The Sydcast: Recent Episodes

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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 Olympics
• What determines a score in skiing
• Skills and techniques in skiing
• How Hannah learned skiing
• What she loves about skiing
• When she knew she was good at skiing
• The role of role models in Hannah’s skiing
• Hannah’s failure in skiing and bouncing back
• Mental health issues in athletes
• What happens leading up to the race

Quotes 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 onStitcher,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 company
• Getting laid off while on maternity leave
• Lessons Wendy learned running her own company
• Details about what her company does
• Building a formidable workforce
• Details on her competitor, Google translate
• The beauty of different languages
• Advice for people going to other countries

Quotes 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 onStitcher,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 book
• Theranos scandal and how John discovered it
• The intimidation, threats, and stonewalling John experienced when covering the scandal
• Details about Elizabeth Holmes's trial
• Confidential informants being stalked during the trial
• What Elizabeth Holmes did wrong and how she was able to build credibility

Quotes 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 onStitcher,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 Snap
• Kenny’s career journey
• Developing new apps
• Kenny’s biggest competitor
• Details about augmented reality and the metaverse
• The future of the metaverse
• The role of AR in the real world
• The role of marketing in an organization
• Kenny’s nomination for an Emmy Award
• Kenny’s hiring process

Quotes 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 onStitcher,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 is
• Empathy in business
• Buzzwords in leadership
• Differences between empathy and sympathy
• Importance of criticism
• Design thinking for legal systems
• Application of design thinking to social systems
• Details about the content in his book

Quotes 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 onStitcher,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 professor
• Maron’s Buddhist practice and how it helped spark interest in sustainability
• Maron’s life growing up
• Growing up in a Buddhist home in America
• Developing interest in anthropology
• Insights into carbon offsets
• Maron’s work in Brazil
• Concerns of creating concerns

Quotes 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 onStitcher,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 up
• Samantha’s experience at Dartmouth College
• How their parents impacted their lives
• How Samantha found a support group in college
• How Ariana started playing rugby
• Joining the Olympic team
• Building resilience in their lives
• Discrimination in campus
• Ariana's entrepreneurial journey

Quotes 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

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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 life
• Diversity in campus
• Kevin’s life on campus
• Studying during COVID-19
• Kevin’s copying mechanisms during COVID-19
• The importance of setting boundaries
• What it takes to be a fast learner
• Kevin’s definition of winning

Quotes 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

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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 network
• Kristy’s thoughts on the stakeholder capitalism idea
• Effects of COVID-19 on employees
• What a social movement is
• Insights into activism
• How we can impart change in the world
• Differences between women and men in the workplace
• Diversity in the workplace
• Why women are still being paid less in the workplace
• Overcoming the imposter syndrome

Quotes 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)

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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 industry
• Insights into the cannabis industry
• The evolution of the cannabis industry
• Differences between the U.S and Canadian markets
• The biggest companies in the US market
• Differences in the growing and development of cannabis

Quotes 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)

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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 cognition
• How music is connected to our cognitive state
• How long it took Elizabeth to write a book
• Insights into repetition in musical listening
• How repetition affects our musical tastes
• How people use music for pleasure
• Similarities between ritual and the repetitive aspect of music
• Effect of adolescence on people’s musical preferences

Quotes 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

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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 Networks
• Why it is important to bring communities together
• Details on how private communities can help build connections
• How creators build their communities
• The importance of creating valuable communities
• How Gina created online courses on Mighty Networks
• Where Gina’s initial idea for Mighty Networks came from
• How Gina’s childhood shaped her into building communities
• Insights into building sustainable relationships
• Lessons Gina learned from Mark Anderson
• Gina’s experience as a female entrepreneur in Silicon Valley

Quotes 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 onStitcher,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 difficult 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 program
• The problem HomeWorks Trenton is seeking to solve
• How Natalie’s school experience shaped her
• Natalie’s conviction to help women of color
• How HomeWorks Trenton program is aligned to Natalie’s mission
• Partners she has worked with to equip her scholars and make them ready for college
• Natalie’s challenges running the program
• Natalie’s aspiration for HomeWorks

Quotes 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 onStitcher,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 up
• How her grandmother has shaped her view of life
• How her life experiences influenced her career
• Marcela moving back to the U.S from Bogota
• Why she moved to Nashville
• How the Hispanic marketing group came to be
• Overcoming imposter syndrome
• The importance of diversity in board members
• What led Marcela to the cultural shift

Quotes 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

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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 innovation
• Insights into what his upcoming book, Picking Presidents, is about
• Insights into Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes
• The dark side of successful businesses
• Effects of the 2008 financial crisis on the economy
• Mukunda’s thoughts on the Ukrainian war and the role of the West

Quotes 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

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This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.

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Episode Summary

John Pepper is a restaurant entrepreneur, angel investor, and a hands-on advocate for the rights of low-wage workers. He’s been an Uber driver, confronted small-town Vermont politics, and turned a banned college fraternity house into a shared work space for startups. Motivated by social justice, sustained by business, he shares his 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.

John Pepper

John is co-founder and Chief Worker Advocate of Boloco, a New England-based restaurant chain and Certified B Corp founded in 1997 serving Modern Mexican-inspired food and beverages. He is also co-founder of Worthee, an early-stage software project/platform focused on helping hourly workers receive the information they need to rise and thrive. Pepper also co-founded B. Good which grew to 80 units before he and his partners sold it in 2017.

Pepper has been an angel investor since 2014, with investments in more than 30 start-ups focused on workforce-empowering technology, restaurant-facing technology, and a few special consumer businesses like Athletic Brewing, Spindrift, Free Rain, and Starbird.

Pepper graduated from Dartmouth College in 1991 and received his MBA from the Tuck School in 1997 (where he presented the first Boloco business plan). He was elected to the Selectboard of Norwich, VT in 2017 and was Chairman from 2018-2020.

His wife Maggie and their 3 kids live in Hanover, NH.

Insights from this episode:

• Insights into Boloco and how it became successful
• How the branding of his restaurant to Boloco was done
• Pepper’s strategies for running a restaurant
• Insights into successfully raising capital
• Pepper’s lessons from being an Uber driver
• Insights into how Worthee came about
• What’s next for Boloco
• Effects of COVID-19 on restaurant business
• Pepper’s rehabilitation of Dartmouth College

Quotes from the show:

• “I am always curious about what’s ticking behind any business, and frankly any job” -John Pepper [3:15]
• “The first thing I had to do when I got back was to realize that we don’t know what we are doing and we need to hire talent: We need to hire someone better than us” -John Pepper [9:52]
• “Their [investors] main objective was to transform me from an entrepreneurial CEO, they said, to a professional CEO” -John Pepper [16:51]
• “I became an Uber driver back in Boston and it informed me a lot about the work I have done since” -John Pepper [23:19]
• “I did come away with a sense that flexibility was going to matter for workers. And we’ve got to figure out how to include people who are stuck in rigid low-paying jobs; put them into flexible jobs so that they’ll find time for better education, skills development and a way to get out of low paying jobs” -John Pepper [29:52]
• “People just don’t get regular feedback in any way that helps them understand their strengths and that led me to start thinking what can we do to solve that problem” -John Pepper [34:34]
• “Our goal has always been, and this is not a high bar, to be the number one highest wage payer in the industry” -John Pepper [40:08]
• “It’s all about work-from-home habits that are not temporary; they are here to stay. Yes, people will move back to the office, but I don’t think we will move back to 100% of what it was in 2019” -John Pepper [48:45]
• “I think that small businesses right now we don’t have the technology. I am investing in technology that does allow businesses like ours to compete with the big chains” -John Pepper [50:14]
• “I do use Boloco today as a petri dish for interesting new technologies. I aggressively implement things that aren’t always so good for our business, but inform us on what is good for the business but also help me in making investment decisions” -John Pepper [53:20]

Stay connected:

Sydney Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

John Pepper

LinkedIn: John Pepper

Website: johnpepper.com

Boloco's Website: Boloco

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This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.

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Episode Summary

Careers zig-zag, they don’t go in straight lines. But yet there is a thread that connects our paths over time. This is true if you run for Governor of New Hampshire, grow one of the top online education universities in the US, or lead the biggest collection of angel investors in the country. And it’s true if you’ve done all of these things, as we’ll find out in this conversation with Colin Van.

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.

Colin Van Ostern

Colin Van Ostern is an entrepreneurial general manager with experience leading high-growth ventures and teams. Through many different sectors, he has maintained a focus on successfully democratizing access to previously exclusive markets – ranging from higher education to venture capital, consumer goods, tech, and even politics & government.

Currently, he serves as President & COO of Alumni Ventures, a network-powered venture capital firm which in 2021, was the third-most active venture investor in the world (as per Pitchbook Global League Tables). Previously, Van Ostern was on the founding executive team for Southern New Hampshire University’s online College for America, which he helped launch and grow to more than 10,000 “nontraditional” students and graduates nationwide.

Outside of business, Colin was publicly elected twice to New Hampshire’s five-member Executive Council (which serves as a board of directors for the state government), where he was the first Councilor in state history to share all state contracts online for public comment. In 2016, Colin was the general election nominee for Governor of New Hampshire.

Early in his career, he helped elect several members of Congress, Governors, and US Senators in New Hampshire. He holds an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth and a BA in International Studies from George Washington University. He lived in 16 different houses while growing up before moving to New Hampshire after college. Colin today lives in Concord, NH, with his wife and two boys.

Insights from this episode:

• How Colin got into politics
• What prompted Colin to run for office
• Why Colin didn’t win his race for governor
• Similarities and differences in political and entrepreneurial leadership
• Colin’s thoughts on online education as a business model
• Insights into online learning
• Colin’s involvement with Alumni Ventures
• Colin’s shift from politics to venture capital
• How Colin got his job at Alumni Ventures

Quotes from the show:

• “When you see a way things can be better, that you are passionate about and you have a clear picture of how you could positively impact things, you shouldn’t hold back” -Colin Van Ostern [14:23]
• “I think frankly I didn’t offer a compelling enough reason for people to understand in a sentence or in a moment why this race mattered to their lives and why having me as Governor would be different” -Colin Van Ostern [17.06]
• “When you are launching something new, you have to have a vision of the future that you are so convinced has to happen that nothing can get in the way, even failure” -Colin Van Ostern [19:18]
• “There is so much information available, and so it's possible for some of us to get real knowledge about something in a very cost-effective way on their own terms” -Syd Finkelstein [29:58]
• “The best versions of online education, I believe, are significantly better than the worst versions of in-person learning, but I have never seen an online experience that comes close to a good in-person experience” -Colin Van Ostern [31:42]
• “I think content is the smallest part of education in 2022; I think it’s really important, but they're a very small number of thought leaders who are driving new content” -Colin Van Ostern [32:51]
• “Good online education can still be better than in-person learning and we should be honest that there is bad in-person learning” -Colin Van Ostern [37:34]
• “The folks who have to work twice as hard are accomplished people worth betting on” Colin Van Ostern [55:28]

Stay connected:

Sydney Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Colin Van Ostern

LinkedIn: Colin Van Ostern

Twitter: ColinVanOstern

Facebook: Colin Van Ostern

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This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.

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Episode Summary

Lowey Bundy Sichol writes books about entrepreneurship for kids. Think Google, Lego, and Disney. A multiple award-winner who used to write business school case studies, Lowey has figured out how to communicate to children in a way that makes them want to keep reading. On this episode of The Sydcast, Lowey tells her story.

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.

Lowey Bundy Sichol

Lowey Bundy Sichol (her last name rhymes with pickle) is an award-winning children's author with an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. She is a leading expert in teaching business and entrepreneurship to kids.

Lowey’s nonfiction series From an Idea to... (Harper Collins/ HMH, 2019) is the first entrepreneurship and business book series for kids and the recipient of several literary awards. Her latest book, IDEA MAKERS: 15 Fearless Female Entrepreneurs (Chicago Review Press, 2022), shares the incredible stories of 15 of our nation’s greatest female founders. And Lowey’s upcoming book Cookie Queen (Random House, 2023) is the first entrepreneurship picture book. Cookie Queen shares the story of Kathleen King and her inspiration for building Tate’s Bake Shop.

Prior to writing children’s books, Lowey worked in brand management and founded Case Marketing, a specialized writing firm that composes MBA case studies for some of the top business schools in the world. Her case studies have been read by MBA students across the globe and are included in the internationally best-selling marketing book, Marketing Management, by Kotler & Keller (Pearson, 2016).

Lowey received an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College and a BA from Hamilton College, where she played softball and rugby. She lives in Chicago with her husband, three children, and two big dogs.

Awards include 2019 Best Children’s Book, 2019 Best Children’s Nonfiction Book, 2020 Best STEM Book, Junior Library Guild Gold Selection, 2020 Best Children’s Book Council book, 2020 International Literacy Association Book, 2020-2021 Texas Bluebonnet Award master list, among others.

Insights from this episode:

• Lowey’s idea of writing children’s books
• How Lowey’s mom influenced her work
• How her childhood influenced her journey into writing books
• How to go about writing a case study
• Similarities between writing case studies and children’s books
• Lowey’s sweet spot in her target audience
• How Lowey is able to educate her audience without making it too complicated or too simplified
• The common themes while writing her book IDEA MAKERS: 15 Fearless Female Entrepreneurs
• Lessons that children can learn from reading her book

Quotes from the show:

• “I’d certainly think she [my mom] was very influential. She was always a wonderful teacher in town, very focused on play and learning through doing” -Lowey Bundy Sichol [11:03]
• “It’s pretty cool that schools now are embracing teaching kids about entrepreneurship, and I think it goes back to ‘learn through doing, learn through failure, experimenting and inventing’” -Lowey Bundy Sichol [11:36]
• “A lot of my books are about how influenced entrepreneurs and business leaders are by their childhood, and the parents who raised them, and I am such a good example of that” -Lowey Bundy Sichol [12:00]
• “This is what I have learned [about kids in 3rd, 4th, 5th grade]: They are incredibly brave, they are incredibly creative, they are incredibly excited to share their ideas, they are not too cool yet, but they are incredibly bright. It’s almost like they are mini entrepreneurs” -Lowey Bundy Sichol [13:56]
• “It’s interesting the philosophy of education for anyone, but for kids, the idea of having applied projects that are practical is very powerful” -Syd Finkelstein [20:23]
• “I think education, in general, has not done as good a job in entire industries in making it clear why you need to learn” -Syd Finkelstein [20:43]
• “My purpose is to tell a great story and to teach kids about business and entrepreneurship” -Lowey Bundy Sichol [29:43]
• ​​“Being able to adapt for the different audience, being able to just persevere throughout the hard times and being brave enough to go against what other people didn’t support are some of the common themes” -Lowey Bundy Sichol [38:51]

Stay connected:

Sydney Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Lowey Bundy Sichol

Website: Lowey Bundy Sichol

LinkedIn: Lowey Bundy Sichol

Twitter: Lowey Bundy Sichol

Instagram: Lowey Bundy Sichol

Amazon: Lowey Bundy Sichol

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This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.

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Episode Summary

Diane Brady is one of the top business journalists in the world, with writing and editing gigs at the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg Business Week, and Forbes. And also an old friend. She’s wise (“nobody needs more content, they need more intelligence”) and she’s a pro (“the best interviews are about listening”). In this episode, Diane and Syd on curating content, the future of journalism, and 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.

Diane Brady

Diane Brady has interviewed many of the world's leading business and political figures throughout her career. She is currently an assistant managing editor at Forbes, overseeing C-suite coverage and communities, as well as the editorial teams that run ForbesWomen, For(bes) the Culture, the 30 Under 30 franchise, and coverage of creators and startups. Prior to joining Forbes, she worked at McKinsey, Bloomberg Businessweek, The Wall Street Journal, and Maclean’s, along with running her own company. Her book, Fraternity, was named one of Amazon’s best books of the year.

Insights from this episode:

• Diane’s career in journalism
• The difference in the world of business journalism now and when she started
• Insights into the art of storytelling
• Diane’s book Fraternity and how it came about
• Insights into curating content
• The idea and concept behind 30 under 30
• Curating content in a world with so many competitors
• Diane’s favorite people she has interviewed
• Insights into what makes a great interview

Quotes from the show:

• “Every company can be a media company now, or thinks it can be a media company” -Diane Brady [1:11]
• “I think what has driven me my whole career is curiosity”-Diane Brady [3:06]
• “There is no better way to clear a room of men than to put the word women on the panel” -Diane Brady [10:20]
• “I have always brought a commercial instinct to journalism, I don’t wanna be on the business side but I love building new franchises” -Diane Brady [17:42]
• “I don’t mind ignorance as long as it goes with intelligence and as long as people know that I am a quick study and I am coming to you with the information” -Diane Brady [19:50]
• “I think one of the tragedies in school is that we learn math and not economics” -Diane Brady [20.32]
• “Nobody needs more content is my general philosophy in life, they need more intelligence, they need more synthesis perhaps, but not more content” -Diane Brady [27:33]
• “When you don’t have a newsroom of 2200 people, what matters is to be the curator of what matters; to be able to connect the dots” -Diane Brady [29:29]
• “The people who stand out don’t always stand out for the right reasons. Sometimes they stand out because there is such a disconnect between who they think they are and the way they run their companies or brands” -Diane Brady [55:42]
• “The best interviews are about listening” -Diane Brady [1:00:20]
• “One thing that I admire about entrepreneurs is the ability to fail and get back up” -Diane Brady [1:10:30]

Stay connected:

Sydney Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Diane Brady

LinkedIn: Diane Brady

Twitter: Diane Brady

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Episode Summary

Ukraine is Ground Zero for war, but also all manner of newer technologies, from cyber to AI. What is NATO seeing, and learning, and what are the implications of the war for global security, technology, and innovation? James Appathurai has a front-row seat at NATO HQ, 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.

James Appathurai

James Appathurai was appointed to this post in September 2021. As DASG, he works on policy development and implementation in the fields of Emerging and Disruptive Technologies, cyber security, counter-terrorism, the security implications of climate change, and hybrid defence. Mr Appathurai previously served as DASG for Political Affairs and Security Policy and Special Representative to Central Asia and the Caucasus. He was NATO’s Spokesperson from 2004 to 2010. He served as Deputy Head and Senior Planning Officer in the Policy Planning and Speechwriting Section of NATO’s Political Affairs Division from 1998 to 2004. He served in the Canadian Defence Department from 1994 to 1998.

Insights from this episode:

• Insights on the status of the Ukrainian war
• James’ expertise in various technologies and cyber security
• What is happening in Ukraine, and our role as the west
• How Ukraine has defended itself from attacks
• Insights on emerging technologies and how they fit into the Ukrainian war
• How quantum and AI are benefiting countries that have invested in them
• How the war on Russia has affected her credibility with other countries
• Innovations at NATO
• NATO’s efforts toward climate change

Quotes from the show:

• “President Zelensky and the Ukrainian people have reminded us what it is to fight for yourself, for your values, for your security, and they are doing remarkably well in that context” -James Appathurai [1:58]
• “Let’s not underestimate the long years of Russia’s interference into our countries, including the electoral process in the U.S, including ransom war attacks all over Europe and the U.S and Canada” -James Appathurai [5:23]
• “Once you unleash a cyber weapon, everybody knows you have it, everybody knows how it works, and then everybody else has it too. In other words, once it’s out in the wild, you get to copy it, modify it and use it yourself“ -James Appathurai [14:12]
• “Both AI and quantum are technologies which Russia and China have publicly, at the top level of president, identified as national priorities” -James Appathurai [18:07]
• “Whoever gets to quantum encryption first is in a massive position of advantage strategically” -James Appathurai [19:38]
• “If you don’t know whether your communications are reliable within your own system, then how can you know what to do? You are paralyzed” -James Appathurai [23:15]
• “I think when it comes to quantum and to a certain extent AI, it is really the U.S and China that are in the lead” -James Appathurai [25:16]
• “We are not in the same world we were in 20 years ago, we are now in an era of strategic competition, and that strategic competition is driven by technology” -James Appathurai [35:38]
• “When push comes to shove, walls go up: but I think what we need to do is take advantage of the moments when push hasn’t yet come to shove” -James Appathurai [42.39]
• “The U.S doesn’t get as much credit as it should for everything it does over here” -James Appathurai [47:18]

Stay connected:

Sydney Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

James Appathurai

LinkedIn: James Appathurai

Twitter: James Appathurai

Facebook: James Appathurai Official

Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode onStitcher,iTunes, and Spotify.

This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.

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Episode Summary

What happens when a tech-savvy entrepreneurial young man from Africa comes to America for school? It’s his first time in the US and what does he learn? As he describes on this episode of The Sydcast, George Boateng learns that he is black. That simple, and powerful, observation will strike many listeners as profound, yet George understands that his identity is what he makes it to be. As we will hear, that includes an EdTech start-up that is teaching young people in Africa to code, an effort to mentor young Africans to develop solutions to the real problems they are confronting, and his own work on his Ph.D. in Switzerland.

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.

George Boateng

George Boateng is a Computer Scientist, Engineer, Educator, and Social Entrepreneur who has been recognized as a Pioneer in the 2021 MIT Technology Review’s 35 Innovators Under 35.

He is currently a PhD Candidate and Doctoral Researcher at ETH Zurich, Switzerland focusing on Applied Machine Learning, and a Visiting Researcher at the Department of Computer Science and Technology at the University of Cambridge, U.K.

George is also the CEO and co-founder of SuaCode.ai, an EdTech AI start-up that is enabling young Africans to learn to code using smartphones and AI. He is also the President and co-founder of Nsesa Foundation, an education nonprofit that is training and mentoring young Africans to be innovators. He previously worked as an Applied Scientist at Amazon (Alexa AI) and a Software Engineer at Sapho (acquired by Citrix).

George has a BA in Computer Science and an MS in Computer Engineering from Dartmouth College, U.S. where he was an E.E. Just STEM Scholar and an E.E. Just Graduate Fellow.

Insights from this episode:

• What George learned along the way
• What it means to have an impact on people’s lives
• What led George to start the coding company
• How George is able to manage his time (doing his Ph.D. and running a startup)
• George’s journey to engineering
• George’s journey to Dartmouth University
• What it means to show up in America coming from Africa
• Insights on how arthritis led him to wearable technology

Quotes from the show:

• “The goal was to teach people across Ghana to code so that we can reach more people” -George Boateng [9:03]
• “We have a lot of good data, we haven’t made good use of it yet, but I think at some point it will really be useful data that other companies might want” -George Boateng [13:28]
• “Now is the single best time to have talent of any type because you are going to be in such demand, and you’re going to get paid for it, maybe more than you have been before” -Sydney Finkelstein [13:49]
• “One of the challenging aspects of coming to the US was having to embrace this new identity called black” -George Boateng [32:49]
• “I have been in Ghana all my life, the concept of race was not part of my experience” -George Boateng [33:03]
• “I think there’s got to be an evolutionary reason for it, but we do like to separate people into groups and when they don’t exist, we create them, and if they do exist, we highlight them” -Sydney Finkelstein [34:03]
• “I consider myself an accidental academic because the main reason i am in academia is because I didn’t get a job. If I had gotten a job, I definitely wouldn’t be doing my PhD” -George Boateng [34:41]
• “Very few people ever have it figured out, you just have to do the best you can and you try to go for it” -Sydney Finkelstein [45:56]

Stay connected:

Sydney Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

George Boateng

LinkedIn: George Jojo Boateng

Twitter: George Boateng

Instagram: George Boateng

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This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.

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Episode Summary

Scholar, leadership guru, author, speaker, and influencer, for the last 7 years Christine Riordan has been President of Adelphi University in New York. How did she get there? How did her leadership work translate to when she was sitting in the corner office? How did she navigate running a large university during Covid? And how does she think about women and leadership? A master class on leadership, with Christine Riordan.

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.

Christine Riordan

Christine Riordan (MBA, Ph.D.) is the 10th President of Adelphi University in New York and has been since 2015. Since starting, Chris has established the University's Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and has helped launch 50 new academic degree programs. She also sits on a number of boards including those of RE/MAX Holdings and the Commission on Independent Colleges and Universities (CICU).

Prior to becoming Adelphi’s President, Riordan occupied roles including Executive Consultant at State Farm, Dean of University of Denver’s College of Business, and Associate Dean at TCU, to name a few. Chris is an expert in leadership, talent development, career success, and diversity. She has published 70 articles and is authoring Shift Happens: How to Adapt and Thrive in a Rapidly Changing World of Work—a book on helping employees adapt to the changing workplace. Chris’s TEDx talk, “Dare to Be Extraordinary,” has received more than 26,000 views.

Insights from this episode:

• How to create an inclusive environment
• How to involve people in creating an inclusive environment
• Chris’ journey to being university president
• Chris’ challenges as a president
• Navigating classes during covid
• How Chris helped her university to respond to the pandemic from an academic standpoint
• How she helped her community with resources to tap into during the pandemic
• How Chris helped her community to navigate in the new environment with the COVID-19 pandemic
• How to successfully fundraise
• Chris’ mission to help every student succeed
• What are the attributes of good leadership

Quotes from the show:

• “One of the things that was really important for me was to be able to make an impact on students’ lives” - Christine Riordan [5:36]
• “Diversity is easy but it's useless if it doesn’t have inclusion, and I think the hardest work is to make sure people are included” - Christine Riordan [9:23]
• “The job of not just a leader but almost anyone in any significant senior position with responsibility is to figure out what that puzzle is” - Sydney Finkelstein [19:01]
• “I think when you are trying to accomplish things then the challenge and opportunity again is to try to find that shared goal and commonality” - Christine Riordan [30:55]
• “From a leadership standpoint, it is really important to understand who you are serving and understand their desires and make sure you are communicating constantly with them” - Christine Riordan [39:09]
• “To do all the work around diversity, equity, and inclusion and belonging, you have to be very intentional” - Christine Riordan [44:31]
• “To me the number one capability that a leader has to have is adaptability ” - Christine Riordan [46:11]
• “Even if someone has the capabilities to do a particular job, if they do not have the right mindset, they are not going to be successful” - Christine Riordan [47:05]

Stay connected:

Sydney Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Christine Riordan

Website:christineriordan.com

LinkedIn: Christine Riordan

Twitter: Christine M. Riordan

Instagram: Christine M. Riordan (@prezriordan)

Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode onStitcher,iTunes, and Spotify.

This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.

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An Athlete's Life, with Anouk Patty

Episode Summary:

So many people are afraid of change, but sometimes we get to talk to someone whose life is a case study of change. When it was clear that Anouk Patty – an NCAA champion ski racer – would not be good enough to reach Olympic medal heights, she changed. Business school and a successful career in tech strategy and deal-making followed. When Anouk realized that she was not living her true self, this mother of two came out as gay, at age 40. When she was diagnosed with breast cancer, she became an even more empathetic and passionate leader. An honest and inspirational conversation with Anouk Patty, 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.

Anouk Patty

Born into a skiing family in France and raised in Vermont, Anouk Patty was practically destined to make it onto the US Ski team at age 14. Yet after a few years as a global top-30 skier, Anouk was ready to leave behind the “single-minded focus that it takes to be a world-class athlete.” She went on to ski at Dartmouth, where she claimed an NCAA title, and then to JP Morgan in New York where she launched her professional career. After earning her MBA at Harvard Business School and doing a stint at Bain Consulting, Anouk jumped on the tech bandwagon at Intuit. She spent 10 years there before taking some time off to be a mom and (finally) have some time to reflect on her life and what she wanted. As a result, she got divorced, came out as gay, and decided to head back to work doing strategic partnerships at HP. Today, Anouk holds a similar role at Dropbox, sits on numerous ski-related boards, and is a recent survivor of breast cancer. She describes herself as “intensely curious about life, business, opportunities, and people.”

Insights from this Episode

• The age range ski racer's usually reach the peak of their careers
• The challenges of being an athlete
• The importance of the single-minded focus for an athlete
• The differences between an excellent athlete and a world champion
• The difficulties Anouk faced when she transitioned to the business world
• How Anouk ended up working on Wall Street
• The skillsets from the athletic world that have served Anouk the most in business
• Anouk's experience choosing an alternative career path
• How Anouk decided that she was going to retire temporarily to be a mom
• How being gay has affected Anouk as a leader
• How the workspace has changed in the past decades
• How Anouk dealt with being diagnosed with breast cancer
• What advice Anouk would give to her younger self

Quotes from the Show:

• "It's a pretty brutal sport. You're out there in the cold, it's freezing... whether its raining or cold or whatever it is you have to be out there and they're long days" - Anouk Patty [09:30]
• "I love hanging out with people that are trying to be the best in the world at something. There's only one number one at any point in time, so most people are not gonna hit that, but that doesn't mean you can't try it" - Sydney Finkelstein [20:11]
• "When I was actually trying to get the job and going through recruiting, I had a number of different firms say to me: Well you should just go back into sports" - Anouk Patty [23:30]
• "When you make these life-changing shifts you feel like: Oh God, what am I letting go, and what am I giving up? Will I ever be able to find this sense of reward and satisfaction again?" - Anouk Patty [32:28]
• "[About breast cancer] You just never think that something like this could happen because we [the athletes] spend so much of our time taking care of our bodies, eating the right food and exercising everyday"- Anouk Patty [44:30]
• "If you want to get the best out of others, you have to bring your best and truest self to the table" - Anouk Patty[48:42]

Stay Connected:

Sydney Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Anouk Patty

Twitter: Anouk Patty

Facebook: Anouk Patty

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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Dr. Lucy Gilbert: The Cancer-Curing Doctor

Episode Summary:

Dr. Lucy Gilbert – an oncologist at McGill University – has developed a genetic AI-based test to detect early stage ovarian and endometrial cancers, the third highest cancer-killer of women. In this episode of The Sydcast, Dr. Gilbert shares her journey from Singapore to London to Montreal, one of six physician sisters, now closing in on a revolutionary advance in cancer treatment.

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.

Lucy Gilbert

Dr. Lucy Gilbert is a Professor in the Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology and the Department of Oncology at McGill University. She heads the tertiary/quaternary care Gynecologic Cancer Service of the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC) as well as its Women’s Health Research Unit which is active in multinational clinical trials investigating new precision therapies for gynecologic cancers thus providing practical and immediate benefits for women with gynecologic cancer. Her research focuses on novel therapeutic options for the treatment of ovarian and uterine cancers as well as technologies for their early detection. She has set up a network of satellite clinics as part of the DOvEE (Diagnosing Ovarian and Endometrial Cancers Early) project, which provides open access investigations for women with symptoms associated with gynecologic cancers. Dr. Gilbert and her team have recently developed a genomic uterine pap test to identify the somatic mutation. A sample is taken from the uterus and then uses machine learning to discriminate cancer from benign /normal samples. This test, which is currently being offered to women aged 45 – 70 years, has the potential to detect these cancers while they are confined to the gynecologic organs and still curable. The project received 6.4M GAPP funding to start the phase III clinical trial which started on May 10, 2021. In recognition of her outstanding leadership in cancer research, Dr. Gilbert was recently nominated as one of the Top 25 Most Influential Women in Canada 2021.

Insights from this Episode

• The racism and sexism Lucy faced during her life professionally and personally
• Lucy’s thoughts on today’s generational anxiety
• How economically challenging was maintaining six daughters for his father
• Lucy’s experience moving to Montreal
• What does Lucy think about the placebo effect and how it affects cancer
• Lucy’s work and advances in cancer
• How problematic is ovarian cancer nowadays
• What is the BRCA test
• What advice would Lucy give to her younger self

Quotes from the Show:

• “[About her father] He considered us assets and he made us believe that the only limits were what we set for ourselves and if you wanted to be a provider for your family that’s what you did” - Lucy Gilbert [05:08]
• “Health and education, I believe it should not be left to market forces, it should be almost a fundamental right…you will not get a good society and ultimately and impact all of us if we do not invest in a reasonable amount of health for everyone regardless of their ability to pay and a reasonable amount on education” - Lucy Gilbert [13:56]
• “[About the placebo effect] I tell patients what we do with surgery and chemotherapy…is the tip of the iceberg” - Lucy Gilbert [28:40]
• “[About the test] It picks up somatic mutations inside, tells them about prevalent cancers but we also do a saliva test simultaneously which picks up the BRCA genes talk about the genetic susceptibility to these cancers” - Lucy Gilbert [44:17]

Stay Connected:

Sydney Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Lucy Gilbert

LinkedIn: Lucy Gilbert

Website: Dr. Lucy Gilbert

Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode onStitcher,iTunes, and Spotify.

This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.

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Episode Summary:

Every once in a while our guest on The Sydcast seems to do everything well. Jay Rosenzweig, this week’s guest, is a great example. Entrepreneurial “breathing” is in his bones, whether that means building a major executive search firm, investing in dozens of Web 3.0 startups, or spearheading major initiatives at multiple non-profit organizations (including the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights). Add in music recording artist, publisher of the most important report in Canada on the status of women in leadership, mentor to NBA players and company founders alike, and you start to get the picture. Jay Rosenzweig is all about impact, which makes him the perfect guest for 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.

Jay Rosenzweig

Jay Rosenzweig is an internationally renowned social impact entrepreneur, humanitarian, trained lawyer, and leadership strategist. The founder of Rosenzweig & Company, Rosenzweig is an expert in designing, building, and attracting world-class teams. He consults with public and private companies, including large global corporations; emerging growth to mid-sized businesses; professional services firms; and private equity and venture capital firms. He invests in and advises several leading-edge tech companies across North America and beyond. Rosenzweig has been immersed in global human rights causes for well over two decades and has been internationally recognized for the Annual Rosenzweig Report on equality, which he has published for the past seventeen years. Rosenzweig’s Annual Report has received endorsements and contributions from a wide range of leaders and personalities such as Justin Trudeau, Alyssa Milano, Sheryl Sandberg, Mark Cuban, Deepak Chopra, Van Jones, Zainab Salbi, CEOs and Board Chairs of major corporations, and several other artists, humanitarians, politicians and business leaders. He is the Chair of the Board of Irwin Cotler’s Raoul Wallenberg Centre For Human Rights. In addition, he sits on a number of other purpose-driven boards supporting causes ranging from healthcare, youth empowerment, refugee protection, and anti-gun violence. Rosenzweig is an outspoken advocate against Antisemitism, racism, and all forms of hate and discrimination. He invests in businesses whose mission is to foster a world that gives equal opportunities for all, including greater access to education, capital, and mobility. Rosenzweig’s work has been featured in several publications, including The New York Times, Fast Company, The Guardian, Business Insider, BNN Bloomberg, Cheddar, Bold TV, Digital Trends, Business Rockstars, Globe & Mail, National Post, Toronto Star, Huffington Post, and Thrive Global. He earned three degrees at McGill University: Philosophy, Civil Law, and Common Law. In addition, he completed the Harvard Law School Negotiation Program, taught by expert negotiator Roger Fisher, author of Getting To Yes. Rosenzweig is an avid songwriter, having collaborated with a number of well-known recording artists.

Insights from this Episode

• Jay’s mindset of curiosity
• What has helped Jay to have an open mind to criticism
• Jay’s philosophy to explore the opportunities that life offers
• Jay’s professional trajectory
• How did Jay end up working on startups and founders
• What is the skill set needed to thrive in life and business
• What is going on in the digital sector
• What inspired Jay to work towards promoting female leadership
• What according to Jay’s perspective is one of the biggest issues for female workers in the business world
• How Jay was introduced to the music world

Quotes from the Show:

• “I think for a lot of individuals, and I coach a lot of individuals as well, ego gets in the way and defense mechanisms prevent individuals from actually seeking out criticism” - Jay Rosenzweig [16:41]
• “I take criticism in an objective way if you will, as a mean of self-improvement even if I receive irrational criticism, I don’t let that affect me, so it's a matter of really going more deeply into yourself to understand really the only thing you can control 100% is how you’re feeling inside of yourself” - Jay Rosenzweig [17:32]
• “My philosophy it's always been: when you see these windows of opportunity, when you see these cracks in the door, walk through them” - Jay Rosenzweig [19:50]
• “Success to me is not based on events that happen or based on results, success to me is because you have no control or very little control of what comes at you very often, so to me, success is how you respond to what is thrown at you” - Jay Rosenzweig [34:20]
• “The idea is to put a mirror to the corporate world in terms of the iron clad data of what the status of women is in leadership” - Jay Rosenzweig [45:21]
• “I’d say to myself, it’s going to be alright, enjoy the journey” - Jay Rosenzweig [57:54]

Stay Connected:

Sydney Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Jay Rosenzweig

LinkedIn: Jay Rosenzweig

Website: Jay Rosenzweig

Twitter: Jay Rosenzweig

Instagram: Jay Rosenzweig

Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode onStitcher,iTunes, and Spotify.

This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.

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Episode Summary:

Shelley Zalis is an entrepreneur, provocateur, connector, CEO, champion of women and equality, and (as some have called her) “chief troublemaker.” What makes Shelley so fascinating is that she simply refuses to accept the status quo when it’s broken, and what’s broken is the experience – both on the job and at home – of so many working women. The platform she has created and continues to nurture and innovate is The Female Quotient: “We Are in the Business of Equality.” On this episode of The Sydcast, the never-ending campaign to close the gender gap, with Shelley Zalis.

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.

Shelley Zalis:

Shelley Zalis, known as the “chief troublemaker,” is a pioneer for online research, movement leader, and champion of gender equality. She is an internationally renowned entrepreneur, speaker, mentor, mother, and founder and CEO of The Female Quotient. Zalis rewrites the rules and innovates solutions to impact real change. In 2000, she left the corporate world to found OTX (Online Testing Exchange), which became one of the fastest-growing research companies in the world. She sold OTX to Ipsos in 2010 and then led global innovation in more than 80 countries at Ipsos OTX. Today, as CEO of The Female Quotient, Zalis works with Fortune 500 companies to advance gender equality across industries. The FQ’s signature pop-up experience, the FQ Lounge (formerly the Girls’ Lounge), brings a Home of Equality to major conferences, companies, and college campuses around the world. The FQ Lounge is the gathering place for leaders of all levels at events such as the World Economic Forum, Cannes Lions, Consumer Electronics Show, and the Milken Institute Global Conference. Through the destination-turned-movement, Zalis has connected more than 18,000 women in business and created the largest female-led community to transform workplace culture.

Insights from this Episode

• What gave Shelley the idea to start OTX
• What Shelley learned as founder and CEO
• What problems Shelley faced when launching her business about online research?
• Where did she get her “the defying status quo” mindset
• What it’s like being a female CEO
• The role of gender barriers in the business environment
• What competition really is for women in business
• How is competition a bad thing?
• What have successful women learned that young people – men and women – in their 20’s or early 30’s haven’t learned?

Quotes from the Show:

• “[About online research business idea] I didn’t have the money to do it, I didn’t I would be writing, it was so ahead of its time, I had to make it the right time ” - Shelley Zalis [13:42]
• “As we started, I hated titles, I never wanted anyone to talk to someone because of their title or because of the company. I want people to discover people…because I believe you learn something from everyone not because of the title that you wear” - Shelley Zalis [18:39]
• “As a CEO, gender aside, I want to talk about being a conscious leader and I would like to take gender out of the equation and say: as a conscious leader we need to make decisions in our organizations that are good for caregivers” - Shelley Zalis [24:24]
• “Historically women in business have been trained to be competitive because there’s been such a scarcity of jobs at the top so few women get to the top” - Shelley Zalis [31:41]
• “Once women were proud to be women and be collaborative and be feminine and own their strength and not hide it, not try to act like a man and bring their emotive powers to the table, it was game-changing” - Shelley Zalis [36:06]
• “I don’t believe in one mentor, one mentor doesn’t have all the knowledge, you learn bits and bites of advice from different people who have been there, done that” - Shelley Zalis [39:29]
• “I’ve been working on the power of connectivity which its been our global exchange talking to women over hundred countries listening to hear of what they all need to close the gaps” - Shelley Zalis [45:27]

Stay Connected:

Sydney Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Shelley Zalis

Website: The Female Quotient

LinkedIn: Shelley Zalis

Twitter: Shelley Zalis

Facebook: Shelley Zalis

Instagram: Shelley Zalis

Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode onStitcher,iTunes, and Spotify.

This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.

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Episode Summary:

Recently, Syd launched a set of four online courses on the Coursera platform – the Strategic Leadership “specialization” – getting a first-hand view of how education has shifted from traditional classroom to digital media. Since the Sydcast is all about learning, it seems appropriate for the first episode of Season 4 to kick off with the CEO of that digital education company, Jeff Maggioncalda. Not only is Coursera the biggest online education start-up with over 100 million learners around the world, but the company is also creating a complex ecosystem where traditional suppliers of learning – universities – are as much business partners as they are competitors. On this episode of The Sydcast, the story of a CEO in the booming yet quickly morphing education sector that is looking to change how each of us learns.

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.

Jeff Maggioncalda

Jeff Maggioncalda joined Coursera as CEO in June 2017 and since then helped the company grow to over 100 million learners and 7,000+ institutions, served by high-quality learning content from 250+ of the world’s top universities and industry educators. He previously served for 18 years as the founding CEO at Financial Engines Inc, a company co-founded by economist and Nobel Prize winner William Sharpe. Financial Engines grew rapidly under Jeff's leadership, providing high-quality online investment advice that has helped millions of people save and prepare for retirement. Jeff has also worked as a consultant at McKinsey & Company and Cornerstone Research and continues to serve as a Director of Silicon Valley Bank, Inc. He holds an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a Bachelor's degree in Economics and English from Stanford University. In his free time, Jeff is a lifelong learner and proud dad, and enjoys studying music theory and spending time with his wife and three daughters.

Insights from this Episode

• What is Coursera
• How Coursera was founded
• Why Coursera is a rapid changer enabler
• Technology and globalization relationship with Coursera
• Success factors of Coursera
• What’s the general population of Coursera learners
• How did Jeff end up being the CEO of Coursera
• Sydney’s course on Coursera
• What advantages does this “era of resignation” has brought to Coursera
• How do academic institutions use Coursera
• How does Coursera as an organization manage failure
• What does Jeff think most of the time about as a CEO
• What does Jeff think about CEOs addressing social issues in the public eye
• How does Coursera help their workers to balance their time
• What advice would Jeff give to his younger self

Quotes from the Show:

• “I thought everybody knew Coursera, its a hundred million people that are learners in Coursera but turns out that’s not the case”- Sydney Finkelstein in “The Sydcast” [08:25]
• “[About Coursera] We are certainly facilitating a very different and more accessible way of learning than only being able to go on a four-year on-campus program ”- Jeff Maggioncalda in “The Sydcast” [10:45]
• “I teach certain things that I want more people to access so the fact that Coursera came out of universities but it was really the entrepreneurship of professors”- Jeff Maggioncalda in “The Sydcast” [14:10]
• “The exclusive audience of great teachers was the people sitting in the classrooms, it doesn’t have to be that way”- Jeff Maggioncalda in “The Sydcast” [23:21]
• “We’re now in the world of the so-called “great resignation” and what really means is like reconsideration of our lives”- Sydney Finkelstein in “The Sydcast” [32:06]
• “[About entrepreneurship] Even if it's something that the student wants, even if it is less expensive, even if it is higher quality, it doesn’t mean that you’re gonna have a successful business”- Jeff Maggioncalda in “The Sydcast” [39:37]
• “[About Coursera’s culture] It's that combination of loving to learn and translating learning into impact”- Jeff Maggioncalda in “The Sydcast” [42:54]
• “I think what good investors celebrate is rapid learning and often you can’t learn unless you fail”- Jeff Maggioncalda in “The Sydcast” [44:01]
• “What we haven’t yet completely figured out … is how do we want to redeploy strategically the way we use physical space to run our company, to attract people, to engage employees ”- Jeff Maggioncalda in “The Sydcast” [56:54]

Stay Connected:

Sydney Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Jeff Maggioncalda

Coursera: Strategic Leadership: Impact, Change, and Decision-Making Specialization

LinkedIn: Jeff Maggioncalda

Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode onStitcher,iTunes, and Spotify.

This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.

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Episode Summary:

Sarah Apgar – Princeton and Dartmouth alum, Iraqi war vet, volunteer fire fighter and EMT, and startup founder – wants to create a fitness and wellness movement based on the FitFighter steelhose product. In three conversations over the last year, we learn about Sarah and her company, her life as a Mom, her aspirations for her business, and how the relentless move toward growth requires constant adjustment and deep resilience.

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.

Sarah Apgar

Sarah Apgar is the Inventor of the Steelhose®, Founder of FitFighter® and Creator & Team Captain of the SteelSisters®. FitFighter is a strength and mobility system originally designed to help firefighters learn skills and be better prepared for their job. Sarah’s signature innovation, the Steelhose®, was featured in 2020 on ABC’s Shark Tank, and is now available to trainers, coaches, gyms, teams, physical therapists, and the general public, to keep us ready for our everyday mission. The SteelSisters® is a nationwide team of young women aged 13-30 who support each other, celebrate strength, share knowledge, and do what’s worth fighting for. Sarah is an Iraq War Veteran, All-American Collegiate Athlete, Fitness Professional, former Volunteer Firefighter and Warby Parker Executive, and mom of 2 little girls. In addition to her primetime Shark Tank debut, Sarah and FitFighter® have been featured in Rolling Stone, Mens Health Magazine, Muscle and Fitness, Essence, ABC News, USA Sports Radio, Armed Forces Network, and Oxygen Magazine, and performed for clients the likes of ESPN, FDNY, and the United States Military. Sarah promotes and celebrates the power of teams, women leaders, and public service, contributing a portion of sales to the Stephen Siller Tunnel to Tower Foundation. Prior to launching FitFighter, Sarah was an executive at Warby Parker, overseeing the opening of the first 50 bricks and mortar retail stores in the US and Canada. Sarah has an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College and a BA from Princeton University, and is a graduate of the Princeton Army ROTC Program. She lives in Port Washington NY with her husband, Ben Smith, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon, her two young daughters, Emory and Arlyn, and canine Louisiana. Sarah is an avid skier, hiker, triathlete, and just about anything outdoors, and adores baking, cable reruns, and making people smile.

Insights from this Episode

• What is FitFighter and its purpose
• How Sarah got to the idea to found FitFighter
• The importance of the subscription model for FitFighter
• Qualities that entrepreneurs must have
• How Sarah involves her children in her FitFighter life
• FitFighter's journey through Covid-19
• Sarah's experience on Shark Tank and the challenges she faced
• How Shark Tank helped boost FitFighter
• How Sarah manages her time as a mom and as an entrepreneur
• The challenges that partnerships have brought to FitFighter
• Sarah's experience hiring a CEO for FitFighter
• Future business plans for FitFighter

Quotes from the Show:

• “Now we’ve just experienced this incredible shift in folks not being able to get out there to their gym, we’ve seen billions of dollars come out of the market of gym memberships…so what it’s done is really explode companies that developed products that you can have in your home”- Sarah Apgar in “The Sydcast” [12:26]
• “I’ve never thought of FitFighter as just a product…I don’t think I would invest my life in that, there’s a lot of great companies that produce great products but ultimately this (FitFghter) is a lifestyle change and shift and rethinking the paradigms around fitness and wellness”- Sarah Apgar in “The Sydcast” [38:27]
• “[About life balance for Sarah and her team] We’re all sort of facing mental health challenges and struggles, from isolation. I like to think that we’re actually kind of living our best FitFighters life when it comes to strength and fostering a healthier, happier lifestyle that has some balance”- Sarah Apgar in “The Sydcast” [58:33]
• “Whether or not you’re actually starting a business is not the point, is whether you’re creating and seeking opportunities to experience new things and to learn along the way, is really a mindset”- Sydney Finkelstein in “The Sydcast” [01:05:21]
• “[About looking for a CEO] I’ve never had a co-founder, I’ve had great people at the table with me, friends, strategic advisors from the beginning and a couple of terrific early team members, but I never had that person who you can call up three, four, five times a day”- Sarah Apgar in “The Sydcast” [01:18:55]

Stay Connected:

Sydney Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Sarah Apgar

Website:https://www.sarahapgar.com/

Instagram: Sarah Apgar

LinkedIn: Sarah Apgar

Twitter: Sarah Apgar

Dartmouth College: Sarah Apgar

FitFighter:

Instagram: FitFighter

Company Website: https://www.fitfighter.com/

Training Platform:

https://classes.fitfighter.com/catalog

Sizzler:Sizzler

FitFighter Brand Trailer: Brand Trailer

FitFighter App:FitFighter App

YouTube Channel: FitFighter

Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode onStitcher,iTunes, and Spotify.

This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.

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Episode Summary:

Italy. Food. Artisans. Culture. That is the life Professor Danielle Callegari is immersed in, and when you hear about it you’ll probably say, why didn’t I think of it! Except then you’ll need to spend years writing a book on Dante, then start the next book, cloistered in Italian libraries with no air conditioning during Roman summer. Danielle’s story is a story of the professor building a career, a brand, and a platform, an inside look at what it really takes to make it in academia.

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.

Danielle Callegari

Danielle Callegari is Assistant Professor in the Department of French and Italian at Dartmouth College and Councilor of the Dante Society of America. Her teaching and research focuses on Italian literature and food and beverage studies. Her first book, Dante’s Gluttons: Food and Society from the Convivio to the Comedy, is forthcoming with Amsterdam University Press in spring 2022. She is also the co-host of Gola (patreon.com/golapod), a podcast on Italian food and beverage culture, with Katie Parla.

Insights from this Episode

• How Danielle’s interest on Italian culture began
• How Danielle navigates through the investigation world
• Danielle’s concerns on having a PhD in Humanities
• The story behind the Dante Society of America
• The purpose of Danielle’s book “Dante’s Gluttons: Food and Society”
• Danielle’s ideas for her next book
• The importance of creating a brand as an academic and professor
• Secrets about Danielle’s experience in Italy during Covid-19
• The success of the Gola Podcast
• Danielle’s networking strategies

Quotes from the Show:

• “Many people probably don’t understand that if you’re not publishing as a professor you’re not standing up in front of the class as a teacher very long, and whether that’s books or articles or mix of the two”- Sydney Finkelstein in “The Sydcast” [11:35]
• “Everyone must eat, it’s just perfectly universal, there is not time or place where humans haven’t had a relationship with food, and as a result of that, [food] becomes the ultimate point of reference” - Danielle Callegari in “The Sydcast” [31:44]
• “[About Danielle’s experience on libraries] I’ve found things I didn’t know existed and that no one knew existed that fit into my research in a very special way and that’s a kind of Indiana Jones moment”- Danielle Callegari in “The Sydcast” [46:54]
• “[About her teaching method] Talking about things like social order, soft power, economic viability, so it's the place where we start and we outline all the ways in which food culture becomes something that communicates much more than what is apparently on the surface”- Danielle Callegari in “The Sydcast” [56:08]
• “To me universities that continue to offer standard learning just in the classroom without a strong experiential component are living on borrowed time”- Sydney Finkelstein in “The Sydcast” [01:01:55]

Stay Connected:

Sydney Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Danielle Callegari

Instagram: Danielle Callegari

Podcast: Gola Podcast

Society: Dante Society of America

Dartmouth College: Danielle Callegari | Faculty Directory

Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode onStitcher,iTunes, and Spotify.

This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.

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Episode Summary:

Did you ever feel like you didn’t deserve the job you had? That you were faking it, and would soon be found out? That’s impostor syndrome in action, and my former MBA student Catharine Keene has been dealing with it for years. In this episode she tells her story, including how she’s figured out how to keep it under wraps as she starts her post-MBA career at one of the world’s leading consulting firms.

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.

Catharine Keene

Catharine Keene is a consultant at Bain & Company. She received her Bachelor of Science in biology from Tufts University, her Master's in Education from University of Pennsylvania, and her MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. Prior to consulting, Catharine taught high school biology at St. Paul's School in Concord, NH, and worked in customer experience and lifecycle marketing at ClassPass. A lifelong lover of the outdoors, Catharine hopes to incorporate sustainability into her consulting work, leveraging the power that businesses have to drive positive environmental change.

Insights from this Episode

• Catharine's learnings from Tuck School of Business
• How Catharine experienced Covid-19 as a student
• How the imposter syndrome has affected Catharine
• Catharine’s experience at Bain & Company
• Catharine’s tools to deal with the impostor syndrome
• How to build relationships oriented to mentorship

Quotes from the Show:

• “[About the impostor syndrome] It’s not just a little bit of self-doubt, which is normal for most of us, but the self-doubt kind of takes hold, it starts to take over and it can be debilitating”- Sydney Finkelstein in “The Sydcast” [02:32]
• “As a woman, both in academic settings and in professional settings, women have historically been a little quieter than men and specially in male dominated fields, so that is a stereotype that I want to actively work to counter”- Catharine Keene in “The Sydcast” [13:04]
• “[About growth mindset] My modeling has lots of room to improve, rather than I will never be an excel genius like some other people that I may encounter”- Catharine Keene in “The Sydcast” [16:58]
• “Internally for me it has been important to counter negative thoughts with tangible facts that I know about the work I’ve done, both at being so far at Tuck and then my previous career, and then also engage people which are helpful in creating good habits”- Catharine Keene in “The Sydcast” [32:42]
• “Breaking down that perceived need to be perfect all the time really helps come back at impostor syndrome”- Catharine Keene in “The Sydcast” [34:00]
• “In my experience the people who have been the strongest mentors are people that I have a great connection with on a personal level as well, and it takes time for both people to unravel the different layers of who they are in work and outside of work”- Catharine Keene in “The Sydcast” [38:40]
• “I am reconciling what it means to keep passion and drive in mind while also letting it be okay that there will be periods when you’re just present where you are and not running so fast towards the next goal”- Catharine Keene in “The Sydcast” [42:26]

Stay Connected:

Sydney Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Catharine Keene

LinkedIn: Catharine Keene

Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode onStitcher,iTunes, and Spotify.

This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.

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Episode Summary:

Successful MBA leaves high-paying Wall Street job to build a start-up dedicated to helping women manage their careers and families. Joyce Cadesca tells us why she made this move, and in this As It Happens series, visits with us three times over the last year to talk about the challenges and wins she’s racked up. The truth: it hasn’t been easy, but for this single mom of color the path she’s on is a true life passion, replete with reinvention and re-learning, but no regret.

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.

Joyce Cadesca

Joyce Cadesca is an experienced general management leader who is devoted to social justice, inclusion, and equity. Her corporate work experience includes finance, strategy, and human resources roles at leading global Fortune 100 companies such as Microsoft, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley. Her life purpose is to empower individuals to achieve their educational, family, and professional goals. She is the Founder and President of famHQ LLC, a tech-enabled family concierge, holistic coaching, and dedicated childcare service designed to maximize time, energy, and success for busy working mothers. Joyce was inspired to create famHQ based on her challenges as a busy corporate mom and through her work as a professional development coach and child-care advocate for underserved families. Through partnerships with reliable companies, supportive co-founders, and an experienced in-house staff, Joyce offers an affordable, user-friendly “one stop app” through famHQ to give working moms access to resources that help you set goals and crush them.

Outside of famHQ, Joyce serves as a Professional Development Coach at Management Leadership for Tomorrow, working with MBA students as they define their career paths. Also, as Resident Director of ‘A Better Chance Lower Merion’, Joyce advocates for providing educational access to underserved high school students. Her previous nonprofit work experience also includes education program management and classroom teaching. Joyce earned an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth and a Bachelor of Arts from Columbia University.

Insights from this Episode

• Joyce’s process of being admitted into Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth
• Joyce’s experience at J.P. Morgan
• Joyce’s experience as a single working mom
• About famHQ
• About having co-founders in famHQ
• How to deal with doubt as a entrepreneur
• About the constant famHQ adaptation process to changes
• Joyce’s future plans for famHQ
• Why famHQ shifted their focus to moms of color

Quotes from the Show:

• "I do believe in the idea of a calling, I believe that I was called to help young students to gain the opportunities that I was exposed to, because my life was so drastically changed by those opportunities ”- Joyce Cadesca in “The Sydcast” [09:31]
• “[About shifting from the for-profit to non-profit sector] What I have gained by leaving that behind far exceeds the salary that I had, not monetarily right?, not financially, but the piece of mind that I’m doing what I love and what I was called to do, a balanced person, it exceeds that money that I left behind”- Joyce Cadesca in “The Sydcast” [19:01]
• “I have to admit there were moments, I think every entrepreneur has moments like this where you’re in the middle of a pandemic, your kid is home half time or whatever the situation is, or you’re maybe I should just go and do this the easy way, maybe I should go back to my stable corporate life”- Joyce Cadesca in “The Sydcast” [38:53]
• “[About facing doubt as an entrepreneur] I used to say when I was in one of those situations, well what’s the worst thing that could happen? And not always but usually the worst thing that could happened is something you can deal with" - Sydney Finkelstein in “The Sydcast” [41:00]
• “[About entrepreneurship] Be ready for the grind, the resilience and resourcefulness it takes to get through some tough nights, and also the self-awareness to work with partners who may not agree with you”- Joyce Cadesca in “The Sydcast” [1:02:50]

Stay Connected:

Sydney Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Joyce Cadesca

Instagram: Joyce Cadesca

LinkedIn: Joyce Cadesca

FamHQ

LinkedIn: famHQ | Family Concierge

Instagram: famHQ

Website: http://www.famhq.org/

Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode onStitcher,iTunes, and Spotify.

This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.

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Episode Summary:

At It Happens: MBA student Lia Parker-Belfer re-enters the workforce with her summer internship at Uber. Dedicated to a career of impact, joining legendary bro-culture Uber is a purposeful challenge, akin to many Gen Z’ers and Millennials who must come to terms with aspirational values in the corporate world. In this episode, we follow Lia, before and after, comparing expectations and reality, to see what she learned about Uber, and about herself.

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.

Lia Parker-Belfer

Lia Parker-Belfer is a graduate student pursuing an MBA at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth and an MPA at the Harvard Kennedy School. Lia grew up in Brookline, MA and received her BA from Hamilton College. Prior to graduate school, Lia was a consultant with Deloitte’s Government and Public Services practice in Washington, DC. During this time, she helped US federal agencies and nonprofit organizations better serve their constituents and customers and work through complex challenges. Lia is currently exploring ways to leverage technology for social good. Upon completing her dual degree in 2023, Lia hopes to work at the intersection of the public and private sectors, advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Lia’s passion for DEI stems from her lived experience as a Chinese woman adopted by Caucasian parents and raised in the Jewish faith. Lia is committed to creating community and fostering cultures of belonging wherever she goes. During her first year at Tuck, Lia founded If You Knew Me, a podcast designed to illuminate surprising connections, broaden perspectives, deepen understanding, and spark rich conversation within the Tuck community.

Insights from this Episode

• The backstory of the “If You Knew Me” Podcast
• Why Lia picked business school
• Why Lia chose Uber to do her internship
• Lia’s constant pursue for an intersection between the private and public sector
• How to build relationships even in remote environments
• How Lia’s internship experience is different or common from her classmates
• Lia’s experience of taking in person classes during Covid-19
• What Lia learned from working on Uber
• How to identify and understand if a job is the right fit for you
• Lia’s future plans of joining technology with social good

Quotes from the Show:

• “I wanted to work at a company where the product I could really see a tangible connection to helping people, and so Uber actually did make a little bit of sense for me when I thought about how it grants people access, transportation and that might not be otherwise available to people and specifically during the pandemic”- Lia Parker-Belfer in “The Sydcast” [12:16]
• “Redefining what that impact actually looks like and I think you can have a day to day in the communities you’re part of, without maybe having that CEO title for example”- Lia Parker-Belfer in “The Sydcast” [21:14]
• “[About serving to your community] The more gratitude you have the more you personally benefit in terms your own personal mental wellbeing and happiness ”- Sydney Finkelstein in “The Sydcast”- [23:04]
• “It was challenging to find opportunities to be in the CSR or social impact space for a summer that is so short and also that’s not in my job title”- Lia Parker-Belfer in “The Sydcast” [37:45]
• “Being an individual contributor doesn’t mean you’re truly alone, and I think I had that misconception because really you are surrounded by resources, you do have a team ”- Lia Parker-Belfer in “The Sydcast” [45:48]

Stay Connected:

Sydney Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Lia Parker Belfer

Email: lparkerbelfer@gmail.com

LinkedIn: Lia Parker-Belfer

Podcast: If You Knew Me

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This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.

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Episode Summary:

As It Happens: Follow puzzle-maker Kaylin Marcotte as she builds her startup JIGGY during Covid – growing, pivoting, and getting her first big break. In two conversations over four months, we get an inside look at how Kaylin and her startup manage early growth while learning both what she needs to do next and who she is as an entrepreneur and a person.

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.

Kaylin Marcotte

Kaylin is the founder & CEO of JIGGY, a direct-to-consumer jigsaw puzzle brand on a mission to modernize and elevate the humble jigsaw, and support female artists around the world. Prior to launching Jiggy, Kaylin founded Village Strategies, a marketing consultancy, and was the first employee at theSkimm, running its community marketing, social media and Skimm’bassadors. Kaylin holds a BA in political science and economics from Barnard College. She lives in Brooklyn, NY and spends her free time doing jigsaw puzzles of course, and running a 30-day plastic-free challenge program with her sister, Mackenzie.

Insights from this Episode

• How JIGGY works
• What the science behind playing puzzles is
• The differences of between being a female founder and male founder \
• Kaylin’s entrepreneur journey and what inspired her to found JIGGY
• The community building process of JIGGY
• What the JIGGY Puzzle Club is
• Kaylin’s experience of being on SharkTank

Quotes from the Show:

• “[About entrepreneurship] I thought it was a much more straightforward process and that, you know, you have an idea, you wanna get something made, there’s these factories, they make it and you pay them and that’s that”- Kaylin Marcotte in “The Sydcast” [15:13]
• “[About Syd’s experience on a class called ‘Art & Money’] The ways in which the art market works are really unusual, and there’s a bit of wild west here”- Sydney Finkelstein in “The Sydcast” [21:57]
• “[About women in the art world] Gender representation it’s a big issue in terms of gallery space, museum space” Kaylin Marcotte in “The Sydcast” [24:33]
• “[About dealing with competitors in the market] As your business grows and people hear about you more you will have copycats, and what I’ve learned about all of this is that you can’t avoid people copying you and if you have to sue them to keep them away is a really bad way to live, you don’t have enough money to keep doing that”- Sydney Finkelstein in “The Sydcast” [26:05]
• “[About her experience on Shark Tank] The idea of just releasing control and not even knowing until it’s live on TV, what that edit is gonna be, you know, you don’t see anything before hand, it’s definitely nerve wracking” Kaylin Marcotte in “The Sydcast” [48:51]
• “[About the founder syndrome] What’s next, what’s the new shiny opportunity or what else should we do and finally I had an advisor and he was like yes of course like innovator die, always thinking of those things, but also like part of scaling is the less sexy, just you do what you’ve already done 10 times over ”- Kaylin Marcotte in “The Sydcast” [1:00:21]

Stay Connected:

Sydney Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Kaylin Marcotte

Website: https://jiggypuzzles.com/

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/jiggypuzzles/

Shark Tank: Kaylin Marcotte on the Shark Tank

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This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.

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Episode Summary:

Starting a job as a new CEO is not easy. Starting at the same time as a global pandemic is tougher. Now add in that the CEO – my guest, Lucy Lieberman – is running the travel company Tablet Hotels and you get the picture. With a career that went from digital startups in the early days of the Internet to managing global brands, Lucy has experience with pretty much every aspect of marketing, and she brings it all to her role as CEO. On this episode of The Sydcast, Lucy walks us through her path to the top, how she thinks about leadership, and some of the exciting new ideas she’s been spearheading to help emerge from the Covid crisis

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.

Lucy Lieberman

Lucy Lieberman is CEO of Tablet Hotels, the hotel experts at the MICHELIN Guide. She joined Tablet as Chief Marketing Officer in 2019 to scale the brand globally following its acquisition by Michelin, bringing more than 20 years of expertise in marketing, product development and operations to the role. Lieberman previously spent 10 years with Ogilvy and Mather, most recently serving as Managing Director. At Ogilvy, she was responsible for delivering marketing ROI for brands such as InterContinental Hotels Group, American Express, IKEA and BlackRock. Earlier in her career, Lieberman served as a founding team member of two technology startups, oversaw product development for a mobile startup, and helped lead operations and project management for digital marketing agencies. She holds a BA from Georgetown University in Studio Art and French and an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College.

Insights from this Episode

• How Tablet Hotels work
• The difficulties of running a travel company during Covid-19
• How the partnership between Michelin and Tablet Hotels was formed
• Lucy’s journey to becoming the CEO of Tablet Hotels
• Lucy and Syd’s first experiences on business with the internet
• How the travel behavior has changed because of Covid-19

Quotes from the Show:

• “[About traveling] For quite a while now, my philosophy has been quite different, I’ll see what I see in terms of the famous places...but I much rather just kind of walk around and experience”- Sydney Finkelstein in “The Sydcast” [4:41]
• “When you get any job offer you think about could I even do this, is this insane or is this completely common sense and there is not even anything to question about it ”- Lucy Lieberman in “The Sydcast” [15:07]
• “You can’t go out thinking that everything you’re going to do is going to be flawless and amazing and game-changing”- Lucy Lieberman in “The Sydcast” [42:05]
• “We definitely saw a real shift in where people were traveling away from metropolitan destinations and big hotels and people were really gravitating towards smaller properties, properties that had bungalows or cottages or stand alone units, villas, those were insanely high demand”- Lucy Lieberman in “The Sydcast” [50:38]
• “When I was growing up I was taught that business and capitalism were almost dirty, that the path in life needed to be more noble and more about education and the wellbeing of society in some ways”- Lucy Lieberman in “The Sydcast” [59:30]

Stay Connected:

Sydney Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Lucy Lieberman

LinkedIn: Lucy Lieberman

Facebook: Lucy Lieberman

Instagram: Lucy Lieberman

Tablet Hotels

Website: Tablet Hotels

Twitter: Tablet Hotels

Facebook: Tablet Hotels

Instagram: Tablet Hotels

Pinterest: Tablet Hotels

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This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.

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Episode Summary:

Sometimes you know what you want to do with your life, and for Bianca Smith, that was baseball. Professional baseball. Her path to becoming the first Black woman to coach in professional baseball is a story of grit, single-minded focus, and force of personality. Still only 30 and a coach at a minor league affiliate of the Boston Red Sox, Bianca tells us how she got there and what life is like when you’re a 5-foot-tall woman teaching professional male athletes how they could be better baseball players.

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.

Bianca Smith

Bianca Smith finished her 1st season with the FCL Red Sox in 2021. Prior to the Red Sox she was an Assistant Athletic Director and Assistant Baseball Coach/Hitting Coordinator at Carroll University. Smith has also coached at Case Western Reserve University (where she earned her dual JD/MBA) and the University of Dallas, as well as worked in Baseball Operations in the front offices of the Texas Rangers, the Cincinnati Reds, and MLB’s Commissioner’s Office. Smith graduated from Dartmouth College in 2012 where she played varsity softball and club baseball.

Insights from this Episode

• The journey into the baseball major leagues
• The transition from front office work into coaching
• The skill sets and mindset that are necessary to be a coach
• How to build relationships of trust with your players as a coach
• The psychological side of coaching
• The challenges of being a woman in the coaching environment
• Why analytics are helpful in sports

Quotes from the Show:

• “One thing I can say about Bianca is that she is simply not a stoppable force because along with driving passion she brings a learning mindset to everything she does”- Sydney Finkelstein in “The Sydcast” [05:40]
• “Professional baseball is a little bit different because, yes your individual stats matter to your contract, but overall the goal is still, you’re gonna win a world series and you can’t win a world series by yourself, the team wins the world series not you”- Bianca Smith in “The Sydcast” [14:27]
• “As a coach, one of the biggest things I think you need is just to be open minded, don’t come in thinking that you know everything because I guarantee you in any sport you’re never gonna know everything”- Bianca Smith in “The Sydcast” [25:31]
• “The best players are the ones that can adjust on their own because they have that body awareness, they know what they’re looking for, they know what they did wrong and they are able to make that adjustment in game”- Bianca Smith in “The Sydcast” [30:07]
• “[About statistics] The best coaches are the ones that know when to use it and in what situation”- Bianca Smith in “The Sydcast” [46:03]
• “Ignore the criticisms and the expectations and do what you want to do”- Bianca Smith in “The Sydcast” [1:01:09]

Stay Connected:

Sydney Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Bianca Smith

LinkedIn: Bianca Smith

Twitter: Bianca Smith

Instagram: Bianca Smith

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This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.

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Episode Summary:

Imagine carrying a burden of self-doubt and insecurity while everyone else only sees a smart young woman taking on the world of business. At some point something has to give, and for my guest on this episode of The Sydcast it did, via a nervous breakdown and an epiphany that has led to a new career of helping fellow Latinas come to terms with a culturally-derived inferiority complex that holds back an immense talent pool from fulfilling their potential. This is the inspirational and gripping story of Valeria Aloe.

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.

Valeria Aloe

Valeria Aloe, founder of Abundancia Consciente (Conscious Abundance), has designed and facilitated bilingual programs on cultural narratives, entrepreneurship, stress management, and more, coaching women and minority leaders, teams, and business owners throughout the U.S. and in 14 Latin American countries.Before launching her practice, she worked +20 years in business development, marketing, and finance in leading companies across 7 countries, including Procter & Gamble, Citibank, Reckitt Benckiser, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, and TIAA. Born in Argentina and living in the U.S. since 2002, Valeria is on a mission to support Latinas who navigate new spaces as first-generation, as well as Allies who seek to become more assertive mentors and sponsors by understanding the Hispanic culture from within. She wrote “Uncolonized Latinas” (New Degree Press, Dec’21), a book that casts a new light on the limiting cultural narratives holding Latina women back, and that provides strategies and insights for career success and upward mobility. She holds degrees in Business Administration and in Finance from Universidad Catolica Argentina, an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, and a Master in Spiritual Sciences.

Insights from this Episode

• How Valeria’s childhood was like growing up in Argentina
• How Valeria kept up with the expectations of her parents
• Differences between studying in Argentina and in the United States
• Challenges that Valeria faced as a Latina women when she emigrated to the United States
• Valeria’s adapting process as a Latina women in an American college
• The difficulties of constructing relationships in the United States as a member of the Hispanic community
• How imposter syndrome affects the Hispanic culture
• How gender roles in the Hispanic community impose pressure on Hispanic women
• How COVID-19 has affected Hispanic families

Quotes from the Show:

• “As an obedient Latina, I worked hard while keeping my head down. Played with self doubt and a sense of unworthiness”- Valeria Aloe in “Uncolonized Latinas” [05:36]
• “[About Valeria’s parents] I still remember they saying to me: You're going to be the first female in the family to go to college”- Valeria Aloe [11:30]
• “The initial conversation with my parents was like, you either study business or you study law or medicine, the traditional careers...there is this cultural relief that, that’s where you can do better”- Valeria Aloe [27:53]
• “Leaving Argentina was very emotional, it was a one way ticket, we had no idea what to expect”- Valeria Aloe [32:50]
• “[About Valeria’s experience in a US college] I was so intimidated and I felt so inferior in a way when I came here, that I used to only surround myself with Spanish speakers in the beginning. I was intimidated to approach people”- Valeria Aloe [35:04]
• “There is a cultural silence among hispanics. We come from cultures of struggle, so we accept that struggling is what it is and we’ll go through that and we don’t even talk about it”- Valeria Aloe [36:50]
• “When I was 20 I said, I want to be one of those facilitators, I want to be of those in the front of the room helping people with their own mindset, with their own challenges ”- Valeria Aloe [56:19]

Stay Connected:

Sydney Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Valeria Aloe

LinkedIn: Valeria Aloe

Instagram: Valeria Aloe

Book: Check in at Valeria's website for updates on availability: www.ConsciousAbundance.net

Abundancia Consciente

Website: www.ConsciousAbundance.net

Youtube: Abundancia Consciente USA

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This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.

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Episode Summary:

Imagine taking a career break for 11 years and then returning to face an entirely different world of work, technology, and even culture. Carol Fishman Cohen did it, and quickly came to realize that there are many thousands of others – mostly women – who are looking to make the same transition. They had high-powered jobs, and now they want to get back in the game. As it turns out, hundreds of companies are thinking the same thing – how do we tap into this experienced talent pool? And so was born iRelaunch, Carol’s work force re-entry consulting and training business that is normalizing the concept of a “career break” while demonstrating the value that “relaunchers” bring to the table. I think this is more a movement than a company, and Carol Fishman Cohen will tell you why, 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.

Carol Fishman Cohen

Carol Fishman Cohen is the CEO and Co-founder of iRelaunch, a career reentry consulting, training and events company. iRelaunch has worked with over 200 clients on career reentry programs and programming. iRelaunch produces the iRelaunch Return to Work Conferences, and leads a community of nearly 100,000 "relaunchers" looking to return to work after career breaks of one to over 20 years. iRelaunch co-leads the STEM Reentry Task Force with the Society of Women Engineers, the groundbreaking career reentry initiative in its sixth year in which program managers from 34 leading employers to date have joined for top guidance on launching return to work programs at their respective organizations. Corporate giants that have launched return to work programs through this initiative include Johnson & Johnson, Raytheon Technologies, Apple, Merck, Northrop Grumman, P&G, IBM, Ford and Cummins. Cohen's TED talk "How to get back to work after a career break” has over 3.6 million views and has been translated into 30 languages. She is the author of the Harvard Business Review Magazine articles “The 40-Year-Old Intern,” and the recently released “Return-to-Work Programs Come of Age,” writes regularly for HBR Online and has presented on career reentry topics nearly 800 times. Cohen has been featured dozens of times in the major media. Her return to work at Bain Capital after an 11-year career break is the subject of a Harvard Business School case study and iRelaunch is the subject of a Stanford Graduate School of Business case study. Cohen is a graduate of Pomona College and Harvard Business School.

Insights from this Episode

• How Carol came up with the iRelaunch idea?
• How “returnship” programs have evolved over time
• Concerns of employers and managers towards the returnship programs
• The implications for a relauncher
• iRelaunch’s purpose
• What a career break really is
• Why a relauncher is valuable for a company
• The experience of the relaunchers after completing the iRelaunch program
• Advice for people who are looking to take a career break

Quotes from the Show:

• “Executives tell me or CEO’s tell me how tough it is to find great people. The first thing I ask them is where are you looking? So often they’re looking at the same places”- Sydney Finkelstein [2:18]
• “People take these career breaks [because] of an external factor and not related to their work performance” - Carol Fishman [13:45]
• “[About the relaunchers] They are recruited and hired now, more with the idea that they are gonna come into the teams and get hired after the program ends ” - Carol Fishman [17:57]
• “[About iRelaunch] Our mission since our founding in 2007 has been to normalize the career path that includes a career break” - Carol Fishman [32:05]
• “The career break forces you to step back and reflect on whether you are on the right career path to begin with and where we can have the most value to an organization” - Carol Fishman [40:57]

Stay Connected:

Sydney Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Carol Fishman Cohen

LinkedIn: Carol Fishman Cohen

Twitter: Carol Fishman Cohen

Instagram: Carol Fishman Cohen

Book: Back on the Career Track: A Guide for Stay-at-Home Moms Who Want to Return to Work

HBR article:"Return to Work Programs Come of Age"

HBS case study on return to Bain capital after 11 years: HBS case study

Stanford GSB case study: Stanford GSB case study

TED x talk: "How to get back to work after a career break"

IRelaunch

Website: https://www.irelaunch.com/

LinkedIn: iRelaunch

Twitter: iRelaunch

Facebook: iRelaunch

Instagram: iRelaunch

Youtube: iRelaunch

Podcast: 3, 2, 1 iRelaunch Podcast

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This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.

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Episode Summary:

Episode 112. Julie Quenneville is a path-breaking CEO whose personal journey reads like a greatest hits of modern challenges for women who want to make an impact. From being married to a partner that wanted her at home, to navigating multiple male-dominated professional settings, to bringing up children as a single Mom with a high-powered career, Julie has, and is, living her own life. Add in a dedication to mentoring other women, the ability to communicate her message in powerful ways, and a forthright honesty that comes through in our entire conversation, and Julie Quenneville’s story is a master class in the art of becoming the person you want 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.

Julie Quenneville

Julie Quenneville is the President and CEO of the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC) Foundation. Her vast knowledge of philanthropy, business and government relations has made her a sought-after speaker on multiple platforms. Whether as a commentator, panelist or media expert, Julie communicates her message in a dynamic and engaging way. She is a change agent, passionate about the need for innovative research as a global responsibility. As someone who has excelled in her field, Julie offers her expertise to business, corporate, community, health care and government leaders. She is a proud mentor, particularly passionate about empowering young women. Julie has been named a TOP 100 Most Powerful Women in Canada.

Insights from this Episode

• Julie’s journey into leadership
• Julie’s life philosophy
• The impact of mentorship on Julie’s professional career and as a woman
• Secrets to why the McGill University Health Centre has had such success
• Challenges the McGill University Health Centre has faced during Covid-19
• Challenges Julie faced as a working mom during Covid-19

Quotes from the Show:

• “Women bring diversity to executive teams, but the nature of that diversity is not simply that there are women sitting around the table, is their life experience, so often different than men’s life experience ”- Sydney Finkelstein [2:27]
• “[About women during covid] Many of these women have dropped out of the fast track, sometimes out of the entire workforce because so much of the responsibility to cope rests on women in most families”- Sydney Finkelstein [3:09]
• “When we choose a different kind of lifestyle to balance being a wife, a mother and a leader, there’s still a lot of judgement” - Julie Quenneville [2:42]
• “I was never satisfied just observing and watching, which is what journalist are supposed to do” - Julie Quenneville [11:33]
• “The turning point for me was living everyday like it’s my last, and when I returned to school I joined absolutely every extracurricular activity” - Julie Quenneville [12:50]
• “There’s absolutely no going back to pre-covid. The world is completely different” - Julie Quenneville [36:08]
• “[About sexual harassment in the work place] This is your workplace, these are not your friends, you have to maintain a certain level of professionalism” - Julie Quenneville [42:25]
• “I think the male leaders play a role in ensuring that the work place is professional” - Julie Quenneville [46:57]
• “I have been successful because of the mentors that I have had” - Julie Quenneville [48:56]
• “If you have the right partner and the right support network around you, there is absolutely no reason to turn down career opportunities” - Julie Quenneville [54:40]
• “I believe that my children are better today or stronger today, and much more resilient and agile because of their mom’s career” - Julie Quenneville [56:04]

Stay Connected:

Sydney Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Julie Quenneville

LinkedIn: Julie Quenneville

Website :https://www.juliequenneville.com/

McGill University Health Centre (MUHC) Foundation

Website: https://muhcfoundation.com/

Twitter: MUHC Foundation

Facebook: MUHC Foundation

Instagram: MUHCFoundation

Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode onStitcher,iTunes, and Spotify.

This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.

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Episode Summary:

He is addicted to prescription opioids, he attempts suicide, he’s found guilty of white-collar crime and serves 13 months in prison. Now he’s out, free, and has a chance to do something good for others, and himself, with the rest of his life. This was, and is, Jeff Grant, and on this episode of The Sydcast we hear his story.

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.

Jeff Grant

After an addiction to prescription opioids and serving almost fourteen months in a Federal prison (2006 – 07) for a white-collar crime he committed in 2001 when he was lawyer, Jeff started his own reentry – earning a Master of Divinity from Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York, majoring in Social Ethics. After graduating from divinity school, Jeff was called to serve at an inner city church in Bridgeport, CT as Associate Minister and Director of Prison Ministries. He then co-founded Progressive Prison Ministries, Inc. (Greenwich, CT), the world’s first ministry serving the white collar justice community.

On May 5, 2021, Jeff’s law license was reinstated by the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York.

Now again in private practice, Jeff is an attorney and counselor-at-law providing private general counsel, legal crisis management, and dispute strategy and management services to individuals and families, real estate organizations, family-owned and closely-held businesses, the white collar justice community, and special situation and pro bono clients.

For over 20 years Jeff served as managing attorney of a 20+ employee law firm headquartered in New York City, and then Westchester County, NY. Among other practice areas, the firm engaged in representation of family-owned/closely held businesses and their owners, business and real estate transactions, trusts and estates, and litigation. Jeff also served as outside General Counsel to large family-owned real estate equities, management and brokerage organizations, in which role he retained, coordinated and oversaw the work of many specialty law firms, including white collar defense firms.

Insights from this Episode

• Why Jeff wanted to become an attorney
• Family struggles Jeff went through during his auto-medication addiction problems
• How Jeff ended up in prison and what his experience was
• The steps of Jeff’s return journey to life after prison
• How Jeff supports white-collar criminals
• Patterns of white-collar crimes
• Institutional challenges towards fraud

Quotes from the Show:

• “I became addicted and slowly I started to deteriorate where I couldn't show up at work anymore and I couldn't run my firm even though it was continuing to be successful” - Jeff Grant [12:11]
• “I was betting my livelihood and health of my family and my future in ways that were just reckless” - Jeff Grant [17:02]
• “I learned more about human nature and respect and care and character in prison than I've learned in my entire life.” - Jeff Grant [24:48]
• “[About his early life as a successful attorney] Positional power and money bought me the illusion that I had anything important to say and that anybody ever cared what I had to say, and the truth was that I was just a narcissistic mess” - Jeff Grant [27:18]
• “I'm afraid that what we are doing is that we are teaching business leaders and political leaders...we are teaching them the wrong values” - Jeff Grant [50:17]
• “[About people who make fraud] It's not okay to take advantage of the system so long as you, either don’t get caught or if you do get caught, you won’t get prosecuted for it” - Jeff Grant [50:34]

Stay Connected:

Sydney Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Jeff Grant

LinkedIn: Jeff Grant

Website: https://prisonist.org/

Website: https://www.grantlaw.com/

Podcast: White Collar Week

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This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.

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Episode Summary:

Wendin Smith wanted Russia to stop polluting its largest lake and ended up becoming one of America’s leading thinkers on weapons of mass destruction. Her vantage point at the Department of Defense and now in consulting gives her access and insight to some of the most intractable challenges we face, from biological weapons to global cybercrime. In this episode of The Sydcast, an inside look and master class you wish you didn’t need.

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.

Wendin D. Smith

Wendin D. Smith, PhD, currently serves as a Managing Director at Deloitte Consulting, LLP. Her professional background is in Russian and security studies, focused on countering weapons of mass destruction and environmental security. Prior to transitioning to Deloitte, she had the honor of serving as the Senior Advisor to the Commanding General of the U.S. Special Operations Command, supporting the Command in its capacity as the DoD’s Coordinating Authority for Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction (CWMD). Previously, she served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for CWMD, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy (DASD/CWMD). Across her career, she has led strategic initiatives in defense and national security at various smaller and larger firms, as well as inside and outside of government. On the entrepreneurial side, she has founded and operated two woman-owned consultancies, and has served overseas in various capacities in Moscow, Russia. Fluent in Russian and conversational in German, she is also proud to serve on various Boards, and - pending the season – is a competitive rower and nordic skier (xc, “skate” skiing). She enjoys spending as much time as possible outdoors, usually with her active, nature-loving 5-year-old daughter.

Insights from this Episode

• How Wendin’s sense of purpose to protect the Baikal Lake from the Soviets was a crucial point to define her career.
• How Wendin became interested in weapons of mass destruction and global security.
• Strategies Wendin used to combine the security field with the environment and the challenges she faced by doing so.
• The crucial role she played in a treaty that controlled biological weapons production globally.
• How an exchange experience in Russia as a Native American, helped her to understand the logic of the geopolitical problems between the Russian and United States better.
• The difficulties countries face due to cyberterrorism because they are borderless.

Quotes from the Show:

• “Through the end of the late 80’s there had been a lot of changes in the leadership of the Communist Party and in the 1991 time frame the transition went from being the Soviet Union under Gorbachev to then Russia as the Russian federation” - Wendin D. Smith [13:45]
• “At what point can there be a norm around what acts you do or don’t do as an expert in your field and the ethics that come with that”- Wendin D. Smith [26:34]
• “With nuclear weapons we have mutual assured destruction” - Sydney Finkelstein [26:50]
• “Even if we could rapidly develop a policy, and rapid in that space would be a year or two which would be extraordinary, by the time we’ve developed that policy the technology would have evolved at a pace that the technology will likely not be entirely relevant ” - Wendin D. Smith [27:42]
• “[About United States culture] We are all about capitalism, and the market, and driving forward, so our mindset is much more driven to a path that puts us more vulnerable [to cyberterrorism] - Wendin D. Smith [30:18]
• “When you have a single leader with that much power, it is much easier to turn and change and do things as a country than in our system where consensus rules” - Wendin D. Smith [42:07]
• “[About understanding Russia and their objectives] You can’t find yourself to resolution if you don’t understand whether it is an adversary or a partner and what their views are”- Wendin D. Smith [54:16]

Stay Connected:

Sydney Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Wendin D. Smith

LinkedIn: Wendin D. Smith

Website: https://councilonstrategicrisks.org/dr-wendin-smith/

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Episode Summary:

Imagine an investing strategy that takes advantage of biases and imperfections in the marketplace. Sounds good? Now imagine that these investments are in startups founded by women and people of color, groups that have not had access to the same funding opportunities as others have. Sounds even better, doesn’t it? And that’s what my guest on this episode of The Sydcast, Jacques-Philippe Piverger, is all about, as he tells his story of entrepreneurship, investment, and impact.

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.

Jacques-Philippe Piverger

Jacques-Philippe Piverger serves as OzoneX’s Managing Partner, overseeing the firm’s operations with responsibilities across all aspects of the business. Jacques-Philippe is an entrepreneur who harnesses private and public sector experiences to affect change where it is needed most on the globe. He has co-created and scaled a wide range of enterprises including MPOWERD Inc., REALICITY, and The Council of Urban Professionals.

Jacques-Philippe developed his business acumen in the finance world, most notably as Director at AIG Investments and PineBridge Investments, where he participated in over $10 billion of real estate and venture capital transactions. He has been recognized by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader and by the Council on Foreign Relations as a Term Member. He also serves as a board member of the New York Economic Development Corporation's Build NYC and the Industrial Development Agency.

Jacques-Philippe holds a bachelors degree from Georgetown and a Master of Business Administration from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. He is an avid martial artist and practitioner of transcendental meditation. He is the father of Soleil and Jacques-Maxime.

Insight from this Episode

• Challenges Jacques-Philippefaced towards people not believing the potential of marginalized groups in the market.
• The differentiator factor that makes Ozone X successful in the entrepreneurship environment.
• Insight into the companies that Ozone X’s has invested in.
• The story behind Ozone X’s name
• Ozone X’s client selection process
• Secrets of entrepreneurial failure

Quotes from the Show:

• “Many of the greatest challenges also present the biggest opportunities”- Jacques-Philippe Piverger [11:05 ]
• “We think [Ozone X’s] there are big ideas housed in communities that have historically been marginalized from the traditional flows of capital”- Jacques-Philippe Piverger [15:20]
• “[Some people] believe that women and various marginalized groups just don’t have the skill, expertise and talent to do as well as the [traditional] groups that have been gaining the capital” - Jacques-Philippe Piverger [21:21]
• “[When building a business] It’s almost impossible to raise money, it’s really hard to develop the product, you have to manage your SIMS, so unless you’re doing something you really believe in and you’re passionate about, you’re not gonna be willing to do what it takes” - Jacques-Philippe Piverger [45:18]
• “There are certain things that are harder to foresee so you create a solution based on the challenges that you see, but then the market shifts in a way you didn’t anticipate and your solution is no longer relevant” - Jacques-Philippe Piverger [49:50]
• “If you do that thing that you love, the money and everything else that you want is gonna come anyway” - Jacques-Philippe Piverger [54:21]

Stay Connected:

Sydney Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Jacques-Philippe Piverger

LinkedIn: Jacques-Philippe Piverger

Twitter: @jacquespiverger

Facebook: jacques philippe.piverger

Instagram: @jacquespiverger

Ozone X´s

Website: https://www.ozonex.vc/

Instagram: @ozoneventures

Facebook:OzoneVenturesInd

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This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.

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Episode Summary:

Why do humans walk on two feet? Every other animal motors on four legs (paws), and they do it way faster than we do, but we humans walk upright. If you thought evolution is supposed to select for attributes that enhance survival, then we have a real puzzle, among the most fundamental in human evolution. And that’s the puzzle Jerry DeSilva sets out to explain in his highly accessible book “First Steps,” and in 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.

Jeremy DeSilva

Jeremy "Jerry" DeSilva is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Dartmouth College. He is a paleoanthropologist, specializing in the locomotion of the first apes (hominoids) and early human ancestors (hominins). His particular anatomical expertise-- the human foot and ankle-- has contributed to our understanding of the origins and evolution of upright walking in the human lineage. He has studied wild chimpanzees in Western Uganda and early human fossils in Museums throughout Eastern and South Africa. From 1998-2003, Jerry worked as an educator at the Boston Museum of Science and continues to be passionate about science education. He is the author of the 2021 book First Steps: How Upright Walking Made Us Human. Jerry lives in Norwich, VT with his wife Erin and their twins Ben and Josie.

Insights from this Episode:

• How Jeremy’s curiosity for studying human walking began.
• How writing a book and giving a voice to the scientist is perceived in the scientific community.
• Explanations on why the apes are relatives of the human species but not ancestors.
• Hypothesis on how the phenomena of walking on two feet began seven to eight million years ago.
• Difficulties and advantages that walking upright brought to the human species.
• Myths about the evolution of the human species and its cooperative nature.

Quotes from the Show:

• “The best leaders are the ones that ask good questions”- Syd Finkelstein [3:43]
• “I'm really interested in how animals move and how they get from point A to point B and what adaptations they’ve evolved” - Jerry DeSilva [8:26]
• “Once you start moving onto two legs it comes with the sacrifice of your ability to climb in an acrobatic kind of way”- Jerry DeSilva [12:46]
• “I wanted to produce something that was gonna have a wider reach and was gonna be read frankly by more people than you know, some paper on a fossil metatarsal that'll be read by 7 of my colleagues” - Jerry DeSilva [15:09]
• “[About Scientists] We’re just curious people wondering how the world works” - Jerry DeSilva [18:34]
• “I've always thought that the job of a professor/academic is the creation and the dissemination of knowledge” Syd Finkelstein [19:28]
• “Wherever you put down [in the museum] needs to be understood by people of all different ages, all different backgrounds, all different levels of education” - Jerry DeSilva [21:56]
• “My father on the writing [process] used to always ask: when you put it on a paper and you read it out loud, would you ever say that? If you’re in a conversation with somebody, would you ever say a sentence like that? and If the answer is no, then don’t write it like that” - Jerry DeSilva [27:48]
• “[About the chimpanzee’s] we can't quite treat them as time machines but we can treat them as models” - Jerry DeSilva [38:09]
• “What increases your ability to survive… is very often cooperation” - Jerry DeSilva [51:33]

Stay Connected:

Sydney Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Jeremy DeSilva

Twitter: Jeremy DeSilva (@desilva_jerry)

Website: https://sites.dartmouth.edu/desilva/

Book: https://www.amazon.com/First-Steps-Upright-Walking-Human/dp/0062938495

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This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.

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Episode Summary:

How did the dancing Jikaria Sisters – a JD, MBA and Engineer – become TikTok sensations in their spare time? And what should they do next? The three sisters talk about their upbringing, their new brand, and how they’re juggling their “real” careers with another one in the heart of social media. Lots of fascinating questions, from how to scale the brand to what to say to clients about something they see as much more than a side hustle. This is post-millennial Gen Z in action.

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.

The Jikaria Sisters

The Jikaria Sisters (Omi, Rish, & Aash) are a sister trio originally from New York City. They are trained dancers, content creators, and social media influencers. The Jikaria Sisters combine their diverse Indian and American identities in their art and content. Whether it's through creating Bollywood-Hip Hop fusion pieces, going back to their roots through Garba and Bhangra, or defining what it means to be a part of the South Asian diaspora, the Jikaria Sisters are passionate about pushing boundaries and inspiring other creators to do the same. They are proud to have a community of 610,000 followers on TikTok, 60,000 followers on Instagram, and 3,500 subscribers on YouTube.

In addition to being a content creator and professional dancer, Omika Jikaria is a business professional and management consultant with diverse interests in innovation, design, entertainment, and entrepreneurship. She holds an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth and a Bachelor’s degree from the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Rishika Jikaria is a J.D. Candidate at the Fordham University School of Law and is passionate about corporate law, social justice, and public policy. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in International Relations and Affairs from Emory University. Aashika Jikaria is an industrial engineer and Operations Management Trainee at L’Oréal USA. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Industrial and Systems Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she was also a Student-Athlete on the university’s official dance team.

Insights from the Episode:

• Understanding what identity means to young people especially for them growing up in neighborhoods where they are different
• How to market yourself by adding flavor to your content to propel you forward
• Understanding your audience and the kind of content they want to see and engage with
• How to work with brands and leveraging your growth on social platforms

Quotes from the show:

• “People can do more than just regular jobs that they are doing and still perform at an extremely high level at that core job” -Syd Finkelstein [4:51]
• “We value both of our real careers as well as this because this is as real as it can be as well. It is definitely a place where we are also profiting” -Jikaria Sisters [24:58]
• “I think that it really showed a different side of me because it showed that I can also manage a business and I have entrepreneurial aspects and features as well, so I think it really helped in terms of comparing myself to other candidates when recruiting for jobs” -Jikaria Sisters [25:56]
• “I have learned to stay true to myself and understand that I want to work at a company that does value my skills and talents and my whole self” -Jikaria Sisters [27:53]
• “The thing that gives people power in their jobs is extreme competence because people start to depend on you: your bosses, your partners start to depend on you, and all of a sudden you gain power because people wanna hear what you have to say” -Syd Finkelstein [30:31]
• “It’s really empowering to have multiple interests and passions, but also multiple income streams. As the internet has blossomed over the past few years, it has become easier and there is a lot less friction to do that” -Jikaria Sisters [32:31]

Resources Mentioned

• ABC Good Morning America: https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Family/video/jikaria-sisters-bringing-south-asian-representation-tiktok-77702259
• CBS: https://m-partners.facebook.com/watch/?v=961391011324907&_rdr
• Brown Girl Magazine: https://browngirlmagazine.com/2020/08/evolution-jikaria-sisters/

Stay Connected:

Sydney Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Jikaria Sisters

Instagram: jikariasisters

Tiktok: @jikariasisters

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This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.

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Episode Summary:

What would happen if you took Silicon Valley smarts and talent and applied it to helping social impact entrepreneurs scale their enterprises? Doug Galen decided to find out. Motivated by his daughter's drive to make the world a better place, Doug founded RippleWorks, an organization that has now helped social ventures in 59 countries and counting. This is his story.

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.

Doug Galen

Doug Galen has been building innovative and disruptive companies for some twenty-five years. Doug Galen is the Co-Founder and CEO of RippleWorks. RippleWorks is relentlessly focused on the needs of social ventures, providing the practical support impactful entrepreneurs and their teams need to improve more lives. We work in 59 countries and have a portfolio of 110 organizations of which these ventures have helped 216 million people.

In addition to RippleWorks, Doug teaches Startup Garage at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Doug sits on the Boards of Heifer International and Kenzie Academy as well as advises early-stage companies.

Prior to RippleWorks, Doug served as Chief Revenue Officer at Shopkick, a mobile app startup backed by Kleiner Perkins and Greylock that successfully sold to a Fortune 50 company, SVP of business and corporate development at Shutterfly where he helped grow revenue from $50 million to $500 million and a successful IPO, VP and GM of new ventures for eBay where he helped create eight new business units with revenues of $500 million and was employee #3 and Vice President of Sales and Business Development for E-LOAN which had a successful IPO.

Insights from the Episode:

• Understanding the ability to bridge from where you are to where you want to go in your career.
• How to pursue what you love doing: pursue it and stop when it is not working.
• How to acknowledge when you are out of sync and figure out what you have to do about it.
• How to marry purpose and impact into your day job and enjoy and feel happy about your work.

Quotes from the show:

• “Naivety is a blessing and a curse when you are starting a company” -Doug Galen [14:53]
• “Trust isn’t always in a great product or about speed, rather it is in the testimonials and attaching credibility to your company” -Doug Galen [20:10]
• “Trust is almost like the underpinnings of a capitalist society” -Sydney Finkelstein [26:12]
• “It’s important to build a company that adds value and withstands hard times” -Doug Galen [23:05]
• “Money is a scarce resource, but so are skills and the ability to scale an organization” -Doug Galen [43:13]
• “There are a lot of people in the world who would like to help and give back but they do not know how to or where to begin” -Doug Galen [45:25]
• “Some of our best lessons in life come from our mistakes” -Doug Galen [43:59]
• “When an organization becomes really big, a great strategy is to zoom in on their operations and focus on something narrow that you can do better than them” -Doug Galen [1:04:20]
• “Don’t go after what you should do, go after what you want to do. And if you go after what you want to do and it doesn’t work, it is okay to stop and start over” -Doug Galen [1:07:00]

Stay Connected:

Sydney Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Doug Galen

Website: Homepage - Rippleworks

Facebook: Doug Galen

LinkedIn: Doug Galen

Twitter: @DougGalen

Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode on Stitcher, Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.

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Episode Summary:

“If you don’t start with reality, you can’t fix it.” Simple yet deeply meaningful. Alex Liu – one of the world’s top management consultants – has an interesting take on lots of things, including diversity and how to make it work better, racism and how to make it stop working, and joy at work, the secret sauce of successful organizations. All on this episode of The Sydcast.

Syd 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, whichLinkedIn 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.

Alex Liu

A trusted advisor to CEOs and boards, Alex joined Kearney as a partner in 1996 and later served as head of the firm’s global Communications, Media & Technology Practice and as a member of the board of directors. He was elected as the firm’s ninth managing partner in 2018. He also serves as the firm’s chief diversity officer. Alex has served as both speaker and co-chair at World Economic Forum (WEF) events, including the Annual Summit in Davos and the WEF Africa Summit, sharing his perspectives on the fourth industrial revolution and future-workforce topics. He is also a member of the WEF International Business Council (IBC), an advisory body made up of 100+ influential chief executives and chairs. Alex has been published in The Harvard Business Review, featured in The Financial Times, and selected a “Top 25 Consultant” by Consulting Magazine and a Top 20 Global Diversity CEO in 2020. He hosts a podcast #Joy@Work. Alex has previously served as a board advisor to Emirates Telecommunications Company (Etisalat) in UAE. Prior to Kearney, Alex was CEO of a technology startup and a partner with the Boston Consulting Group, helping establish the firm’s Asian operations outside of Japan in the 1990s. He began his career in brand management at a subsidiary of Procter & Gamble. Alex earned an MBA from Harvard, BA from Yale and serves as a trustee of Episcopal High School (Virginia). He remains an avid rugby player.

Insights from this episode:

• The idea that curiosity and learning is not just beneficial for consultants, but for everyone.
• Understanding what workplace culture truly is and entails.
• Identifying responsibilities that business leaders have in recognizing social inequities and leading by example to move toward solutions.
• Making joy a priority at work.

Quotes from the show:

• Consulting is “the hidden growth industry, because it’s an index for change.” -Alex Liu [3:42]
• “As soon as you stop learning about an industry, a sector, people, how people work, you’re not a very good teacher, consultant, or coach. So I think consultants need to be curious. They need to want to make a difference.” -Alex Liu [5:15]
• “We need to make sure that we create a culture, which is not only you feel psychologically and physically safe to be in, you need to be seen for who you are, not just your identity because most diversity is actually invisible, as you know. It’s not just race, gender, or age. It is many other things.” -Alex Liu [13:23]
• “We’re human at our core, and companies and people that are successful recognize and treat people that way--as individuals, not as easy identities.” -Alex Liu [33:50]
• “If you don’t start with reality, you can’t fix it.” -Alex Liu [45:50]
• “Run your own race. Self-define your passion, your definition of success, because you’re your own board of directors.” -Alex Liu [59:52]

Stay Connected:

Syd Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Alex Liu

LinkedIn: Alex Liu

Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode on Stitcher, Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry (www.podcastlaundry.com)

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Episode Summary:

It is now a common phrase: fake news. Are you getting tired of it? I wanted to talk to someone who doesn’t have a horse in the race and who has studied media, polling, political polarization, and the psychology of how people think about political media so I can get handle on the Trumpian bon mot that is lasting a lot longer than he did. Dr. Jennifer Jerit is that person, and this is our conversation.

Syd 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, whichLinkedIn 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.

Jennifer Jerit

Jennifer Jerit is a Professor of Government at Dartmouth College. She studies American politics with a focus on public opinion and political communication. Her research explores how information (from elected leaders and the media) influences people’s attitudes as well as their knowledge about the political world. She also studies misinformation and techniques for correcting this problem. Several of her current projects examine best practices for the measurement of public opinion through survey and experimental methods.

In 2010, Jerit received the Erik Erikson Early Career Award for Excellence and Creativity in the field of Political Psychology and her work has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the Economic and Social Research Council. Professor Jerit has been the recipient of Best Paper awards from the American Political Science Association, International Society of Political Psychology, and International Communication Association. She is on the editorial board of several leading political science journals and a co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology (3rd edition). Prior to coming to Dartmouth College, Jerit held positions at Stony Brook University, Florida State University, MIT, and University of Connecticut.

Insights from this episode:

• Understanding the psychology of how people process and use political information.
• The idea that a general concept becomes a partisan issue.
• How specific motivations can drive behavior in order to influence others.
• Understanding that algorithms influence exposure to specific resources.
• How the pandemic is affecting general public health behaviors.

Quotes from the show:

“There has been, it seems, like a separation between people who study politics and people who practice it. And I’m not quite sure I understand why that’s the case. I do think there are people who get phDs or maybe Master’s in political science and then they go on and work in the political world, so they’ve been trained as political scientists. But I don't think political scientists have had the kind of experience as economists have had.” Jennifer Jerit [28:21]

“The content of these two channels is obviously vastly different. It’s challenging to identify the effect of that on people because people are choosing to watch these programs. You know, there’s some element by which there are different people who watch these programs and so they’re different to begin with. They may have different persuasions. They may have different levels of knowledge, different levels of interest. They may differ on other characteristics that we can’t even mention. And so there are different viewers and they are selecting into these channels, most likely. And so that, from a social science standpoint, that’s the biggest challenge: is how to identify or isolate the unique effect from the same person watching Fox versus that same person watching MSNBC.” Jennifer Jerit [30:22]

“When the algorithms know what we like, it is logical for those algorithms to suggest more similar things, which takes you deeper and deeper down the same pathway that you’ve been on and it leads to less diversity and variety of perspectives, if you let that happen. And that’s their job. And many people, I mean I was quite happy about these algorithms when Amazon said, “You might like this book.” And I said, “You know what, I think I might.” But when you start to reflect on it, algorithms are a method, a very common method everywhere really now, that leads people to narrower range of use--less exposure to diverse products, ways of thinking, books, records, who knows what.” Syd Finkelstein [34:20]

“The real challenge measuring opinion through polls is that the people who agree to participate in a poll are different than the people who don’t. And so even with the very highest quality probability based polls there’s still the choice of whether or not you’re going to participate once you’ve been selected to be a respondent. And so, you know, the conventional way to deal with this is through weighting, where we upweigh the responses of the people who choose to participate among these underrepresented groups. And so I think some of the thought was that that was not being done. There were some mistakes or errors in the way that was done for particular groups, particularly groups related to education in 2016. But weighting, the philosophy of that approach assumes that you know everything about the people who decided to participate; that you can solve this problem through weighting. And I’m just skeptical that that can be done. Because I think there are some differences that maybe we haven’t measured--that we can’t measure. Or maybe there are differences that we don’t even know about.” Jennifer Jerit [45:09]

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Jennifer Jerit

Website: http://www.jjerit.com

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Episode Summary:

In the age of Amazon, it’s important for a start-up e-commerce company to be able to offer something different. This is why exclusivity is such an important element. When offering an exclusive partnership with vendors or suppliers, it’s also important to establish mutual benefits within that partnership. Dave states that the secret to make all of this happen effectively is determination, motivation, and inspiration among the team. In this episode, Dave Bolotsky describes giving up a lucrative, stable career to start a new business in e-commerce and why he did it. He also describes some fears and struggles that he experienced as an entrepreneur in a relatively new industry at the time.

Syd 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, whichLinkedIn 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.

David Bolotsky:

David Bolotsky founded UncommonGoods with the goal of introducing more people to creative design in a sustainable way. UncommonGoods is a hub of creativity - from collaborations where we work with designers to help get products made to the commerce side of our website and catalog where customers can purchase a broad range of items that are great for gifts or themselves. We strive to do everything in a sustainable manner, beginning with treating everyone with dignity and respect, paying a living wage, using environmentally-friendly materials and working with vendors who share similar practices. We are a Founding B Corporation and we successfully advocated for Paid Family Leave and a higher minimum wage in New York.

In an earlier life, Dave was a Managing Director at Goldman Sachs, specializing in investment research in the retail sector. Dave is active in community service in New York’s Lower East Side, where his family has lived for generations. Dave was a founder of Comprehensive Youth Development, a non-profit organization whose mission is to provide support services to disadvantaged public high school students, where he has been involved for 27 years.

Insights from this episode:

• The importance of exclusivity in partnership with another company to develop mutual benefits.
• Tips and ideas for starting an e-commerce business in the age of Amazon.
• Balancing merchandise predictions and sales using analytics, inspiration, and insight.
• The return on investment for advertising an online retail store versus the investment for a physical retail store.
• Finding your company’s critical competitive advantage over larger retailers.
• Doing something that is more aligned with your values.

Quotes from the show:

“I think that the mindset of the entrepreneur is one that I hope each of us, whether we’re entrepreneurial or not, whether we are in business or not, each of us can adopt. I mean, it really is a can-do attitude. It really is, ok I got a problem I’m going to figure it out. I’m going to try to solve this problem and I’m not just going to complain about it. And that’s a pretty important life skill.” - Syd Finkelstein [01:42]

“Just about anything that can go wrong, has gone wrong over the past 22 years at one time or another. So, better to be ready for it than be surprised by it.” - Dave Bolotsky [25:44]

“At Goldman I sort of had the equivalent of front row seats at Madison Square Garden watching, assuming the Knicks were good at the time, watching the Knicks play. And it was exciting, but it was a spectator sport. I was a critic as opposed to an actor. And I’d always had that feeling gnawing at me, that I wanted to try to build something. The internet was such an exciting thing and I wanted to be more of an actor in it.” - Dave Bolotsky [29:21]

“There is way more to life than money. And my parents had raised me to try to make the world a better place in whatever way that I could, as corny as it sounds. And they’ve lived their lives that way. And I felt like I wasn’t. I didn’t feel like what I was doing was immoral, but I felt it was amoral. I was helping the wheels of capitalism spin faster but not necessarily in a direction that I particularly believed in.” - Dave Bolotsky [30:01]

“I think that was probably the single biggest thing that I had to work on was my nature to look at the glass as half empty and recognize that that’s not inspiring. It’s great, if you’re an analyst, to identify what’s wrong. It’s also very helpful as a CEO, but I had to learn how to tamp that down and be more positive and frame things in a more constructive way. - Dave Bolotsky [35:32]

“The one thing I could say from my own experience, having taught MBA students now for almost three decades, is there’s been a tremendous change in their mindset coming in the door. And they absolutely care a lot about environmental and social issues, diversity and inclusion. And the rubber meets the road when you see what companies they work for and what those values are and what they’re going to do when a company doesn’t have all the values or doesn’t live up to the values they might espouse. - Syd Finkelstein [54:45]

On advice to his twenty-one year old self: “I would say be kind to yourself. You know, my parents always raised me to believe in myself and I think I have. I’ve certainly had self-doubt, but in general believed in myself. But, that glass half empty mindset can wear on you and wear you down, because I’m my own harshest critic. And so, I think just appreciating the things that go well and focusing on that as much as things that I can do better.” - Dave Bolotsky [56:32]

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Syd Finkelstein

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Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

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David Bolotsky:

Website: https://www.uncommongoods.com

LinkedIn: Dave Bolotsky

Twitter: @DavidBolotsky

This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry (www.podcastlaundry.com)

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Bruno Viniciguerra - Bain, Sotheby's, Dell, Disney, Bonham's - he's worked in senior leadership roles at cool companies in cool industries. What did he learn? What does he know, and what doesn't he know? How did he learn to adapt to different industries, companies, and cultures? Bruno - one of Syd's favorite business thinkers - shares his wisdom, advice, and stories, on this episode of The Sydcast.

Syd 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.

Bruno Vinciguerra

Bruno Vinciguerra is the Global CEO of Bonhams. He was appointed in September 2018 to lead Bonhams after the auction house was acquired by Epiris, the UK-based private equity company.

Vinciguerra – who holds dual French-American citizenship and is a graduate in business administration and economics from ESSEC (Ecole Superieure des Sciences at Commerciales) in Paris – has offices based in Bonhams New York and London. He has led global businesses in the consumer, luxury and technology sphere such as Bain & Co, Disney and Dell. Vinciguerra's previous role before joining Bonhams was Chief Operating Officer at Sotheby's, which he joined in 2007 and where he was responsible for the global P&L and the management of the worldwide organization. His influence on complex deals, auction sales and staff around the world was instrumental in Sotheby's return to all-time high levels of profitability after 2009.

Vinciguerra also played a major role in Sotheby's expansion in Beijing, making the company the first international fine art auction house in mainland China, and in the development of the company's digital initiatives.

Insights from the Episode:

• How important creativity and intuition are in business and leadership
• The ways managerial skills can be successfully transferred to different industries
• How the art market exists, and how it has changed over the past years especially with the introduction of NFTs
• How listening to the expertise of someone else can change your perspective

Quotes from the Show:

• On how working for Bain helped him: “It was all about trying to understand a program that you don't have a lot of experience with, first hand. And working in a team with very smart people, focusing on the quality of your communication to convey a message to an audience you have a limited time with, and being effective at using the information you have and at conveying it.” - Bruno Vinciguerra [8:23]
• On why he loves working art auctions: It is thrilling, exhilarating, to see the best of human creativity through the ages, and that’s what I deal with on a daily basis. - Bruno Vinciguerra [9:08]
• On how one’s production shouldn’t define one’s career: “I think depending on who you are, you can live in this business of big events that can be triumphs, or could be moderate successes. Or you can be in a world of perfection and optimization where you know what you deliver.” - Bruno Vinciguerra [11:37]
• On the shift away from longer plans and towards new, faster forms of development: “I see with my team developing a website; there is a concept of ‘sprints.’ Six-week sprints, which is, they say, these small bites, these small projects. ‘Okay, what can we achieve in six weeks,’ and it is completely different, and it’s all the new programming.” - Bruno Vinciguerra [20:53]
• On how to keep up with changing trends: “To your question, the ultimate goal is to be flexible. To be able to get information as fast as possible, analyze it, and modify trajectory as fast as you can.” - Bruno Vinciguerra [25:22]
• On how difficult it is for new players to enter the art selling market: “This is not only a business about selling this is also a business about sourcing. And in the world of rarities, in the world of the exceptional, the success factor is having the best art to sell, or the best cars to sell, or the best jewelry to sell.” - Bruno Vinciguerra [26:48]
• The usual criteria for a collector to sell. “The four ‘D’s’, Death, Debt, Divorce, and Desperation.” - Bruno Vinciguerra [28:18]
• On why shifting to an online model of art auctions is working: “The secret of this industry is the following: you have 500, 600 people in an auction room during a great evening sale in the art world, maybe 5 people in the room are bidding. They are here for the entertainment, and the majority, the vast majority, I’m talking more than 90% of the bidders are either online, on the phone, or leave what we call an absentee bid, which means ‘buy it, to that level, for me.’” - Bruno Vinciguerra [35:50]
• People say ‘you know you’re going to pay 0 for a copy of a Picasso, so why do you pay millions of dollars for the original painting,’ and you say ‘Because it was painted by the hand of Picasso,’ and there is a reality to the object. - Bruno Vinciguerra [43:31]

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Syd Finkelstein

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LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

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Bruno Vinciguerra

LinkedIn: Bruno Vinciguerra

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Episode Summary

In this riveting episode of The Sydcast, Syd sits down with Doug Conant to talk about life, leadership, and the pursuit of improving business from the top down. No matter where you may be positioned in your current work situation, the lessons Doug shares will bring your attention to how important a brilliant leader is for a business and how you can take concrete steps towards being one yourself. These aren’t lessons pulled from a vacuum either, this is Doug’s lived experience, and what an experience it is.

Syd 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.

Doug Conant

Doug is the only former Fortune 500 CEO who is a New York Times best-selling author, a Top 50 Leadership Innovator, a Top 100 Leadership Speaker, and one of the 100 Most Influential Authors in the World.

A devoted leadership practitioner and teacher, Doug’s 45-year career has been defined by achieving high performance through an intentional commitment to studying, practicing, improving, and spreading the tenets of “leadership that works.”

He is Founder and CEO of ConantLeadership, former President and CEO of Campbell Soup Company, former President of Nabisco Foods, and former Chairman of Avon Products. He has also served on multiple corporate boards including AmerisourceBergen and RHR International. He began his career in marketing at General Mills and held leadership positions in marketing and strategy at Kraft.

Doug is also Chairman of CECP—Chief Executives for Corporate Purpose, and proudly

serves on the boards of The Center for Higher Ambition Leadership, the National

Organization on Disability, the Partnership for Public Service, and Hope College. Previously, he was Chairman of The Conference Board, Chairman of the Grocery Manufacturers Association, and Chairman of Enactus.

His new Wall Street Journal bestselling book, co-authored with Amy Federman, The

Blueprint: 6 Practical Steps to Lift Your Leadership to New Heights, is available now and is a seminal treatise on leadership and practical guide for leading effectively in a chaotic world. He is also the New York Times bestselling co-author with Mette Norgaard of TouchPoints: Creating Powerful Leadership Connections in the Smallest of Moments.

Doug is a graduate of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and served as the Chairman of Kellogg Executive Leadership Institute for five years. He is an instructor of leadership at the Higher Ambition Leadership Institute and he teaches many of the concepts advanced in The Blueprint to seasoned and aspiring leaders in his own signature leadership development course, The BLUEPRINT Boot Camp by

ConantLeadership.

Conant has been named a Trust Across America Top Thought Leader in Trust for five

consecutive years and is a Top Thought Leader in Trust Lifetime Achievement Award Winner. He has also been lauded as a Top 100 Leadership Speaker by Inc. Magazine; a Top 100 Most Influential Author in the World; a Top 30 Leadership Professional by Global Gurus; a Leader to Watch by the American Management Association (AMA); a Top 50 Leadership Innovator Changing How We Lead; and a Top 75 Human Business Champion.

Finally, he is the ever-so-proud husband of Leigh and father to their three remarkable children.

Insights from the Episode

• The role a brilliant leader should fill for a company
• How to learn from failure
• How to use role models to guide your career
• How to develop world-class talent
• The importance of crafting a career, not following a straight line

Quotes from the Show:

On the importance of learning from past experiences. “I’m constantly looking at what's working and what's not, what can I do differently, how can I be a little better tomorrow than I was today, how can I grow. For me it’s what makes life so interesting.” -Doug Conant [8:29]

On how to navigate imperfect jobs early in one’s career. “For me it’s about growth, and it’s not just my growth, it's growth and contribution to others. And so I’m always looking through the lens of growing and contributing in a more substantial way.” -Doug Conant [9:22]

“As a CEO, you’re crazy if you think you’re going to know everything. So you’ve got to be able to have a collection of people that know a lot about the subject matter expertise and then you’ve got to be incredibly fluent at orchestrating to optimize your effectiveness at calling on all those talents.” -Doug Conant [10:24]

On leadership as a learnable skill: “I view leadership in a mastery model, you've got to become a craftsman at it. You apprentice, you study, you learn, and most of the time you do it by the seat of your pants, let's be honest. But I think it's imperative that you really embrace the notion of being a brilliant leader to get the most out of people.” -Doug Conant [12:43]

“It’s hard to have courage if you’re not clear on your convictions.” -Doug Conant [26:46]

“You were an overnight success 25 years in the making.” -Syd Finkelstein [30:49]

On the most important aspect of leadership “I find that my effectiveness, in every situation, improves if I’m a good listener. If I’m very attentive with it. I serve people better because I better understand their situation. They appreciate that I’m earnestly trying to hear them and we move forward in a way that’s a higher order of effectiveness.” -Doug Conant [52:24]

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Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

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Doug Conant

Website: https://conantleadership.com

LinkedIn: Douglas Conant

Twitter: @DougConant

Youtube: Doug Conant

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Episode Summary:

In this episode of The Sydcast, serial entrepreneur Adrian Johnson sits down and gives us the details of his fantastic life from childhood to where he is now. He has a curiosity and an entrepreneurial mindset that is, to put it lightly, extraordinary, and a heart that seeks to help wherever he can. This episode has it all, from the ways technology can assist in education to what it was like starting a business in Eastern Germany after the Berlin Wall came down.

Syd 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.

Adrian Johnson:

Adrian Johnson is an Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship and a technology and media entrepreneur. Since 1993 he has co-founded several companies, including Poptel, Germany's first phone-to-phone Internet telephony service provider (VC-funded and successfully sold in a trade sale); Archimation (www.archimation.com), Germany's first architectural animation and visualization company; MrFootage (www.mrfootage.com), a web-based film footage library; Eventival (www.eventival.com), the world’s leading online film festival management system and SeriesIMPACT, an “EdTech" business creating “NextGen" live cases (www.LiveCASE.com).

At INSEAD Adrian is an Adjunct Professor and teaches the legendary "Your First Hundred Days" (YFCD) MBA/EMBA course as well as Executive Education company-specific and open-enrolment programmes at INSEAD’s campuses in Fontainebleau, Singapore and Abu Dhabi. Adrian is also a supervisor of final EMBA student projects, and has been teacher, judge and mentor for Startup and Sci-Tech Commercialisation Bootcamps. After fourteen years on the INSEAD MBA Admissions Committee, he now sits on the INSEAD Global EMBA Admissions Panel. Investing in the next-generation leaders of tomorrow, Adrian is the Programme Director of the Summer@INSEAD business awareness summer camp for 15 to 18 year olds.

Before becoming an entrepreneur, Adrian began his career with ICI, then the largest manufacturer in Britain. After his MBA, he moved to the IT services industry, later working for the German Treuhandanstalt, privatising East German companies in Dresden and Berlin.

After a childhood spent in Sierra Leone, Kenya and the USA, Adrian studied Electrical Engineering at Imperial College London and earned his MBA from INSEAD.

Insights from the Episode:

• How important a Team is to starting a new business
• What Eastern Germany looked like, from a business perspective, after the wall came down
• The nuances of choosing between different countries to start a business in
• The potential for technology to integrate with education going forward

Quotes from the Show:

• Getting an MBA is a way of reducing your career risk because you’re increasing your skill set and marketability and your own brand, and coming out of an MBA program you are really extremely marketable - Syd Finkelstein [19:47]
• On the most important part of a startup: It's kind of easy coming up with ideas but actually turning an idea into a successful venture; I have definitely come to the conclusion that the team ends up being the most important thing. - Adrian Johnson [23:33]
• We started working together, and we were so complementary to each other. That's why our business worked, and cementing that was the trust that we had and we built over the years. And of course we ended up becoming very good friends - Adrian Johnson [25:34]
• On the way Germany handled business ventures after the wall came down: I think what has worked very well in Germany is that sort of the social democratic structure, so there was not this massive transfer - as many east germans feared - that the wealthy Germans would come in and take all the wealth and we’d end up with a load of very rich people and a load of very poor people. - Adrian Johnson [36:43]
• The problem is France didn’t have any real role models, successful entrepreneurs. There’s no Bill Gates, there's no Steve Jobs or Elon Musk. - Adrian Johnson [49:07]
• Entrepreneurship can create, not can, but does create wealth not just for the entrepreneurs that are successful but for the entire economy and employment - Syd Finkelstein [57:57]
• There's still a lot of innovating to be done around how to more effectively use technology to help kids learn. And maybe it's not just in the content delivery but its the process of; how do you actually teach, how do people learn, and can they learn more effectively. - Adrian Johnson [62:11]

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LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Adrian Johnson:

Website: adrianjohnson.com

Blog: Adrian Johnson

INSEAD: Adrian Johnson

Twitter: @acvjohnson

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In this episode of The Sydcast, Syd sits down with American businessman Michael Ainslie to discuss how the former President and CEO of Sotheby’s fits into the complex stories of the 2008 financial crash, the ever-fluctuating prices of art, and the nature of educating underprivileged youth. It seems unbelievable that one man can be a focal point for three topics as diverse as these, but it’s all true, and you can hear it all on this episode of The Sydcast.

Syd 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.

Michael Ainslie:

Michael Ainslie is an American businessman who’s distinguished career includes, among other things, serving as President and CEO of Sotheby’s from 1984-94 and transforming the world of auctioning. Prior to this he was the CEO of the National Trust for Historic Preservation where he helped to rewrite a tax law to provide a 25% investment tax credit for investment in historic buildings. He was a director at Lehman Brothers for 12 years, culminating with its 2008 bankruptcy. Ainslie was one of the ten people in the room on the night of September 14th, the night of the largest bankruptcy filing in US history, and afterwards was part of the team that oversaw the sale of the company’s remaining assets.

One of his more passionate ventures involved the Posse Foundation, which he helped to launch in 1994. This foundation finds young leaders from public and parochial high schools in ten major cities and sends them to one of over 50 elite university partners. They travel as a cohort of 10 scholars, and all receive a full merit leadership scholarship. To date there have been over 9200 Posse Scholars who have been awarded over $1.4 billion in scholarships.

He is a Trustee Emeritus of Vanderbilt University and has served on the boards of Sotheby’s, the United States Tennis Association, and the St. Joe Company. In 2020 he authored a book called A Nose For Trouble: Sotheby’s, Lehman Brothers, and My Life of Redefining Adversity, in which he describes his personal experience with these high profile events.

Insights from this episode:

• The complicated nature of the 2008 financial crisis and where Lehman Brothers exists in the story
• How deeply the global financial system depends on trust
• Understanding how the art market exists as one of the purest free markets in the world, for better or for worse
• How important it is to provide students from under-privileged backgrounds with the support they need in University settings

Quotes from the show:

• “The ability of a buyer from China or Russia or anywhere in the world to participate is now very easy to do. That has made it a true global market, it's also driven up the prices because a lot of these people have new wealth and they either want to own the art or be known to own the art.” - Michael Ainslie [00:32]
• “Universities go out of their way to admit students from very underprivileged backgrounds and they think their job is done. ‘We have diversity, we did a good thing, this is great,’ and then they leave these kids to sink or swim.” - Syd Finkelstein [05:58]
• “The problem was that causing the bankruptcy triggered that basically banks stopped and stopped working together, and the global financial world froze.” - Michael Ainslie [12:55]
• There's something that gets done after a bankruptcy that's called an examiners report, and a firm from Chicago was hired to do that. Believe it or not they spent $100 million on the forensic evidence to put together that examiners report. They concluded there was no malfeasance, there was no lack of carrying out responsibilities by the audit committee, the board, or management. They literally said ‘Lehman became illiquid in the last 5 or 6 days of its existence due to things I spoke about earlier.’” - Michael Ainslie [26:28]
• Congress literally opened the floodgates to the subprime mortgage crisis, you remember this, they were changing the lending standards. Do they go to jail for that decision? Because that, in a sense, is what really precipitated the flooding of money into these financial instruments that financed these subprime mortgages.” - Michael Ainslie [29:03]
• I think the involvement of wealthy individuals, and frequently very newly wealthy individuals, in the art market has driven prices to levels that are really quite remarkable. And frankly I think a lot of people have trouble with that. When paintings cost three or four hundred million dollars, even though they’re some of the great works of art, that seems excessive. - Michael Ainslie [32:39]
• “The Posse is kind of a genius idea because you have a team, you have friends, you have support group right from day one, which gives you a huge comfort level. You don’t have to worry about having nothing to do on a Saturday night in the first month because you don’t know anybody, you know nine people” - Syd Finklestein [49:24]

Stay Connected:

Syd Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Michael Ainslie

Website: https://anosefortrouble.com/

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Episode Summary

When it comes to entrepreneurship and investment, underrepresented communities face many challenges. As a female investor in a male-dominated field, Marjorie Radlo-Zandi, has overcome her own set of challenges and helped others to do the same. In conversation with Marjorie, Syd explores how successful entrepreneurs and investors operate and the tools they need to make it to the top of their field.

Syd 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, whichLinkedIn 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.

Marjorie Radlo-Zandi

Marjorie Radlo-Zandi is an experienced angel investor, board director, mentor and consultant who focuses on investing and mentoring early-stage companies in life sciences, diagnostics, software/IT, clean technology, ed-tech, food/beverage/ag and related food related technologies. She invests primarily for impact with an eye to diversity through two angel investment groups where she is a member, Launchpad Venture Groupand Branch Venture Group. Launchpad is the most active angel investment group in the Northeast and top three-ranked group in the U.S. It invests in life sciences, diagnostics, medical devices, software / IT, ed-tech, web and e-commerce, media/social media, and clean technology. Branch invests nationwide in start-ups in the food/beverage/ag CPG and related technology space. Fifty percent of her investments are in women-led businesses and fifty percent are led by people of color.

Prior to becoming an angel investor, she was a senior executive and leader in Silicon Valley and the Boston life science diagnostics sector, where she developed a reputation for driving domestic and international organizational growth through innovation, global market expansion and building robust cross-cultural teams. She also improved organizational performance by both positioning and evaluating companies for acquisition. Her biggest achievement: grew the food diagnostics company she led with angel funds, expanded in over 100 countries, and sold it to a two billion dollar publicly-held firm. This company she led positively impacted the lives of millions by protecting and enhancing the global food supply.

Marjorie grew up in a family of entrepreneurs, so entrepreneurship is in her blood. Her first entrepreneurial venture at age 19 was a high-profile sailing program where none existed previously in Burlington, Vermont. She now focuses her time on investing, being a board director, mentoring and consulting in companies which makes an impact with an eye to diversity.

Marjorie holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Vermont, and a master's degree in business administration from Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts.

Insights from this episode:

• How to predict individual and entrepreneurial success using algorithms
• Different ways to foster success in others by providing thoughtful and sustainable support
• The best problem-solving strategies used by both successful entrepreneurs and investors
• The benefits of targeting investments that align with personal values
• The essentials of successful angel investing
• The secrets to preparing a successful pitch for an angel investor as an entrepreneur
• Benefits of expanding the workplace and the workforce through investing in virtual corporations and e-commerce

Quotes from the show:

• “Virtual Corporations are going to expand the workplace opportunities, so those people who are in Montana, South Dakota, North Dakota, Wyoming who didn’t have the richness of opportunities of Silicon Valley or Boston or New York City are going to have that open to them with the advent of work from many different places.” - Marjorie Radlo-Zandi [00:10]
• “We all like to complain, we all like to wonder, we all like to think, but actually fix the problem. And fix it in a way that could be beneficial to other people, and if it leads to wealth generation, that’s a good thing” - Syd Finkelstein [11:10]
• “The most important thing is have your vision, execute your vision, get the go-to market plan, and go and market well.” - Marjorie Radlo-Zandi [12:12]
• “Technology is in the DNA of the economy. It’s not going away. The mutation has occurred.” - Syd Finkelstein [16:44]
• “It was a very male-oriented culture, mostly white males. But yet, yes there was sexism along the way. But I’d say I had some fabulous mentors in Silicon Valley, and the learning opportunities were tremendous…There were some challenges along the way, but you can't let that get in the way of your progress.” - Marjorie Radlo-Zandi [18:56]
• “If I’m targeting for anything, it's investments that make a social or environmental impact.” - Marjorie Radlo-Zandi [22:49]
• “I think where there’s an opportunity for President Biden is helping those underserved communities and putting investment in underserved communities who don’t have the friends and family round.” - Marjorie Radlo-Zandi [34:43]
• “I think there can be an algorithm for a lot of different things, but there is a direct human element in terms of evaluation and working with different groups to assess them. I’m not quite sure that an algorithm could do that.” - Marjorie Radlo-Zandi [42:42]

Stay Connected:

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LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

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Marjorie Radlo-Zandi

Website: https://www.jazzas.com/

LInkedIn:Marjorie Radlo-Zandi

Twitter: @margorieradlozandi

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This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry (www.podcastlaundry.com)

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Episode Summary

Throughout Dr. Rowland Hazard’s career, listening and human connection have been at the core of his success in both medicine and business. Through asking simple questions such as “who are you?” and “where are you from?” Rowley has been able to help people through the toughest period of their lives. Syd and Rowley discuss Rowley's journey from dishwasher to world-renowned MD and back pain specialist.

Syd 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, whichLinkedIn 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.

Rowland G. Hazard

Rowland G. Hazard, MD recently retired from an over 30-year career devoted to people disabled by chronic back pain. Currently Emeritus Professor of Orthopaedics at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, he is a physician, internationally respected scholar and researcher, widely published author, teacher, inventor, entrepreneur, athlete and jazz musician.

As a clinician and director of Functional Restoration Programs (FRPs) at the University of Vermont (1986-2000) and at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center (2002-2018), Dr. Hazard cared for several thousand patients with back pain and lead FRP teams of physicians, psychologists, physical and occupational therapists, and trainers. A board-certified internist, he is a Fellow in the American College of Physicians.

He has published over 50 journal articles and book chapters and delivered scores of related academic lectures and media appearances in the US, Europe and Australia. He has served as reviewer and technical expert for the US Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and as an editorial board member of Spine and The Back Letter. He has twice represented the US at the International Society for the Study of the Lumbar Spine.

His new book, Talking Back: How to Overcome Chronic Back Pain and Rebuild Your Life, was published by Rowman & Littlefield in May, 2021.

Insights from this episode:

• How to effectively communicate with your doctor and peers about your goals and expectations
• Benefits of following your skills and finding your passion within those skills
• The differences between pain and disability stemming from pain and fear of reinjury
• Advantages of manipulation and functional restoration for back pain and treating disability
• The power of listening and its ability to propel you into success in a variety of different fields
• Advice on how to treat and manage chronic, acute back pain

Quotes from the show:

• “I learned in a way that was completely different from the book learning I was accustomed to, and I loved it.” – Rowland G. Hazard [11:55] Episode #97
• “I just think true reform of the national healthcare system should involve education, research, and practice. Not just, you know, with your taxes, you’re going to pay for your gall bladder operation. It’s more complicated than that. ” – Rowland G. Hazard [23:01] Episode #97
• “I was hit over the head by how ignorant I was about how to take care of people who had back pain. So for almost a year, I dedicated Thursday nights. I stayed up every Thursday night, reading everything I could get my hands on about back pain.” – Rowland G. Hazard [24:00] Episode #97
• “There’s a huge variety of treatments out there for back pain. There are many belief systems underneath those that pass as science, but the science is actually pretty thin.” – Rowland G. Hazard [27:06] Episode #97
• “If I go back to doing all the things I did before, there is a fear of getting much worse. The pain itself is not terrible, it’s manageable. Just you sharing that actually is good to know. It at least helps me process it in my head and recognize what choice is happening implicitly” Syd Finkelstein– [37:20] Episode #97
• “You gotta have passion, and you have to work hard. You can be fearless, but if you can’t listen, you can drive really hard down the wrong road quickly.” – Rowland G. Hazard [46:25] Episode #97
• “In my own practice, I rarely talked to people about opioids, even though I was seeing ‘the worst of the worst of the chronic pain patients’.” – Rowland G. Hazard [59:48] Episode #97
• “90% of people who have an acute episode of back pain get better, almost no matter what you do.” – Rowland G. Hazard [62:29] Episode #97

Stay Connected:

Syd Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Rowland G. Hazard

New book: Talking Back: How to Overcome Chronic Back Pain and Rebuild Your Life

LInkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/rowland-hazard-8a8a2174/

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This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry (www.podcastlaundry.com)

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TSC 96: The Wisdom of Philippe Bourguignon

Episode Summary

Vice Chairman of Revolution Places and Executive Co-Chairman of Exclusive Resorts Philippe Bourguignon shares his zigzag journey that led him to the top of the travel industry. Once the CEO of Euro Disney, Philippe gives advice on having fun, being a dreamer, and taking time for yourself. Hear Philippe Bourguignon’s stories, business strategies, and wisdom in this episode of The Sydcast.

Syd 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, whichLinkedIn 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.

Philippe Bourguignon

Vice Chairman, Revolution Places; Executive Co-Chairman, Exclusive Resorts

Philippe Bourguignon is vice chairman of Revolution Places, a company that is creating a new model for travel and tourism that promotes and encourages a healthy lifestyle, Philippe establishes consumer brands that reflect those values. In addition, he serves as executive co-chairman of Exclusive Resorts, a carefully vetted collection of more than 300 privately managed multimillion-dollar residences in iconic destinations paired with highly personalized and intuitive service. Revolution Places’ approach is to create unique, authentic experiences that can become treasured memories that last a lifetime — and build large businesses in the process.

Prior to joining Revolution Places, Philippe was co-chief executive officer of the Davos-based World Economic Forum in 2003 and 2004. Previously, as chairman and chief executive of Club Med, he was widely credited with a comprehensive turnaround of the company in 2000. The change included refocusing the brand, revamping operations and restoring competitiveness, implementing an innovative pricing policy, and completely overhauling the management culture.

Beginning in 1988, Philippe worked with Disney in several capacities, including as chairman and chief executive officer of Euro Disney, and executive vice president of Disney Europe. As the head of Euro Disney, he led a far-reaching corporate restructuring which restored the company on solid financial footing and achieved operating results far ahead of market expectations.

Previously Philippe spent 14 years with the Accor group, one of the largest hotel groups in the world. Initially serving as vice president of Development for Asia/Middle East and executive vice president of North America, he was eventually promoted to president of Accor for the Asia/Pacific region.

Today, Philippe sits on the board of two Revolution companies: Exclusive Resorts, a luxury travel club, and Mint House, a hospitality company setting a new standard in business travel.

He also co-founded Le Shack with his daughter in 2020.

In addition, he is also an active member on the board of Neiman Marcus, the global board of Operation Hope and chairman of HOPE Global Forums, a non-profit organization with a vision to eradicate poverty.

He is also the chairman of Primonial a Paris based wealth management firm and an active investor in OneRagtime, a European disruptive venture platform. He previously served as a member of the board of directors for Zipcar and spent 11-years on the board at eBay.

Philippe is also a co-founder of the Monthly Barometer. The Barometer is a subscription service that enables executives and leaders from around the world to anticipate and leverage emerging trends, using “contextual intelligence” methods to distill into one page the macro issues relevant to time-starved decision-makers. It has been in existence for more than five years and has a remarkably accurate track record.

In 2005, Philippe published his first book, Hop!, a revealing discussion on the paradoxes of the world and the French economy.

On a personal note — Philippe Bourguignon is married, and the father of two children. He is a man of many passions – a dedicated racer of yachts who, with Bruno Peyron, set a record in 1996 for crossing the English Channel.

Insights from this episode:

• Reasons why it is important to have fun and play, no matter what your age.
• Tips for practicing unconsciousness to overcome doubt and imposter syndrome.
• Information on the “zigzag strategy” and how to leverage it in your life and career.
• How Philippe helped revive Club Med and Euro Disney, and his reflections on the travel industry.
• How Philippe is working to create “opportunities of collision.”

Quotes from the show:

• “You should still play as a kid. Even if you learn serious things, you should still play because the minute you stop playing, you become serious. And when you become serious, it’s the beginning of the end.” — Philippe Bourguignon [13:32]
• “A good businessman needs to have a certain level of unconsciousness. If you are too conscious, you don’t take risks.” — Philippe Bourguignon [22:19]
• “I don’t believe in straight lines… Americans believe in straight lines. America is the only country which has built a city based on straight lines over 14 hills called San Francisco and swear… straight lines are efficient.” — Philippe Bourguignon [26:27]
• “In life you meander, you don’t go straight. Those people who want to go straight, they lose opportunities.” — Philippe Bourguignon [27:24]
• “Experience is like the light on the back of a train. It lights the backtrack behind us. While vision lights the tracks ahead, where you’re not sure where you’re going.” — Philippe Bourguignon [30:27]
• “I was feeling more like a carton of milk with an expiration date, but after I joined Revolution, I became like a bottle of old wine.” — Philippe Bourguignon [35:17]
• On branding: “A lot of agencies force, or a lot of clients of agencies accept to have a brand bible, and all of a sudden, the brand is driving the decisions of the company, while the brand should be the expression of what the company is.” — Philippe Bourguignon [50:28]
• “Those hotels have a soul. They don’t need a loyalty program for me to come back. The experience I got there is good enough that I don’t need points to come back.” — Philippe Bourguignon [52:05]
• “I was given a chance. Therefore, I knew and trusted my leaders that I would get somewhere.” — Philippe Bourguignon [1:04:53]

Stay Connected:

Syd Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Philippe Bourguignon

Website: https://www.revolution.com/

Linkedin: Philippe Bourguignon

Le Shack: https://leshack.fr/

Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode onStitcher,iTunes, and Spotify.

This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry (www.podcastlaundry.com)

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TSC 95: Professor Emily Finn: How Our Brain Activity is as Unique as our Fingerprint

Episode Summary

New Dartmouth professor and brain scientist Emily Finn talks about how our brains are wired and how we have something akin to a neural connection fingerprint. In addition to discussing the implications of this headline discovery, Dr. Finn shares her own motivations in her research and her personal journey in arriving where she is now in this episode of The Sydcast.

Syd 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, whichLinkedIn 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.

Emily Finn

Emily S. Finn, PhD is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Dartmouth College. She completed her Ph.D. in neuroscience at Yale, and her postdoctoral training at the National Institute of Mental Health. Before that, she received a B.A. in linguistics, also from Yale. Emily’s work is focused on individual variability in brain activity and behavior, especially as it relates to appraisal of ambiguous information under naturalistic conditions. She is particularly interested in how and why, given the same experience, different individuals arrive at different conclusions. She was recently named a Rising Star by the Association for Psychological Science, and her work has been featured in popular media such as The New York Times, BBC, NBC, PBS, CBS, Scientific American, Discover, and WIRED.

Insights from this episode:

• Dr. Finn’s journey to becoming an independent researcher and a scientist and what she learned along the way.
• The value of strong communication skills when you’re in any field.
• Reasons why a break from school might be a good idea.
• A look into Dr. Finn’s research into the brain’s activity fingerprint, including what might cause it.
• The goals of Dr. Finn’s research and possible implications of mapping individuals’ brain functional organization.

Quotes from the show:

• “To have real responsibility, to have the confidence of the people around you, you have to earn it but you also have to take it… you spend all your time becoming the expert-- and it’s not easy to do that-- and sometimes you forgot, or don’t even know, that you have to actually advocate for yourself.” — Syd Finkelstein [11:13]
• “I think I didn’t appreciate just how much of a scientist’s job is writing-- writing papers, writing grants, and the further you get the more and more it’s about communicating the science rather than actually doing the science.” — Emily Finn [21:57]
• “My articles [for the newspaper at MIT] about neuroscience, I think, were actually the worst because I was the least able to put myself in the shoes of someone who didn’t have any background on the topic, whereas when I would go interview the physicist or the geologist or astronomy people, I could just say, hey talk to me like I’m a five-year-old, I don’t know anything about this.” — Emily Finn [22:50]
• “You don’t have to be at breakneck speed. In fact, there are many disadvantages to it.” — Syd Finkelstein [25:10]
• “I’ve never met anybody that took a few years off and said, wow I really wish I had gotten my MD two years earlier once they’re mid-career. On the contrary, having that life experience and flailing a little bit-- not in the bad sense of the word-- but giving yourself a chance to kind of experience things and make sure what you’re choosing is right.” — Emily Finn [26:20]
• “As we’re sort of getting to the point where we’re building up these databases, because really what you need is a ton of data from lots and lots of individuals… the challenge is to find the signal in that noise, and all of these things are messy and complicated and there’s no single factor that is going to be driving everything. We’re making progress, but it’s still early days.” — Emily Finn [37:24]
• “Genetics can account for a lot, all of the epigenetic phenomenon, life experiences, and the different things that people encounter and experiences they seek out are also going to leave a fingerprint so to speak that’s not necessary encoded in the DNA itself but that’s present in brain functional organization.” — Emily Finn [40:12]
• “People’s brains will, in some ways, synchronize. So when two people watch the same movie or listen to the same story, you see a lot of synchrony in terms of how brains are processing that experience, but in other ways, you also see idiosyncrasies, so different people have different reactions at different moments or to different features.” — Emily Finn [47:09]
• On privacy: “The press coverage of the first fingerprinting essay was kind of unsettling in some ways, and it’s understandable. In a lot of ways this brings up concerns, and a lot of the reporters were kind of interested in how this could be used against us?” — Emily Finn [55:16]

Resources Mentioned

The Code Breaker by Walter Isaacson

Stay Connected:

Syd Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Emily Finn

Website: https://esfinn.github.io/

Twitter: @esfinn

Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode onStitcher,iTunes, and Spotify.

This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry (www.podcastlaundry.com)

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TSC 94: Jim Campbell, and the Truth about Bernie Madoff

Episode Summary

Jim Campbell, author of Madoff Talks: Uncovering the Untold Story Behind the Most Notorious Ponzi Scheme in History, returns to The Sydcast to reveal the truth about Bernie Madoff, how his mind worked, and how he came to run the most infamous Ponzi scheme in history. Jim’s direct access to Bernie and his family makes for new and never-before-heard details about this master criminal and his scheme. Get into Bernie Madoff’s mind and learn some lessons about owning up to and facing our failures and mistakes in this episode of The Sydcast.

Syd 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, whichLinkedIn 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.

Jim Campbell

Jim Campbell has been the host, since 2008, of the nationally syndicated “Business Talk with Jim Campbell”; and, more recently, the syndicated crime show: “Forensic Talk with Jim Campbell.” “Biz Talk” is known for its “deep dives” with leading figures from the world of business; and the business of politics and sports. “Forensic Talk” features Wall Street crimes to unsolved murders to international scandal and corruption.

Mr. Campbell is also Assistant News Director at a Connecticut radio station – AM 1490 WGCH Greenwich. Previously, he was a National Director with a Big Four Consulting Firm – KPMG Consulting; an Officer with Dean Witter Financial Services (now Morgan Stanley); and an Analyst at IBM. He has a BA, Magna Cum Laude, from Tufts University, and an MBA from the Tuck School at Dartmouth.

His book Madoff Talks: Uncovering the Untold Story Behind the Most Notorious Ponzi Scheme in Historyis now available.

Insights from this episode:

• How Jim Campbell got open access to Bernie Madoff and his family.
• Why Bernie decided to talk to Jim, and what it reveals about Bernie’s psychology.
• What you don’t know about the Bernie Madoff scandal, including when and how it really started and other behind-the-scenes players.
• Could Ponzi schemes like Bernie Madoff’s still be happening today and can you protect yourself from one?
• Tips and advice for aspiring authors and interviewers and secrets of the publishing business.

Quotes from the show:

• “I said ‘Well, Bernie, this is your chance to talk to history, but I’m going to vet every single word you say for the truth…The rest was history, 400 pages of communication later. It didn’t come out quite the way Bernie had anticipated, but he was obsessed with telling me and rationalizing everything.” — Jim Campbell [10:57]
• “In his world, he was not a bad guy. He was obsessed with explaining, number one, that his investment strategy really did work. He would go through incredible details, very technical, and then say, Jim I realize I wasn’t doing any real trading. So that’s sort of delusional.” — Jim Campbell [11:17]
• “Bernie did not act alone, because not only were there these Big Four, but the feeder funds were willfully blind, the SSC was unwittingly blind, and the 17th floor, which was high school graduates, were completely witless.” — Jim Campbell [14:35]
• “The demons of his ego couldn’t figure out how to get out of it. He could not accept-- this is a fundamental thing-- he could not accept losses. How could you be in a trading business and not accept losses?” — Jim Campbell [19:34]
• “He was very good on innovation and cost control… [Bernie’s other] business itself, while it was legitimate, was worth 3 billion dollars, independent of the hedge fund, which was the Ponzi scheme, so yeah, it was successful. It broke down the monopoly of the New York Stock Exchange. It legitimized discount brokerage firms. In a way, he was a populous… He was a genius in exploiting opportunities.” — Jim Campbell [22:07]
• “Initial perception is this is greed. He’s stealing his customer’s money… He wasn’t making all the money. He wasn’t doing it for greed. He was doing it to maintain his reputation in any way he could.” — Jim Campbell [26:57]
• On Ruth Madoff: “I asked Ruth, what did you say when you heard this, and she said her first question was ‘What’s a Ponzi scheme?’ ...She was cult-like programmed by Bernie.” — Jim Campbell [30:01]
• “[Bernie] would even use the words, remorse is a complex thing for me, and until you’ve managed high-net worth investors’ money, you can’t understand what you are saying. ‘I was basically’ --and this is an exact quote-- ‘I was a product of corrupt culture on Wall Street.’” — Jim Campbell [37:02]
• On JP Morgan: “When you get below the scenes, a lot of ugly stuff. They smelled bad stuff, Madoff blocked them from doing due diligence, they got their own money out of hedge funds and left their clients in.” — Jim Campbell [47:58]
• “No other book has looked at the SSC, SIPC, JP Morgan, feeder funds, and has the whole thing and the Big Four because it’s not a story of just Bernie behind a curtain.” — Jim Campbell [54:06]

Resources Mentioned

Madoff Talks: Uncovering the Untold Story Behind the Most Notorious Ponzi Scheme in History by Jim Campbell

Stay Connected:

Syd Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Jim Campbell

Website: http://www.campbellbiztalk.com/

Linkedin: Jim Campbell

Twitter: @JimOCampbell

Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode onStitcher,iTunes, and Spotify.

This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry (www.podcastlaundry.com)

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TSC 93: Reverend Leah Daughtry: A Surprising Life in Religion and Politics

Episode Summary

Syd and his guest Reverend Leah Daughtry break all the rules of polite conversation to discuss faith and politics, and why Rev. Daughtry has hope for America’s future. Rev. Daughtry answers questions such as should we raise a red flag when a politician visits a church, how can we believe in God in the face of evil, and how did the Black Lives Matter movement finally break through to the broader community? Get an inside scoop to the Democratic Convention and a friendship with Kamala Harris in this episode of The Sydcast.

Syd 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, whichLinkedIn 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.

Leah D. Daughtry

Strategist. Organizer-Activist. Author. Public Theologian.

Bishop Leah Daughtry is a nationally recognized organizer-activist, political strategist, author, and Faith leader. She serves as Presiding Prelate of The House of the Lord Churches. Daughtry is Principal of On These Things, LLC, a strategic planning and project management firm that builds and supports partnerships that advance the common good. She is also Co-Convenor of Power Rising, which brings together Black women and girls to leverage their power for the benefit of their communities.

Standing at the intersection of Faith and politics, Daughtry has served as Chief of Staff of the US Department of Labor, and the national Democratic Party, as well as CEO of the 2008 and 2016 Democratic National Conventions, making her the only person in Democratic Party history to hold the position twice.

For her work with communities of Faith, Religion News Service named her one of the dozen most effective Democrats in the Nation on faith and values politics. She is co-author of the NAACP Image Award winning For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Politics (St. Martin's Press, 2018).

The daughter of a long line of community organizer-activists, Leah represents the fifth

consecutive generation of clergy persons in the Daughtry family. A native of Brooklyn, New York, she is a graduate of Dartmouth College and Wesley Theological Seminary.

Insights from this episode:

• Rev. Daughtry’s experience as a Black woman attending Dartmouth during the Reagan administration.
• How Rev. Daughtry keeps her faith in the face of ongoing racial and gender discrimination.
• The impact that COVID had in spurring on the current racial reckoning in America.
• Details on the ways scapegoating is dividing America and how focusing on the “other” distracts from the root of our problems.
• How Rev. Daughtry got the gig of running the Democratic Convention twice.

Quotes from the show:

• “I sort of tie [community activism] to the church because as far as we were concerned, the community activism was an outgrowth of our faith and our theological understanding of what our role as Christians ought to be.” — Leah Daughtry [08:34]
• “The work that I did in politics, I considered that to be ministry” — Leah Daughtry [09:26]
• “Can you not make your point without attacking people by name, people by race? If your entire political and social construct and political leanings are dependent on you attacking other people as part of the basis for your reasoning and rationale, then that’s problematic.” — Leah Daughtry [15:43]
• “When the history is written, the thing that was the tipping point for all of it was COVID… The pandemic made us focus. We couldn’t escape from all of the things surfacing. We couldn’t escape from COVID. We couldn't escape from the inequities. We couldn't escape from George Floyd. We couldn't escape from Donald Trump. It was in our face in a way that made us say, ok I got to do something.” — Leah Daughtry [21:40]
• “I hope that we will remember. And maybe we won’t all be out with signs, but we’ll be more conscious of the things that we say and the tests and the trials that our neighbors may endure… I think we see them more, and I hope we remember.” — Leah Daughtry [26:33]
• “So if God doesn’t force choice on you in what I believe is the greatest decision-- will you choose a life with God or not-- then God’s certainly not going to force choice on you in terms of the vaccine or the virus or anything else. We have choice and we have agency, and that is the greatest thing about us as God’s creation… We must live with the consequences of those decisions.” — Leah Daughtry [40:48]
• “Our humanity--the way we are designed--is that we hope, we believe… We’re hardwired to hope… that’s the part of God that lives in you.” — Leah Daughtry [43:57]
• “I would tell my younger self to be braver, to be bolder, to be more confident because you know more than you think you know.” — Leah Daughtry [56:12]

Stay Connected:

Syd Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Leah Daughtry

Website: https://leahdaughtry.com/

Linkedin: Leah D. Daughtry

Twitter: @LeahDaughtry

Facebook: Leah Daughtry

Instagram: @leahdaughtry

Youtube: Leah Daughtry

Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode onStitcher,iTunes, and Spotify.

This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry (www.podcastlaundry.com)

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TSC 92: Henry Cisneros: A Life of Service, from the Barrio to the Mayor's Office to Clinton's Cabinet

Episode Summary

The Honorable Henry Cisneros, former mayor of San Antonio and HUD Secretary, joins The Sydcast to talk about his life’s work in politics from city council to the president’s cabinet. Mr. Cisneros speaks of the power of local government, place-based practices, and entrepreneurial thinking in politics. Hear Mr. Cisneros’s take on the atomization of our news sources, free enterprise and Latinos in Texas, how to make everyday count, and more in this episode of The Sydcast.

Syd 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, whichLinkedIn 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.

Henry Cisneros

Chairman of American Triple I Partners, LLC.

Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors & Equity Owner,

Siebert, Williams, Shank, LLC.

Founder & Chairman, City View

Henry Cisneros is Chairman of American Triple I, an infrastructure investment firm based in New York. He is also a Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors & Equity Owner of Shank Williams Cisneros & Co., L.L.C, and Principal of Siebert Williams Shank & Co., LLC. a national municipal and corporate finance firm. Mr. Cisneros is the Founder and Chairman of CityView, which is a partner in building more than 100 communities in 13 states, building more than 7,000 homes with a total value of over $5 billion.

Mr. Cisneros’ community-building career began at the local level. After serving three terms as a City Councilmember, in 1981, Mr. Cisneros became the first Hispanic-American mayor of a major U.S. city, San Antonio, Texas. During his four terms as Mayor, he helped rebuild the city’s economic base and spurred the creation of jobs through massive infrastructure and downtown improvements.

In 1984, Mr. Cisneros was interviewed by the Democratic Presidential nominee as a possible candidate for Vice President of the United States and in 1986 was selected as the “Outstanding Mayor” in the nation by City and State Magazine. After completing four terms as Mayor, Mr. Cisneros formed Cisneros Asset Management Company, a fixed income management firm operating nationally and ranked at the time as the second fastest growing money manager in the nation.

In 1992, President Clinton appointed Mr. Cisneros to be Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. As a member of President Clinton’s Cabinet, Secretary Cisneros has been credited with initiating the revitalization of many of the nation’s public housing developments and with formulating policies which contributed to achieving the nation’s highest ever homeownership rate. In his role as the President’s chief representative to the nation’s cities, Mr. Cisneros personally worked in more than 200 U.S. cities in every one of the 50 states.

After leaving HUD in 1997, Mr. Cisneros was president and chief operating officer of Univision Communications, the Spanish-language broadcaster which has become the fifth-most-watched television network in the nation. Mr. Cisneros served on Univision’s Board of Directors until 2020. Mr. Cisneros has served as President of the National League of Cities, as Deputy Chair of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, and as Vice-Chairman of Habitat for Humanity International. Mr. Cisneros remains active in San Antonio’s leadership where he is former Chairman of the San Antonio Chamber of Commerce, the San Antonio Economic Development Foundation, the San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, and BioMed SA. He is a former member of the advisory board of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Mr. Cisneros has been inducted into the National Association of Homebuilders (NAHB) “Builders Hall of Fame”.

Mr. Cisneros has also been author or editor of several books including: Interwoven Destinies: Cities and the Nation. His book project with former HUD Secretary Jack Kemp, Opportunity and Progress: A Bipartisan Platform for National Housing Policy, was presented the Common Purpose Award for demonstrating the potential of bipartisan cooperation and Casa y Comunidad: Latino Home and Neighborhood Design was awarded the Benjamin Franklin Silver Medal in the category of best business book of 2006. In 2017 he co-authored Building Equitable Cities. Mr. Cisneros co-authored The Texas Triangle: An Emerging Power in the Global Economy, release date May 11, 2021.

Mr. Cisneros holds a Bachelor of Arts and a master’s degree in Urban and Regional Planning from Texas A&M University, where he has been designated a Distinguished Alumnus. He earned a Master’s degree in Public Administration from Harvard University, was a graduate assistant in urban economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, holds a Doctorate in Public Administration from George Washington University, and has been awarded more than 20 honorary doctorates from leading universities. Texas A&M University at San Antonio is the site of the Cisneros Center for Emerging Leaders.

He served as an infantry officer in the United States Army. Mr. Cisneros is married to Mary Alice P. Cisneros, who from 2007–2011 served on San Antonio’s City Council. They have three children – Teresa, Mercedes, and John Paul – and four grandchildren.

Insights from this episode:

• Reflections on the values of education and how cities can provide free college education.
• How local government can function in entrepreneurial ways and possibilities of place-based, bottom up politics.
• Mr. Cisneros journey to mayor and Clinton’s cabinet, along with an inside look into cabinet meetings and the interplay between policy and White House obligations.
• Mr. Cisneros insights into politicians like the Clintons, FDR, and Obama.
• Reasons why Texas won’t turn blue anytime soon.

Quotes from the show:

• “It took a lot of focus and belief in education [to get Henry and his siblings through college]. Our family has almost a secular faith in education.” — Henry Cisneros [11:24]
• “[Cities] can be masters of their own destinies, can be self-reliant entities, and do things of that nature [such as providing free college education] that they know they need for their goals.” — Henry Cisneros [14:32]
• “I wanted to do something in my life and my career of service that didn’t include necessarily the formal establishment ways of service -- being in the military, being the foreign service-- but I fell in love with the notion of helping build the cities.” — Henry Cisneros [17:36]
• “What I found in the practices of the city government were so antiquated, so unfair, so unjust that I just couldn’t abide it. And I ended up, quite against my own nature, being a firebrand, populace city council member.” — Henry Cisneros [21:24]
• “An entrepreneur sees a problem, and rather than walking away, it makes them crazy. And they try to fix it. They don’t always succeed in fixing it, but that’s what they try to do.” — Syd Finkelstein [23:22]
• “When you approach people with practical solutions instead of labels, like what is properly conservative or what is liberal, radical. When you’re talking about solutions, you can get somewhere. We used to say, there’s no democratic or republican-- no liberal or conservative-- way to pick up the garbage or to re-develop a neighborhood.” — Henry Cisneros [26:47]
• On place-based politics: “It’s not about the department in Washington. It’s not about the extended bureaucracy across the country. It’s about how it appears on the ground… We kind of flipped the organizational chart upside down.” — Henry Cisneros [36:03]
• On the population growth in Texas: “Think about it, who’s coming? It’s people who are dissatisfied and escaping conditions in other states, which they regard as too progressive.” — Henry Cisneros [51:02]
• “A mix of things results in the Latino community not being the ingredient that’s going to turn Texas blue. It’s beginning to split.” — Henry Cisneros [52:23]
• “There’s no longer broadcasting; there’s narrowcasting.” — Henry Cisneros [53:43]
• “Learn all you can and keep an open mind. Think well of the world and other people, and let their ideas get into your world and ferment. You’ll be a better person for it. You’ll be a happier person. You’ll be a unifier.” — Henry Cisneros [56:11]

Resources Mentioned

Inside Bureaucracy by Anthony Downs

Stay Connected:

Syd Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Henry Cisneros

Website: https://www.tripleipartners.com/henry-cisneros/

Linkedin: Henry Cisneros

Twitter: @henrycisneros

Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode onStitcher,iTunes, and Spotify.

This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry (www.podcastlaundry.com)

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TSC 91: Tom Mendoza: Technology and Culture from a Silicon Valley Pioneer

Episode Summary

Tom Mendoza – NY kid who boot-strapped a career of impact; philanthropist; evangelist for building strong corporate cultures and how to do it (“Catch Someone Doing Something Right”); former senior Silicon Valley executive at NetApp; story-teller; teacher; engaging conversationalist. In other words, the perfect Sydcast guest.

Syd 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, whichLinkedIn 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.

Tom Mendoza

Former Vice Chairman, NetApp Inc.

Tom Mendoza is the former Vice Chairman at NetApp. He joined in 1994 and was responsible for sales until becoming president in 2000. In 2009, he became vice chairman. In that same year NetApp was voted the #1 company in America to work for (and was in the top 10 places to work for more than a decade).

Tom has given talks on the power of corporate culture and leadership all over the world to people in such diverse organizations as the U.S. Marine Corps, West Point, CIO forums, Oracle's Leaders Circle, and Stanford University. In 2009 he was the co recipient with NetApp Chairman Dan Warmenhoven of the Morgan Stanley Leadership Award for Global Commerce.

Tom holds a BA degree from the University of Notre Dame and is an alumnus of Stanford University's Executive Business Program. In September 2000 Notre Dame renamed its business school the Mendoza College of Business after an endowment made by Tom.

Insights from this episode:

• Reflections on how to honor and remember the fathers in our lives.
• A look into the cutting edge of the technology industry in the early 90s, the impact of immigrants on the tech industry over the years, and why Tom loves Zoom.
• What’s behind the American philanthropic spirit and Tom’s experience donating 30 million dollars to Notre Dame.
• How to have high expectations, recognition of the individual, and humanity in business and in life and the power of catching someone doing something right.

Quotes from the show:

• “More than 50% of the top 200 startups in the last decade are founded by immigrants… technology or leadership can come from anywhere.” — Tom Mendoza [16:51]
• On his dad: “He always felt the need to make sure that people felt appreciated, which had a big influence on me.” — Tom Mendoza [19:06]
• On the conditions of his endowed scholarship: “Number one: I don’t care if it’s man, woman, Black, white, it’s got to be the kid’s dream to go to Notre Dame. So if you give the kid the Mendoza scholarship, and that kid says I’m going to consider it, you blew it… Whatever school you’re attached to and care about, there’s an amazing amount of people really wanting to go there.” — Tom Mendoza [21:44]
• “If you’re going to give back, I felt education was the best thing you could give to the people. Anyone who criticizes what people give to probably don’t give to anything… I felt that that’s a gift that really does keep on giving. If you give people an education that might not have got it, you’re helping the planet, you’re helping the people.” — Tom Mendoza [30:40]
• “You don’t get to choose how your money’s being spent when you pay taxes. You get to choose how your donations are being used.” — Syd Finkelstein [33:05]
• “What’s networking about? When you help other people, that’s actually the best way to help yourself.” — Syd Finkelstein [34:50]
• On NetApp’s success: “We grew from 0 to 1 billion in revenue in six years.” — Tom Mendoza [39:48]
• “What is the behavior that we want to witness wherever we do business in the world? That’s the culture that we want to promote, which means if we sign up for it, that’s the action we will take, that’s how we will act, that’s what we’ll hire to, that’s what we will rate people against.” — Tom Mendoza [45:33]
• “It’s a great filter when you make decisions to ask yourself if you’re proud of that decision — Tom Mendoza [46:07]
• “No matter what you’re doing there’s always room to help out other people, to influence other people.” — Syd Finkelstein [48:51]
• “People emulate the behavior you recognize. That’s why it’s important you’re thoughtful about how you give recognition.” — Tom Mendoza [54:53]

Stay Connected:

Syd Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Tom Mendoza

Linkedin: Tom Mendoza

Twitter: @TomMendozaTalks

Forbes: Tom Mendoza Contributor Profile

Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode onStitcher,iTunes, and Spotify.

This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry (www.podcastlaundry.com)

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Episode Summary

Finding the right place to start when it comes to investing in companies can appear mind-boggling, especially when times are constantly changing. Eric Jackson, President of EMJ Capitol, explains the complexities of companies, how to find the best investments, and the process of how he got started. Syd joins Eric Jackson to understand how to invest in and research the up-and-coming companies, niches, and trends.

Syd 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, whichLinkedIn 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.

Eric Jackson

Eric Jackson, Ph.D., is the President and Portfolio Manager of EMJ Capital, Ltd., which he founded in 2017. Eric was previously involved as an investor in Yahoo and Viacom as a Manager Director at SpringOwl Event Driven Partners from 2014 - 2016. Eric co-founded and was the Portfolio Manager of Ironfire Capital LLC from 2008 - 2014. He was President of Jackson Leadership Systems from 2004 - 2007, and was Vice President of Business Development at VoiceGenie Technologies, Inc. from 2000 - 2004.

Eric has a Ph.D. in Management from the Columbia Business School (2002) and a BA in English Literature from McGill University (1994).

Insights from this episode:

• The essentials of researching companies and their niches in order to start investments.
• Advantages of working at a startup and networking with the people around you to get a foot in the door.
• Benefits of not being afraid to take risks and put your name in the open, where the outcome can vary.
• Aspects of the ever-changing market, the situation with GameStop, and Covid-19’s long-lasting adjustments to the market.
• Details on how some businesses will continue to stay the same, the unknown of what will come next, and succeeding in the podcast industry.

Quotes from the show:

• “My philosophy is that I'm really trying to look for, I call it the next generation of FANG Stocks. So I tend not to invest in the Netflix and Facebooks of the world.” – Eric Jackson [19:04]
• “So that’s where the pressure comes in. Just trying to balance your view of the world, your faith in your original research...and all the pressure that comes with having a good year.” – Eric Jackson [22:35]
• On the stock market: “You got to be right twice, when you get in and when you get out.” – Syd Finkelstein [23:45]
• On GameStop and the influx of small investing: “I think that people should try. I think they should experiment. I mean the only way that I learned is by making terrible mistakes. That’s the only path to wisdom.” – Eric Jackson [29:15]
• “Everything we do plants various seeds, some good seeds, some bad seeds out there.” – Syd Finkelstein [36:05]
• On big bosses: “Because they look for unusual talent. There’s standard talent and that’s fine...and the people who change the world the most are the unusual talent.” – Syd Finkelstein [39:56]
• Eric on Journalism: “Be clear about what your belief is, what your argument is, because that’s an investment. You got to write a story.” – Eric Jackson [41:21]
• Covid-19 and its effects: The longer people have to adjust to this new reality and change their own behaviors, they are going to create new behaviors...So, what are the companies that are going to benefit from the new patterns?” – Eric Jackson [46:40]
• On effects of Covid-19 and other historical events: “I don’t think the world isn’t going to completely change overnight…There are going to be some major shifts in views and attitudes and expectations throughout layers of organizations.” – Eric Jackson [51:50]
• On podcasts and streaming: “The long term secular transfer of media is not very bright, but there are going to be these rays of sunshine…stars that emerge in the niches.” – Eric Jackson [56:22]
• Eric’s advice to himself: “The persevering, even at the point where you think you don't know how you’re gonna do it, always has led to amazing things on the other side.” – Eric Jackson [59:29]

Stay Connected:

Syd Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Eric Jackson

LinkedIn: Eric Jackson

Twitter: @ericjackson

Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode onStitcher,iTunes, and Spotify.

This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry (www.podcastlaundry.com)

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Episode Summary

Take a trip through time with Sid Ganis as he shares how a couple of rejection letters shaped his amazing and long career as a motion picture executive and producer. Movie buffs will revel in his stories about working closely with George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and Francis Ford Coppola, what happens off-camera during awards shows, and how Hollywood is evolving into a more socially conscious industry.

Syd 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, whichLinkedIn 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.

Sid Ganis

Marketing, publicity, distribution, production – Sid Ganis has seemingly done it all. He got his start at 20th Century-Fox in New York City in the early 1960s, and after stints at Fox, Columbia, and Seven Arts he became Senior Vice President at Lucasfilm in 1979, and worked with George Lucas in marketing such blockbusters as “The Empire Strikes Back,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.” In the 1980s he segued to prexy at Paramount where he oversaw such hits as “Top Gun” “Fatal Attraction” and “Ghost.” From 1992 to 1996, he returned to Columbia as Vice Chairman and President of worldwide marketing for Columbia/Tristar, and then in 1996 founded his own company, Out of the Blue Entertainment. With wife Nancy as a partner, and in association with Adam Sandler, he produced “Big Daddy,” “Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo,” “Mr. Deeds,” and “Akeelah and the Bee”.

Sid has had a distinguished career in Hollywood as an executive at major studios including Sony Pictures, Lucasfilm, Warner Bros., and Paramount. He served on the board of directors of Marvel Entertainment until its sale to Disney in 2009. During that time, Marvel developed Spider-Man, Iron Man, and The Avengers, among other films. He has served on the boards of FIND (Film Independent) and the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive. He currently serves as co-chairman of the New York Chinese Film Festival.

Sid is known throughout the industry as the former president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, a prestigious position he held for four consecutive years. He has led the development of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, which is the world's premier museum devoted to exploring and curating the history and future of the moving image. He was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2013 Gabby Awards.

Insights from this episode:

• How luck and learning allowed Sid to break into the entertainment industry and continued to help him create a long and distinguished career as a movie executive.
• Details on working with George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, and others on blockbuster movies and what new directors Sid is impressed by.
• Benefits of advancing technology in the movie industry and how streaming platforms affect the ways movies are made.
• Secrets of what it is actually like to be friends with the Hollywood elite and how they really live.
• Details on how Hollywood, movies, and personal responsibility have evolved over the last several decades.

Quotes from the show:

• Syd’s take on Sid’s first job: “You were there and you had a good time, but you were learning. It was all about learning.” – Syd Finkelstein [12:06]
• Sid’s thoughts on Steven Spielberg: “He’s a consummate artist and he knows the art of film backward and forward, knows how to do it in such an interesting and unique way movie after movie.” – Sid Ganis [20:29]
• “The myth about Hollywood is that everybody lives in some ivory tower and [they] don’t know the basics in life and that is just not true.” – Sid Ganis [20:59]
• “Successful people in the [entertainment] business are successful and people and often have the very same values as most all of us have.” – Sid Ganis [21:08]
• “I love movies and the older I get and the longer I’ve been in this business the more I absolutely understand that I love movies and why I love movies - it’s an amazing art form.” – Sid Ganis [23:02]
• What distinguishes great directors: “They do their work in epic style even if it’s a tiny, little, small movie they do it in epic style.” – Sid Ganis [25:45]
• On watching movies in a theater versus a streaming service: “Entertainment as I know it and believe that people should consume it, there’s nothing like having that collective experience about being in a space [together] and watching a film.” – Sid Ganis [28:41]
• “These movies for Netflix and Amazon and now Apple, they’re being made by some of the same talent that have been making movies and that are starring … so many great stars have moved to (streaming services).” – Syd Finkelstein [29:25]
• On evolving standards: “There’s more empathy and understanding of how other people are perceiving what, maybe, the majority considers funny.” – Syd Finkelstein [45:49]
• Sid’s advice to young Sid: “Stay curious about everything that you don’t know about and find out what’s up in the world and be a good guy and be with your fellow human beings.” – Sid Ganis [49:46]
• Further advice from Sid: “Be a good person and go after what you’re interested in and don’t be ridiculously aggressive, be wise and be confident.” – Sid Ganis [50:21]

Stay Connected:

Syd Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Sid Ganis

Facebook: Sid Ganis

Twitter: @GanisSid

Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode onStitcher,iTunes, and Spotify.

This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry (www.podcastlaundry.com)

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Episode Summary

Are you an extrovert or an introvert? Karl Moore has interviewed hundreds of CEOs and concluded that many were neither. Or, more precisely, many were both. These “ambiverts,” who were outgoing when the situation called for it, introspective at other times, adjusted to the situation they were in. Which holds a pretty powerful lesson for each of us, whether it is how to communicate more effectively or how to show up at work and at home. Syd and Karl dig into this, and more, in this episode of The Sydcast.

Syd 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, whichLinkedIn 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.

Karl Moore

Associate Professor, Desautels Faculty of Management, McGill University

Associate Fellow, Green Templeton College, Oxford University

Prior to his academic career, Dr. Moore worked for eleven years in Canada sales and marketing management positions with IBM, and Hitachi. Before McGill he taught at Oxford University for five years.

He has taught extensively in executive education and MBA programs including at Oxford, Cambridge, Stanford, Harvard, IMD, LBS, INSEAD, Duke, McGill, Bangalore, Renmin (Beijing), and Darden. His publications include +150 articles, and 10 books, with +3,700 Google Scholar citations. His next book, Introverted/Ambiverted/Extroverted Leaders is for Stanford University Press. His research on Quiet Leaders was recently highlighted in the Schumpeter Column of The Economist. He has recently presented his research on Introverts at Harvard Business School, Oxford, and the Stanford Business School.

For nine years, Karl did a weekly video interview for the Globe and Mail called “Talking Management,” where he interviewed CEOs one week and the world’s leading management scholars the other. For 10 years Karl has blogged for Forbes on business and leadership. He hosts a weekly program, “The CEO Series” on CJAD, where he interviews global thought and business leaders one-on-one for an hour. Previous guests include Justin Trudeau, Nobel Prize Winner Muhammed Yunus, and Eileen Murry, co-CEO of Bridgewater Associates. The show appeared as a weekly column for the National Post for two years and is now published in French for Les Affaires. In November of 2020, Karl and Indigenous Graduate Students started a biweekly column for the Globe and Mail, Indigenous Leaders where Wahi and Karl interview an Indigenous Leader in Canada and elsewhere. Karl has interviewed +1,000 CEOs, Prime Ministers, Generals and other senior leaders, among the most in the world, one of the few advantages of age is that you have done it longer than most everyone else.

Karl was nominated for a Thinkers50 Distinguished Achievement Awards in the Leadership Category for his work on introverts/extroverts in the C-Suite & Millennials/Generation Z.

Insights from this episode:

• Differences between Canada and America, their CEOs, and the balancing between self-confidence and humility by leaders.
• Defining an ambivert, explaining extrovert and introvert breaks, and the importance of authenticity.
• Leaders’ and ambiverts’ understanding of how to customize and adjust to the situation around them.
• The issues with implicit bias and the importance of listening to other communities, especially indigenous leaders.
• The character traits and actions needed in becoming a great leader/CEO, interviewing processes, and advice from Karl to the youth.

Quotes from the show:

• “But I think these days in COVID-19, more CEOs in the US around the world are going a little bit more humble mode, but there is still that need for the inspiring leadership of the CEO to say, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we’re gonna make it through. We have the abilities, the strength, and the wonderful capabilities.’” — Karl Moore [13:52]
• “And so an ambivert is someone who can act like an introvert at times and an extrovert at other times.” — Karl Moore [15:48]
• “So the tendency of an extrovert is to do that, but you might have to fake it till you make it. In the sense that we understand that the right thing is to be more like an introvert and listen…. but we have to bite our tongues.” — Karl Moore [19:08]
• “So you might be a square peg in a round hole…. I kinda found where my personality and who I am fit with the nature of my job, so I think that’s what you want in the medium term to find out where it’s a great fit, but still be flexible on occasion.” — Karl Moore [25:35]
• “The ability to listen and come up with some pretty good questions makes a difference.” — Karl Moore [28:48]
• “How do you know you’re done is when you hear nothing new.” — Karl Moore [36:01]
• On the topic of introversion and extroversion: “And so the key thing is, you have to be just willing. You have to recognize that you can learn this.” — Syd Finkelstein [46:22]
• “Because so many people frame others and categorize others and of course we see that with male/female. We see that with black/white and other kinds of simplifications and as you know it's a very very powerful thing, implicit bias.” — Syd Finkelstein [51:04]
• “But two things strike me is that you gotta deliver, you gotta perform in your earlier job….but you also know how to build networks and work with people effectively.” — Karl Moore [57:42]
• “And part of it is saying, go broad, that specific sets of knowledge are gonna become dated, but the ability to learn and think is good for your life.” — Karl Moore [1:00:03]

Stay Connected:

Syd Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Karl Moore

Website: https://www.mcgill.ca/desautels/karl-moore

Linkedin: Karl Moore

Twitter: @profkjmoore

Forbes: Karl Moore's Blog

SoundCloud: CEO Series

Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode onStitcher,iTunes, and Spotify.

This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry (www.podcastlaundry.com)

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Art has long been considered a commodity but, thanks in large part to a technologically connected world, accessibility and availability have helped turn creative genius into “cultural capital.” Chad Elias combines an art history lecture with a business seminar to provide a comprehensive lesson on the ways art adds value beyond its beauty. Syd reconnects with his former teacher to discuss Andy Warhol, Banksy, and the business of art, in this episode of The Sydcast.

Syd 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, whichLinkedIn 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.

Chad Elias

Chad Elias is an Assistant Professor of Art History at Dartmouth College and Tate Modern Research Fellow. His first book, Posthumous Images: Contemporary Art and Memory Politics in Post-Civil War Lebanon, was published by Duke University Press in 2018. Reviews of Posthumous Images have appeared in Arab Studies Quarterly, Art Journal, Art Papers, the Journal of Arabic Literature, Object, and Third Text.

In collaboration with the Hood Museum, Chad organized a multidisciplinary symposium, “Futures Uncertain: A Symposium on Contemporary Art in the Anthropocene,” which explored questions relating to resource extraction, carbon imaginaries, species extinction and evocations of the deep past and worlds-to-come in contemporary art.

Another research project analyzed how contemporary artists critically engage with artificial intelligence (AI), machine vision, virtual reality, and 3D printing as rapidly evolving forms that are marked by indeterminacies. The project argues that these technologies serve to unsettle identity formations that span ontological boundaries (i.e. between human and non-human actants) and established hierarchies that are encoded across racial and gender lines.

Insights from this episode:

• Details on what contemporary art is, how it got started, and the impact that term has had on art history.
• Benefits to an artist of outsourcing their work and why art has become a business-class asset.
• Difficulties associated with pricing art, how new technology is impacting value, and where there is room for improvement.
• How the process of buying art is changing and is making art more accessible to greater audiences.
• Parallels between the art and business world and the success that happens when they intersect.
• How artists like Andy Warhol and Banksy capitalize on their art and how that has impacted the image of the value of art.

Quotes from the show:

• “During the postmodern period, and in the aftermath, art became increasingly detached from the notion of manual or technical skill.” — Chad Elias [23:35]
• “It’s no accident that contemporary artists also start to think of their work as something that is no longer just tied to materialized forms of production but actually to the production of ideas.” — Chad Elias [25:31]
• On finding the parallels between art and business: “It involves dispensing with the mythology of the romantic artist who is somehow detached from commercial and economic interest and just makes work for the love of art.” — Chad Elias [26:31]
• “It’s difficult to determine the pricing systems that operate in contemporary art, partly because of the opacity of the system.” — Chad Elias [29:23]
• “You can draw a connection between the critical or symbolic value that is attached to a particular artist’s practice over time and the economic value that is assigned to their work.” — Chad Elias [31:05]
• “The art world, and the art market in particular, is a quite curious economy.” — Chad Elias [34:06]
• “[Andy Warhol] was considered, I don’t know if it’s right to say he was a great artist, but he certainly was a very successful, but also highly influential artist.” — Syd Finkelstein [40:19]
• On Banksy: “The anonymity of the artist is part of the mystique and draw.” — Chad Elias [43:45]
• On making money: “When someone does or has an image of doing really good things for society, but makes a lot of money doing it, there’s a negative reaction to that person.” — Syd Finkelstein [48:10]
• “Even the idea of authenticity, of sincerity, in contemporary art is held with a large degree of suspicion.” — Chad Elias [59:27]

Stay Connected:

Syd Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Chad Elias

Email: Chad.Elias@Dartmouth.edu

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Generational differences may seem to divide us but there is one thing that unites us all, change. Change is the catalyst that propels each new generation to make an impact and leave their mark on civilization and Moj Mahdara has secured her legacy with the launch of Beautycon, a diverse and inclusive beauty brand that aims to change the popular perception of beauty and our access to it. Moj and Syd discuss all things change; how to see it, how to make it happen, and most of all, how to accept it, in this episode of The Sydcast.

Syd 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, whichLinkedIn 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.

Moj Mahdara

Moj Mahdara is an entrepreneur and CEO. She is an expert in the beauty, wellness and CPG market and currently the CEO of Beautycon, a globally-recognized community for content creators, celebrities, fans, and brands. As CEO, she is responsible for driving brand vision for Beautycon and its growth initiatives, launching the brand globally, which include strategic media partnerships, content development, market intelligence, and e-commerce over the past 5 years.

Mahdara is an accomplished speaker, business figure and an active investor with international recognition for her expertise in Gen Z and Millennial consumer profiles and behaviors. She has been named to multiple lists over the years, including ones in Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire magazine; Fast Company’s “Most Creative People” list, The Hollywood Reporter’s “Top 25 Most Powerful Digital Players,” Women’s Wear Daily’s “Digital Power Posse” list and Variety’s “Digital Entertainment Execs to Watch,” and has traveled nationally and internationally to present Beautycon’s first market intelligence white paper, FOMO Vol. 1.

Additionally, Moj is an active investor, and working on her first book and focused on bringing the industry together via Beauty United.org

Moj resides in Los Angeles with her wife, Professor Dr. Roya Rastegar, their son, Neev, and their dog, Sufi.

Insights from this episode:

• Differences between the generations, what sets Gen Z apart from the others, and why that matters in business and brand building.
• Reasons why businesses need to anticipate and adapt to changing platforms to remain relevant and successful.
• Details behind the creation of Beautycon, how COVID has impacted growth, and what Moj sees in the future for the brand.
• Benefits of leaning into change and providing the opportunity for others to change.
• Difficulties that Moj sees in the world and what can be done to bring about positive change.

Quotes from the show:

• “[Gen Z] do believe in the concept of emoting power, intention, and I find them to be very, very inspiring.” — Moj Mahdara [12:32]
• “I think Walt Disney and Disney are some of the greatest North Stars of marketing we’ve ever seen and to think about [Beautycon] through that lens has always been inspiring to me.” — Moj Mahdara [19:32]
• On the creation of Beautycon: “The idea was how do we build this at-scale for everybody who wants to enjoy the beauty and wellness industry.” — Moj Mahdara [20:40]
• On COVID’s impact on Beautycon: “We weren’t set up to be able weather a two-year experiential storm and pivot into digital.” — Moj Mahdara [22:05]
• On the rise of virtual conferences: “Some of these conferences now have attendance that is far beyond anything before because there’s no friction, there’s no cost.” — Syd Finkelstein [22:41]
• “What’s missing from these [virtual] conferences and events is the human connection and the opportunity for serendipity.” — Syd Finkelstein [23:03]
• “In life, what I have learned is that you always need to give people the opportunity to change. I think the kindest thing you can do for someone that you love is give them the opportunity to change.” — Moj Mahdara [29:05]
• “I think fear and anxiety drives most of people’s misunderstandings around each other.” — Moj Mahdara [31:12]
• “It will be interesting to see what happens as Gen X comes into more executive leadership roles. I am very curious to see what happens.” — Moj Mahdara [34:33]
• “We are really at a time and a place where there are just too many people that aren’t being taken care of.” — Moj Mahdara [37:47]

Stay Connected:

Syd Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Moj Mahdara

Twitter: @mojism

Twitter: @beautycon

Instagram: @mojism

Instagram: @beautycon

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This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry (www.podcastlaundry.com)

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Sara Mathew would describe herself as an accidental CEO, someone more lucky than good, but luck isn’t what propelled Sara from clerk to vice president at Procter and Gamble, it was because Sara gets things done. But to become CEO and Chair of Dun & Bradstreet, Sara had to overcome a singular challenge, herself. In this episode of The Sydcast, Syd and Sara talk about the benefits of feedback and failure, discomfort and self-awareness, and how everyone has the potential to make their own luck.

Syd 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, whichLinkedIn 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.

Sara Mathew

Ms. Mathew is the Former Chairman and CEO of D&B. She joined D&B in August 2001 as its Chief Financial Officer (CFO), after 18 years at Procter and Gamble. At D&B she was appointed CFO and SVP of International in 2005, CFO and President of the U.S. business in 2006, and President and Chief Operating Officer in 2007. She was named Chief Executive Officer in January 2010 and assumed the role of Chairman of the Board

in July of that year, a position she held until her retirement in 2013. Ms. Mathew was a member of D&B’s Board of Directors from 2008 to 2013.

During her tenure at D&B, Ms. Mathew was instrumental in transforming D&B from a data company to a more innovative, digital enterprise, leveraging technological advances to expand its reach to new customers and structural changes to transform the underperforming international business. She led the re-build of D&B’s core technology platform and data assets, introducing Data-as-a-Service (DaaS) to access new customers and accelerating Big Data Analytics to create new insights for its existing customer base.

Ms. Mathew has received numerous accolades during her tenure at D&B. In 2012, she was named to FT’s 50 Women at the top; in 2013, Top Value Creator in the S&P 500 by Chief Executive magazine; in 2015 NACD’s Directorship 100 list; in 2017, FWA’s Woman of the Year; in 2018 Ascend/Deloitte’s Pan Asian Director of the year. In 2019, Sara was awarded NACD Director of the Year for the New Jersey Chapter in 2019 and is the recipient of P&G’s John G Smale Award for outstanding alumni in 2020. Prior to D&B, Ms. Mathew spent 18 years at Procter of & Gamble.

Ms. Mathew currently Chairs the Board of Freddie Mac and serves on the Boards of State Street (Chair of the Comp), Reckitt Benckiser, and NextGen SPAC. She has previously served on the Boards of Campbell Soup, Avon, and Shire and has about 35 years of cumulative Board service. Sara holds a bachelor's degree in physics, chemistry and mathematics from the Women's Christian College in Madras, India, and a master’s degree in business administration from Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Insights from this episode:

• Details on why Sara needed to change her leadership style and how she solved the problem by adjusting her negative behaviors.
• How to incorporate and deliver negative feedback to make the experience beneficial to all parties.
• Reasons why Sara’s competitive nature powered her success when she had plans to be a trophy wife.
• Benefits that can be gained when you lean into discomfort by taking risks, failing at something, apologizing, and growing through those uncomfortable experiences.
• Difficulties associated with being a woman and a CEO, why there are so few women in higher positions in businesses, and what can be done to improve those conditions.
• How to make your own luck by loving what you do.

Quotes from the show:

• “That’s my drive for getting things done. That is who I am. That’s actually so innate in my wiring that if I make a commitment, I’m going to make it happen.” — Sara Mathew
• “To me, today, leadership is about behavior. It’s that simple. It is how other people perceive what you do.” — Sara Mathew
• “The role of a leader is to extract the best out of people.” — Sara Mathew
• “Self-awareness is almost like the secret elixir for great leaders.” — Syd Finkelstein
• On becoming a good leader: “Don’t say, ‘How did I do,’ say, ‘What could I have done better?” — Syd Finkelstein
• On her ambition: “Whatever I do I want to do exceptionally well and the bar is me. It’s not somebody else, it’s usually me.” — Sara Mathew
• “I think failure is the most important part of life … and when you fail you have to learn to pick yourself up and move forward. Focus on the solution, don’t obsess about the problem.” — Sara Mathew
• “It’s those times that I’ve been hit the hardest that I learned the most. That’s what I mean by leaning in.” — Sara Mathew
• On advancing your career: “People really have to, not just aspire, but you have to produce, you’ve got to be a performer.” — Syd Finkelstein
• “If you don’t love what you do, go find something else that you really love because if you love what you do, you’re really good at it, that’s where the magic begins then other people see that and want to help you just that little bit farther.”” — Sara Mathew

Resources:

Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell

Stay Connected:

Syd Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Sara Mathew

LinkedIn: Sara Mathew

Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode onStitcher,iTunes, and Spotify.

This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry (www.podcastlaundry.com)

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Raised to believe she could be anything, Christine Spadafor has done almost everything, from competitive ice-skater to Harvard Law School to CEO. And a dozen other pretty cool things too. Which makes her an ideal Sydcast guest! While her deep background in healthcare helped her through her own personal health crisis, it has been her indomitable spirit and intellectual restlessness that has really powered Christine’s incredible journey, in this episode of The Sydcast.

Syd 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, whichLinkedIn 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.

Christine Spadafor

Christine J. Spadafor is an experienced public and private company board director with deep expertise in risk management, regulatory compliance, and ESG. She has a demonstrated track record leading successful large-scale transformational initiatives at the intersection of strategy, operations, finance, and change management in both domestic and global markets across a broad spectrum of industries.

Christine is CEO of SpadaforClay Group, a management consulting firm. She serves as an Independent Director on the boards of highly regulated companies: Chair of Governance and Nominating Committee and member of the audit committee of Boyd Gaming, Chair of Quality and Compliance Committee of Kindred at Home, and she serves on the advisory board WBUR, a premier National Public Radio station. She is also a regular commentator on the BBC World Service “Business Matters” global radio broadcast and podcast.

For nearly 10 years, Christine dedicated her extensive experience in financial, operational, and organizational management to St. Judes Ranch for Children — a nationally recognized nonprofit that cares for homeless and abused children — and led an innovative turnaround that received national acclaim.

A graduate of Harvard Law School and the Harvard School of Public Health, Christine was selected by the Business Section of the American Bar Association/Direct Women as one of the top 20 female attorneys with outstanding expertise for corporate board service. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she co-authored a workplace health treatise that was published by Johns Hopkins University. She is a lecturer on Strategic Leadership in the Visiting Executive Program at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth University, a lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School of Business, and is a frequent speaker addressing board governance topics and “Women in Leadership” topics.

Christine has been awarded two Doctor of Humane Letters degrees — received in recognition of her professional accomplishments and lifelong contributions to vulnerable and at-risk populations.

Insights from this episode:

• Details on Christine’s upbringing that had a solid base in feminism and hard work and lead to her expansive education and accomplishments.
• Reasons why Christine became a nurse but didn’t pursue that career to a doctorate and the winding path that led her to graduate from Harvard Law School.
• Benefits of having a medical degree as a lawyer and how that influenced Christine’s law career.
• How to recognize and develop your own opportunities and control your success.
• Difficulties women have and still face in attaining education and career goals and the need for mentors and sponsors to act as your champion.
• Details on Christine’s struggle with a brain tumor to a successful end.

Quotes from the show:

• On her thoughts of life after high school: “It felt as though my head was filled with empty bookshelves and I needed to leave town to go and fill them up.” — Christine Spadafor
• “I worked in the medical ICU (Intensive Care Unit), which is one of the most meaningful and greatest privileges I’ve had professionally.” — Christine Spadafor
• “I was just really intellectually restless … and I still feel it.” — Christine Spadafor
• “Someone mentioned MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) to me in high school and I had no idea what it was and now here I am at MIT.” — Christine Spadafor
• “While you learned the law in law school, it’s different practicing law and really understanding how each of those [law] specialties work.” — Christine Spadafor
• On how she became in-house counsel: “It’s about creating your own opportunities, not just waiting for that job description to come through.” — Christine Spadafor
• On being compensated for your work: “I think another way for ‘payment’ is to not only give you the big title but to give you the authority.” — Christine Spadafor
• “It’s a stereotype but backed by data, which is that women are not as aggressive a negotiator as a man, on average, in a corporate setting.” — Syd Finkelstein
• “When thinking about a sponsor, think about those people who are influential and persuasive and who are well regarded.” — Christine Spadafor
• “Expecting something, then it doesn’t happen, that can take a psychological toll.” — Syd Finkelstein

Resources:

I Am Woman (2019 Film)

RBG (2018 Film)

Stay Connected:

Syd Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Christine Spadafor

Website: christinespadafor.com

Twitter: @cjspadafor

Facebook: Christine Spadafor

LinkedIn: Christine Spadafor

Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode onStitcher,iTunes, and Spotify.

This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry (www.podcastlaundry.com)

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Powered by a voracious curiosity to learn how things work, Stephanie Mitchko-Beale blazed a trail through the world of engineering at a time when women in STEM were an anomaly. Now, as the Chief Technology Officer at Charter Communications, Stephanie brings insight to how to manage a career when fulfilling your dreams and bypassing the naysayers means everything.

Syd 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, whichLinkedIn 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.

Stephanie Mitchko-Beale

Stephanie Mitchko-Beale joined Charter Communications in 2019 as Executive Vice President & Chief Technology Officer. Based in Stamford, Ms. Mitchco-Beale oversees Charter’s Network, Mobile, Video and Software Engineering teams, as well as Network Architecture, Technology Policy, and Emerging Technology organizations.

Ms. Mitchko-Beale joined Charter from Cadent, a provider of data-driven solutions for buying and selling TV advertising. She served as joint Chief Technology Officer and Chief Operating Officer and oversaw all technical aspects of the company’s strategy, operations and development.

Earlier in her career, Ms. Mitchko-Beale was Senior Vice President of Video Infrastructure Software at Cablevision Systems Corporation (currently part of Altice USA) where she was responsible for the software development of new consumer-facing technologies. As a key member of Cablevision’s technology senior leadership team, she broke new ground in bringing interactive and web technologies to traditional media models.

With more than 20 years of experience, Ms. Mitchko-Beale is a technology, television, and advanced-advertising veteran with a strong record of first-to-market products. She earned an Emmy award from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences for Best Interactive Television Platform for Cablevision’s iO Interactive Television and two Technical Emmys for Outstanding Achievement in Advanced Media Technology for the Creation of Non-Traditional Programs or Platforms for Cablevision’s iO Interactive Optimum Digital Cable and the second for Pioneering Work in Implementation and Deployment of Network DVR.

Ms. Mitchko-Beale received a B.S. in electrical engineering from Polytechnic University in New York. She guest lectures on “AdvancedTechnologies for Business Applications”and“Technology Innovation in Business” at NYU Stern School of Business and is a member of the NYU Poly Enterprise Learning Board. Additionally, she serves as a mentor for WICT to help young women see the benefit of pursuing careers in cable and technology.

Insights from this episode:

• Difficulties Stephanie’s experienced in college and as a young engineer in a male-dominated field and how that led her to mentoring young women.
• Reasons why working in the field of technology provides a better work-life balance and was better positioned to respond to the COVID pandemic.
• Differences between mentorship and sponsorship and why you should create your own “personal board” to help you navigate decisions.
• Changes that are happening in the cable industry from customer service to technology and how COVID has impacted the industry.
• Benefits of going from working for a tech giant to a start-up and how that affected Stephanie’s career.

Quotes from the show:

• “The numbers are still staggering when you look at percentages of women and men in the careers of engineering and software but there’s much more acknowledgement around having more women and more diversity.” – Stephanie Mitchko-Beale
• “If you try to be something you’re not or try to conform yourself to somebody else’s norm, it’s exhausting. You have to learn to get really comfortable in your own skin.” – Stephanie Mitchko-Beale
• “From my perspective, a mentor is someone who calls you on your shit.” – Stephanie Mitchko-Beale
• On the difficulties in providing customer service: “What has made it difficult in the past is really visibility and exposure to what’s happening at the customer site.” – Stephanie Mitchko-Beale
• “I think the whole COVID thing really accelerated digital adoption, self-service, self-install, and the use of data so we didn’t have to go into the field to learn about things.” – Stephanie Mitchko-Beale
• “It’s not the end game, it’s just a journey of using data to help manage our networks.” – Stephanie Mitchko-Beale
• On COVID’s affect on business: “The speed at which companies have responded in all sorts of industries, has been fascinating to see and in some ways it’s an unplanned test of how strong your organization is.” – Syd Finkelstein
• “What’s interesting about the cable industry … we collaborate, we don’t compete.” – Stephanie Mitchko-Beale
• On the proliferation of streaming services: “I think that curation and aggregation of what’s available is something that people need and it will happen when consumers don’t want to pay for multiple applications.” – Stephanie Mitchko-Beale
• “When you’re in engineering and tech you’re never really working on today; I’m always working five years out.” – Stephanie Mitchko-Beale

Stay Connected:

Syd Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Stephanie Mitchko-Beale

Website: Charter Communications

LinkedIn: Stephanie Mitchko-Beale

Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode onStitcher,iTunes, and Spotify.

This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry (www.podcastlaundry.com)

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How many Emmy-award winning journalists working in war zones in the Middle East do you know who go on to become startup CEO of a hot new media company? That’s Jeff Kofman, the guy who got fed up spending hours transcribing interviews while on assignment and thought, there has to be a better way. And there is, and he calls it Trint. In this episode of The Sydcast, Jeff shares his story of what it took to go from one world to an entirely new one, and some of the adventures he encountered along the way.

Syd 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, whichLinkedIn 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.

Jeff Kofman

Jeff Kofman, CEO and founder of Trint, is a tech entrepreneur with an unusual backstory. As an Emmy award-winning network television news foreign correspondent and war correspondent with ABC, CBS and CBC News he spent more than three decades reporting from around the world. Jeff has covered many of the biggest stories of our time including the Iraq War, the Arab Spring, Hurricane Katrina, the Gulf Oil Spill and the Chile Mine Rescue. He's won an Edward R. Murrow Award, a duPont Award and two Emmys, including one for his coverage of the fall of Muammar Gadhafi in Libya in 2011.

Insights from this episode:

• Difficulties Jeff faced with transcription and wasted time that led to him creating Trint, the problems the company set out to solve, and what sets Trint apart from the competition.
• Benefits of being a new company in a new category of technology and software.
• What it takes to be a successful start-up including maintaining focus, providing solutions people want, and being sustainable and repeatable.
• Details on why being a journalist was good preparation for being an entrepreneur.
• How to communicate with your employees to achieve common goal-setting and create a positive work-environment.

Quotes from the show:

• “I think that people sometimes confuse AI as the end product, AI is a means to an end.” – Jeff Kofman
• “We live in an era that I call the Voice Economy. The 20th Century was text driven, today we live in a voice-driven economy.” – Jeff Kofman
• On entrepreneurship: “It is more creative than I ever imagined. It is harder than I ever imagined. And it is more fun than I ever imagined.” – Jeff Kofman
• “All of us are in the business of storytelling, that’s called living.” – Syd Finkelstein
• “I think that the innovation opportunities in this field are pretty limitless, people need to be able to turn around content efficiently and get it out to multiple platforms and integrate it into traditional products.” – Jeff Kofman
• “It’s very interesting when it comes to timing, many people forget that when they look back at the success of a company.” – Syd Finkelstein
• “A start-up has to have an actual business model that’s sustainable; if it’s not a sustainable business, it’s not a business.” – Jeff Kofman
• “You have to be really comfortable admitting what you don’t know … you have to be really humble about knowledge.” – Jeff Kofman
• On being a journalist: “You become incredibly resourceful, you understand what’s achievable and what’s not, and you do it.” – Jeff Kofman
• “It’s oppressive to think about how hard life is for some people.” – Jeff Kofman

Resources:

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell

Benedict's Newsletter

Stay Connected:

Syd Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Jeff Kofman

Website: trint.com

Twitter: @JeffreyKofman

Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode onStitcher,iTunes, and Spotify.

This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry (www.podcastlaundry.com)

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In the 1930s, when a fiery mistress decided to get her revenge, she did not serve it cold, she served it hot enough to burn and helped create the legendary Nashville-style Hot Chicken. Kim Prince carries on the family tradition with her restaurant Hotville and has been scorching tastebuds and the competition in Los Angeles. The importance of legacy and family are at the core of the conversation, in this episode of The Sydcast.

Syd 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, whichLinkedIn 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.

Kim Prince

Reaching as far back as the 1930s, Kim said it was her great-great Uncle Thornton Prince who, along with his brothers, started the hot chicken tradition in Nashville. Legend has it that hot chicken’s origin was rooted in a not so favorable circumstance when a vengeful love interest added some unexpected heat to Uncle Thornton’s food, leaving his mouth sweltering with spice. From there, the Prince family gave birth to the BBQ Hot Chicken Shack in 1936, later undergoing a name change to Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack in the 1980s.

Born in California, raised in Tennessee, Kim Prince moved back to California to work in television but in 2013 she decided to return to her family roots in the kitchen. Kim is now the owner of LA’s Hotville Chicken™ and has brought her family’s deeply rooted hot chicken creations to Los Angeles. Kim has expansion plans on the burner and hopes to continue to build on the family legacy.

Insights from this episode:

• Details on the history of Nashville-hot chicken created by the Prince family and how that style of chicken has spawned many different imitators.
• How preparation affects the heat of the peppers and how the preparations might be culturally influenced.
• Difficulties in running a business in Los Angeles and keeping the family-oriented business model through expansion plans and how Kim is tackling that problem.
• Importance of community when it comes to success and how a support network can make or break a business.
• Difficulties COVID has presented for her business and how she has overcome the challenges.

Quotes from the show:

• “If you like fried chicken, you’re going to love Nashville’s Hot Chicken.” – Kim Prince
• “Once something comes into public usage, you start to lose some of the power of the brand itself.” – Syd Finkelstein
• “Nashville hot chicken, to me personally, is a legacy project. This is all about the Prince family and the growth of the Prince family legacy.” – Kim Prince
• “When I try Nashville Hot Chicken at so many different restaurants … I have to honestly say they’re not bringing it.” – Kim Prince
• “While workers here may not be blood relatives, they’re working alongside a true Prince family member, a third-, fourth-, fifth-generation descendant of the original Prince [family].” – Kim Prince
• “We’re going to do the best we can, with what we can, while we can.” – Kim Prince
• “I am excited about the opportunity but I’m more excited about the fact that people have embraced Nashville Hot Chicken, here in Los Angeles, like it’s their own.” – Kim Prince
• “Nashville Hot Chicken is everything to me. I plan on retiring doing this.” – Kim Prince
• “The lessons we learn, sometimes they’re spoken … other times you just see it, you observe.” – Syd Finkelstein
• On the current racial disparity: “If they could do it [in the 1930s], I can do it now.” – Kim Prince

Stay Connected:

Syd Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Kim Prince

Website: hotvillechicken.com

Twitter: @kimprincetwin2

Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode onStitcher,iTunes, and Spotify.

This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry (www.podcastlaundry.com)

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From the moment we first gazed upon the stars humans have wondered if there is life beyond our own planet. Dr. Kevin Hand, an astrobiologist at NASA, has traveled to the far reaches of our own planet, including to the bottom of the ocean with James Cameron, to learn what life might be like on another planet. Kevin talks with Syd about why we are searching for Goldilocks, how the universe is like a campfire, and the upcoming NASA mission to Europa, in this episode of The Sydcast.

Syd 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, whichLinkedIn 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.

Dr. Kevin Hand

Dr. Kevin P. Hand is a planetary scientist and astrobiologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where he directs the Ocean Worlds Lab. His research focuses on the origin, evolution, and distribution of life in the solar system with an emphasis on moons of the outer solar system that likely harbor liquid water oceans. He is the pre-Project Scientist for NASA’s Europa Lander mission concept and was co-chair of the 2016 Europa Lander Science Definition Team. From 2011-2016, Hand served as Deputy Chief Scientist for Solar System Exploration at JPL. His fieldwork has brought him to Antarctica, the Arctic, the depths of Earth’s ocean, the glaciers of Kilimanjaro and Mt. Kenya, and the desert of Namibia. His popular science book, Alien Oceans: The Search for Life in the Depths of Space, was published by Princeton University Press in April of 2020.

Insights from this episode:

• Details on what the search for extraterrestrial life entails and what we are likely to find when life is discovered.
• Reasons why communication, specifically writing, is important in scientific discovery.
• Information that can be gained from comparing Earth to other celestial bodies and how that is helping to direct the search.
• Difficulties that are impeding the search for life including technology, funding, and time.
• Details on Kevin’s work with James Cameron, their exploration of the Earth’s oceans, and how what they saw influenced their individual projects.
• Benefits commercial industries receive from NASA’s explorations.

Quotes from the show:

• “When we look at life on Earth, from the most extreme of microbes to the most extreme of human beings, we are all connected by the tree of life. We are all connected by biochemistry.” – Kevin Hand
• “You need to know how to communicate your scientific arguments, that’s not to say writing is the most important thing, but it is an incredibly important skill.” – Kevin Hand
• “Communication and scientific discovery do not necessarily go hand in hand.” – Syd Finkelstein
• “If we’ve learned anything from Earth’s biosphere it’s that; where you find the liquid water, you generally find life.” – Kevin Hand
• “A mission to the surface of Europa is not just about searching for life, it’s also about understanding oceans as a planetary process.” – Kevin Hand
• “One of the great things about NASA and this kind of exploration is that, for the most part, it does get broad, bi-partisan support.” – Kevin Hand
• “What these missions to search for life really do is open the doorway to a much broader scientific community.” – Kevin Hand
• “It’s important to remember that the goal of NASA … is in truly pushing the frontier, daring the mighty things.” – Kevin Hand
• “I like to think of NASA as a venture capital organization that helps seed innovation at the most extraordinary levels.” – Kevin Hand
• “I can see the spiritual side of the explorations that you’re doing, it’s very spiritual.” – Syd Finkelstein

Resources:

Alien Oceans: The Search for Life in the Depths of Space by Dr. Kevin Hand

Alien Ocean: NASA’s Mission to Europa - YouTube

Bouyant Rover for Under Ice Exploration (BRUIE)

Stay Connected:

Syd Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Dr. Kevin Hand

Website: https://science.jpl.nasa.gov/people/Hand/

Twitter: @Alienoceans

LinkedIn: Kevin Hand

Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode onStitcher,iTunes, and Spotify.

This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry (www.podcastlaundry.com)

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Episode Summary

In a search to live freely, Fleet Maull made regrettable choices that caused his life to take a dramatic turn, but also provided the impetus for a spiritual awakening. That transformative journey led him to spearhead prison reform programs and mindfulness training programs for public-safety sectors that are changing and saving lives. Syd talks with the Prison Monk about how the choices we make lead us to the person we become, in this episode of The Sydcast.

Syd 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, whichLinkedIn 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.

Fleet Maull

Fleet Maull, PhD, CMT-P is an author, meditation teacher, consultant, coach, seminar leader, motivational speaker, social entrepreneur, and peacemaker. He is the founder of Prison Mindfulness Institute, National Prison Hospice Association, Windhorse Seminars & Consulting, the Center for Contemplative End of Life Care at Naropa University and co-founder of the Engaged Mindfulness Institute, Center for Mindfulness in Public Safety and the Upaya Zen Center's Buddhist Chaplaincy Training Program. He is a senior teacher in two venerable Buddhist traditions as an Acharya (senior Dharma teacher) in the Tibetan Buddhist Shambhala lineage and a Roshi (Zen master) in the Zen Peacemaker Order and Soto Zen lineage.

Dr. Maull taught socially engaged Buddhism, Buddhist psychology, and contemplative approaches to peacemaking and social action at Naropa University from 1999 - 2009 and is a frequent guest lecturer and conference presenter at other universities like Harvard, Brown, Emory and the University of Colorado. He is also a frequent keynote speaker at national conferences on mindfulness, criminal justice, end of life care, and trauma-informed care.

He is the author of Radical Responsibility: How to Move Beyond Blame, Fearlessly Live Your Highest Purpose, and Become an Unstoppable Force for Good and Dharma in Hell: The Prison Writings of Fleet Maull along with numerous book chapters and articles in peer reviewed professional journals.

Acharya Maull travels world-wide offering mindfulness retreats, transformational seminars, prison training, first responder training, and bearing witness retreats. He has trained correctional officers, law enforcement, and other public safety professionals in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Ontario, Canada.

Insights from this episode:

• Details on how a drug addiction and a counter-culture mentality led Fleet to being in prison for drug smuggling.
• Benefits federal prison afforded Fleet beyond improved facilities over county jail; perspective, compassion, and a focus on serving others.
• Difficulties Fleet has faced outside of prison including the loss of his parents, his wife, and, very recently, his son and the comfort his faith provides.
• How to find joy and positivity even in the worst circumstances by caring for others.
• Details on Fleet’s mission to reform the prison system from punitive to rehabilitative and provide mindfulness training that extends beyond the prison walls.
• How to get started in practicing mindfulness and receive tangible benefits.
• Differences between Fleet’s mindfulness training and other available programs.

Quotes from the show:

• On why Fleet got into selling drugs: “I was doing it just to keep living outside the system and I justified it with this us versus them thinking … I was so self-deluded that I actually felt it was a noble calling.” – Fleet Maull
• “All my artifices of justification finally completely fell away and I had to face the fact that I had been involved in something extremely harmful.” – Fleet Maull
• On how Fleet dealt going to prison: “I was practicing meditation and that was my salvation, to work with my mind in that way.” – Fleet Maull
• On finding purpose: “[Prison] is a hellish place and I’m here for a reason.” – Fleet Maull
• “In my tradition, the transition from one life to the next, we believe there is further life and that transition is very important.” – Fleet Maull
• “We felt it very important to get mindfulness into mainstream rehabilitation programming and drug-treatment programming, and post-release programming, and so forth, to do that it had to be secular and it had to be evidence-based.” – Fleet Maull
• “I think this idea of mindfulness training and other work of the type that you’ve been involved with has got to be helpful for people that have high-stress jobs.” – Syd Finkelstein
• On why people struggle with practicing mindfulness: “They might get a few moments [of peace] but it’s not tangible enough to outweigh all the distractions, the boringness of it, and the difficulty in doing it.” – Fleet Maull
• “The only place we have any power, that’s with ourselves.” – Fleet Maull

Resources:

21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari

How to Become a Straight-A Student: The Unconventional Strategies Real College Students Use to Score High While Studying Less by Cal Newport

Neuro-Somatic Mindfulness course:

www.heartmindinstitute.co/nsm-foundation

The Best Year of Your Life Summit (January 19 - 28)

www.bestyear.life

Radical Responsibility Book:

www.radicalresponsibilitybook.com

Fleet’s website:

www.fleetmaull.com

Prison Mindfulness Institute (mindfulness for prisoners):

www.prisonmindfulness.org

Center for Mindfulness in Public Safety (mindfulness for police):

www.mindfulpublicsafety.org

Engaged Mindfulness Institute (trauma informed mindfulness teacher training):

www.engagedmindfulness.org

National Prison Hospice Association

www.npha.org

Stay Connected:

Syd Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Fleet Maull

Website: fleetmaull.com

Facebook: Fleet Maull

Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode onStitcher,iTunes, and Spotify.

This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry (www.podcastlaundry.com)

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Episode Summary

Chez Panisse has indelibly shaped California cuisine since its inception in 1971 and Lindsey and Charles Shere were there from the beginning, helping to change the landscape for female chefs. Influenced by the politics and art of Berkeley in the 1960s, Charles and Lindsey found their niche for unconventional thinkers and doers and they continue to live their life by following their hearts. Listen in for the era-spanning experiences of a chef and a composer, in this episode of The Sydcast.

Syd 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, whichLinkedIn 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.

Charles Shere

Charles Shere was born in Berkeley, California, in 1935, and grew up there and on a small farm in Sonoma county, where he attended high school. He studied music and English literature at Chapman College, Santa Rosa Junior College, San Francisco State University, and the University of California at Berkeley, where he graduated cum laude in 1960.

He was music director at KPFA-fm, Berkeley, 1964-67; announcer, critic, director, and producer at KQED-tv, San Francisco, 1967-1972; lecturer in music at Mills College, Oakland, 1973-1984; and art and music critic at the Oakland Tribune, 1972-1988. He was the founding editor and publisher of Ear, the west coast new-music tabloid, 1973-78, and has published four books: Even Recent Cultural History (Hanover, New Hampshire: Frog Peak Music, 1995); Thinking Sound Music: the Life and Work of Robert Erickson (Berkeley: Fallen Leaf Press, 1996); Everbest Ever: Correspondence with Bay Area Friends (as editor and joint author with Virgil Thomson and Margery Tede)(Berkeley: Fallen Leaf Press, 1996); and Why I Read Stein (Oakland: Mills College Center for the Book, 2002), as well as numerous musical compositions.

Lindsey Shere

In 1947 Lindsey and her family moved to a sizable ranch in Sonoma County, California, where she spent the next ten years among milk cows, apple and prune orchards, hayfields, and four younger sisters.

She graduated from Healdsburg High School, Santa Rosa Junior College, and the University of California at Berkeley, where she majored in a group major in French language, literature, and political history.

In 1971 she joined Alice Waters to open the restaurant Chez Panisse, where she continued as Pastry Chef until her retirement in 1998.

Largely self-taught as a cook, she began focusing on baking and desserts as a teenager, delighted by the fresh dairy and orchard products available on the family farm. Her interest in the French language and in European culture led to further investigations into cuisine. She has traveled extensively throughout western Europe, especially in France and northern Italy: her mother’s family was Alsatian; her father was born in the Italian Alps.

Widely read, she counts among her major influences James Beard, Ada Boni, Robert Courtine, Curnonsky, Elizabeth David, M.F.K. Fisher, Richard Olney, and Waverly Root, as well as the chefs associated with her at Chez Panisse, especially Alice Waters.

Her book, Chez Panisse Desserts, was published in 1985 and is still in print. She was named Pastry Chef of the Year by the James Beard Foundation in 1993. Among the chefs who have worked for her in the Chez Panisse pastry kitchen have been bakers Diane Dexter, Gayle Ortiz, and Steve Sullivan; pastry chefs David Lebovitz and Mary Jo Thoresen; and chefs Deborah Madison and Mark Peel. She is an active member of The Baker's Dozen and a major contributor to the Dozen's forthcoming book.

Since her retirement she has returned with her husband to a rural life in Sonoma county, dividing her time among gardening, grandchildren, reading, and travel.

Insights from this episode:

• Details on how Lindsey’s passion for baking led to her becoming the Pastry Chef at Chez Panisse and a prestigious career that lasted twenty-six years.
• How Chez Panisse challenged the prevalent perception of the 1970s of women’s roles as chefs and restaurant owners.
• Benefits to businesses and brand building when there is one owner for an extended period of time, like with Chez Panisse.
• Details on some of the experiences that Charles and Lindsey have shared, including why Charles walked from Geneva, Switzerland to Nice, France.
• Importance of living life as it comes and taking advantage of opportunities as they come to you.

Quotes from the show:

• “I used to think the restaurant business was a really safe business to be in because people always had to eat but now I’m learning differently.” – Lindsey Shere
• “It is quite interesting to see how the center of gravity for political parties shifts over time.” – Syd Finkelstein
• “You can’t cook a different menu everyday without learning a huge amount.” – Lindsey Shere
• On Alice Waters: “One thing that Alice has continued to learn over these years, she doesn't stop and stay there; she’s constantly moving.” – Lindsey Shere
• “The early success of the restaurant owes something to the fact that health and nutrition were very much in the news all that time.” – Charles Shere
• On having a bucket list: “I don’t think I believe in it and I don’t think I have one. It seems unnecessarily disciplined.” – Charles Shere
• “If you lead a full and engaging life, your life is the bucket list.” – Syd Finkelstein
• “There’s always something waiting out there to be discovered and enjoyed.” – Lindsey Shere
• “It seems very difficult to be a young person these days.” – Lindsey Shere
• “My method has always been to have as open a mind as possible and be as attentive and responsive to events as possible and to enjoy things for what they are.” – Charles Shere

Stay Connected:

Syd Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Charles and Lindsey Shere

Website: shere.org

Charles’ Blog: The Eastside View

Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode onStitcher,iTunes, and Spotify.

This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry (www.podcastlaundry.com)

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Episode Summary

Rachel Feintzeig, a columnist at the Wall Street Journal who writes about work and life, has a knack for asking great questions that resonate. Whether it’s how it feels to have a partner on the front lines of COVID to how to get noticed and promoted when working remotely, her writing gets to what people are experiencing, right now. On this episode of The Sydcast, it’s Rachel that answers the questions, about her journey as a reporter, how to make people mad, and the effects of COVID on the workplace.

Syd 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, whichLinkedIn 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.

Rachel Feintzeig

Rachel Feintzeig is the Work & Life columnist at the Wall Street Journal, writing about the intersection of jobs and everything else. From 2013 to 2020, she covered management and career trends as a reporter for the paper’s management bureau, writing about everything from the changing role of executive assistants to people who get tattoos of their company logo. She has a particular interest in stories about families and has written personal essays exploring her own experiences with pregnancy, parenthood and marriage. Rachel joined Dow Jones as a reporting assistant in 2008, covering bankruptcy and restructuring during the financial crisis and its aftermath. She’s a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, where she was managing editor of the student newspaper the Daily Pennsylvanian.

Insights from this episode:

• Details on why Rachel went into journalism, how she ended up writing for the Wall Street Journal, and her process for research and reporting.
• Benefits an editor provides beyond grammar and how a good editor helps shape a good reporter.
• Differences between editorial writing and reporting and why a newspaper would publish both.
• Details on Rachel’s favorite article she wrote, why she wrote it and the writing process, and how she felt about writing a personal story.
• Difficulties that COVID presented personally and professionally, how it influenced her articles, and her thoughts on the long-lasting effects of COVID on the workplace and metropolitan areas.

Quotes from the show:

• On working in different fields of journalism: “I really do believe that if you’re just curious and bright and a good writer you can tackle anything as a reporter.” – Rachel Feintzeig
• “The best case scenario is that everyone is mad at you; that’s how you know you’ve done a good job.” – Rachel Feintzeig
• On being a good reporter: “A lot of it is about confidence and trusting your own intuition and it also takes time.” – Rachel Feintzeig
• “Great editors make you concise. They cut through a lot of the bullshit in your writing.” – Rachel Feintzeig
• “The truth is that most academics don’t teach what they do research on.” – Syd Finkelstein
• On writing of her own personal experience: “I’m a millennial, I’m like a natural over-sharer, and I write for a living. I’m a professional journalist, how hard could this be? It was incredibly hard.” – Rachel Feintzeig
• On working during COVID: “I felt like writing was giving me purpose and that what I was doing was really important.” – Rachel Feintzeig
• On the expectation of experts having all the answers: “I wonder if, as a society, we’ve over-relied on experts.” – Syd Finkelstein
• On the effects of COVID on the workplace: “My hope is that this empathetic style of leadership and doling out of benefits will be here to stay.” – Rachel Feintzeig

Stay Connected:

Syd Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Rachel Feintzeig

Website: wsj.com/news/author/rachel-feintzeig

LinkedIn: Rachel Feintzeig

Twitter: @RachelFeintzeig

Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode onStitcher,iTunes, and Spotify.

This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry (www.podcastlaundry.com)

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Episode Summary

From military logistics to mega-concerts to self-driving cars, Blair LaCorte has had a seat at the head of the table. How does one person move so ably from industry to industry, and what do you learn along the way? In this episode of The Sydcast we skip the platitudes and get right to what leadership looks like in the trenches, what skills make the difference, and why curiosity is the secret sauce of business success.

Syd 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, whichLinkedIn 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.

Blair LaCorte

Blair LaCorte is an accomplished leader and strategist with a long history of leveraging his change management skills to drive operational alignment and company growth. Currently, Blair is president of AEye, an artificial perception pioneer and the creators of iDAR™, a perception system that acts as the eyes and visual cortex of autonomous vehicles. Prior to AEye, he served as the global president of PRG, the world’s largest live event technology and services company. He was also CEO of XOJET, one of the fastest-growing aviation companies in history and the largest private charter company in North America. He also served as a managing director and operating partner at TPG, a premier private equity firm with over $91B in global investments. LaCorte has held numerous executive and general management positions in private and public technology and investment companies throughout his career including, VerticalNet, ICGE, Savi Technologies, Autodesk, and Sun Microsystems. He graduated summa cum laude from the University of Maine and holds an MBA from Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, where he later served as an executive fellow at the Center for Digital Strategies. He has garnered numerous patents across several domains, served on the Senate’s High Tech Advisory Board, and has been named an “Innovator of the Year” by NASA. LaCorte is an investor and astronaut-in-training with Virgin Galactic, as well as an investor in Moon Express, designer of the next generation of robotic spacecraft systems.

Insights from this episode:

• Benefits of growing up with parents that were entrepreneurs including not wanting to be an entrepreneur.
• The three waves that have changed the way technology and data are manipulated; the internet, smartphones, and logistics and the implications of China driving the logistics wave.
• Difficulties companies face in implementing self-driving assets beyond perfecting the autonomous technology and when we can really expect to buy a self-driving car.
• Reasons why Blair has had success through many career changes and why curiosity is the best skill to cultivate.
• Details on the astronaut training program, the technology, and what it’s like to fulfill a childhood dream.

Quotes from the show:

• “The challenge is to convince humans that technology is to be trusted more than humans.” – Blair LaCorte
• “It’s really about the psychology of humans, at some point, people are going to say … it’s very beneficial for us.” – Syd Finkelstein
• “I do believe that live entertainment will be back. I think we need it. We communicate verbal, non-verbal but we also need that proximity and the energy transfer that proximity gives.” – Blair LaCorte
• On growing up with entrepreneur parents: “I learned to deal with entrepreneurs and, at a very young age, became someone who tried to put processes in place to get rid of the volatility.” – Blair LaCorte
• “It turns out that when you go to war the first thing they need on the tip of the spear is logistics.” – Blair LaCorte
• “One of the things that makes you valuable for each place you go is you’ve got a portfolio of experiences that are very diverse.” – Syd Finkelstein
• On his career success: “I like to say I was forged in the world of ambiguity and the world of crisis.” – Blair LaCorte
• “Gaining trust is the key that I’ve found in my success and the best way to get trust is to find truth and to speak truth.” – Blair LaCorte
• “One of the greatest things to help people learn is diversity and variety of experiences because then you start to see patterns.” – Syd Finkelstein
• “I think part of the challenge in capitalism is we’re always driven towards growth even when we should hunker down.” – Blair LaCorte

Resources

Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein

Stay Connected:

Syd Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Blair LaCorte

Website: www.aeye.ai

LinkedIn: Blair LaCorte

Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode onStitcher,iTunes, and Spotify.

This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry (www.podcastlaundry.com)

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When the world continues to throw new challenges your way, improv might be the most important life skill you’ve never learned. Collaboration, reading a room, dealing with failure, Kelly Leonard of legendary The Second City theater details how improvisation can benefit your life beyond creating a great sketch comedy. Kelly shares what it was like seeing John Belushi and Chris Farley on stage, working with Tina Fey and Stephen Colbert, what actor really surprised him, and more from behind the comedy curtain, in this episode of The Sydcast.

Syd 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, whichLinkedIn 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.

Kelly Leonard

Kelly Leonard began his Second City career in 1988, eventually becoming a producer of Second City in 1992 and Executive Vice President through 2015. He has produced hundreds of original revues with talent such as Stephen Colbert, Tina Fey, Keegan Michael Key, Seth Meyers, and Amy Poehler. His book, Yes, And: How Improvisation Reverses "No, But" Thinking and Improves Creativity and Collaboration--Lessons from The Second City, received rave reviews in Vanity Fair and the Washington Post. He co-leads a new partnership with Booth School at the University of Chicago that studies behavioral science through the lens of improvisation. He is a popular speaker, appearing at Aspen Ideas Festival, Chicago Ideas Week, and TEDxBroadway. Kelly also hosts the Second City Works/WGN Podcast Getting to Yes, And.

Insights from this episode:

• Details on how Kelly went from a dishwasher to a producer at Second City, his life outside of the theater, and why improv has become life.
• Reasons why charisma is a blessing and a curse and whether it is something you are born with or something you can develop.
• Benefits of using improv skills to build a better business, be a better parent, and become comfortable being uncomfortable.
• Strategies for dealing with loss and how to console someone who has experienced loss.
• Details on working with some of the biggest names in comedy, the relationship between Second City and Saturday Night Live, and how COVID has changed the creative process at Second City versus other comedy shows.

Quotes from the show:

• On charisma: “It’s not a superpower unless it can be used for evil.” – Kelly Leonard
• “I find it an artificial conceit that somehow business operates differently than the rest of the world and life.” – Kelly Leonard
• “Anyone can learn information but the ability to take that information and apply it successfully in collaboration with others is the real thing you need.” – Kelly Leonard
• “The only way innovation happens is when you experiment over and over, which is a majority of failures, on your way to eventual success.” – Kelly Leonard
• On failure: “If you don’t admit it, you don’t acknowledge it, there’s not much opportunity there to learn from it.” – Syd Finkelstein
• “You can not be in a creative mindset and be analyzing and judging yourself at the same time. You have to suspend that entirely.” – Kelly Leonard
• “That is the great mark of an improviser, is their ability to be fearless and sometimes even follow their fear because making yourself uncomfortable allows you to learn new things about yourself.” – Kelly Leonard
• Creativity is a discipline, it might sound strange, but it is like any other amazing skill and you’ve got to practice it, you’ve got to do it.” – Syd Finkelstein
• On how he dealt with the loss of his daughter, Nora: “We have a saying, play the scene you’re in and not the scene you want to be in, and that’s what we did, we played the scene we were in.” – Kelly Leonard
• On operating during COVID: “We’re doing work in ways that we’ve never done before and we should be proud of that, but we can’t stop.” – Kelly Leonard

Stay Connected:

Syd Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Kelly Leonard

Website: www.secondcity.com/people/other/kelly-leonard

Twitter: @KLsecondcity

Book: Yes, And: How Improvisation Reverses "No, But" Thinking and Improves Creativity and Collaboration--Lessons from The Second City

Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode onStitcher,iTunes, and Spotify.

This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry (www.podcastlaundry.com)

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Episode Summary

If you really want to shake up a family dinner just bring up sports or politics. Pepper in a bit of business and crime and you have Jim Campbell shaking things up on talk radio. From his start in radio, to his explosive interview with Bernie Madoff, and beyond, Jim has always had a passion for providing unbiased information in a world where facts matter less than ratings. Gain perspective on why some successful people become bad at what they do, in this episode of The Sydcast.

Syd 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, whichLinkedIn 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.

Jim Campbell

Jim Campbell has been the host, since 2008, of the nationally syndicated “Business Talk with Jim Campbell”; and, more recently, the syndicated crime show: “Forensic Talk with Jim Campbell.” “Biz Talk” is known for its “deep dives” with leading figures from the world of business; and the business of politics and sports. “Forensic Talk” features Wall Street crimes to unsolved murders to international scandal and corruption.

Mr. Campbell is also Assistant News Director at a Connecticut radio station – AM 1490 WGCH Greenwich. Previously, he was a National Director with a Big Four Consulting Firm – KPMG Consulting; an Officer with Dean Witter Financial Services (now Morgan Stanley); and an Analyst at IBM. He has a BA, Magna Cum Laude, from Tufts University, and an MBA from the Tuck School at Dartmouth.

Insights from this episode:

• Details on Jim’s life before radio, why he chose radio for his platform to change the world, and details on some of his favorite interviews and guests.
• Reasons why social comparisons set you up for failure and why being your best is what really matters.
• Why Bernie Madoff allowed Jim to interview him, what they both hoped to get from the interviews, and what Ruth Madoff was like.
• Details on Madoff’s Ponzi scheme and why it worked.
• Strategies used by leaders to disassociate themselves from their failures or crimes that allow them to maintain their status.

Quotes from the show:

• “Radio reared itself as something that I could be free to do what I wanted as well as fill this gap I thought that was out there for unbiased, non-partisan, information-driven, fact-driven … perspective.” – Jim Campbell
• On the current status of talk radio: “Truth doesn’t seem to matter anymore, facts don’t seem to matter.” – Jim Campbell
• On social comparison: “The easiest way to feel unsatisfied with your own accomplishments in life is to continually compare yourself to somebody else.” – Syd Finkelstein
• “Building a team, to me, is also one of the most fascinating things in the world. Where you sublimate your ego for the benefit of a team and you learn how to endure and how to win.” – Jim Campbell
• On why Bernie Madoff let Jim interview him: “I think that he thought he could bullshit me.” – Jim Campbell
• On why CEOs talked to Syd for his book Superbosses: “Why did they talk to me? Part of the answer is because they didn’t think they did anything wrong.” – Syd Finkelstein
• Quote from a Wall Street fraud expert on why Bernie Madoff allowed Jim’s interviews: “You were his self-appointed guardian of reputation.” – Jim Campbell

Stay Connected:

Syd Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Jim Campbell

Website: campbellbiztalk.com

LinkedIn: Jim Campbell

Book: Madoff Talks: Uncovering the Untold Story Behind the Most Notorious Ponzi Scheme in History

Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode onStitcher,iTunes, and Spotify.

This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry (www.podcastlaundry.com)

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As the world rages around us it may seem like there is no rule of law to keep us safe but Judge Fred Block provides us with ample evidence to be optimistic about the enduring independence of the Judicial Branch. Speaking to Syd from Greece, Fred shares his journey to a judgeship, why New York is still a great place to live, and why he doesn’t consider the infamous Gotti trial to be his most important case. In this episode of The Sydcast, get an enlightening view from the bench with Judge Fred Block.

Syd 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, whichLinkedIn 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.

Fred Block

Frederic Block was appointed by President Bill Clinton to the United States District Judge for the Eastern District of New York on September 29, 1994, and entered duty on October 31, 1994. He assumed senior status on September 1, 2005. He received a bachelor’s degree from Indiana University in 1956 and an LLB degree from Cornell Law School in 1959.

During his twenty-three years on the bench, Judge Block has presided over a number of high-profile cases, including the trials of former Bear Stearns hedge fund managers Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin, Kenneth “Supreme” McGriff, Peter Gotti, Lemrick Nelson, and nightclub magnate Peter Gatien. He regularly sits by designation on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

In addition to Race to Judgment and Crimes and Punishments: Entering the Mind of a Sentencing Judge, he recently authored the best-selling book, Disrobed: An Inside Look at the Life and Work of a Federal Trial Judge.

He also co-authored the 1985 off-Broadway musical Professionally Speaking (music and lyrics) and he has published articles on a variety of legal topics.

Insights from this episode:

• Details on how he became a federal court judge, why the process is not the same for everybody, and the importance of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
• How the current administration is affecting the dynamic and independence of the judiciary and why their strategy is unlikely to yield the desired results.
• Reasons why mafia cases always seem to be tried in New York and why the mafia isn’t quite the bogeyman they used to be.
• Difficulties that come with being a judge in an age of technology that removes privacy and safety.
• Details on collateral consequences, the lifetime impact they have on people, and how they can affect sentencing.

Quotes from the show:

• On the current judicial climate: “There’s really something different in the waters today than I think we’ve had, historically, in the United States.” – Fred Block
• “[The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals] is one that’s looked at very carefully because it’s the largest circuit court, it covers twenty percent of all the appeals of district courts throughout the country. It’s the most profound court in terms of the impact it has on the Senate judiciary.” – Fred Block
• “I think any of our privileges, any of our functions of government, any of our institutions can be subject to abuse in the wrong hands.” – Fred Block
• On the separation of powers: “We’re independent yes, conceptually, but certainly not in practice and we’re subject to a lot of pressures from the other branches of government.” – Fred Block
• “Judgement itself is central to society, to leadership, and to organizations.” – Syd Finkelstein
• “We’re being challenged like never before to really maintain the independence and the integrity of the judiciary.” – Fred Block
• “Sometimes strange things happen and have a positive effect when you least expect them.” – Fred Block
• “The people that have been among the most positive and have helped society the most [during this pandemic], of course first-line responders goes without saying, but the arts community would be next. We’ve watched many streaming events from all over the world and it’s been powerful and there’s been an exposure to something that people would never have gone to.” – Syd Finkelstein
• On collateral consequences: “I think it adds a human dimension to the law.” – Fred Block
• “I think we have a pretty sound federal judicial system correlated to merit, correlated to being well-educated, correlated to having a good sense of judgement with a good moral compass.” – Fred Block

Resources:

I Am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes

By Frederic Block:

Race to Judgment

Crimes and Punishments: Entering the Mind of a Sentencing Judge

Disrobed: An Inside Look at the Life and Work of a Federal Trial Judge

Stay Connected:

Syd Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Fred Block

Website: fredericblock.com

Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode onStitcher,iTunes, and Spotify.

This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry (www.podcastlaundry.com)

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Football is synonymous with Sundays in America and the NFL draft has become almost like a celebrity awards show. What makes it so popular? Why have other sports not achieved that status? Kevin Demoff, Chief Operating Officer of the Los Angeles Rams, not only answers that question but also talks about how data drives the draft, why defense isn’t the best offense when it comes to hiring diversity, and how the NFL is continuing to operate under COVID. Get unprecedented access to the talent beyond the playbook, in this episode of The Sydcast.

Syd 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, whichLinkedIn 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 Demoff

Kevin Demoff is in his 11th year as Chief Operating Officer with the Los Angeles Rams football team. In this capacity, Demoff serves as the team's top front office executive and liaison to owner and chairman, Stan Kroenke, on all organizational matters. After serving on the working group that helped Kroenke return the Rams – Los Angeles' original professional sports team – home to L.A., Demoff played a significant role in delivering on Kroenke's vision to design and construct the 298-acre sports and entertainment district in Inglewood that will serve as the future home of the Rams. The campus will include SoFi Stadium, a retail district and office complex and is currently the largest entitled real-estate project in Southern California.

Since joining the Rams in 2009, Demoff has been responsible for re-organizing the club's business efforts with a focus on delivering a better overall experience for Rams' fans and increasing the club's presence in the community. As part of his vision, Demoff spearheaded the organization's efforts to become one of the strongest philanthropic partners in professional sports. Demoff serves on the boards of the United Way of Greater Los Angeles, Los Angeles Sports and Entertainment Commission and Los Angeles Sports Council.

Prior to joining the Rams, Demoff spent the previous four seasons (2005-08) with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, where he served as a consultant before being named Senior Assistant in 2006. In this capacity, Demoff assisted General Manager Bruce Allen in contract negotiations, salary cap management, strategic planning and both college and pro scouting.

Demoff was recognized by the Sports Business Journal as one of its "Forty under 40" class members of 2016, and in 2010 he was named one of the "NFL's 10 Future Power Brokers" by Sports Illustrated.

Born and raised in Los Angeles, CA, Demoff received a bachelors' degree in history from Dartmouth College in 1999 and an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth in 2006. Kevin and Jennifer have two children – a daughter, Claire and a son, Owen.

Insights from this episode:

• Details on the NFL draft, its singular popularity among sports drafts, and how COVID has affected how the draft is held.
• Reasons why the Rams have a majority female staff, how hiring practices have changed, and how COVID has highlighted the need for greater work-life balance.
• Strategies used for recruiting talent to the team, how technology has improved player research, and why being the fastest might not be what gets you on the team.
• Similarities between running a business and running an NFL team.
• How to promote and improve diverse hiring practices within the NFL and why status quo hiring practices have hurt teams and created a poor candidate pool in terms of diversity.
• Difficulties specific to running a NFL franchise under COVID and how to move forward as safely as possible.

Quotes from the show:

• “What’s so unique about the NFL draft right now, I would say, is the collision of what I believe are the two most popular sports in America which is the NFL and college football.” – Kevin Demoff
• On working from home during COVID: “Seeing people at home, in their environments, has helped people understand more the importance of that work-life balance.” – Kevin Demoff
• “Once you have people in senior leadership who are diverse, be that gender, be that, racial, be that LGBTQ, they are much more open to hiring people who are diverse underneath them.” – Kevin Demoff
• “If you bring someone in who is super talented but doesn’t fit your culture, who does not have the ability to do what is most important within your culture, they’re probably not going to be a fit.” – Kevin Demoff
• “In the NFL we are bad at developing head coaches. When you look at the turnover in the NFL in head coaches, we are terrible at hiring.” – Kevin Demoff
• “Imagine every team had an offensive-oriented head coach, all of a sudden it’s not the same league anymore, there’s going to be an advantage to having someone on the defensive side.” – Syd Finkelstein
• On hiring coaches: “Winning the press conference and making the big hire was not ultimately what was going to set us up for success, it was finding the right fit for our organization at that time.” – Kevin Demoff
• “You’ve got to give people a chance to make things happen.” – Syd Finkelstein
• “If we really want to improve the minority pipeline, we can be more patient with all of our coaches so that those coaches get a chance … for success.” – Kevin Demoff
• “I think, much like the rest of the world, we have to get to a point in the NFL where one case does not shut down the NFL and one case doesn’t shut down the world.” – Kevin Demoff

Stay Connected:

Syd Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Kevin Demoff

Website: therams.com/team/front-office-roster/kevin-demoff

LinkedIn: Kevin Demoff

Twitter: @kdemoff

Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode onStitcher,iTunes, and Spotify.

This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry (www.podcastlaundry.com)

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Why is Bob Wallace – successful entrepreneur, advisor to senior executives, and author of multiple books on business – running as an Independent candidate for mayor of Baltimore? And why does this outsider, in a city where Democrats have dominated the political arena for decades, actually think he has a real chance to win? In this episode of The Sydcast, meet Bob Wallace and hear his story that took him from the Baltimore projects to the corner office, and now, maybe, City Hall.

Syd 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, whichLinkedIn 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.

Bob Wallace

Robert L. Wallace is an internationally-known entrepreneur, author, speaker, and consultant. With more than 30 years of business experience spanning engineering, energy, and IT, Bob blends decades of research with practical real-world advice to educate and inspire entrepreneurs and executives worldwide. His rags-to-riches story began in the Baltimore projects amidst poverty and racial segregation, before overcoming obstacles to establish three companies: BITHGROUP Technologies, Bithenergy, and through RobertWallace.com, EntreTeach. Now, he shares his innovative strategies for success with other corporate and community leaders through his growing library of books and other content, and through his energetic keynote presentations and training workshops. He is running for Mayor of Baltimore in 2020.

Insights from this episode:

• Details on why Bob felt the need to run for Mayor of Baltimore, including ousting career politicians to bring a new perspective to the position.
• Reasons why he changed from the Democratic party to the Republican party and why he is now running as an Independent candidate.
• Benefits of spiritual fortitude in entrepreneurship and “mayor-preneurship”.
• Difficulties Bob faced being an African-American student in Ivy League schools, Penn and Dartmouth, in the 1980s.
• Details on Bob’s plan to rebuild Baltimore and how he plans to be transparent and accountable to the people of Maryland.

Quotes from the show:

• On Bob Wallace: “It’s pretty exciting to see someone with this type of mindset and integrity, deep integrity, and innovation and verified real accomplishment as an entrepreneur.” – Syd Finkelstein
• “If you always do what you’ve always done, then you’re going to get what you’ve always gotten.” – Bob Wallace
• “What’s critical to success in business is timing. You can have a great idea and a great plan but if the timing is not right, it’s not going to work.” – Bob Wallace
• On why Bob is running for Mayor: “Sometimes we are called in life to do things that don’t make sense on paper but you’re called to do it, so you must do it.” – Bob Wallace
• “I do believe that there is a spiritual component to entrepreneurial success.” – Bob Wallace
• On spiritual fortitude: “It’s not about religion per se, it’s that there is a belief that the future will be better than the present. A belief that I have the power to create something out of nothing ” – Bob Wallace
• “When you get to another level of some type in whatever venue it is, you gain this incredible confidence. ... Once you get to a certain level, it becomes your standard” – Syd Finkelstein
• On Bob’s mission as Mayor: “I’m not interested in coming in and nibbling around the edges of this environment, I’m looking to disrupt it and rebuild it and that’s going to take courage and that’s going to take strength, and I think I can bring that to the table.” – Bob Wallace
• “[My approach] is to understand first and then to move forward together. I am prepared to fight for the things that I think are important, but may not be popular.” – Bob Wallace
• “What’s most rewarding for me is the people I am meeting in Baltimore City neighborhoods that I am able to visit and it is so encouraging. Our city has such great DNA, strong bones, and all we need is a leader to pull it together.” – Bob Wallace

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Syd Finkelstein

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Bob Wallace

Website: robertwallace.com

Twitter: @RobertLWallace

Facebook: Bob Wallace for Baltimore Mayor 2020

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The Guggenheim Museum is one of the greatest art institutions in the United States, and in the world. Who works there? Who are these people we know as “curators?” What goes on behind the scenes in preparing exhibitions? The Sydcast goes on a road trip to the NY Guggenheim (pre-COVID) to talk to curator Megan Fontanella, who shares her passion for the stories behind the historic artworks in the collection, her journey to art and curatorship, and what it takes to create exhibits that bring art to life for patrons, critics, and general audiences.

Syd 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, whichLinkedIn 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.

Megan Fontanella

Megan Fontanella joined the curatorial staff in 2005 and conducts collections research for the Guggenheim, focusing on institutional history and the provenance of artworks. In addition to her research work, she has co-organized several collection-based exhibitions, including Art of Another Kind: International Abstraction and the Guggenheim, 1949–1960; The Great Upheaval: Modern Art from the Guggenheim Collection, 1910–1918; and From Berlin to New York: Karl Nierendorf and the Guggenheim. Her co-organized international presentations for the Guggenheim include From Private to Public: Collections and the Guggenheim and Painterly Abstraction, 1949–1969: Selections from the Guggenheim Collections, both at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao; she likewise curated Visions of Modernity, the final presentation of the Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin. More recently, Fontanella supported the traveling retrospective Alberto Burri: The Trauma of Painting; curated Visionaries: Creating a Modern Guggenheim, and co-curated Giacometti. She has also helped organize numerous presentations in the museum’s former Kandinsky Gallery and currently maintains the Thannhauser Gallery, a permanent display of 19th- and early 20th-century art. For the Guggenheim Bilbao she organized Van Gogh to Picasso: The Thannhauser Legacy. Megan graduated from Dartmouth College with a BA in art history modified with history and received her MA in art history from the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, where she specialized in late 19th-century French art. She is a member of the Board of Advisors at the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth.

Insights from this episode:

• Details on how exhibitions are determined and created, what happens once the exhibit has launched, and what happens if the show is a flop.
• Strategies used to create exhibits, how to get pieces on loan from other museums, and how reframing shows to present them differently to the audience gives them new life.
• Details on artists like Kandinsky, Cézanne, and Van Gogh, how they were influenced by their time period and surroundings, and how those influences can be seen in their art.
• How to determine the provenance of a piece of artwork, how the journey of the object can influence exhibits, and dealing with sensitive issues surrounding pieces.
• Benefits of incorporating art into your life and encouraging children to appreciate art through exposure and respect.

Quotes from the show:

• On building relationships: “So much in life is socially based, no matter how ‘scientific’ or ‘technical’ something is, the personal connection is so important.” – Syd Finkelstein
• On creating an exhibition: “It really, genuinely takes a village. There are so many colleagues that I rely upon to make sure that things go off without a hitch.” – Megan Fontanella
• “Some of the most special, fantastic shows maybe don’t connect with our visitors but connect with art historians and critics or vice-versa; it doesn’t connect with critics but is wildly successful [with audiences].” – Megan Fontanella
• On building exhibits: “First and foremost, we strive for scholarship behind our work, we strive to do justice to the artists’ work.” – Megan Fontanella
• On exhibits featuring art from a living artist versus ancient artwork: “It’s an interesting dynamic to think about when the artist is living and this is part of his or her brand and what they are trying to accomplish.” – Syd Finkelstein
• “An exhibit is a work of art in itself.” – Syd Finkelstein
• “Every object tells a story, it has lived a life, and I very much relish pulling out those stories.” – Megan Fontanella
• “You don’t have to be an art historian or think you are going to pursue a future career in the art world to hone your visual literacy.” – Megan Fontanella
• “Variety of experience creates more talented people in whatever area they end up in.” – Syd Finkelstein
• “There are so many different ways that art can affect us and I would just love for the arts to become something that everyone feels is part of their life.” – Megan Fontanella

Stay Connected:

Syd Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

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Megan Fontanella

Book: Visionaries: Creating a Modern Guggenheim

Website: www.guggenheim.org

LinkedIn: Megan Fontanella

Instagram: @meganfontanella

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Coffee, cheese, chocolate, carbs. We all love to eat, but we don’t completely understand how food affects our health and that’s what Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian wants to change. A cardiologist by trade and a food scientist by necessity, Dr. Mozaffarian appreciates the complex relationship between food and health and the need to make choices based on individual health needs, not broad guidelines. Put down that diet magazine and get ready to hear the real skinny on nutrition with Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, in this episode of The Sydcast.

Syd 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, whichLinkedIn 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.

Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian

Dariush Mozaffarian is a cardiologist, Dean, and Jean Mayer Professor at the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, and Professor of Medicine at Tufts Medical School. As one of the top nutrition institutions in the world, the Friedman School’s mission is to produce trusted science, future leaders, and real-world impact.

Dr. Mozaffarian has authored more than 400 scientific publications on dietary priorities for obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases, and on evidence-based policy approaches to reduce these burdens in the US and globally. He has served in numerous advisory roles including for the US and Canadian governments, American Heart Association, World Health Organization, and United Nations. His work has been featured in a wide array of media outlets including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, National Public Radio, and Time Magazine. In 2016, Thomson Reuters named him as one of the World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds. Dr. Mozaffarian received a BS in biological sciences at Stanford (Phi Beta Kappa), MD at Columbia (Alpha Omega Alpha), residency training in internal medicine at Stanford, and fellowship training in cardiovascular medicine at the University of Washington. He also received an MPH from the University of Washington and a Doctorate in Public Health from Harvard. Before being appointed as Dean at Tufts in 2014, Dr. Mozaffarian was at Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health for a decade and clinically active in cardiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He is married, has three children, and actively trains as a Third Degree Black Belt in Taekwondo.

The Friedman School pursues cutting-edge research, education, and public impact across five Divisions, a cross-divisional Center, and multiple academic programs. Areas of focus range from cell to society, including: molecular nutrition, human metabolism and clinical trials, nutrition data science, behavior change, community and organizational interventions, communication and media, agriculture, food systems, and sustainability, hunger and food security, humanitarian crisis, and food policy and economics. Friedman School graduates are leaders in academia, US and international government, policy, advocacy, industry, public health, community service, and entrepreneurship. The School’s unique breadth, engagement with the world, and entrepreneurial spirit make it a leading institution for nutrition education, research, and public impact.

Insights from this episode:

• Details on the two epiphanies that led Dariush, a cardiologist, into the science of food and health.
• Strategies used to implement dietary guidelines that changed the American diet forever.
• Difficulties transitioning from the original, single-focus food science into a more complex and broad approach to health.
• How to characterize the quality of nutrition in your food when different sources provide conflicting information.
• Differences between the acceptance of nutrition science versus the acceptance of more established sciences.
• Strategies needed to change the politics, funding, and research of food science to help the population become healthier and less prone to serious medical conditions.
• How to define a healthy carbohydrate, how they affect your glycemic index, and why that is important to your overall health.
• The reasons why fat intake was dropped from dietary guidelines in 2015 and why fat continues to be a diet focus.
• Differences between high- and low-fat dairy and how food science is evolving in that area.
• How COVID has affected the health and nutrition of millions of Americans.

Quotes from the show:

• “Nutrition science doesn’t change or evolve any more or any less than any other science. Every science changes and evolves pretty rapidly.” – Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian
• “I think that [change] is natural and normal in science. That we have some stuttering and shifts moving toward truth. Science is always improving and, not only is it natural, it should reassure us.” – Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian
• On the accessibility of food science: “We’re in the lab of the kitchen every single day. That’s never the case for these other fields [of science].” – Syd Finkelstein
• “Food and nutrition are the top cause of poor health in this country and on the planet.” – Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian
• “COVID’s really laid bare the fractured food system and unhealthy food system that we have.” – Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian
• “Most of the fat in your body is from eating too many calories that get converted to fat.” – Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian
• “The fundamental message is that foods can’t be judged based on their calories. Every food is a complex package of physiologic information that comes into our body, and interacts with our body in complex ways.” – Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian
• ”These simple solutions and labels have really brought us into a crazy place where all you look at is calories.” – Syd Finkelstein

Resources

New York Times article Our Food is Killing Too Many of Us by Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, August 26, 2019

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Syd Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

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Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian

Website: nutrition.tufts.edu

Twitter: @DMozaffarian

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Bill Helman sits on the board of directors for some of the most influential institutions that are changing the business landscape and, as a partner at Greylock, he is helping to foster the next generation of big ideas. Internet conspiracy theories, flying cars, and a talent search for a president are among the scenery on this wild ride of an episode of The Sydcast.

Syd 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, whichLinkedIn 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.

Bill Helman

William W. Helman IV is a general partner at Greylock Partners, a venture capital firm focused on early-stage investments in technology, consumer Internet, and healthcare. He joined Greylock in 1984, has been a partner since 1997, and served as managing partner from 2000 to 2013.

Bill was elected to the board of directors of Ford Motor Company in 2011. He serves on the finance committee and nominating and governance committee, and as chair of the sustainability and innovation committee. As of 2019, he is also a trustee for Vornado Realty Trust and a Member of the Board at Inari.

Bill led Greylock’s investments in Aveo Pharmaceuticals, Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Hyperion Software, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Filene’s Basement, UPromise, Reveal Imaging, and Zipcar, among others.

He is a former trustee of Dartmouth College and chaired the investment committee from 2014 to 2017. In addition, he serves on the board of Harvard Management Company, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, and The Steppingstone Foundation.

Bill is a member of the board of fellows at Harvard Medical School and Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation.

He graduated from Dartmouth in 1980 and Harvard Business School in 1984.

Insights from this episode:

• Strategies for encouraging and investing in internet security and protocols to ensure a company’s prosperity and safety.
• Details on what personality characteristics are shared by the most successful business people.
• Benefits changing transportation modes, auto-drive vehicles, and rideshare services bring to the automotive industry.
• How to determine and recruit leadership talent for elite universities and how those leaders will shape the future of those establishments.
• Details on the food supply system in the United States and future trends in dining and food.

Quotes from the show:

• “Philosophically, the issue of the negative effects of our totally wired interconnected world runs against the unbelievable benefits.” – Syd Finkelstein
• On predictive algorithms and website tracking: “You don’t know what they know about you and what they are using that information for, you have no idea.” – Bill Helman
• “[Elon Musk] is an amazing inventor, amazing, and he has changed the car industry like no one else has, maybe since Henry Ford.” – Bill Helman
• On traits of highly successful people: “Number one, it’s being willing to challenge the standard convention like few do, number two, it’s having an idea that may seem crazy to the average person but which the founder has an instinct that it will be a great product or service that will deliver value, and the third thing is being able and enabled to accept risk.” – Bill Helman
• On transportation methods: “I think people are moving around, particularly in urban environments, differently.” – Bill Helman
• On higher education: “I believe it is one of our core, unique assets in the United States, it is something that is so important to our core position, higher education, and I don’t think that we appreciate that enough.” – Bill Helman
• “The leadership of most higher education institutions got there through default.” – Bill Helman
• “Four-year, residence-based college is too expensive and it’s not for everybody and it shouldn’t be for everybody. We have this obsession with going to a four-year, top school and, I think, we need to get rid of that obsession. We need to educate our population in a different way.” – Bill Helman
• “You wouldn’t want to hire someone that didn’t want to change the world in some way.” – Syd Finkelstein
• Bill’s favorite hobby: “Hanging out with people and learning from them.” – Bill Helman
• “People say ‘you should do what you’re really good at’ but just because you’re good at something doesn’t mean you like it.” – Syd Finkelstein

Stay Connected:

Syd Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Bill Helman

Website: www.greylock.com

Email: bhelman@greylock.com

LinkedIn: Bill Helman

Instagram: @billhelman

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Listening to Oliver Kremer of Dos Toros Taqueria illustrate the beauty of the burrito, it is easy to understand how he and his brother, Leo, found success bringing Mission-style Mexican food from San Francisco to New York. Oliver and Syd discuss the ingredients that came together to launch Dos Toros and how Oliver, Leo, and Dos Toros have grown and changed along the journey, in this episode of The Sydcast.

Syd 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, whichLinkedIn 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.

Oliver Kremer

Oliver Kremer, co-founder and co-CEO of Dos Toros Taqueria, grew up in Berkeley, California. He graduated from Washington University in St. Louis in 2008, where he flexed his entrepreneurial muscles in the business world, starting a website devoted to helping students find off-campus housing. After graduating with a degree in finance he ultimately decided to return to his first love – burritos – and build a business with his brother Leo. They opened the first Dos Toros Taqueria in New York City in 2009. Today, Dos Toros has 22 locations in NYC and Chicago. In January of 2020 Dos Toros was acquired by Chopt Salad and L Catterton to form Founders Table Restaurant Group with the mission to create, acquire, and cultivate innovative and profitable founder-led restaurant companies.

Insights from this episode:

• Details on the history of the Mission-style burrito and its signature ingredients, how that contributed to the launch of Dos Toros Taqueria, and what it was like to open their first location in Manhattan.
• How to predict demand by monitoring how outside factors, like days of the week, can affect consumer spending and how consumer psychology plays into that demand as well.
• Strategies for using technology to track consumer demand and whether you need high-end or basic programs.
• The secret formula, V.O.R.B (Value Over Replacement Burrito), that Dos Toros Taqueria uses to determine factors like potential new locations.
• Benefits of having a busy restaurant including reducing variability in sales and inventory management and how location affects your volume.
• Details on how Dos Toros went from one location to over a dozen, how they are handling COVID-19, their new merger, and what Oliver has learned along the way.

Quotes from the show:

• On the recipes that make a burrito: “If you can nail each one of these components and if you can portion them and place them into the burrito with real care and love that you can create a real synergy that is so much more than each one of these recipes by itself.” – Oscar Kremer
• On burritos in New York: “You can find amazing tacos that are really authentic, really high-quality tacos but the burrito was, seemingly, more elusive.” – Oscar Kremer
• “I love the creation of anything and food happens to be a pretty good anything.” – Syd Finkelstein
• On product demand: “Thankfully, demand is remarkably predictable. I think people outside of the industry don’t realize the extent to which you can forecast.” – Oscar Kremer
• On not overthinking your market: “Really we’re all very similar, I think, and if you use yourself as a North Star and as a good guide for what people want and when they want it, you’ll probably be fairly accurate.” – Oscar Kremer
• On starting Dos Toros: “We are expert connoisseurs and consumers of the burrito so we didn’t have a lot of questions about what we wanted this thing to look like or be like, it was just about execution.” – Oscar Kremer
• “I know it’s cliche but I really can’t overstate how important location is especially for fast-casual [food].” – Oscar Kremer
• “With every problem I come to, just really try to distill it down to its core and understand what the root cause of something is.” – Oscar Kremer
• On the importance of luck in business: “Acknowledging that is important. I think it keeps all of us a little more centered on the reality of the world.” – Syd Finkelstein
• “I’ve done a fair bit of research on experience and whether it’s valuable or not valuable, in particular highlighting how so many of us, it’s human nature, reach all kinds of conclusions based on a sample size of one.” – Syd Finkelstein

Stay Connected:

Syd Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Oliver Kremer

LinkedIn: Oliver Kremer

Facebook: Oliver Kremer

Instagram: @guackaflockaflame

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When taking off in an Apache helicopter you turn into the wind and face that wind head-on ... and that is how Shannon Polson takes on life. A fighter pilot, mountain climber, and author, Shannon is the embodiment of grit, whose energy and personal story inspires others to change, overcome, and transform. Syd talks with his former student about her unique military experience, family tragedy, and navigating life, in this episode of The Sydcast.

Syd 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, whichLinkedIn 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.

Shannon Polson

After eight years in uniform as one of the Army's first women Apache pilots, Shannon Huffman-Polson never stopped looking for challenges. She climbed high mountains, raced long-course triathlons, and took journeys to Alaska's Arctic, all epic in their challenge emotionally and physically. For three years, she has interviewed women in the vanguard of their military fields as research for The Grit Factorto better understand shared stories and lessons in leadership and grit to inspire other leaders in ways she would have liked to be inspired herself. The Grit Institute is a culmination of that work toward the mission of providing resources for leaders at all levels, especially those in transitions or navigating change.

Insights from this episode:

• Details on why Shannon joined the Army, growing up in Alaska, and what it was like to be stranded while climbing Denali, North America’s tallest peak.
• The strategy Shannon used to become the first female attack helicopter pilot and what it was like to fly missions.
• Benefits of her unique military experience that translated to providing mentorship and leadership to other women through personal interaction and her books.
• How to define grit for yourself, what it takes to get it, and how to use it.
• Benefits of telling your story your way and creating a narrative that makes you stronger.

Quotes from the show:

• On working in the military: “I worked with some of the absolute best people that I ever hope to know and ever hope to work with and I also worked with some of the worst.” – Shannon Polson
• On leaving the military: “It was very hard to not be somewhere where I felt like I was making a difference and responding.” – Shannon Polson
• “My experience is, possibly, now a little bit dated. It’s certainly very unique for having been one of the first women to enter into army attack aviation.” – Shannon Polson
• “Absolutely no question that grit is innate to every single one of us and that grit is a trainable skill and I think that’s been proven again and again.” – Shannon Polson
• “Whatever our level [of skill] is when it comes to being an effective leader or a creative person … you can get more, you can learn how to extend that.” – Syd Finkelstein
• “The ecosystem that supports grit is something that we all need to pay attention to and be able to determine as well.” – Shannon Polson
• “Stories are so fundamental to how we think about the world and who we are.” – Syd Finkelstein
• On telling our own story: “It really is just integral, quite frankly, to everything that we do and everything that we are, whether or not we recognize it. To recognize it means to claim the potential to change it.” – Shannon Polson
• “We often don’t see the truth in our own stories without a little bit of help.” – Shannon Polson
• “We all create our masks in life and we’re different types of people in different situations and this whole thing [COVID-19] has stripped it away to our fundamentals.” – Syd Finkelstein
• “Nothing ever happens by just doing what everybody tells you to do.” – Syd Finkelstein

Stay Connected:

Syd Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Shannon Polson

Website: www.thegritinstitute.com

Website: www.shannonpolson.com

Twitter: @ABorderLife

Book: The Grit Factor: Courage, Resilience, and Leadership in the Most Male-Dominated Organization in the World

Book: North of Hope: A Daughter's Arctic Journey

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If Stuart Weitzman - storyteller, entrepreneur, impresario - had a motto it would be “stand on the shoulders of others.” That simple phrase characterizes his approach to business, branding, and advertising and has helped him create a shoe that regularly walks the red carpet while remaining affordably accessible. From his first shoe design sketches to opening the first shoe store on Rodeo Drive, Stuart shares stories of how Stuart Weitzman shoes became a coveted celebrity brand, in this episode of The Sydcast.

Syd 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, whichLinkedIn 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.

Stuart Weitzman

It can certainly be said that Stuart Weitzman’s passion for design has been a lifelong pursuit: he began working at his father’s Massachusetts shoe factorywhile still in college. After graduating from university, Weitzman applied himself to the industry with a laserlike focus, eventually building the globally-renowned company that bears his name. He has been honored with numerous awards from the footwear, bridal, advertising, and business communities for his work in the world of fashion and entrepreneurship.

Today, his shoes dominate the red carpet events and are worn by loyal celebrity fans like Meghan Markle, Kate Middleton, Beyonce, Taylor Swift, Selena Gomez, Gigi and Bella Hadid, Jennifer Lawrence, Halle Berry, Angelina Jolie, Julia Roberts, Nicole Kidman, and by millions of women who buy them in over 70 countries around the world.

Weitzman approaches his other endeavors with equal commitment. He shares his time with his wife Jane and their two daughters and is personally involved in philanthropic causes close to his heart. Among these is his mentoring students on their entrepreneurial aspirations at several universities, including the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, Yale, and the London Business School. Weitzman is a graduate of Penn’s Wharton School of Business and in 2019 the university honored him by renaming their design school the Stuart Weitzman School of Design.

During his free time, you may find him on the tennis court or at the ping-pong table. If you’ve got a racket, he’ll welcome the challenge.

Insights from this episode:

• Details on how Stuart got his start in designing shoes, early lessons he learned about business, and the best decision he made.
• Benefits of working in an industry versus going to graduate school to learn the industry.
• Strategies Stuart used to create a niche market for his business that would bring the success he envisioned.
• How to become a great designer, not just a talented designer.
• Strategies for protecting your business from competition including company culture and imagination.

Quotes from the show:

• “There’s the creative side of so many endeavors and then there’s the business side. You see it in almost any field. … It’s almost this yin and yang kind of thing.” – Syd Finkelstein
• On customer acquisition cost: “That made me recognize nothing was more important than making a business out of this product.” – Stuart Weitzman
• “The most beautiful shoe in the world, if nobody bought it, it wasn’t such a good shoe.” – Syd Finkelstein
• “I knew if I could work for someone else who was making a product that, hopefully, I would make one day as well, I could learn things I certainly would never have gotten in grad school.” – Stuart Weitzman
• On finding his market niche: “Every dress on the red carpet was custom made and one of a kind for that actress but shoes were bought in shoe stores.” – Stuart Weitzman
• On why women buy his shoes: “It’s really about the image of the company and how I use the celebrities to overcome being a low-price brand [in the luxury shoe market].” – Stuart Weitzman
• On using celebrities to promote brands: “Associate yourself with great success in others and it can rub off on you if you do it well but you have to have product integrity.” – Stuart Weitzman
• On why Stuart decided to open shoe stores: “I recognized that the right store on the right street was a great branding tool, better than spending a $100,000 on a Vogue ad.” – Stuart Weitzman
• “There was never a door on my office. I knew everybody and I didn’t manage them, maybe I inspired them.” – Stuart Weitzman
• “To be imaginative and do things out of the ordinary but in a fresh and exciting way is just as easy as following the same straight path to that finish line.” – Stuart Weitzman

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