Intentional Performers

Tanya Vogel has had quite a career in athletics and she’s kind of just getting started with her impact and influence in not just athletics, but beyond it as well. She’s been a distinguished leader in collegiate athletics for nearly 3 decades. Recently, she concluded her tenure as the Director of Athletics at George Washington University; she served in that position for 7 years. Her journey at GW b...

Joe Quitoni is the Founder and CEO of Unify Align. Unify Align collaborates with clients to reimagine the people and customer experience, delivering real-world solutions that supercharge business growth. Joe knows a thing or two about collaborating with clients, specifically around people and customer experience. Throughout his career, he has used his skills in organizational transformation to cre...

Harris Fanaroff is the Founder of Linked Revenue. Linked Revenue is a company that helps Executives and sales and marketing teams utilize LinkedIn to generate new business. They focus on 3 areas: Helping executives generate thought leadership content Growing and nurturing their network Creating a business development strategy and executing on it Harris has over 28,000 followers on LinkedIn and has...

Dr. Diane Hamilton is one of those people that came on my radar and just didn’t stay off of it. She is one of the leading experts when it comes to studying curiosity in the world. She’s written multiple books about curiosity, she’s the creator of the curiosity code index which tries to help us understand what actually gets in the way of our ability to stay curious, and for that I am extremely grat...

Jason LaRose has built quite a reputation for himself throughout his career in his desire to help companies scale and grow. He worked for companies like Under Armour, where he became their President of the North America Region. He then went onto Equinox Media, where he served as the CEO, helping them build out their technologies and their content. From there, he co-founded and became President of...

Mitch Warner is a managing partner of the Arbinger Institute, which is a global leadership development firm. He directs the development of Arbinger’s leadership development programs and highly customized large-scale organizational culture change initiatives. Mitch has been instrumental in Arbinger’s rapid growth, including its expanding international presence in over 20 countries. He’s also a heck...

Doug Stitt most recently served as the Chief People Officer for the United States Army where he was the lead HR officer for the Army's 1 million uniform and civilian personnel. He graduated from Norwich University and served around the globe in a variety of formations. He is married to Beth and has two daughters, Laura and Anna. Doug had a number of amazing insights during our conversation. Some o...

Ashley Zaslav is the founder of Integrative Complexity, which is a high-performance coaching firm that works with made career high achievers ready to bet on themselves and test their potential. She’s also on our coaching bench at Strong Skills, and I’ve been fortunate to refer some amazing people to Ashley and hear firsthand about the work that she does with them. Some of her clients include found...

Gretchen Rubin is one of today’s most influential and thought-provoking observers of happiness and human nature. We discuss happiness at length in today’s conversation, but we also discuss frameworks, and I think you’re going to find right off the bat that Gretchen sees things in terms of frameworks, in terms of theory. But she’s also known for her ability to convey complex ideas from science, to...

Tiffany Thompson is a unique human being. She’s driven by curiosity, and that’s going to come shining through in our conversation today. Tiffany weaves the analytic rigor of her early career as a CIA analyst with the explorative creativity of her recording artist career. So, to say she wears multiples hats or weaves multiple identities is probably an understatement. She is the founder and CEO of A...

James Lawrence is a serial entrepreneur with a passion for cultivating great workplaces and empowering people. You will be able to tell right off the jump that James is extremely passionate about developing people in the workforce and doing so with intentional leadership. With more than 25 years of being a CEO and founder, James loves to share his insights, not just on leadership, but also on orga...

Before I get to Micah Hendler’s bio, I want to acknowledge there are things in this conversation, there are themes in this conversation, there are ideas in this conversation, that I don’t agree with. And if you look back to our podcast guests in the past, we have tried to bring a variety of people to the podcast for dialogue and to learn other people’s perspectives. And just because you’re learnin...

Melissa Urban is a badass. And we talk about that term badass and why she likes and why she appreciates the label and explains why we may attach that label to women who are doing big things, but we don’t necessarily attach it to men. So, who is Melissa beyond being a badass and what has that baddass-ery led to? It led to her co-founding and becoming the CEO of the Whole 30 brand. She’s also a reco...

Lauren Sisler is an Emmy Award winning sports broadcaster, a former collegiate gymnast, an ESPN sideline reporter, an author, and a keynote speaker. While those accolades are super impressive and certainly her resume is impressive, this conversation gets into some of the challenges Lauren has faced personally. She lost both of her parents with their hidden battle with prescription drug addiction w...

Ruben Gonzalez is going to inspire you with our conversation today. He is 61 years old and he is still attempting to make it to the next Olympics in the sport of luge. If you know anything about luge, you’ll know that it is a difficult sport that’s hard on the body that comes with danger. And Ruben knows a lot about the sport of luge. He’s competed in 4 different Olympics in the 3 different decade...

If you live in the Washington DC area, Lindsay Czarniak is a name that you’re probably familiar with. She’s an Emmy Award winning broadcaster who spent several years as the sports anchor and reporter for NBC Washington. Also, if you’re familiar with NBC Washington, you’ll know that they have become somewhat of a factory for talent in the sports broadcasting world. That really traces back to the da...

Dr. James Doty, or as he wanted me to call him, Jim, is a Clinical Professor of Neurosurgery at Stanford University. He’s also the Founder and Director of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education, which is an affiliate of the Stanford Neurosciences Institute. So, you’re going to learn pretty quickly in today’s conversation that Dr. Doty has been on the neurosurgery side and on...

Allison Shapira, MPA, CSP, is a former opera singer turned entrepreneur, keynote speaker, and international expert in leadership communication. She is the Founder/CEO of Global Public Speaking LLC, a certified woman-owned small business that teaches speaking skills to leaders so that they can build better client relationships, inspire their teams, and confidently lead their organizations into the...

Bill Kraus is on a mission. And I use that word intentionally. He is the co-founder and owner of Mission Barbeque, which opened its doors for business on September 11th, 2011. And of course, that date is not a coincidence. Bill and his co-founder Steve “Newt” Newton, who came from Outback Steakhouse, were very intentional from the beginning to make sure that they built a business that was purpose-...

Dr. Charles Camarda has a resume that scares the heck out of me because there are so many technical elements of his background in research engineering that I know that I can butcher a lot of these words because it’s basically like speaking Chinese to me. I love this conversation because it’s actually not about a lot of the technical background that Dr. Camarda brings to it. You have Dr. Camarda, a...

Mickey Bergman is one of the most fascinating, interesting people that I’ve met (and certainly that we’ve had on this podcast). He’s currently the Vice President and Senior Advisor at the Governor Richardson Center for Global Engagement. We are going to talk about Governor Richardson, who’s also known as “The Gov” to Mickey, and the impact that he’s had on Mickey’s life. The Center for Global Enga...

Andy Lopata is all about building quality, strategic, and intentional relationships, and trying to teach others how they can do so as well. He’s written 6 books on networking and professional relationships, with his latest being all about aentoring; it’s called The Financial Times Guide to Mentoring, and it was co-written by Ruth Gotian who is a past podcast guest. He also writes a regular blog fo...

I’ve been really fortunate to spend time with some of the best athletes in the world, whether it’s through my podcast or whether it’s through other relationships I’ve had in my life, I’ve gotten to be inside certain circles that put me in spaces with professional athletes. I also had a sport psychology practice where I worked with a number of professional athletes. One of my favorite athletes that...

When I was first introduced to Chris Waddell for this podcast, I was super excited. His bio is absolutely inspiring. He was Dalai Lama’s Unsung Hero for Compassion. He’s won 13 Paralympic medals. He’s in the Paralympic Hall of Fame. He’s in the US Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame. NPR credited him with one of the best graduation speeches ever for his keynote at Middlebury College in 2011. He has won...