Beyond High Street

Jeff Pegues is a CBS News correspondent, two-time author and multi-Emmy winning journalist. And just last month, he was the commencement speaker for Miami’s 2019 graduating class. He currently leads the Chief Justice and National Security beat for the news organization. I enjoyed the discussion about how he prepped for delivering an address to students (yes, of course he was a bit nervous) and the...

Charlie Metzger is the EVP, Chief Revenue and Marketing Officer at Palace Sports and Entertainment and the Detroit Pistons, where he oversees all business functions including marketing/sales strategy, communications, fan experience, social media, and community relations. We discuss the challenges of his job and the differences of working for a team, brand and agency (he has done all three!). He di...

Miami University alum Mike ‘Doc’ Emrick is not only the voice of the NHL on NBC Sports, he is simply the voice of hockey. His vast and successful 46-year broadcasting career 46 years includes six Sports Emmys for Outstanding Sports Personality, Play-by-Play – including just two nights ago! Our conversation focuses on the beginnings of his incredible vocabulary and language recall to his advice for...

A deep discussion with SVP and General Counsel of BioScrip, Kathryn Stalmack about work-life balance and the personal choice of a woman to work or stay at home. It’s an important discussion that is not shared publicly much. Kathryn took it head on. She also elaborated on the unpredictable aspect of her work and the tone/communications skills needed for her audiences (staff, clients, shareholders,...

Andy Sauer continues a recent conversation trend; entrepreneurs who identify problems and work-round-the-clock to solve them through innovation. There was a lack of convenience and clarity in performance nutrition and Andy isn’t stopping until it is fixed. Through experience and a bit of trial and error, he and his team at Hilo Nutrition have developed a gummy product to meet the needs of all athl...

Our first active Miami student on the pod! Why? Because Christie Currie is so darn impressive. She is days away from graduation and about to hit the world with a newly created business. She identified a problem in the real world through her own personal experience with cancer and is all-in to solve it. Enter Zandaland , a holistic digital platform and virtual world for Children’s Hospitals that ed...

Mark Lacker took a circuitous route to his current role as an entrepreneurship professor at Miami’s Farmer School of Business. He is a self-described accidental professor. While building and scaling businesses, he connected back with Miami to get help from students as an occasional guest lecturer. His interest, excitement and long-term love for Oxford grew and grew until he moved out of the busine...

While Tim Sweetwood has always been passionate about music, it wasn’t until he graduated from Miami and experienced the entrepreneurial side of the business that he knew he could make a career out of it.  In the years since he has been involved with just about every aspect of music entertainment – from recording, to booking events, to his current role organizing and running entire music festivals....

Jon Podany has the unique challenge and awesome opportunity to manage the legacy of one of sport’s most revered figures. Podany was appointed the CEO of  Arnold Palmer Enterprises , managing every use of the legend’s name, image, signature, and properties worldwide in the Fall of 2018. He is also the President of the Arnold & Winnie Palmer Foundation. It is staggering to hear Jon list all of the t...

It takes a lot of courage to drop everything immediately post college and move to a foreign land without a lick of the local language. This week’s guest Jeff Brunka did just that and has been taking calculated risks ever since. His first job in Germany was helping out at a horse ranch, four hours away from Munich.  Brunka has a lot of great stories and insight, from his first months in Germany to...

Susan Canavari, the Global Head of Brand Experience Development at JPMorgan Chase & Co is a rockstar. She has had an incredible business career which began on the other side of the house, the agency side. We focus much of the conversation on the differences between the two sides and how they can help each other succeed. We dig into her daily habits, from what time she wakes up to how she stays cur...

Andy Blackburn is the VP of New Business at Marquee Sports & Entertainment , which is the hospitality and marketing arm of the Chicago Cubs, Wrigley Field, and other iconic properties. Every day, he aims to improve the in-game experience for anyone who steps foot into Wrigley Field, from team sponsors to once-a-year fans, and everyone in between. He talks about the dramatic facelift Wrigley Field,...

The MLS season is just getting underway, and we’re lucky to have on the pod this week the President and General Manager of the league’s newest team. Jeff Berding was instrumental in the awarding of FC Cincinnati , and he provides some fascinating insight on the pod about the process of getting his beloved city that franchise. You can hear in his voice the passion he has for Cincinnati. He also tal...

From a geology major to an uber-successful business leader, Steve Carlin has spanned the industries of soap and cosmetics to video games and robotics over 20+ years of work. Our conversation covers all sides of his business career and is rooted in some key themes – leadership, business creation, and networking. He has successfully weaved his way forward using key attributes and learning to propel...

David Fleming is a senior writer for ESPN and has written numerous stories for The Magazine and espn.com. He has also authored two books – Noah’s Rainbow (a father’s memoir) and Breaker Boys (the stolen 1925 NFL title). The passion in his voice when talking about Miami is infectious. He uses that same passion when writing too. If you haven’t read his work, search for it. It’s worth your time. In t...

Andy Gloor is a Managing Principal at Sterling Bay – an uber-successful commercial real estate and development firm. Bloomberg even named Andy – “the tech industry's go-to real estate developer”. He really stresses the importance of relationships and how handshakes are often more important than lawyers in getting a deal done. He and his wife Mara (a Miami Merger) are incredibly generous and have s...

Beth Herrington is a partner at Morgan Lewis , and has been named one of Crain’s Chicago Most Influential Women Lawyers….multiple times! It was so great to catch up and hear about all of her success. Her comments about gender-split in law, competitiveness and the power of a relationship are so well articulated. You can easily see why a client would want her to be on the front line in any dispute....

As PR Week wrote when Jeff Immel was honored with a 40 under 40 Award, “a leap of faith can sometimes usher in a whole new approach to marketing….when Immel left Arc Worldwide to join Weber Shandwick’s budding creative team as its first art director, he was making a bold move.” I so appreciate his risk, and the firm’s, as the public relations discipline was evolving into something much greater – a...

Imagine waking up every day having to react to countless stories that came in overnight, and to determine how they impact your City. Well, that is what Lisa Schrader did for two years as Chief of Staff for Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel (and almost 15 years total working at City Hall). She shares great learnings of skillsets you acquire when working in the public sector, and how she has used that expe...

So good to catch up with Kevin George, the new CMO of Harvest Health & Recreation, Inc. – a vertically integrated public cannabis company. That’s right, a cannabis company. Kevin has spent the past 20+ years in global leading roles at Unilever, Beam Suntory and the marketing agency Mosaic. He is taking his plethora of experience, knowledge and relationship into one of, if not, THE fastest growing...

Welcome back to Beyond High Street! One area I want to focus on with this podcast is innovation/transformation, and retail is the perfect industry for that. Our guest today is Jeff Gooding, who oversees all Marketing and Advertising for ACE Hardware. He shares great thoughts on what it takes to change in today’s business environment and how to work in a co-op environment (as he says, “it’s like ha...

Happy New Year Beyond High Street friends. Marc Bushala has passion to be an entrepreneur. You can hear it in his voice in how he thinks through challenges and opportunities. He shares some great stories about taking advantage of opportunities (especially when you are young) and how to find openings in the marketplace. All of this business and entrepreneurial work led him down a path into the spir...

Jeff Tennery is the founder & CEO of Moonlighting and has spent 25+ years in senior executive leadership roles in the mobile space via Verizon, AT&T Wireless and Millennial Media. Jeff has spent the past year “moonlighting,” helping friends and co-founders on nights and weekends build the first on-demand mobile marketplace (you will hear his commentary on the 41st hour in the pod! and when/how/why...

Mark Satkiewicz has spent the past 20+ years working with and building mission-based businesses. All of that work is guided off a simple phrase from him: are you a contributor in life or a consumer? And a recent near fatal health issue (resuscitated to life!) has made him refocus on what’s important for him and his family. He is taking that new focus back to Steamboat, CO with his family to better...

The conversation with Donn Davis gave great insight into how he thinks. He is a Founding Partner of Revolution Growth as well as Co-Founder and Chairman of the Professional Fighters League . The commonality of those two businesses: disruption. And that is what we focus much of the conversation on. We also dig into the differences in being an attacker v. defender and a builder v. manager. His persp...