gautam Mukunda. Leadership, Theranos, Failure and Learning, Luck, Russia and Ukraine, the Financial Crisis, Inequality, Innovation. Bezos, Jobs, Holmes, Neumann, Sackler, Putin.
Sydney Finkelstein
Syd Finkelstein is the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He holds a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. Professor Finkelstein has published 25 books and 90 articles, including the bestsellers Why Smart Executives Fail and Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent, which LinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman calls the “leadership guide for the Networked Age.” He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Management, a consultant and speaker to leading companies around the world, and a top 25 on the Global Thinkers 50 list of top management gurus. Professor Finkelstein’s research and consulting work often relies on in-depth and personal interviews with hundreds of people, an experience that led him to create and host his own podcast, The Sydcast, to uncover and share the stories of all sorts of fascinating people in business, sports, entertainment, politics, academia, and everyday life.
Gautam Mukunda
Gautam Mukunda is an internationally recognized expert in leadership and innovation. He often jokes that his life’s ambition is to have the world’s most confusing resume and that he’s most of the way there. He is a Research Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Center for Public Leadership and the host of the Nasdaq podcast World Reimagined with Gautam Mukunda. Previously he was a professor at Harvard Business School and a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Schwarzman College, Tsinghua University. He is the author of two books: Indispensable: When Leaders Really Matter (Harvard Business Review Press, 2012) and Picking Presidents (University of California Press, forthcoming in August 2022). He has published articles in Harvard Business Review, Foreign Policy, Security Studies, Slate, Fast Company, Parameters, Politics and the Life Sciences, and Systems and Synthetic Biology on leadership, reforming the financial sector, military innovation, network-centric warfare, the security and economic implications of synthetic biology, and the TV show Mad Men. His work has been profiled in the New York Times, Atlantic, New Yorker, Economist, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and All Things Considered. He advises a variety of companies and organizations on leadership and strategy.
Gautam was a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Security Studies Program and Program on Emerging Technologies. He was a Paul & Daisy Soros New American Fellow, an NSF IGERT Fellow, a Next Generation Fellow of The American Assembly, and a Principal Investigator of the National Science Foundation’s Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center. He served on The Chief of Naval Operation’s Executive Advisory Panel and as a member of the New England Regional Selection Committee for the White House Fellowship and was a Member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on New Models of Leadership. He was also a Jeopardy Champion.
At MIT, Gautam was the National Science Foundation Synthetic Biology ERC Postdoctoral Fellow resident at MIT’s Center for International Studies. He received his Ph.D. from MIT in political science focusing on International Relations and Security Studies, where he was a Paul & Daisy Soros New American Fellow and an NSF IGERT Fellow. He received his AB in Government from Harvard, magna cum laude. Before his academic career, he was a consultant with McKinsey & Company, where he focused on the pharmaceutical sector.
In addition to his current work as an academic, Gautam is a member of the board of directors and chair of the Mentorship Committee of The Upakar Foundation, a national non-profit devoted to providing college scholarships to underprivileged students of South Asian descent. He is on the Advisory Board of Bionic Solutions and Fount Bio. He is an Overseer of the Boston Ballet and a member of the Museum Council of Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts.
Insights from this episode:
Mukunda’s thoughts on leadership and innovationInsights into what his upcoming book, Picking Presidents, is aboutInsights into Theranos and Elizabeth HolmesThe dark side of successful businessesEffects of the 2008 financial crisis on the economyMukunda’s thoughts on the Ukrainian war and the role of the WestQuotes from the show:
“I do believe this, both as a matter of inclination and a matter of research, that in a world of specialists, there is a real advantage to being a generalist” –Gautam Mukunda [2:23]“I think it’s possible to be an extraordinarily successful leader, and obviously he [Duke of Wellington] was without being innovative” –Gautam Mukunda [10:04]“If you do the same thing as everyone else, it’s difficult or impossible to produce unique results” –Gautam Mukunda [10:24]“I think it’s really important to have people in senior executive positions who are capable of doing the job” –Gautam Mukunda [12:15]“Organizations that exist in domains of limited losses and unlimited gains have a tendency to become far too risk-averse” –Gautam Mukunda [19:32]“It’s not an experiment, whatever the project is if you know it’s gonna succeed” –Syd Finkelstein [22:00]“If you are not angry about this [economic crisis], you are not paying attention. Anger is an appropriate response to the scale of bad things that we saw” –Gautam Mukunda [39:00]“Much of the behavior that led to the financial crisis was criminal. And the federal system just chose not to prosecute it” –Gautam Mukunda [39:25]“We are on the forefront of a medical revolution to a scale of which baffles the mind” –Gautam Mukunda [53:56]Stay connected:
Sydney Finkelstein
Website: http://thesydcast.com
LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein
Twitter: @sydfinkelstein
Facebook: The Sydcast
Instagram: The Sydcast
Gautam Mukunda
Website: Gautam Mukunda
LinkedIn: Gautam Mukunda
Facebook: Gautam Mukunda
Twitter: Gautam Mukunda
Instagram: Gautam Mukunda
Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode on Stitcher, iTunes, and Spotify.
This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.
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