Authentic Leadership for Everyday People

Christian Muntean is a strategic coach and consultant based in Anchorage, Alaska, who specializes in leadership transitions and business exits. Christian came into this work from a very nontraditional path. He started his career in the NGO world and specifically doing work supporting medical efforts in Africa and Kosovo. Through this work he became interested in mediation and that is what ultimate...

Lily ZHeng is a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Strategist, Author and Practitioner. They take a very practical approach, deeply grounded in data and in creating long-term measurable results for the companies they partner with. In this conversation, Lily explains what it means to take a data driven approach to DEI. They share their focus on fostering long-term partnerships with clients truly commi...

Jim Schleckser is founder & CEO of The CEO Project, a company that serves CEOs and high-revenue entrepreneurs. Their offering combines peer group meetings and discussions with personalized one-on-one coaching sessions led by former CEOs. We start with Jim's path to his first CEO role, and how coming up from the sales side shaped his approach. And in this context he shared some of his early mis...

Neta Weiner is an artist and social activist based in Jaffa. He is the founder and lead singer of the Jewish-Arab hip-hop band System Ali and the artistic director of the Beit System Ali social educational movement. And right now, he is also teaching a Tufts University. System Ali is musical collective of artists of many nationalities and ethnicities, that blends music genres and languages.&n...

Today's guest is Patrick Heron - Managing Partner of Frazier Life Sciences, a healthcare investment firm focusing on companies developing novel therapeutics. In our conversation we covered his career, but then we dove into the hard questions: how do you build a successful partnership with a founder? As a VC, how do you balance protecting the interest of your investors with ensuring the business su...

Maggie Olson is the Founder of Nova Chief of Staff, the first-of-its-kind destination for Chief of Staff education, certification, and development. In our conversation, we discussed her career and then dug deep into what it means to lead from the Chief of Staff spot. What are the key steps to take when you start in the role, what are the success factors, what are the traps, and conversely, what CE...

At the end of every episode I ask my guests their "food for the soul" - arts or other things that inspire them. In this episode I answer the question with some of my food for the soul. I start with guitars and specifically, my current favorite guitar, my Powers Electric. Then I talk about two groups of books that have influenced me - the great early 20th Century European novels and musicians biogr...

Claudia Scott, the Head of Inclusive Entrepreneurship and Director of KIVA North West Arkansas at Startup Junkie. In that role, Claudia leads the development and implementation of strategies that give access to capital and other entrepreneurial resources to underserved populations. We talked about the main challenges that these entrepreneurs face suffer, and some of the steps that can be taken to...

Today's guest is Damon Lembi – CEO of Learnit, published author and host of the Learn-It-All podcast. As you may guess from the name, Learnit is a learning and training company that helps organizations upskill their workforce. Through college, Damon thought he would be a professional baseball player. He was drafted by the Atlanta Braves in high-school but elected to go to college and played at Pep...

Joanna Strober is the CEO and founder of MIDI health, a company that provide tele health services to women in midlife. In the process, she ended up taking a leadership role not just for the company but for society as a whole, as MIDI Health does work that fills a big gap. Like many founders, Joanna had the idea to start the company when she experienced this void of service personally. In our conve...

Victor Cho, CEO of Emovid comes back to the podcast. In our first conversation he mentioned his passion for the topic of the Fourth Stakeholder and the role of business in society. We agreed that since it was a topic we both loved, rather than discussing it in that episode we would dedicate a whole episode to it. So here he is. In the past 30 years, business has moved from a world where CEOs were...

Today's guest is Ali Cox, founder and CEO of Noble West, a marketing consultancy that specializes in food ingredients, agriculture and the entire agricultural ecosystem. Ali is not your typical CEO – before starting her business career, she won a world championship gold medal and an Olympic silver medal, in rowing. At the time she won it, in 2004, the US had not medaled since 1976 in her event, th...

An anthology episode including all the answers to the favorite food and drinks by guests of the podcast. Includes answers by: Anna Goldsmith Ginevra Bersani Franceschetti Jason Downie Bryan Adams Jesse Friedman Melissa Kwan Jason Thompson Whitney Hinshaw Sullivan Jeff Bender Debi Kleiman Carlos Williams Don Martelli Mosongo Moukwa Giovanni Vacchi Contact Dino at: dino@al4ep.com Websites: al4ep.com...

Today's guest is Jesse Friedman, Head of WP Cloud and VP of Innovation and Partnerships at Automattic. We discuss how to build an open and creative culture when leading technology teams and the foundational practices that make Automattic so successful at remote work. Contact Dino at: dino@al4ep.com Websites: al4ep.com jesse.blog Additional Guest Links: Corporate: automattic.com LinkedIn: linkedin....

John Torrens is an entrepreneur, founder of two successful healthcare related businesses, and a professor of entrepreneurship at Syracuse University. What makes him unique is that he accomplished all this, including getting a PhD. in business, while having adult ADHD. In this episode, you will hear about how John adapted once he got his ADHD diagnosis and actually became a better entrepreneur by l...

Today's guest is is Victor Cho, a tech entrepreneur, former CEO of Evite, and current CEO of Emovid, a company that uses video messaging to deliver more authentic communications at scale. Unlike many people, Victor knew from an early age that when he grew up he wanted to be the CEO of a software company. In our discussion he shared how that clarity informed every choice in his career, and how his...

Today we talk about branding and leadership with Carlos Williams, the founder of DBC, a creative agency that leverages data and equity to connect brands with their audiences. Carlos shares his unique perspective on leadership influenced by historical city-states. We started the conversation going way back to his experiences in elementary school, where he was always the smartest kid in the class, a...

Our guest is Bryan Adams, one of the pioneers of the employer branding discipline and the author of the book “Give and Get Employer Branding” a book that is considered the bible of the discipline. He is the founder and CEO of two companies: Ph. Creative, an agency that focuses on employer branding, and HappyDance, an enterprise career technology company. In our conversation we talked about Bryan’s...

Giovanni Vacchi is the CEO of Colombini Group, a family owned company that has been one of the leaders in the Italian design and furniture sector for over 50 years. Giovanni had a variety of experiences across countries and industries, and in this conversation shares how authenticity and effective leadership are pivotal in diverse business environments. Specifically, we discuss his journey from co...

David West, co-founder and CEO of Proscia, shares his journey from student/researcher to founding and building a medical software company whose goal is to improve cancer diagnosis through technology. We discussed how he developed his vision of authentic leadership while building the company as he transitioned from a scientist/hands-on entrepreneur to a leader who fosters a problem-solving mindset...

In today's episode we revisit all the answers to the question: what is the business expression or jargon that drives you crazy. If you missed it, make sure you check out 4th Annual Business Jargon that Drives You Crazy - Part 1 , which came out on Memorial Day. Here are our featured guests: Ginevra Bersani Franceschetti Jason Thompson Dr. Amanda Blake Anna Goldsmith Jason Downie Amy Vaughan Stephe...

Rachel Labi is the co-founder of Building Financial Freedom, an organization that develops financial literacy programs for youth. As she discusses her journey from advocating for mandatory personal finance education in Indiana to founding Building Financial Freedom she builds a strong case for the necessity of systemic changes in financial education, and not leaving the responsibility solely to pa...

Anthony Frasier is the CEO and Founder of ABF Creative, a media company specialized in multicultural audio content for children. Starting out right after high-school, Anthony followed a unique entrepreneurial path, going from tech to educating fellow entrepreneurs to entrepreneur in residence and podcast producer. We talked about the mental resilience required to build a career as a minority in te...

Our guest today is Simon T Bailey, anAward-winning keynote speaker, coach, and author who spent his formative years working in the hospitality business, working for companies like Hyatt and Disney. In our conversation, we discussed Simon’s approach to leadership and developing people and his fascinating journey. Simon’s story began as the classic American story – starting from the bottom of the la...

Today's guest is Kelly Campbell, a former CEO turned Trauma-Informed Leadership Coach. She is also the author of  Heal to Lead: Revolutionizing Leadership through Trauma Healing  (Wiley), an inspired keynote speaker and a longtime conservationisttrained by Al Gore as a Climate Reality Leader in 2017. In this candid and raw interview, Kelly discusses the intersection of personal trau...